Entertaining Strangers

It is Saturday night and my wife calls me from her work. I was expecting the usual after work question, "do you want me to bring home anything to eat?". Instead I was asked a very different question. "There is someone here who needs a place to stay for a couple of days, is it okay with you if he comes home with me? I am pretty sure he is not on any drugs."

what I said was "yes he can stay with us." What I thought was "I do not want another person sharing our 900 some odd square feet." I will be honest having someone in the house with us was hard on us. Still God worked on my heart through the experience.

For the sake of the blog I am going to call our previous house guest Johny. I am generally a quiet introspective kind of person, Johny is not. While I was home with Johny I found that I was having to tell myself several times "Jesus wants you to care for this man." Thinking about what John Piper teaches I began to remind my heart that I would have more joy in God by helping Johny D.

It was still really hard for me to have someone other than my wife in the house with me, but I found that my attitude toward him was changing. I started to feel less annoyed by Johny's propensity to never be quiet and more exited about the opportunities it provided my wife and I to share the Gospel. We were never able to share the gospel start to finish in one sitting, but we were able to lay ground work about sin, all men sinning against God, and Christ was either going to be judged on our behalf or we would be judged. Johny even sat with Carrie and I every night while we did our corporate devotion through Psalms and one night he asked questions about the return of Christ.

Johny's stay at our house was never easy for me and I will be honest when I say I am glad he found a place to rent. Yet, throughout his tenure at our house, I received a contented joy in the Lord that superseded the discomfort. I am thankful that God in his Grace allowed my mouth to say "yes he can stay with us" even though my heart was not where it should have been.

I was further rewarded today when I was reminded of Hebrews 13:2 "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it."