Hospitality To The Homeless Fails

he’sI’ve been talking about, what do you do when the homeless asks you for money? But I’m going to flip it up a little bit in today’s video. Yesterday, I mentioned some fails. We’ve had some fun fails, but let me give you a little bit of backstory about this. I started to get convicted that we weren’t being hospitable. There’s a verse in the Bible that says ‘practice hospitality’. But if you look at the word for practice, it literally means to pursue it, like you need to pursue being a hospitable person.

I realized that right after Jesus died, he was resurrected, he’s on the road to Emmaus. The disciples invite Jesus to spend the night with them. They didn’t know it was Jesus. They just invited this stranger to come and spend the night with them, and he did. And then, they finally realized who he was.

There’s a verse in Matthew 25 where Jesus gathers the people before him and he separates the sheep and goats. One of the things He says was, “You get a chance to come and be with me because you’ve invited the stranger in and you’ve cared for them.” Where the vice versa is, “I was a stranger and you never invited me in.”

And then, there’s a verse in Hebrews that says, “Some of you have entertained angels without even knowing it.” So, he’s saying, “You guys have had angels spend the night at your house. You didn’t even know it.” It’s because they would pursue hospitality. They would invite people to stay with them.

I started and get convicted that we never really have people stay with us. First of all, we had a mom and a daughter staying with us. My son was a newborn baby. I put my baby in a clothes hamper head first and then shut the clothes hamper on them. That’s not too bad. I mean, well, it’s kind of bad maybe. I don’t know. Then they leave.

We had this husband wife with two kids. They came and stayed with us. Her son started a fire in our bathroom. I mean, all kinds of stuff went wrong, right? Then, we met this group. There was a husband and wife, they had four kids and then they had two single guys that were with them. They’re basically living on the streets. I felt convicted again. We need to have these strangers stay with us. I didn’t want the kids to be on the street, so we moved these eight people into our apartment.

Now listen, I have five, they had their eight, we live in a two-bedroom, 600-square-foot apartment. That’s a whole bunch of people staying in your apartment. What ends up happening is, they left and our landlord calls us and she says, “Why is our water bill three times what it usually is?” She just knew. She’s like, “You can’t have people staying with you.” So she canceled out our stranger ministry.

But come to find out, when we would go to bed, one of the dudes in their group would take an hour long shower every single night. This dude is going into our bathroom and just soaking up the warmness for an hour every night. He blew it. He blew the stranger ministry for everyone else.

But listen, I think it’s important. Even if you have someone, put your baby in a clothes hamper, start a fire in your bathroom or run up your water bill, I think it’s important that we allow strangers to come into our lives, come into our house. I’m realizing more and more that the early church, they would constantly bring people into their house. I think the church wasn’t just a building, it was a group of people that acted like a family, and families stay together, right? You go spend the night at your family’s house, and that’s what they did. That’s why I think people were added to their number daily because they were pursuing hospitality.

Even when you get these fails where it’s not all glory, you have all these bad things happen, it’s still worth it the very least because Jesus says, “The way you treat strangers is the way you treat me.” So, it’s important to allow strangers into your life because Jesus says, “The way you treat those guys that no one else knows, that’s the way you treat me.” When you stand before him, at the end of your life and you stand before Jesus, he’s going to judge you according to how well you treat a stranger. So, that’s kind of sobering to me.

So man, do it to it. Go practice. Pursue hospitality.