by Cliff Saenz

What does being hospitable look like on the mission field? It means always being ready to open our doors or our arms to someone, praying and listening to the Spirit’s leading  as we look for opportunities that the Lord places in front of us to share the Gospel in word and deed.

We need to realize that hospitality and service on mission will not always be on our perfect timing or look how we want it to. We have to trust God’s perfect timing and His will. We go out and invite people to enter our lives and see and hear the change God has brought about, rather than wait for them to come to us.

That will make some Christians uncomfortable. Some will have to kill the idea that everything has to be perfect before they can be hospitable, invite someone over or buy someone a cup of coffee. Hospitality takes humility. Just as Jesus humbled Himself and came down to us, we must do the same for others.

Matthew 5:44 and Romans 12:20 don’t encourage comfort with people we already know and love. No, those verses refer to our enemies and those who persecute us. Yet we are told to pray and love them, to give them something to eat when they’re hungry and to give them something to drink when they’re thirsty. Hospitality and service in love is gracious, not convenient or self-serving.

The Bible teaches that we were all God’s enemies, and yet we see Jesus eating, drinking, spending quality time with nonbelievers — His enemies. But it doesn’t stop there. Service and hospitality for service and hospitality’s sake means nothing. The food will not satisfy forever. The drinks will run out and our thirst will return.

Instead, Jesus uses hospitality and service as the means to share the very thing that will satisfy people’s needs: Himself. Jesus is bold enough to invite Himself to Zacchaeus’ house and spend time with His enemy, so that He could bring salvation to his household (Luke 19:1-10).

Later, Jesus served in the most humbling way known to the culture by washing His disciples’ feet. He turned a night of breaking bread and drinking wine (or in other words, hospitality) into a symbol of the ultimate act of love and service:  Conquering death and sin so that we could have new life!

Hospitality and service alone do not save souls. Jesus saves. We must live out hospitality and service, opening our doors so others can see, hear and sense the change in our lives so that by the grace and mercy of God they can be reconciled to the Father through Jesus Christ. One day they may sit at the Lord’s table, breaking bread not just with friends and family, but their Lord and Savior in heaven.

Cliff Saenz is a church planting resident at Family Church.