Good morning my “Walking with Jesus” family all around the world.
Today is February 02 and I hope this new month is off to a good start for you!
Have you ever been on the receiving end of wonderful HOSPITALITY? Maybe it was a friend’s family who took you in over College break because you didn’t have the money to go home, a far distance away? I know a dear widow woman who regularly hosts other widows in her home for a nice meal and evening of encouraging conversation. What is God honoring hospitality in your experience? Sadly, it’s not something we hear about or experience very often in our busy world, is it?
But in the mid first century, as Christians were being persecuted everywhere across the Roman empire, they found themselves often run out of their homes or even their towns, by angry people who hated the idea that Jesus was a resurrected Savior. As these persecuted people and families fled, they became refugees and so Peter is urging all Christians across the empire to be on the watch for such people who needed an extra touch of God’s love.
Let’s join Peter again as he writes: “Above all love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each of you should use whatever gifts [from God] you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.” (1 Peter 4:8-10) Now what do you suppose Peter meant when he said that love covers sins? Sadly, that is misinterpreted by some to suggest that every time you love and do some good deed for someone in God’s balance book God will erase a sin for your every good deed!
Now that’s not at all what Peter is saying for we can do NOTHING to make up for or undo our sins. Only God can pardon and erase and cleanse us from our sin, but His justice requires that the death sin payment be made before He can forgive sin, and that’s why the death payment of Jesus, the Son of God, is so important for all of us my friends!
Peter is saying that the power of Love is almost unmeasurable and unstoppable, do you agree? Love heals a wounded heart, doesn’t it? Undeserved and unexpected love can be overwhelming. God says the greatest example of love is God sending His own Son, Jesus, to die for our sins against God! (1 John 4:9,10) So, Peter was admonishing first century Christians to show self-sacrificing love to each other, especially to those who were being persecuted, for that love would help them forgive their persecutors and help them experience God’s healing touch in their wounded hearts.
One of the great ways to express that type of love practically was hospitality. Opening their homes to receive those on the run. Opening their table to feed those hungry. It was sharing the resources God had entrusted to them, with those in need, even if their sharing meant they had to go without! That is sacrificial hospitality. Have you ever experienced that type of hospitality? Peter remembered Jesus had said, on the night before He went to the cross: “When you love one another as I have loved you, then people will know you are really My disciples.” (John 13:34,35) Those words became life changing as the Disciples watched Jesus pour out His love to those who persecuted Him, and tortured Him, and eventually crucified Him!
Let’s look at the very next powerful statement Peter writes: “Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.” (1 Peter 4:10) Oh my that is a powerful statement, isn’t it? What abilities or talents or passions do you have that you believe are not natural in you, they are God given to you? Now watch this, my friends. We’ve all seen a person who just has a natural, remarkable ability and it was apparent from the time they were a child. I have this in my own grand girls and perhaps you have too. It may be art or music or athletics or story telling or creative design. We’ve seen people who, from the time they were children, had a natural tenderness toward hurting people or a willingness to jump in and serve when needed without any recognition. Now some of this is natural and God given and was there from their earliest days. But sometimes we see a person who had a new God anointing after they became a follower of Jesus.
Do you notice Peter calls us to understand all of these are evidences of God pouring out His Grace, His kindness, His blessing upon us and Peter urges us to first recognize it as a special touch from God and then nurture it, develop the gift and then use it to make a helpful difference in our world.
Now let’s pause right here… let’s take some personal inventory.
How are you and I loving other people with the love of God that we have received and as we pour God’s love to others it expects nothing in return and is self-sacrificing love? Whose life is being helped, made better because of your Jesus style love?
Secondly, how are you and I offering hospitality to others? How are you helping other people carry their burdens in life?
And third, how are you and I using our God given gifts to help our world be a better place? Take a few moments thinking about that and asking Jesus to help you see how HE would like to grow and develop each of these three things in you, much more in 2023.
What difference can Jesus see that HE could make through you and me in our world, if these three things were really anointed by the Holy Spirit and used wisely and lavishly in our world? Oh, believe me, I’m asking Jesus to show me the same thing and so here’s a song to help us as we talk with Jesus. It calls us to live in the overflow of what Jesus is doing in us!
Today’s Scripture is 1 Peter 4:8-10.
Choose below to read or listen.
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Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
Have a comment or question about today’s chapter? I’m ready to hear from you, contact me here.
Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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