“Use hospitality one to another without grudging.”

1 Peter 4:9

A very interesting verse.

Hospitality, welcoming guests and tending to their needs, can be a thorny issue. We avoid it because of our very imperfect perceptions/perspective  and our instinctive distaste for asymmetry.

Our perspective always inflates our good deeds, trivializes our missteps, and narrows our focus.  Meaning, we often think that we do more for others than they do for us.  We often remember others’ offenses more than our own. And we give their wrongs a high weighting, while giving ours a pass.  

In addition, we seldom see the big picture of what God is doing.  Instead, we get intensely focused on whether “the score” is even: checking whether our brothers/sisters in Christ have done less for us than we have done for them.

So we grumble.

And we hold grudges.  

Because, we cry, “it’s unfair”.

The real problem is that hospitality should be, and indeed is, about God.  Specifically, God working through us to bless others.  
Thus, when we complain, we are effectively complaining about being a blessing from God to others. Or that we are too much of a blessing. When we complain, we are really asking God to use us less and to use others more.  

Even worse, we would prefer that God only use us to bless those others with whom we are comfortable.  

In this way, hospitality ceases to be a ministry and just becomes a burden. It becomes a tiresome game of staying within the boundaries that we have set for ourselves.   Hospitality ceases to be about God and becomes all about me: my comforts, my inconvenience, and my preferences.

It’s not just hospitality!

Though our text specifically addresses hospitality, the principles extend much further.  It challenges us to consider why we do what we do, and to decide who we are actually serving.  

The opportunity to help, to minister, to bless others, in any way, should always be welcomed. Welcomed because we want so much to serve God.  But, in so many aspects of life, we prefer to serve only who, and when, and how we want.  And, thus, we don’t really serve at all, no matter what we decide to do. 

When a servant tells his master who, when and how he will serve, he is no longer a servant.  And he no longer has a master, he is his own master.  And he is his own god.

“But what if people take advantage of my generosity??”

Whether or not people take advantage of us is never your/our primary concern.  Yes, we should use wisdom where we can.   But being taken advantage of is not our problem.  It is the problem of the one committing that sin.  And so God will take care of him/her: vengeance belongs to God, not you (Romans 12:19). 

Our primary concern is to be available and obedient to God, our Master.  If we have done that, we have done well.  

If we read through John 5 and 6, we will see that Jesus fed the five thousand in chapter 5. And then that same group bad-mouthed and abandoned Him, one day later, in chapter 6.  Jesus’ hospitality in chapter 5 was not appreciated for more than a day.  

Indeed, Jesus, revealed that they were only following Him for what they could get from Him.   They had no real love for Him. And they proved His words true by “turning their backs” on Him.

But Jesus wanted to minister to them, to bless them, to save them, anyway.

When we focus on anything other than serving Christ, our Lord, hospitality, and any other ministry, becomes unbearably burdensome. It becomes something we avoid rather than a ministry we embrace.

God loves us even when we are unfair or hard to deal with. Let’s do the same.

“But I am so poor.  I have no money.  And my house is run down”

It is true that we can find ourselves in difficult situations. Maybe we aren’t wealthy. Maybe our houses are falling apart as a result. We might truly be the least able. But serve God anyway. 

Be like the widow: give all you have.  Rejoice that God wants to work through you. Rejoice that God doesn’t think you are too poor to be useful. Rejoice that He looks upon you and sees your wealth, because He sees His Son alive in you.

If we are to serve, we must look to God; not ourselves and not to those whom we are called to serve.  The only question to consider is what does God want?  And the only answer is “Here am I, Lord, send me, choose me, use me.” (Isaiah 6:8)