May 3, 2012 Hospitality - making who feel at home?

Luke 1: 35 And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.

John 14: 17 Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it sees him not, neither knows him; but ye know him; for he dwells with you and shall be in you...23 Jesus answered and said unto him, IF a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with him.

I was talking to a student about making choices, (hers and it wasn’t all that great a choice) and trying to get her to see that we are constantly speaking to all those around us by every choice that we make. Our actions sometimes speak more loudly than our words, and that message communicated by our actions often lingers far longer in someone’s mind than any words we might speak.

I shared with her the reality that we take God everywhere we go, and not only is He a witness to everything we say and do, everything we say and do says something about our relationship with Him.

After she left, the above Scripture came to mind, the idea that Mary indeed carried the physical body of Jesus for a time – making a home for Him inside of her. Then the Scripture in John came to mind: the idea that the Spirit of God, God Himself, dwells or abides or makes His home inside of me, and not just for a while, but as long as I live.

Mary knew, as far as a human mind could comprehend it, that she was carrying the Messiah. And if you have ever been pregnant, you know that reality is never far from your mind. I remember that I worked extra hard about being careful to eat the foods right for my baby, and to avoid the foods that might harm my child. I avoided risky behaviors and embraced anything that would increase the likelihood that my baby would be born healthy. All of that to say, I would bet you money that Mary did the same thing, at least as far as she knew to do.

Taking that one step further, if you are a believer in Jesus, you carry the Spirit of God around with you every moment of every day. The issue or the challenge is, are you as hospitable to Him as you might be to a human child. And for the record, I have to admit right here, I have certainly not been as hospitable to the Spirit of God all the time as I wanted to be or could have been.

I remember talking to my little unborn child, telling her or him that I loved her (two times) and him (one time), not that I only did it a total of three times, but I did only have three children. The point is do I talk to God as much as I talked to my unborn children or talked to God about them, and is He as at home in my body as they were.