The Hospitable Leader DevotionalSample

As we’ve recently discussed, it’s not always easy to go about God’s dreams for our lives. Along with the big vision comes the big struggle of trying to do something that changes the world when the world doesn’t really want to change. Yet, if we want to accomplish what we’re called to, we have to face up to the suffering facts and fight through them. We can frequently think the right calling will be easy, but in reality the right calling is the most difficult place you could be. As Terry Smith quotes Teresa of Avila in The Hospitable Leader, “More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.” When our prayers come true, we have to deal with the dream we asked for and figure out how to get along with the task we’ve always wanted. Thankfully, we have a God that is a God of hope, who gives us what we need to be a part of his mission.

It’s interesting that, in today’s passage, Paul titles God the “God of hope.” God could be a lot of things other than the “God of hope,” but obviously this descriptor of hope is very important to Paul’s thinking (the author of Romans). Paul, facing endless strife and enemies, needs the God of hope. And Paul doesn’t just want a God who is going to give him a glimmer of hope; he wants us to be full of joy, overflowing with hope, “by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

Hope is not something external to us, as if we look at God from afar and longingly hope for who he is and his eventual future. No, hope resides right within us. His hope is our operating system. The Holy Spirit, when it indwells us, allows us to be powered by the spirit and the things of the spirit rather than our sinful natures. Gaining the Holy Spirit is like moving from having a peddle bike to a Ferrari. We gain a new engine, a new driving force, that guides everything we do as we cultivate its presence within us.

Thus, when we are in God, we will experience the struggle of the calling, but we will simultaneously have the “God of hope” as our operating system, our engine pushing us forward to our destinies. By his Spirit, we will be full of joy and overflowing with hope, even in the midst of the greatest suffering.

As hospitable leaders, our calling is to enter into the darkest of places, the most inhospitable environments, ready to pounce on any light. Yet by the power of God, we are able to persist in combating evil with good, hate with love, and inhospitality with hospitality. This is how we change the world.