Weekly Encouragement

Every Wednesday a video and a readable copy will be added to this page to serve as an encouragement, a reminder, and to offer suggestions on how to develop a hospitality mindset toward those in your sphere who don't follow Christ.

Week 3

Starting on March 19th

Prayer, Fasting, and Hospitality

  • LAST WEEK: We continued in the rhythms of prayer and fasting and focused on two things. We focused on who God has laid on our heart in prayer and in action, and were reminded that the goal isn’t simply Easter attendance, but rather being the hands and feet of Jesus and loving others how Jesus loved them. And that is by caring for their soul, sharing the gospel, and the real goal being making, growing, and unleashing disciples. We also focused on bringing our family into this season for expanded outreach and accountability. There is something powerful about an entire family being in unity over the lost.
  • THIS WEEK: We are going to continue our focus of hospitality and begin to make a plan to best serve who God has laid on our heart. The goal this week is consistently work on relationships with our lost friends and to take some personal time to create a plan, THAT YOU MAKE AND WORKS FOR YOU, that can help you be accountable and show you where to be thankful and what to be praying for!
    • Planning Hospitality is Important. Whether you think you are a master of hospitality or you feel inadequate, consistent hospitality requires planning. If we aren’t careful, we will finish our normal daily rhythms which will leave us tired or exhausted and our evenings will become a “typical evening.” I have found that planning hospitality helps you remain faithful and excited to complete it. As an example, use Sunday evenings for planning your breakfasts, lunches, dinners, weekends, etc… and make some of those intentionally focused on time with others. Once you do that, REACH OUT right then and see if someone is available. This will hope know that you do actually have the time to make it happen as well as the other person receiving from you that they are cared for and thought about. This is intentional hospitality. This is just an example and there is no perfect way to do it, so figure out which way is best for your family and run after it!
    • Hospitality Is Easier Than You Think: You don’t have to pay for a Masterclass and you don’t have to spend years with a professional to learn it. God made each one of us unique and He has given us people in our spheres intentionally! You were made purposely and BY DESIGN to reach those people and share the Gospel with them. You are equipped to do it. Be confident that our creator God didn’t leave out things in your makeup that give you permission to let this be someone else’s job. We are all called to this and we can have confidence that God will be with us. SO… Eat with them. Watch a movie. Go to the park. Wash your cars together. Go on a hike. Go watch the Vols play. Invite them into your living room. The “WHAT” matters a little bit, but the “WHY” is everything. The whole world is doing this but they are making it about the food, about the Vols, about the movie, about health, or about how clean their car is. Our “why” is what sets us apart. Use these things as a means of showing them the love of our God. We should be known by our love!

Cool. What Do I Do Now?

  • Today, continue in fasting and pray for the salvation of the lost people in your life. If you have someone by name, and you feel like the relationship is there already, shoot them a text or call them and simply ask if there is anything you can be praying about specifically. If you know already, reach out and just ask for an update on that prayer request.
  • As you go through your week, make a custom plan that works for you and your family so that you have permission and accountability to be love others well this week. Make a bold attempt to do something with them where you are together and ask the Spirit to be with you. Remember, it isn’t about what you are doing, it is about why you are doing it, and we need the Spirit to prepare the way to their heart and give us the words to say when the time is righ

Past Weeks

Week 1

What is Fasting and Lent all about?

  • Fasting is both an appeal to God for him to listen to my prayer and a tool to intensify my desire for the right things.
  • A fast is when I give up food for some amount of time to help re-order my own desires away from worldly things and toward what God cares about. 
    • Why food and not something else? There are a lot of good things that I might benefit from sometimes denying to myself, but food is unique. I won’t die without social media, movies, a daily latte, or news consumption. But I will die if I don’t eat. Fasting from food hits a part of my being that nothing else can. 
    • Hunger is one of the ways God describes the way I should desire him. To experience physical hunger is a direct way of saying to God “I want my hunger to be for you,” and saying to myself “You need God even more than you need food.”
    • Jesus put this in the simplest possible terms when he was in the middle of a long fast himself. When the tempter suggested he satisfy his hunger by proving his divine power and turning stones into bread, Jesus answered by quoting Deuteronomy 3:8, “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” (Matt 4:4)
  • Where did Lent come from? The name “Lent” is a reference to springtime, when the days are lengthening. As early as the second century AD, Christians started to prepare for Easter by imitating Jesus’ 40 days of fasting in the wilderness in preparation to begin his public ministry. As Easter became the pinnacle of the church’s yearly life, taking time to prepare for the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection made sense.
  • So, what we’re doing is taking this 40-day practice that Christian history has handed us, and instead of simply using it for personal preparation (which is good), we’re using it together to prepare relationships for discipleship through hospitality. For some of us, practicing hospitality itself may feel like giving something up! If you’re a homebody who likes to keep your schedule simple, inviting someone over may feel like a sacrifice. This is good! 

Cool. What Do I Do?

  • Today, try foregoing one meal and using that time to pray, asking God to give you the heart desire to start or continue a relationship with someone who needs him. (if you have health concerns that prevent you from fasting from food, feel free to abstain from something else that you would normally place attention on.)
  • As you go through your week, ask God who that might be, and then listen. He may show you in surprising ways!
Week 2

Last Week: 

We focused specifically on what fasting is, what it looks like in scripture, and how we were going to fast. During the weekwe prayed for God to put someone in our hearts to either start or continue an intentional relationship with them in hopes that it would lead them into right relationship with God.

This Week: 

This is not about starting something that ends on Easter Sunday. It’s also not a judo move from Providence to boost Easter attendance. We are truly taking intentional time to sacrifice and ask God to help us love as He loved and be hospitable to others in an effort to glorify God and make, grow, and unleash disciples of Christ.

  • Don’t Make This Goal Oriented To Easter. Sometimes when we bullet point people and relationships as a task we are doing, it is felt by the person receiving it. We all know what it’s like to receive a phone call from someone selling something. Usually, it is not successful… This is more about starting new habits of sacrifice and prayer, specifically for the lost world around us. We are asking to be changed by God, not just hit a number.
  • Practical Hospitality Goes A Long Way. As you continue to pray and fast over who God has laid on your heart, be confident that you can do this! This is as simple as inviting someone to live life with you. It’s actually sharing your life with someone else and inviting them to do the same. Simply, be a follower of Christ, who is intentionally creating relationships with others who are lost.
  • Get Your Family In On It. Invite your family to join together in prayer and fasting. This is a great way to exercise loving accountability instead of accountability that discourages. Pray together. Fast together. As God lays someone on each heart, write those names down and put them somewhere in your house where your family can pray for those names in private and together. How beautiful would it be to find your family developing a habit of praying together for lost people BY NAME!

I Don’t Have Anyone Yet? That’s totally fine. Whether you are introverted or you are just unsure of who to be intentionally hospitable with, for Jesus’ sake, that’s ok. I would challenge you to not be too specific with it. Anyone who is lost and God has placed in your sphere of influence is a candidate for you to show God’s love consistently and intentionally.

I Do Have Someone! Amazing! Here is another reminder… Don’t make the relationship goal-oriented to Easter. Just begin inviting them into your life. Have them over for dinner. Go shopping with them. Share a hobby or sport with them. Meet for coffee before work. Use your story to connect with theirs.

Cool. What Do I Do Now?

  • Today, if you don’t have anyone, pray and ask God to reveal someone in your life who needs to experience His love. If you do, be bold and reach out to them with an invitation to connect.
  • As you go through your week, commit to praying daily in private and with your family for the lost, writing down specific names, and intentionally looking for ways to show them Christ’s love through hospitality.

Why?

Our Purpose Behind Lent

We want to use this year’s Lent season for a slightly different focus. As you know, Easter is one of the two times a year that many people will go to church. This creates a huge opportunity to invite people into discipleship – following Jesus, being changed by Jesus, and being on mission with Jesus – who might otherwise just get a taste of religion and return to life as usual after Easter. The last thing those folks need is for one of us to invite them to Providence and for them to have that short-lived experience here, as opposed to somewhere else.

So here’s what we want to do: As a family, we want to enter a season of prayer, and if you want to, even fasting, asking God who he has placed in YOUR personal sphere of influence, and how you can invite that person, or people, into your life. Notice: that didn’t say “how you can invite them to church on Easter.” That might be where it ends up, but this is really about your home. Coffee hangouts. Dinner. Shopping together. Finding out what’s going on in their life, meeting them in it, and inviting them into your life.

How Is It Going?

Type an update on how your intentional hospitality is going and how we can pray for you!