The Intimacy of God’s Visitation to Us

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Pastor Foley

Part I of our Series on Visiting and Remembering

Visitation is hospitality gone mobile. It’s more than just a social call or a brief chatty check-in. The word signifies something big:

God showing up where before there was no one; life showing up where before there was nothing; deep care where before there was neglect; correction where before there was open sin.

“Visit” in the Hebrew, paqad, means “to personally inspect and pay close attention to.” Think of a general inspecting troops in the field and then stopping to talk with one particular soldier.

Amazingly, visitation is even more intimate than that!

In the New Testament, “visit” is typically the Greek episkeptomai, meaning “to examine with the eyes.” This is not about showing up to shoot the breeze or make small talk. John Wesley called it “close conversation.”

As author Amy L. Sherman notes, in the Bible visitation means something even more than inspection. God visits human beings who are soul-sick and languishing in the prison of sin, widowed and orphaned by the father of lies.

In I Samuel 2:21, God “visits” barren Hannah—and the result is that she is enabled to have five children. You’ll recall that God had graciously given Hannah the gift of a son, Samuel, whom she dedicated back to the Lord. God has more that he wants to do for barren Hannah, and so He “visits” her and she conceives new life.

The visitation of God imparts life!   

Scripture portrays God visiting human beings in distress who cry out to him. As we’ll talk about later on this month, when God calls us to visit those in prison, we can look to him as the perfect example: he made the first prison visit ever recorded in the Bible. He looks in on the wrongly-accused Joseph and imparts to him the gifts of friendship-love and favor:

And Joseph’s master took him and put him into the prison, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined, and he was there in prison. But the LORD was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison. (Genesis 39:20–21, ESV)

At the close of his life, Joseph prophesizes that the God who remembered him and visited him in prison will surely not fail to remember and visit his children in Egypt – a remarkable event given the understanding of the day that gods were restricted to their own geographic domain. This God, however, will cross any domain to lead his children to the home he has prepared for them. Joseph is so certain of God’s character that he forces his children to swear an oath based upon the visitation coming to pass:

And Joseph said to his brethren, I am going to die. But God will surely visit you and bring you out of this land to the land He swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob [to give you].

And Joseph took an oath from the sons of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and you will carry up my bones from here. (Genesis 50:24–25, ESV)

And so God does. A few generations after Joseph’s prophesy, the Israelites are ground down into slavery. God hears their cries and resolves to show them heartfelt care, commissioning Moses. That’s an important principle that we’ll be developing this month.

God visits – through, with, and in the form of – his servants.

How have you experienced the visitation of God through others?

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Come Lord Jesus – Come!

Posted on March 23, 2012 by Pastor Foley

Part XI of our series on Opening Your Home

Every act of opening our homes is more than a response to human need. Even more, what it is is a foretaste or partial revelation of the divine hospitality that eventually all creation will experience in full. I love what Guice writes. He says:

The early church as well regularly practiced the Eucharist, the good gift, and recognized it as a sign of God’s hospitality. Each time the Eucharist was taken, the costliness of the divine gift was remembered (Alexander and Rosner 2000).

They also saw it as a foreshadowing of how hospitable God will be in the future when all the believers join him in the marriage supper of the Lamb (Rev 19:7-9). This regular gathering around God’s table served to inspire them towards the future and remind them of the Jubilee that was part of their past and present. Jesus while present reminded them, “But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” (Luke 14:13 NRSV) (Russell, Clarkson, and Ott 2009)

The visions of John end with a simple call that is a model for what the church is to be when he writes, “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’ And let everyone who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.” (Revelation 22:17 NRSV).[1]

We have a sign right next to the front door of our home that says, “Mi casa es su casa”—my home is your home. But maybe we ought to change that sign to read, “Even so, come Lord Jesus—come!”

And each time we open our door, we ought to think to ourselves and perhaps even say out loud, “Even so, come Lord Jesus—come!”

[1] William Guice, “Hospitality, Part 2,” What if…, August 18, 2010

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Three Practical Ideas to Learn How to Open Your Home And Let Others’ Homes Be Open to You

Posted on March 21, 2012 by Pastor Foley

Part X of our series on Opening Your Home

We’ve covered a lot of ground these past couple of weeks as we’ve explored how God has opened his home to us and how we should do the same for others.  Perhaps most surprisingly, we learned that sometimes, this Work of Mercy takes a passive role by letting others open their homes to us – and by extension Christ.

So let’s talk today about what it looks like to “do the word” of Opening Your Home. Here are three ideas that you can pray about:

1. Consider undertaking a week long Luke 10-style mission trip. Spend the preceding weeks in prayer, asking the Lord where he wants to send you. Resolve to take only the barest of essentials, as specified by Jesus in the Luke 10 passage.

When we did a Luke 10-style trip several years ago when we lived in Houston, Texas, I and Mrs. Foley and a group of four others took no change of clothes, no wallet, no money—just a cell phone (to enable our frightened families and curious church members to check in on us, and to enable us to report each day on what happened), a car, my driver’s license (to take us to Beaumont, Texas, where we prayerfully felt the Lord was leading us), and a video camera, to record what happened.

In that week, we never missed a meal; we never went without a shower; we never had to wear dirty clothes; and, at the end of the week, God gave us two homes—and a tithe of $638 to bring back to the church in Houston that had sent us out!

2. Every year, increase the amount you are giving away by half a percentage point (i.e., go from giving 10% to giving 10.5% the next year, 11% the year following, and so on).

I learned this from Doc Haggstrom of Billings, MT. When he married his wife, Evvie, as a young man, he found that because she did not grow up in a Christian home, she was completely puzzled by the idea of tithing.

So he said to her, “Well, do you think we should give away any of our money?”

And she said, “Well, of course! I’m not selfish, you know.”

So they agreed to start by giving away 5% of their income, and each year thereafter, they asked, “Was God faithful to meet our needs this year?” If he was (and he always was), they would increase their giving by half a percentage point. By the time Doc died in his late 80’s (Evvie had passed away a few years prior), they were giving away the majority of their income. Doing this causes us to be less reliant on our own resources and more reliant on God’s resources, given through the hospitality of others.

Learning how to be hosted is a real challenge, especially for those of us from rich nations or backgrounds. Here, the opportunity exists for us to learn hospitality from our global neighbors:

3. Rather than going on short-term missions trips to paint houses or teach Vacation Bible Schools, journey humbly as ambassadors-in-training and seek out global Christian neighbors known especially for opening their homes and warmly welcoming strangers.

We can learn how to be guests and hosts at the feet of those whose hospitality hasn’t been infected by Western notions of privacy and the pale imitations of hospitality one encounters in hotels, hospitals, and even Western homes. There’s a former missionary named Michele Hershberger who writes:

One of the things I enjoyed most about Uganda was the opportunity to walk on meandering paths through gardens, up and down hills, and long streams. Walking was almost synonymous with conversing because invariably I would meet someone along the path or at work in their garden and we would talk.

One afternoon I came across my friend Ruth, busy pulling weeds. After chatting a while, she took me to one corner of her garden to see what she had grown. She was excited because she had just planted eggplants for the first time and they were just beginning to bear; two lovely fruits dangled from the step.

Later that evening two unexpected visitors arrived to spend the night at my home. Word soon spread that we had guests, and before long Ruth appeared at the kitchen door. In her hands were the two eggplants. She gave them to me, saying, “Please prepare these for your friends tonight.”

I wanted to say, “No! No! You must keep your eggplant. We have plenty of food, and you have so little.” But I could not do that. I could not deny Ruth the opportunity to give of her literal first fruits. She was giving so joyously.

The height of Western missionary folly and utter disdain for the gospel may be moving into a new environment and seeking to act as a host or self-sufficient guest to the people who live there. As Jesus revealed in his own incarnation, the pinnacle of missionary wisdom—and Christian ambassadorship—is to voluntarily empty ourselves of any provision or capacity to host, or even the capacity to care for ourselves—just like Jesus did—and instead place ourselves entirely in the hands and hospitality of those we visit.

We need to grow our self-identity. We are not only those who do good to our enemies; we are also those who place ourselves in the hands of others in order to permit them to do good to us, and, thus, to our God.

What other ideas would you recommend?

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