Thursday, June 30, 2016

In our study on hospitality we saw the first example of someone spontaneously practicing hospitality after receiving Jesus Christ as her savior in Acts 16:15. Soon after that experience we find Paul and Silas being publicly stripped and beaten. After being severely flogged they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. For his own protection he put them into the inner cell and fastened their feet in stocks. What followed is surreal. Paul and Silas began to pray and sing hymns to God at midnight! Suddenly there was a violent earthquake which threw the prison door open and loosened their feet from the stocks. When the jailer awoke from his sleep and saw the prison doors open he was ready to take his own life, but Paul assured him that no one had escaped. Shocked the prison keeper fell at their feet and asked, “What must I do to be saved?” Paul said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved – you and your household.” After explaining some basics of the faith, “the jailer took them and washed their wounds; then immediately he and all his family were baptized. Then he “brought them into his house and set a meal before them, and the whole family was filled with joy, because they had come to believe in God.” Again, hospitality was a spontaneous expression of gratitude for God’s blessing upon them. If we don’t practice hospitality we rob ourselves of one of the most enriching and fulfilling experiences in the Christian life.