As I thought about tonight and our theme for tonight, I thought about this crazy thing we do in our family. Sometime after dinner and cleanup, after bathtime and PJs, we huddle up with our kids around the Bible, we read a story together, we pray for our family, our church, our neighbors, for the needs around us, and then we do this thing. It’s kind of like talking, but it’s not talking. It’s more beautiful than talking, and usually happier. You use your vocal cords, but you change the rhythm of your voice and the pitch (highness and lowness) to make a different kind of sound. We have a book with lots of lines and funny symbols that guides us.

My eight-year-old has the hang of it (with some tuning issues). My four-year-old really gives it her all, but she isn’t winning any competitions. My two-year-old loves to do this thing — it comes as naturally as eating or drinking or liking dump trucks. You probably know what I’m talking about. In fact, many of you are here tonight because you love to do this beautiful, inexplicable thing. It’s called singing.

It’s utterly ordinary to you now, but when you stop to think about it, it’s one of the strangest things human beings do — isn’t it? I mean, how would you describe singing to an alien who’s just landed on earth and never heard someone sing before? It’s hard, isn’t it? You hear it all throughout history and all over the world, but it’s not at all essential for life. You don’t need it to survive. You must eat and drink and breathe and walk, but you don’t have to sing. Someone could live a whole life, seventy or eighty years, and never sing. I’m sure those people are out there. They’re really, really sad, but they’re out there.

God Sings

So, why do we sing? Why would the infinitely creative, infinitely powerful God alter our brains and vocal cords to give us the capacity to make melodies and harmonies? I think it’s because some things in life are just too good to be said.

For example, I can say, “I love Jesus.” I can say, “I really love Jesus,” and I do. I can say, “Jesus is my greatest Treasure,” and he is. I can say, “Jesus is the greatest, most trustworthy, most satisfying, most glorious Treasure in the world.” Can I get an amen? Or I could sing, “Hallelujah! All I have is Christ!” I don’t even have to sing it well — and it still says more than words can.

God gave us singing because there’s a joy greater than words. And there’s a joy greater than words because that’s the kind of God we have. All the singing in the world is an echo of the song at the heart of the universe. He’s the Song of songs, the God who made lungs and mouths, whole notes and half notes, major keys and minor keys, symphonies and, yes, country music. Did you know our God is a singing God? Zephaniah 3:17:

The Lord your God is in your midst,     a mighty one who will save;he will rejoice over you with gladness;     he will quiet you by his love;he will exult over you with loud singing.

It’s not just singing, but loud, happy singing. You were made in the image of that God. So, I shouldn’t be surprised when my two-year-old sings nonsense in his crib in the middle of the night. He was made, knitted together in his mother’s womb, to remind me of God. Of course he sings. Of course we sing.

God gave us singing because he loves to sing, but he also gave us singing because we were made to worship — to glorify him by enjoying him forever. It’s not enough to know, study, or describe this God. To really know him is to enjoy him, to treasure him, to worship him. And that’s why I wanted us to begin this evening of seeing, savoring, and singing in a favorite psalm, Psalm 4. We’re going to look first at the melody, then at the minor key, and lastly the chorus.

The Melody

Psalm 4:7 has become one of my favorite verses in all the Bible. I read through the Bible several times over years before I ever noticed it, but once I saw it, these words lodged themselves in my soul, and I’ve come back to them again and again:

You have put more joy in my heart     than they have when their grain and wine abound.

More than the world has at its very best!

Notice, David doesn’t say, “You have given me great joy.” He could have said that, but he didn’t. He also didn’t say, “You have given me as much joy as those in the world have in their finest meals and fullest pleasures.” No, he says, “You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound.” If it’s a word that has grabbed me, it’s that word more.

As David weighs the joy he’s found in God against all the greatest joys on earth — the most expensive experiences, in the most exotic places, with the most famous people — he finds all those other offers wanting. He prefers what he’s tasted through faith over anything else he might see or do or buy, because he knows that God holds out more joy. I wonder if you believe that.

Do you believe that if you went all in with Jesus — if you had to give up everything else you have and love to have him — you’d be happier than you’d ever be without him? I know some of you do — that’s why you’re here. You can’t think of Christianity any other way. You don’t know Jesus only as Lord and Savior, but also as your greatest Treasure. You’re part of the “Fellowship of More Joy.”

“It’s not enough to know, study, or describe this God. To really know him is to enjoy him.”

Others of you, though, have never heard someone talk about Jesus like this. Savor Jesus? How do you savor a person, much less someone you can’t see? What does that even mean? I’m glad you asked, and I’m glad you’re here. I want you to hear that there really is something in life worth singing about — there’s someone worth singing about. There’s a joy too great for words. “You have put more joy in my heart.” For tonight, we’ll call this greater joy the melody. But I chose the psalm for a second reason.

The Minor Key

I’ve loved verse 7 for years, but it’s taken on even more meaning the more time I’ve spent in the psalm. Now, experts wrestle over the specific circumstances, so we don’t know for sure what David was experiencing. We do know that he’s in trouble and that he’s been sinned against, because of how he begins the psalm:

Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness!     You have given me relief when I was in distress.     Be gracious to me and hear my prayer!How long, exalted men, will my honor be insulted?     How long will you love what is worthless and pursue a lie? (Psalm 4:1–2)

You could call this the minor key. We heard the melody: “You, O God, have given me more joy.” Now here’s the minor key: suffering. In David’s case, it was serious and prolonged pain. The king’s honor has been insulted, and people close to him have been lying about him. Who was it in this case, and how exactly did they wrong him? Again, we don’t know for sure. David had so many enemies and so many trials that it’s truly hard to know.

Many, however, read Psalms 3 and 4 together as morning and evening psalms and therefore believe they’re about the same event. And the superscription on Psalm 3 tells us that he wrote that psalm “when he fled from Absalom his son.” In 2 Samuel 15, when David was king, Absalom (his own son) led a conspiracy and tried to take his father’s throne by force.

Again, Psalm 4 may not be about Absalom (though I think it is), but it’s about some betrayal, and it’s helpful for me, anyway, to think about a particular betrayal. His third son really conspired against him, lied to him and about him, recruited an army of traitors, and then tried to kill him.
Again, my kids are eight, four, and two. I literally can’t imagine one of them hurting me like this. But they might.

All of this — the betrayal, the lying, the threats, the grief and sorrow and anger — really changes how you hear the joy in verse 7, doesn’t it?

You have put more joy in my heart     than they have when their grain and wine abound.

Really? You can say that in these circumstances? Could you say that if someone hurt you like this? Maybe someone has already hurt you. When he says, “when their grain and wine abound,” I can’t help but think he’s thinking about Absalom, who was sleeping in his father’s house, feasting on his father’s grain, and getting drunk on his father’s wine.

And yet David can say, “As happy as Absalom might be right now, I’m happier.” Even now. Even here. Even while he absolutely wrecks this father’s heart. This is a man who sees, savors, and sings, even in suffering.

His joy in God carries him through the valley — and it shines even brighter in the valley. How great and satisfying is this God that he can give joy — more joy — in pain like this! We hear how the dark minor key draws out and amplifies the melody.

Some of you are struggling to sing in this season. You have something heavy weighing on your mind right now, and you can barely focus in worship, much less sing. It might not be the betrayal of a child, but it stings like that — and like his, the sting might last for months or years or longer.
I think if David were here tonight, he might say, “If you know the God who is with me in my valley, you can still sing. Even now.” In fact, you have to sing. It’s the only way you’ll make it through.

And this psalm teaches us that it’s not just about getting ourselves through. Remember, David is singing to the people suffering with him — he’s singing them through their pain. And he wrote his song down so that God’s people could sing these lines again and again and again. That’s what the psalms are. And his song still sings today, doesn’t it? He’s singing us, all these thousands of years later, through our sufferings of various kinds.

“There is a joy in this world that is deeper and more intense than your pain, whatever your pain is.”

So, if you’re here tonight and going through something hard, who needs to hear you sing through this? Whose faith might be strengthened by hearing you, in all your pain, cry out, “You have put more joy in my heart, even now”? How could anyone feel joy in a situation like this? By finding a joy deeper and more intense than the pain. If you don’t hear anything else, know that there is a joy in this world that is deeper and more intense than your pain, whatever your pain is. That’s the kind of joy God holds out to you in Jesus, in the gospel, in his word.

The apostle Paul wrote a phrase for this kind of happiness: “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” (2 Corinthians 6:10). In a world like ours, with lives like ours and heartaches like ours, that’s the right kind of happy. Sorrowful — genuinely, even persistently, brokenhearted — and yet always, always rejoicing.

No matter how hard life gets, we always have more than enough reasons in Christ to rejoice. And that brings us to the chorus.

The Chorus

We’ve heard the melody: this greater joy God gives. We’ve felt the minor key: his terrible suffering. And we’ve seen how his joy shines through that suffering. But what is the joy he experiences? Does David tell us any more about the “more joy” that God gives? Let’s look at verse 6:

There are many who say, “Who will show us some good?”

I think David’s talking about the faithful people around him, people who are suffering with him (perhaps hiding with him from Absalom), and they’re asking, “Who can show us anything good?” Is God going to let us have anything good? We’re doing the right thing here, and yet we’re the ones suffering. We’re the ones being driven out of the kingdom and running for our lives. And the ones doing evil are getting all the good. They’re safe. They’re well-fed. They’re on their third bottle of good wine. What’s up with that, God? Why am I doing the right thing if I just keep getting beat up by life? And why wouldn’t I do the wrong thing when those people seem to be doing so great?

You’ve probably been tempted this way at some point. You’ve wondered why your Christian life is so hard at times, and why people diving headlong into sin seem to have it easier or better.

How does David shepherd the pain and confusion of these hurting friends? He lifts their eyes to remind them where to find that more joy. Here’s the end of verse 6 into verse 7:

“Lift up the light of your face upon us, O Lord!”You have put more joy in my heart     than they have when their grain and wine abound.

The people around him were looking for safety and justice and some comfort; he was looking for something better than all of that — far better. He wouldn’t settle for getting his things back. A throne with all that power wasn’t big enough for him anymore. No, he wanted the Good that’s better than all those other goods. The reason his joy is strong enough to endure betrayal is because God is his joy. This is the chorus. “Lift up the light of your face upon us, O Lord!” The joy’s in his face — it’s in him.

He makes the same point in verse 3: “Know that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself.” I think that for means “for relationship.” In the gospel, God is not just trying to prove his grace and mercy when he forgives us — he doesn’t save us from a distance — no, he wants to know us. And he wants us to know and enjoy him.

This is the same joy as Psalm 16:11:

You make known to me the path of life;     in your presence there is fullness of joy;     at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

And now, in Christ, we say with the apostle Paul,

I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ. (Philippians 3:8)

David’s chorus in the valley was his greater joy in God himself. That joy kept him from bitterness. That joy kept him from being paralyzed with despair. That joy freed him to love those around him and encourage them not to return sin for sin. That joy allowed him to lie down and get some rest: Verse 8 says, “In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.” Because God is his joy, he can have joy, real joy, more joy, even when his life falls apart. He can sing in his deepest, darkest valleys.

This man is a miracle. He’s an emotionally miraculous man. Who responds to suffering like this? He’s the kind of man I want to be. No one sees, savors, and sings through this kind of suffering — unless God does this kind of miracle in them. And that brings me back to singing.

Prophet, Priest, and Song

I started by saying that singing isn’t necessary to human life — like eating, drinking, and breathing — but the longer I think about it, and the longer I spend in verses like these, and the longer I sing, the more I wonder if it’s not the most human thing we do.

Remember that Jesus — the greatest human who ever lived, the Son of God in the flesh — sings. In a couple precious places, we actually hear him sing. He suffered more than David, far more, and yet with more joy, far more. Hebrews 2:10–12 says,

It was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation [Jesus] perfect through suffering [the cross]. For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying [this is Jesus speaking, quoting Psalm 22], “I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise.”

And he actually sang. Remember that night of the Lord’s Supper, after the bread had been broken and eaten, after the wine had been poured and consumed, after he had given his last words to his disciples, how did they end the night together? Matthew 26:30 says, “And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.” Can you imagine? On the night he was betrayed, hours before he bore the sins of the world, in his deepest, darkest moment, he sang.

For the joy set before him, he endured the cross. David bore the awful betrayal of a son, but the Father sent his beloved Son to bear the betrayal of the whole world — to bear your betrayal against him, your sin. And Hebrews 12:2 tells us that it was joy that sustained him — more joy than the world has ever known, even when their grain and wine abound. He knew that joy, before the foundation of the world — between the Father, Son, and Spirit — and he’s now become that joy for us, our Treasure in the field, our Pearl of great price.

Audio Transcript

Welcome back. As you know, on this podcast we cover the topic of lust from a variety of angles. We did so again on Monday. It’s probably the category of question we get asked about more than any other. You’ll see all the many ways this topic has come up on the podcast in that digest I put together on pages 309–329 in the new Ask Pastor John book.

On Monday, Pastor John, in APJ 2047, you encouraged a wife to confront her husband about erotic literature she found on his phone. And from confrontation comes conviction and repentance, we hope, which is part of the lifelong discipline of killing lust within ourselves. We must root the sin of lust from our lives. And to do that, we’d be helpless on our own. We couldn’t do it on our own. And so, we are not called to battle alone. Most notably, we have the gospel. And we need the gospel here because the only sin we can ever purge from our lives is canceled sin. Step 1: Sin is canceled by the blood of Christ; we are justified before God. Then, step 2: We purge that sin from our lives. We can’t ever get that backward. Sin canceled, then sin purged — another super important theme on the podcast over the years, as you can see in the APJ book on page 274.

So, using the gospel to purge sin is our topic today. It’s fitting because today in our Navigators Bible Reading Plan we are reading about the murder of Christ in Mark 15:33–41. Pastor John, you have talked about the role of visualizing Christ’s crucifixion in our battle against lustful thoughts. Lust is so often a visible battle. So, it makes sense that this battle is fought visually, or at least in the visuals of the imagination. For this purpose, you use an acronym. You created an acronym for this called ANTHEM. That’s important here, to fight lust, and particularly the H in ANTHEM, which you define as this: “Hold a beautiful vision of Jesus in your mind until it triumphs over the other sensual vision.” So, in the fight against lust, how important is it to have this “beautiful vision of Jesus,” and how does this work for you in the moment of temptation? What’s happening as you hold this image in your imagination?

Well, Tony, I’ve had history with really bad ways of using visualization in prayer. So, even though the question isn’t exactly that, let me start there.

Pictures can begin to displace the word of Scripture as the center of God’s saving communication. And that’s really dangerous. We can edge right up to and transgress the intention of the second commandment — “Don’t make any graven images for worship.” There’s an approach that I’ve run into — it’s pretty widespread; at least it was — to healing prayer where people are instructed to go back into their painful past and visualize a scene of, say, abuse, sexual abuse. And, for example, “Imagine Jesus, picture Jesus, walking into the room and picking you up and hugging you and caring for you.”

“One of my strategies in trying to obey Jesus is to fight nudity in my mind with Christ’s misery on the cross.”

And there are problems with that kind of counseling, it seems to me, because it’s foreign to Scripture. You don’t find any pattern quite like that in Scripture, and it’s usually slanted away from some of the aspects of the role that Jesus plays — namely, in providence portraying him only as a comforter and not as a sovereign, and not as a judge, and not as the one who’s going to handle that perpetrator with violence someday. It tends to be just soft and gentle and warm — and therefore slanted. It tends to oversimplify and over-psychologize what’s really needed.

The healing of the soul involves a profound spiritual perception not only of a tender, affectionate Jesus, but of the full meaning of the cross and the reality of the Holy Spirit and God’s ways and justice and judgments. So, there are real dangers that I’ve encountered in this whole area of visualization in prayer.

Visual Words

But let me get back to the positive side. Jesus is the eternal Word, and he became flesh (John 1:14). So, we know he had a body. People looked at him — they could see him with their physical eyes — unlike God the Father, who can’t be visualized in that way. I don’t think we should picture God the Father as a grandfather with a white beard. I think that’s a big mistake. But Jesus had flesh and bones.

And here’s another point: some words do not invoke visual realities — like love, hate, right, wrong, kind. Those are general, principial kinds of words. But other words do necessarily evoke images in our minds: cross, blood, nails, spear, side of body, hands, feet, thorns, beard, spit, rod, sun darkened, hill. You can’t say those words without seeing something, because those words are names of sights. You see a hand; you put a word on a hand; you expect people to process that word and have a kind of hand visualized in their mind — no specific hand, but the idea of hand is being visualized in their mind.

So, when you read, “About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice” (Matthew 27:46), now you’ve got sounds as well. There are words that designate sounds, like loud voice. That word is supposed to conjure something in your mind concerning “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (Matthew 27:46). And it was loud. The word loud is used to make you feel and think loud. And then Jesus calls out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” (Luke 23:46). The point of those very words is to get our minds hearing something, and words like beard and spit are supposed to get our minds seeing something.

“In Paul’s mind, the faith to kill sin every day in his life was strengthened by remembering the love of Christ.”

And then here’s one pointer from the apostle that inclines me to go ahead and form this image in my mind. Galatians 3:1: “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.” Now, what does that mean? I don’t think it means Paul got out a piece of chalk and drew Jesus, but it means, evidently, that he portrayed (with words through the gospel) the cross so vividly that he says, “It was like I was doing it before your very eyes.” He used the words eyes here. “It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed.”

So, maybe he means, “I’m embodying this with my sufferings; I’m speaking it in such a way that you can see it.”

Fight Image with Image

And so, back to ANTHEM and the whole battle with lust. One of my strategies, Tony, in trying to obey Jesus — tearing out my eyes, and putting sin to death, and counting myself dead — is to fight nudity (let’s just take that as a concrete example) in my mind with Christ’s misery on the cross. So, nudity is a picture in my mind. Now, I’ve argued that Christ’s misery on the cross is a picture in my mind. Christ died to make me pure. This lustful thought is not pure. Therefore, if I willingly hold this image in my mind, I’m taking a spear and thrusting it into the side of Jesus. I picture myself about to do that. I picture him saying, “I love you. I love you. I am dying to free you from that bondage to lust.”

And I picture a battered body — and maybe I should qualify: It’s not photographic. I don’t have a particular face in view; I don’t know what Jesus looked like. I don’t pick a movie star from The Passion of the Christ or whatever. I don’t have a particular face for me. He doesn’t look like any actor. I don’t get that specific. It’s a word-created picture, not a photo-created picture.

It’s what I think Paul did when he said in Galatians 2:20, “The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me.” Now, he could have stopped right there, couldn’t he? But he added, “and gave himself for me.” In Paul’s mind, the faith to kill sin every day in his life was strengthened by remembering the love of Christ for him. And the love of Christ is emblazoned in Paul’s mind as he thought of him as crucified. “He gave himself for me.” And Paul saw crucified people. They were on the hills. It was horrible. And when he said, “Christ gave himself for me,” I can’t believe that he didn’t have some picture — if not photographic — in his mind of Christ suffering profoundly for his purity. And thus, his faith was empowered to defeat lust.

Your home may be someone’s hallway out of hell. There’s a spiritual power that pulses through the floors and walls and furniture of a Christian home — a strong, even overpowering aroma, a wild and compelling story unfolding for anyone who comes close enough to hear. Beneath the dirty clothes, behind the unwashed dishes, just below the dusty surfaces, a glory hums and unsettles and woos. A 1,500-square-foot sermon.

When God saves us, he takes our ordinary homes and renovates them with purpose, love, and power. The place may have lain spiritually dormant for years, even decades — utterly dark and cold — but then a voice suddenly calls, “Let there be light.” The walls, the appliances, the paint colors might all look the same, but the home soon becomes almost unrecognizable. A flag has been planted, an address transfigured. And within these four walls, eternities are altered.

This phenomenon is the call and wonder of Christian hospitality.

Humanity and Home

Home has always been a vital part of being human. When God made man, he “planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed” (Genesis 2:8). In other words, he gave the man a home.

And at the end of time, how will humans cross over into a new and renewed history? “Behold, the dwelling place of God” — his home — “is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God” (Revelation 21:3). The human story begins and ends in homes. We’re all born into a home, and we all live to find home. It’s no wonder, then, that so many find healing, forgiveness, redemption, and true life in a normal house filled with faith.

“Your home may become someone’s hallway out of hell.”

Rosaria Butterfield has captured such hospitality as well as anyone I know. “Radically ordinary hospitality is this: using your Christian home in a daily way that seeks to make strangers neighbors, and neighbors family of God” (The Gospel Comes with a House Key, 31). Have you ever thought about your home, your neighborhood, your schedule that way? Have you imagined your home as a hallway out of darkness and into Christ?

Hospitality to the Church

Effective hospitality to the lost, at least in Scripture, often begins with effective hospitality to the church. Much of what the New Testament has to say about hospitality is, first and foremost, about life together in the family of God — how well we welcome one another into our hearts and households (Romans 12:13). “Welcome one another,” the apostle Paul writes, “as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God” (Romans 15:7). Those who have been invited into heaven become people who love to open their front doors, especially to others who have already been welcomed home by God.

That the apostle needs to give the command, though, suggests that our welcoming, even within the church, won’t always feel warm and cozy. There are obstacles to hospitality, lots of them. Those obstacles are the context of Paul’s command to “welcome one another”: “We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves” (Romans 15:1). Open homes invite the weak and often failing — the kinds of weaknesses that will inconvenience us, the kinds of failings that will disappoint and wound us. Faithful, consistent welcoming of one another will mean faithful, consistent bearing with one another.

“Those who have been invited into heaven become people who love to open their front doors.”

This patient and resilient love is actually the special ingredient in the recipe. It’s what makes ordinary Christian hospitality extraordinary — why the divine drama of the gospel seeps through everyday interactions and simple meals. Godless people don’t bear with one another, not for long. They get angry. They hold grudges. They grumble. Until God brings them home, and then makes their homes into a home for others.

In a world bereft of Christian hospitality and crowded with grumbling, Peter encourages the church, “Show hospitality to one another without grumbling” (1 Peter 4:9). Surprise your neighbors by regularly opening up your home, despite the costs that come with open doors. And then confound them by bearing those costs, again and again, without complaining. They’ve likely never met someone who rejoices to spend and be spent like this, who welcomes the discomforts of hospitality with a warm smile (and a fresh pot of coffee).

Front Door of Escape

This kind of hospitality within the church bears lots of good fruit, but one often overlooked is in the war against temptation. Butterfield presses on the sin-defying power of an open front door:

Consider with me the tension of 1 Corinthians 10:13: “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” This passage speaks to the intensity, the loneliness, and the danger of temptation. . . . Have you ever thought that you, your house, and your time are not your own but rather God’s ordained way of escape for someone? (109–10)

Ordinary hospitality undercuts Satan and his schemes in a hundred ways and more. Sin is horribly deceitful, and all the more so when we’re distant or disconnected from one another. A brief greeting in passing on Sunday probably isn’t penetrating through those lies. However, just an hour in your home might be enough to convince a brother or sister to say no (and keeping saying no) to sin.

Another conversation at your table or on your couch might be the spiritual escape route someone desperately needs.

Hospitality to the Dead

As we welcome one another within the church, the world will be drawn to this unworldly love. It’s happened since the first doors opened:

Day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. (Acts 2:46–47)

The kind of community that practices hospitably is irresistible. Even just reading about the early church, and imagining what it was like, makes me want to join them — day-by-day friendship, familiar meals shared and enjoyed, prayers asked and answered, spontaneous singing, and sweetest of all, real people meeting and following Jesus for the first time. Strangers became neighbors, and neighbors became family, all because someone opened the front door.

As we begin to see our homes through God’s eyes and loosen our grips on our schedules, our budgets, and our possessions, we might begin to think of our homes as spiritual hallways — for fellow believers, out of sin and into deeper freedom and joy — and for not-yet believers, out of hell and into life.

Perhaps the word that finally draws someone out of sin, shame, and eternal destruction would simply be “Welcome.”