Stop Waiting Till the House Is Clean: Don Everts

Don Everts (0:04)

Be hospitable, that part of a life well lived, and part of being his people, is where you love the stranger, love the alien. Be hospitable, the New Testament word, the Greek word for show hospitality is phylozenia, which means love of the stranger.

Dave Wilson (0:28)

Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Dave Wilson.

Ann Wilson (0:34)

And I'm Ann Wilson, and you can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

So over the years, we've probably had quite a few people live with us, in and out. How's that been for you?

Dave Wilson (0:55)

You had to bring that up. You're laughing because, tell the listener why you're laughing. Go ahead, I'll just let you express this.

Ann Wilson (1:02)

I wanted you to express it.

Dave Wilson (1:05)

Well, it was always a wonderful thing to invite somebody. They usually lived in our basement, that we finished and had their own living space. But after a period of time, I got a little frustrated. Let's just say that.

Ann Wilson (1:18)

Why is that?

Dave Wilson (1:19)

It cramped my life.

Yeah, and it's a bad way to introduce a topic that we're gonna encourage listeners to do, but we've got Don Everts back with us. Don, you're a pastor, you're a dad, you've written this book on research and how to develop spiritually vibrant homes. So first of all, let me say, we love the last two days having you on here. Welcome back to FamilyLife Today.

Don Everts (1:43)

Great to be with you likewise. It's fun to think about these things together. It is.

Dave Wilson (1:46)

Yeah, and one of the reasons obviously we're bringing this up, and you can remind our listeners, but as you studied spiritually vibrant homes and homes that say what were the commonalities that made them spiritually vibrant, you found three things, messy prayers, you call them, loud tables. We've already talked about those two. And if you don't know what those words mean, then we're not gonna tell you, you go listen.

And trust me, those two conversations are gonna change your life. But then the third one, I didn't see coming.

Don Everts (2:15)

Yeah.

Dave Wilson (2:15)

You know, open doors is what you call it.

Don Everts (2:17)

Yep.

Dave Wilson (2:18)

It's sort of a little bit what we're talking about, but explain what that means.

Don Everts (2:21)

Yeah, we didn't see it coming either. You know, when you do research like this, you go in with some hypotheses. We think we're gonna find this, you know.

We did not think we would find that one of the commonalities that corresponds with more vibrant faith is that households extend hospitality, that there are people in and out of their household on a regular basis every month.

Ann Wilson (2:43)

Some people just said, oh no.

Don Everts (2:45)

I know, I know, I know. And there are gonna be some people, you know, cause I'm about to get like crazy excited about hospitality. So let me just qualify it by saying, sometimes a household is not in a place, a healthy enough place to like throw open the door. Sometimes there's dysfunction in a home and you gotta, that's what you need to focus on and all that.

Dave Wilson (3:05)

And it also doesn't mean you have to come and live in our basement.

Don Everts (3:08)

Exactly, you know, exactly, exactly. And there are levels of how wide, you can crack the door, you can open a little wider, you can just take the door off the hinges. So there's different ways people can do it. So I just want to qualify that.

Ann Wilson (3:20)

And at the same time, we're saying, your house doesn't have to be perfect. Like it doesn't have to be the perfect house with the perfect decor, with the perfect meal.

Don Everts (3:29)

That's right, that's right. This was the surprising one, friends. This was surprising. Now, it made us go back into the scriptures, and then we repented and said, we should not have been surprised about this. Because it turns out, God knows what he's talking about, and he calls his people, Old Testament and New Testament, to be hospitable. That part of a life well lived, and part of being his people, is where you extend hospitality.

So we shouldn't have been surprised, we were. And what the research told us is that, the more you have people in and out of your household, the more vibrant the faith is of the people living there.

And it's not necessarily that you have Christians coming in and out of your household. It could be non-Christians who are coming in. It could be people who are coming in because they're a tutor, right? You could be paying them to come in and tutor a kid, or it could be grandparents coming in. It could be boyfriends and girlfriends. The more open your doors, the more hospitality there is, the more vibrant the faith is. What shocked me in this, because the researchers at Barna, they never talk about causality. They'll never say A causes B. They just say there's a correlation between A and B. This one, they talk different. This one, because they said it causes it. There's something about having more people in and out of your household that actually doesn't just correspond with, but it affects and increases faith formation.