The Hospitality of Spiritual Welcome and Anticipation: Embracing God’s Daily Plans

If you are a parent, I’m sure you have your own story of the moment you found out you were expecting your first child, and you remember that first time you held your little miracle in your arms, overwhelmed with joy and gratitude but feeling some fear and uncertainty, sure that you were not ready for this little life so dependent on you.

We were told we would never have children. Thankfully, God had other ideas. I remember finding out I was pregnant. I’d been setting up my classroom for the new school year and thought I’d pulled a muscle. It was Friday, and I was still hurting, so I called advice. As I talked to the advice nurse, she said it sounded like I was pregnant. Like Sarai in the Bible, I laughed. “We can’t get pregnant,” I told her. She said okay and that I could come in on Monday. No way was I waiting until Monday if I might be pregnant. I went in immediately for a pregnancy test. When they called me back a couple hours later, they said the test was positive. I started to shake. Excitement, disbelief, some fear all hit me at once. Dave just wanted to know what positive meant.

When our daughter was born, we welcomed her with nothing short of jubilation. I felt like I was getting to help God create a miracle. I’d never held anything so precious to me in my whole life. Our lives were forever changed, and we couldn’t imagine life without her even though she’d only been here a few minutes. We welcomed this new chapter of our lives with joy and anticipation.

In remembering this experience, I realized that many times in ministry I’ve felt “pregnant with anticipation” of what God was going to do. That made me think that we should live our daily lives this way – in joy, anticipation, and a little awe of what God might do in and through our lives and what he might ask us to do. He almost always asks us to do what we don’t think we can do. As people of faith, we should welcome with open arms and excited anticipation the work of God in our lives.

We see examples of this in some biblical individuals. Think about Mary. When the angel appears to her and tells her God’s plan, her response is, “I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true” (Luke 1:38a).

Let’s dig a little deeper: Consider the magnitude of what she was being asked to welcome – the very Son of God into her physical body and entire life. The incarnation would completely reshape her future, her relationships, her reputation, and her understanding of God’s plan. Yet her response shows a heart prepared to receive whatever God wanted.

Her words “I am the Lord’s servant” (Luke 1:38) reveal a posture of profound availability. Like a hostess who says, “My home is your home,” Mary essentially tells God, “My life is your life.” This is spiritual hospitality at its deepest – making ourselves fully available for God’s purposes.

The cultural context makes her response even more amazing. As an unwed young woman, saying yes meant potential shame, rejection, and even the risk of death. Yet she chose to welcome God’s plan despite these dangers. Real hospitality often involves vulnerability and risk.

There’s also a beautiful immediacy to her response. She doesn’t ask for time to think it over or set conditions. She does asks for understanding, not proof or hesitation, with “How will this be?” This demonstrates how spiritual hospitality involves both trust and engagement with God.

Furthermore, her song of praise (the Magnificat in Luke 1:46-55) reveals she wasn’t just passively accepting but actively embracing God’s plan with joy and worship. She recognized that welcoming God’s purposes wasn’t just about her – it was part of God’s redemptive plan for all people. True spiritual hospitality looks beyond personal impact to see the bigger picture of God’s kingdom work.

Mary’s example teaches us that spiritual hospitality means:

• Maintaining a posture of availability to God
• Being willing to welcome His plans even when they disrupt our own
• Choosing trust over security
• Engaging actively with what God reveals
• Seeing our role in His larger purposes

Like Mary, we are all invited to be bearers of Christ to our world in different ways. Her response shows us how to welcome those invitations with faith, courage, and joy in our daily walk.

We see guidance in scripture for having a heart of spiritual hospitality. Look at Psalm 5:3: “Listen to my voice in the morning, Lord. Each morning, I bring my requests to you and wait expectantly.” (NLT).

At its heart, spiritual hospitality means living with open hands rather than clenched fists around our plans. It’s like having a guest room that’s always ready – we may not know when a visitor will come or who it might be, but we maintain a space of welcome.

This kind of spiritual readiness requires several key attitudes:

-Flexibility in our daily lives:

• Proverbs 16:9 reminds us ” We can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps.” (NLT)
• Like Jesus who often changed his plans to respond to needs (Mark 5:21-43), we learn to hold our schedules loosely
• Creating margins in our lives rather than filling every moment allows space for divine interruptions (If you’re like me, you may need to write this one down where you can see it daily!)

-A settled trust in God’s character:

• Understanding that God’s unexpected plans, while sometimes disruptive, flow from His perfect love and wisdom
• This trust allows us to welcome change without anxiety

-An attitude of expectancy:

• Isaiah 55:8-9: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways”
• Recognizing that God often works in surprising ways helps us stay alert to His movement
• Like David, who learned to “inquire of the Lord” rather than assume he knew God’s strategy, we develop a listening posture

Practical preparation:

• Regular prayer and Scripture reading that builds our trust in God
• Developing flexibility in our attitudes and expectations
• Practicing discernment so we can recognize God’s invitations when they come
• Maintaining healthy margins in our lives – emotionally, physically, and spiritually

Our attitudes need to be the same as Philip. Philip probably didn’t plan to leave a successful ministry in Samaria to meet one Ethiopian on a desert road (Acts 8:26-40), but his willingness to follow God’s unexpected leading resulted in the gospel reaching a new continent.

I love the attitude and prayer of Evan Roberts from the 1904-1905 Welsh Revival. He prayed, “O Lord, bend us.” Our attitude and prayer must be that we bend or surrender to God’s plan, never that he bends to our desires and whims.

Making space for God’s unexpected plans doesn’t mean living in constant uncertainty – rather, it means finding our security in God’s character rather than our circumstances. It’s about maintaining a commitment that says, “Lord, I welcome whatever you bring today, knowing that your plans, though unexpected to me, are never unplanned by you.”

Making space for God’s unexpected plans doesn’t mean living in constant uncertainty – rather, it means finding our security in God’s character rather than our circumstances. It’s about maintaining a commitment that says, “Lord, I welcome whatever you bring today, knowing that your plans, though unexpected to me, are never unplanned by you.”

This kind of spiritual hospitality transforms our daily lives from a series of interruptions to a beautiful string of divine appointments, each one an opportunity to experience more of God’s presence and purposes in our lives.

We also need to have the faith of a child. We can learn a lot from children and their ability to trust and welcome with joy whatever the future holds. Matthew 18:3 says, “Then he said, ‘I tell you the truth, unless you turn from your sins and become like little children, you will never get into the Kingdom of Heaven’” (NLT). Children approach each day with wonder and expectation. They naturally trust their parents, and if raised in an environment of Christian faith, they usually trust God very easily with simple, unquestioning faith. The simplicity of childlike faith allows us to open our lives to God’s leading and work.

2 Timothy 1:7 says, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline” (NLT). Faith and love casts out fear. When we know God, we can let go of fear. As adults we often think of the “what ifs” in a negative way. What if we thought of them in a childlike way, leaving fear behind, and trusting the God who loves us? “What ifs” in childlike faith become opportunities and anticipation of God’s blessings and work. We can trust and obey and see what God will do.

So, how can we live a life of welcome anticipation and spiritual hospitality toward God? As mentioned above, read God’s word – know it and live it. Pray – pray with expectant prayer. Look for God’s work around us. As Henry Blackaby taught in Experiencing God, God is always at work around us. When we see his work, it is an invitation to join him in what he’s doing. Finally, I encourage you to keep a journal of God’s work and faithfulness in your life. It becomes such a treasure over the years.

Just like new parents holding their child for the first time, we can live our Christian lives as those anticipating what God is about to do in our lives. I remember, each day seemed like we were unwrapping our little gift a little more as our baby’s personality grew and unfolded. We see that in following Christ as well. We may not see the full picture or the full plan God has, but he unfolds parts of it day by day as we follow him faithfully and trust in his unending, unfailing faithfulness toward us. Each day with God brings opportunities for growth and wonder when we approach it with open hearts and spiritual hospitality.