Description

Definition
The aptitude of hospitality is the ability to welcome and graciously serve guests. This may involve providing an open house and a warm welcome for those in need of food, friendship, or lodging.
The Bible provides several examples of effective hospitality, including Lydia, whom the apostle Paul led to the Lord. After she was baptized, she persuaded Paul and his party to go to her home: “If you consider me a believer in the Lord, come and stay at my house” (Acts 16:14-15). We find other examples of short-term hospitality, such as Abraham caring for three strangers, who turned out to be the Lord and two angels. Another example is two believers on the road to Emmaus who invited a stranger to have dinner with them, not realizing until later that it was the Lord. The Bible also provides examples of long-term hospitality. In the book of Romans, Paul wrote of “Gaius, whose hospitality I and the whole church here enjoy” (Rom. 16:23). The Old Testament contains the story of a well-to-do woman who urged her husband to build an extra room on their house so the prophet Elisha could stay there whenever he was in the area (2 Kings 4:8-10).
Because you have the gift of hospitality, you enjoy meeting new people and helping them feel welcome. You are skillful at entertaining guests and setting people at ease in unfamiliar surroundings. You enjoy having guests in your home and entertaining them, and you are not reluctant to open your home to others who need a safe, supportive environment.
You are usually very friendly and outgoing, very sociable and gracious. People enjoy being around you because you make them comfortable and create a warm environment for them. You may be equally comfortable with close friends or strangers. You want people to feel valued, as if a part of the family, and you may look for ways to connect them into meaningful relationships. Though you are thoughtful of others, you may not develop long-term relationships.
Hospitality is not limited to your home. You may be equally effective in an office environment, conference center or resort area because you are highly skilled at making people comfortable in unfamiliar surroundings.
Since your greatest emphasis is the comfort and pleasure of other people, you may work leisurely on the job. You also may care very little about the past or the future because your primary interest is in the present.

Typical Characteristics
● Happier with guests in your home than being alone.
● Enjoy entertaining both friends and strangers.
● Not reluctant to open your home to someone who needs a safe, warm environment.

Tendencies
● General Orientation: extrovert. You enjoy having people in your home and caring for them.
● Perspective: positive. You enjoy making people feel welcome and comfortable, and that requires optimism.
● Priorities:
● People. You are most content when they are in your home or domain.
● Feelings, pleasure. A visitor’s comfort and pleasure are your highest priority.
● Issue Perception: subjective. Human needs and feelings are important to you.
● Orderliness: probably flexible. You have more concern for human comfort than structure or neatness.

Misunderstandings
Because you are so warm and friendly, others might assume you want close relationships, especially with people of the opposite sex. Your family might feel you lack interest in them, since you focus on strangers and entertaining.

Vocations and Roles
Host/hostess, receptionist, and conference coordinator.

Perversions

Self-Centeredness
(Perverts your aptitude by focusing it on you, emphasizing the pleasure or fulfillment it gives you.)
You enjoy making strangers feel welcome and accepted so much that you may ignore appropriate courtesy. It is also possible for you to become so preoccupied with your guests that you overlook personal and family needs. To satisfy your desire to take in those who need food and shelter, you might act unwisely and endanger your family and household. An emphasis on comfort and pleasure could easily make you self-indulgent, unwilling to deny yourself anything you want.

Extremes
(Perverts by exaggerating, taking your characteristics and tendencies to extremes.)
You can make elaborate or extravagant preparations simply to impress your guests. You may even develop a party mentality, becoming bored with normal life. Because you love meeting strangers, you may sometimes ignore your friends and family.

Control
(Self-centeredness makes you want to be in control, and you struggle for control in a way that is unique to your character.)
If you see someone in an uncomfortable situation, you might seize control by taking them into your care, entertaining them, or taking them into your home, depending on the circumstances. By doing so, you may encourage them to abdicate their responsibility or ignore their problems, if they are experiencing the consequences of their own irresponsibility, for example.

Redemption

Putting on Important Traits
Certain godly character traits are especially important to you as a host or hostess. Consciously developing the following traits will help you entertain your guests and make them feel welcome.

● Humility (Considers self relatively unimportant compared to others; prevents using abilities for one’s own satisfaction.) Humility allows you to be a servant to your guests and consider your own needs and interests unimportant.
● Agape (Considers others’ welfare, needs, interests, and desires more important than your own; motivates you to act for others’ benefit regardless of personal impact.) Agape helps you consider your guests’ needs, interests, and desires most important. Be ready to act for their benefit without concern for yourself.
● Peace (A state of well-being; an internal condition of completeness, order, and rest that supersedes external circumstances.) This helps you create a safe, comfortable environment and set your guests at ease in what they consider unfamiliar surroundings.
● Kindness (Appropriate, mild, and pleasant behavior toward others; expressed in actions that meet another person’s need or desire.) Let your actions be appropriate, mild, and pleasant, so your guests feel welcome. Kindness causes you to focus on your guests’ needs, such as food, friendship, rest, entertainment, or lodging.

Repentance, Renewing Your Mind
(The changes you need to make in the way you think, including your attitudes, standards, priorities, and perspective.)
Your role is to serve your guests and help them feel welcome by making their needs and desires your priority. You may serve those who need temporary protection and care by providing a safe, comfortable, supportive environment. Through your hospitality, nonbelievers can experience God’s love as they never have before.

Denying and Humbling Yourself
(Rejecting your own desires and self-interests. Refusing to be motivated by desire for recognition or credit for the results.)
Because your desire is to focus completely on your guests, be alert to those with whom you have long-term relationships. Be careful to determine your guests’ actual needs and not assume you know what they are, or else you might create an awkward situation for them by trying to meet needs they do not have.

Taking up Your Cross
(Accepting that which has potential for great harm, threatens to break you down, or reveals your inadequacies.)
Entertaining certain types of guests can be very demanding or risky, as can hosting guests for an extended period. You will not always have the skills, insight, or resources you need to provide the hospitality your guests expect.

Following Jesus
(How you uniquely imitate Jesus by doing what He would in your situation.)
Jesus did His Father’s will, which means He served in His behalf. You provide hospitality in God’s behalf, serving people as if they were God’s guests.

Becoming Like a Child
(Accepting what God gives you, believing what He tells you, trusting Him to take care of you, and simply doing what He says.)
Let God direct which guests you should take and what kind of hospitality you should provide. Trust His knowledge of their needs and simply do what He tells you.