The Hands and Feet of Jesus

Dannah Gresh: In this series on Revive Our Hearts, we’re exploring many biblical passages on hospitality. In the process of working on this material, our team met a woman who loves putting these biblical concepts into action.

Stacy Holden: If you want to host a party, our house is open.

Dannah: This is Stacy Holden.

Stacy: We have done anything you can imagine: driveway concerts, one hundred people in the driveway for a marathon for blind, a surprise birthday party.

Dannah: These are more than just fun events. Stacy and her family want to share the heart of Jesus to their neighbors—including new neighbors who have been through unimaginable struggles.

Stacy: Thanksgiving lunch for about forty Aghan ladies . . that was beautiful.

Dannah: Welcome to the Revive Our Hearts podcast for April 11, 2024. I’m Dannah Gresh. Our host is the co-author of You Can Trust God to Write Your Story, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Most of us remember seeing the evacuation of Kabul, Afghanistan in 2022. Over 5,000 of those refugees settled in the Houston area, and many churches jumped into action to provide for people who arrived with nothing.

For Stacy Holden, the events of 2022 aren’t just a sad news story. She knows the faces, the names, and the stories of individual people. Some of them have become like family to her.

We’re about to get to know Stacy as part of a series called “You’re Welcome Here.” For the last few days we’ve been exploring biblical hospitality. Erin Davis led a team to turn this teaching series into a workbook, also called You’re Welcome Here. Erin visited women in various parts of the country for a video series that goes along with the book.

Erin met Stacy Holden and her family as part of that process, and she’s here to tell us the story. I know you’re going to be encouraged about how the Lord is at work in Houston. And, you’re going to be challenged to let Him show love through you in your community. Here’s Erin.

Erin Davis: Romans 12 tells us to pursue hospitality. Of all the commands in Scripture, does that one—“pursue hospitality”—really matter? How does it compare with the other commands, like, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel”?

I’m Erin Davis, about to embark on a journey, because I want to see for myself: how are women learning to live out this command? How are they showing hospitality? First stop, Houston, where an international tragedy has come to one family’s backyard.

Stacy: When people walk in my home, I would love for them to feel the love Jesus had for the people He was with. I want to be the hands and feet of Jesus, so I want people to be relaxed. I want them to use my home like they would use their own home . . . and feel very loved and very welcome when they come in.

Song: 

When your hurt are too much to bear,
I can’t make it disappear,
But I know how to weep with those who weep.

Laugh a laugh and cry a tear.
Say ‘yes’ to trust and ‘no’ to fear.
Do you know you’re welcome here with me?

Erin: When nations are coming right to your neighborhood, maybe your home can be a place to preach the gospel to all the world! 

Song:

Laugh a laugh and cry a tear.
Say ‘yes’ to trust and ‘no’ to fear.
Do you know you’re welcome here with me?

Stacy: We have a two-story home, technically, that is a little over a hundred years old. It’s a Victorian home. About five years ago my husband and my daughters closed in part of our attic and made it a clubhouse. So now we kind of have a three-story home.

We started saying, “If you ever need someone to watch your kids, we want to be the family that you do not have.” Most people don’t have family that’s close. Several of them have family across the country. This is something that we have really appreciated and really used, and we want to do that for other people.

Almost immediately, we started having couples ask us to keep their kids—that’s been for a date night all the way up to keeping two kids for a month. We’re happy to do that. It’s a ministry that not just my husband and I have offered to people, but our girls have absolutely had been involved in it as well.

We’ve wanted this home to be one where the kids want to come, not just our daughters’ friends, but also other people’s kids.

Erin: Stacy and her family got a unique opportunity to put their love for hospitality on display when their small group started serving Afghan refugees. After the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 2022, over 5,000 refugees landed in the Houston area. Stacy and her family have helped hundreds of Afghans adjust to life in the United States.

Stacy: We started in 2020 going to an apartment complex and doing church in the courtyard. In 2022 we started going to two different complexes, and they’re filled with Afghans. When the Afghans first came to Houston, we helped them get furniture and fill out forms for food stamps.

They quickly asked me to help them set up bank accounts. I’ve helped hundreds of kids sign up for and enroll in school, made doctors appointments, and taken some to the doctor as needed. I have made phone calls and sat on “hold” for hours and hours to try and help them with conversations. It’s just . . . everything! The goal is to build relationships. 

I have had a few ladies who have asked me to help them find jobs. A few families have said, “Could you come to my apartment and let us cook for you?” So just to develop friendships and to find ways to love on them and be part of their lives and hopefully, eventually, share the gospel. But we also just want to let them know that we love them and they’re welcome and that we want to be part of their lives. 

We have had the opportunity to share the Good News and see a couple come to faith in Christ. There are several who I feel like are very close. Just every morning I am praying for salvation and revival in the Afghan community, that they would know the only hope and the only freedom—the true freedom—that comes through faith in Jesus.

Stacy [calling someone on the phone]: Hi, Hajer, good morning!

Hajer: Good morning, how are you?

Stacy: I’m good, thank you! I’m just telling you we’re just now leaving the house, so I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes! I love you!

Erin: Stacy and I are on our way to meet a young woman named Hajer. She fled Afghanistan in her teens, and now she comes to Stacy’s house a couple of times a week to spend time with the family, to cook, and even to do her laundry.

Stacy: Over the years as our home has been a place of hospitality, I just in the last six months now have come to have this understanding that even my washer and dryer can be used for God! 

It started in the beginning with Hajer bringing her laundry over to do it. I’d say, “Just bring your laundry, and we’ll sit or go do something or whatever you want, while you’re doing your laundry.”

Hajer started telling other people that she was doing her laundry at my house, and so now we have a few families that bring their laundry once a month or so. It just depends. Even a washer and dryer can be used to love others.

Erin: Hajer is pretty extraordinary! 

[Erin to Stacy, as they drive:] Did she speak any English before she came? 

Stacy: Practically zero when I met her in September. 

Erin: Wow!

Back in Afghanistan, Hajer taught herself to read, even though the Taliban didn’t allow her to go to school. Then, in her teens she started teaching other women to read. I couldn’t wait to meet her!

[Erin and Stacy arrive at Hajer’s apartment]: Hi, Hajer!

Hajer: Hi, hello! You look beautiful!

Erin: You, too, look beautiful! My name’s Erin. It’s so nice to meet you!

Stacy [back to interview]: Over and over I think about individuals I have met and what they have gone through to get here. Most of them were ripped out of their country. Many of them were very successful in their country, had very important jobs, and they were shoved on a plane like cattle, brought to America, and dropped off. They didn’t speak the language, didn’t have anything except the shirts on their backs. They were told, “Go for it!” 

I think, What if that was me, or even worse, what if that were my daughters?I know several people who came to America as teenages or in their early twenties, all alone, no family, and they were running for their lives!

But then they get here. They don’t know anyone, don’t have anything. And so I constantly think, What if that was me or my girls? I would pray, and I would hope that God would send someone to love on my girls or to help me.

I have a strong connection to Hajer, just because she’s precious, and I love her, but she’s also six days older than my oldest daughter. I absolutely cannot imagine my oldest daughter going to another country and having to learn how to survive on her own.

So I just feel a strong tug in my heart when I see her and when I talk to her. She’s a friend—I call her a friend—but she’s also like my daughter. I want to love her just like I do my own daughter.

Erin [to Hajer now they are at Stacy’s house]: How often did you say you come to Miss Stacy’s house?

Hajer: Every week.

Erin: So you’re comfortable here?

Hajer: Yes! After two days, I’m so missing Stacy! 

Stacy: She knows my kitchen as well as I do. If she comes to my house and the dishwasher is full of clean dishes, she will be putting my dishes up for me. She is just very at home in our home, and very welcome. I love having her!

Hajer: [to Stacy]: Thank you.

Erin [to listeners]: For lunch, Hajer is going to show Stacy and me how to make an Afghan dish called kofta. I can’t wait! Put me to work! I can chop. I can grill, whatever you tell me. But you’re in charge! 

Hajer: Okay!

Erin: While beginning to chop onions, Hajer told me she used to make kofta with her mom and with their extended family. Every Friday the women of the family would have a big party. They would get together to cook and to wash clothes.

Hajer: My mom is just there, cooking and washing the clothes and talking with my cousin. It’s a lot of work.

Stacy: When Hajer was five years old, she was playing on a hill in the outskirts of Kabul and picked up a bomb that had been left there and lost her hand. Right now, Hajer has a new job in housekeeping for a hotel, and she has shined brightly in that job. She’s absolutely capable of doing everything that everyone else is doing.

She’s had to make a few adjustments, like pushing the cart. It’s very heavy and not easy for anyone, especially for someone who only has one hand. However, she’s done great and has not had any problems.

Erin [to Hajer]: What are some of the things you miss about home?

Hajer: I left everything!

Erin: What did you bring with you?

Hajer: I had one shoe. 

Stacy: Not one pair of shoes, just one shoe.

Erin: This is at the airport in Afghanistan? 

Hajer: Yeah.

Erin: Your whole family was fleeing; you couldn’t speak English, and you had one shoe. 

Stacy: Someone had stepped on her other shoe, and it had fallen off. So from the time she left Afghanistan (I think around August 20, until she came to America, August 25), she said it was almost a week before she ever got a pair of shoes. So for those five or six days when she was coming to America, she walked around with one shoe on.

Erin: Losing a shoe was difficult, but Hajer experienced far greater losses than that!

Stacy: She lost her father to cancer when she was around ten years old. Then, during the evacuation, she and her siblings and her mom were rushing to the airport to try and flee the Taliban.

I have heard estimates that there were over a million people just pressing and crushing into the airport trying to be allowed to flee. In that experience, her mom tripped and fell and was trampled to death. So she has a very sad story with that. 

She had to get on a plane to come to America—sitting on the floor of a cargo plane completely by herself—having just lost her sweet mom. I don’t feel like I replace her mom by any means, but I want to love her as if she was my daughter because I know there is a hole in her heart from the loss of her mom. I can never completely fill that, but I want to love her as well as I can.

I have had many conversations with people who are Muslim who say, “We know you’re going to heaven because you’re so good!”

And I have said over and over and over, “If you only knew me! If you knew the sin you’d see what I’m doing. You see all the good I’m doing, but my thoughts are terrible so often. I regret some words I’ve said. So even though I’m helping so many people, I still need Jesus! I still need a Savior. I still have sin. One sin separates you from God, one sin—not a thousand sins compared to five hundred good deeds. It’s one sin separating you from God, and I need Jesus as much as you do!” 

Song:

I know you have traveled far, 
So bring your hurts and bring your scars.
My table’s open, come and have a seat.
Laugh a laugh and cry a tear, 

Say ‘yes’ to trust and ‘no’ to fear.
Do you know you’re welcome here with me?

Erin [tasting the food made]: This is so yummy! 

Hajer: So good!

Stacy: No one expects perfection. Everyone is always so gracious when it comes to coming to your home. They’re happy to be in your home, it doesn’t matter if it’s a feast or if it’s just tea. So if anyone has the desire to invite people to their home but doesn’t know how, just start asking!

I’ve heard people say that if they go to church, sometimes they’ll ask one person every week, “Do you want to come to my home for lunch?” I’ve heard many Afghans say they’ve never been to an American home, so that’s kind of sad. 

For sure, if you have a relationship with someone who’s not from America, it’s wonderful to say, “Come to my home, and let’s eat together!” It’s okay to order pizza. It doesn’t have to be anything elaborate or expensive. It can be very, very simple.

Erin [to Hajer]: You and I are best friends now. We just bonded over food! (laughter)

Stacy: Jesus tells us to love our neighbor. In 1 John we see, “This is how we know what love is.” So he explains, “Jesus Christ laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters” (see 3:16).

And then he says, “If you see anyone in need and you have something, but you have no pity on them, how can the love of God be in you?” Then he says, “Let’s not love with words or speech, but with action and in truth!” And then later on he says, “Since God loves us, we ought to love other people” (paraphrased, see chapters 3 & 4).

So in reading and reading and reading 1 John, just studying, “What is love?” . . . Jesus laid down His life for us, and we are called to do the same. That is love. Jesus’ sacrificial love is the same love that we are supposed to show. And because He loved us when we didn’t deserve it, we also should love other people.

The sweet family that I have has been just so gracious to me! They have been so patient and so good and so loving. There’s no way I could have done half of this without their support and without their easygoing, just sweet group that we are, to be able to love people well. It’s not just me by myself but all five of us have been able to do so much because of the sweet heart that my whole family has! 

When I was working for the government, and when I was doing all the things that would call “successful” in the typical American eyes, it was fun. I enjoyed the work, but I have felt like there is a greater purpose I’m fulfilling by doing the free volunteer work that I do.

I feel like, at this point, I could never go back to doing anything that doesn’t involve such a passion. I’ve fulfilled the role, the gap that needed to be filled. I just see over and over how God has used the skills that I have to be able to love people.

I’m great at spreadsheets, and I’m great at writing stories. I’ve written hundreds of stories for people who are applying for asylum. They had to tell their stories of why they felt like they would be killed by the Taliban if they returned to Afghanistan.

So all my experience writing a book and writing people’s stories was just the perfect preparation! I have absolutely seen God use my experience and the professional work that I have done to put me in this place, “for such a time as this.”

 

You have what it takes to help people, and you have what it takes to have people in your home. God has equipped everybody to love people well; you just have to do it! You have to take the step of obedience and do what God very clearly in the Bible tells us to do—to practice hospitality, to love your neighbor. He will give you the ability to do that well when you step out.

Nancy: Psalm 146:9 tells us, “The Lord protects resident aliens and helps the fatherless and the widow.”

It has been so exciting to hear some of the ways the Lord is bringing that verse to life in the Houston area.

Like Stacy Holden just said, the Lord can use you to love your neighbors. Maybe your city hasn’t received an influx of refugees. There are still needs all around you. Would you ask the Lord to open your eyes, to fill you with His love, and let that love spill over to others?

Here’s one way for your love for other people to grow. Get a copy of the new Bible study from Revive Our Hearts called You’re Welcome Here. It’s a six-week study that will help you take a deep dive into what the Bible says about hospitality.

This would be a perfect study for your small group. Our team has made six videos that go with each week of the study. So you and your friends can go through the study individually and then come together to watch the videos and discuss the material. 

I hope you’ll watch the video featuring Stacy Holden. You’ll watch Hajar and Erin Davis cook an Afghan meal together, and you’ll catch a vision for the power of opening your home to help build God’s kingdom. You can watch the video by visiting ReviveOurHearts.com.

And when you support Revive Our Hearts with a gift of any amount, we’ll send you the new Bible study You’re Welcome Here. Your gift will help Revive Our Hearts continue practical teaching like this series on hospitality. You’ll help us continue telling stories that put biblical truth on display. The radio program and podcast, the videos, and Bible studies are all possible thanks to the support of listeners like you.

In the months since last fall, donations to the ministry have been a lot lower than we hoped and planned. We are trusting the Lord with some significant needs. Would you ask whether He’d want you to be part of helping to meet those needs?

Again, when you donate any amount at ReviveOurHearts.com, you can request your copy of the study, You’re Welcome Here, and we’ll send it as our gift, or call us at 1-800-569-5959. 

Dannah: Thanks, Nancy. Did you know hospitality reflects the heart of God? We’ll learn more tomorrow as we continue this series. Please be back for Revive Our Hearts.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

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