You're listening to the Allender Center podcast with Dr. Dan Allender. Each week, we dive into topics that reflect something of what it means to foster hope and healing in a world so in need of restoration. These conversations grow out of the work we do with individuals and communities across the country,

which you can learn more about at the Allender Center.org.

Well, we are in a summer mood, and the category that we want to consider today is what it means to be good hosts as we welcome our friends, our acquaintances, strangers into our home this summer.

We do. We have a number of guests coming this summer, and it's just

each and every person I look forward to, because I think one of the things we've done well is

we don't invite people into our home, we don't receive invitations, and go into someone's home

if we have any smell of obligation,

necessity, a kind of expectation that you have to do this.

Do you want to go?

Do you want people to visit such an important?

We covered that in our last time.

And certainly, I think the issue here

becomes even more important because if you're the host, you have taken responsibility for your guests.

You've taken responsibility for protecting them, for providing for them, for in some sense of the word,

nurturing them. But I think the key word is the word welcome. And that welcome should be there not just in the first five or ten minutes,

but throughout the entire visit. So if you've agreed to a week and you are not welcoming on the

third or fourth day, that's not your gas problem.

That was your lack of courage, your cowardice that has not enunciated. That indeed, we are,

you know, whatever the amount of time that you are here, you are welcome and you will be welcome, even in your departure. So in that light, I hope the

review of, you know, what do you want to offer most as you offer your home, your heart,

your hearth as a place of welcoming? And I do think, my love, you are one of the most welcoming people I have known,

certainly in terms of what you have done in welcoming me,

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