What Does God Want to Do with Your House? [42]

Host: TJ Freeman

Summary: TJ Freeman hosts Joshua MacClaren on today's episode of Back to Rurality, discussing how to use one's home and possessions to serve the Lord and bring Him glory. Josh shares his personal journey of transitioning from a camper to building a new home, all while striving to show hospitality and care for others. The conversation emphasizes that everything we own belongs to God and should be used to further His kingdom. Whether you live in an apartment, trailer, or house, the episode encourages listeners to consider how they can use their living spaces to serve their communities and share the love of Christ.

Connect with Us:

• Website: backtorurality.com
• Social Media: Facebook
• Email: tj@brainerdinstitute.com

Transcript

TJ: Have you ever felt like you wished you had more ways to serve the Lord? You know you exist to bring Him glory. You wanna bring him glory, but you're just not sure how you're equipped to do it. Well, today we wanna talk about one of the best assets right under your feet that you can employ for the sake of the kingdom.

With special guest,

Joshua: Josh MacClaren.

TJ: Stay tuned.

Well, hello and welcome back to Back to Rurality. My name is TJ Freeman. I am a rural pastor. I live in northern Pennsylvania, which just like where you live is officially the middle of nowhere and I am not alone today. I'm happy to have a guest today.

Joshua: I'm honored, brother. 

TJ: The guest already referred to himself, but I'll let you introduce yourself a little more. 

Joshua: Hey, guys. I am a pastor in North Central Pennsylvania, about 20 minutes where TJ Pastors. My name's Joshua MacClaren, born and raised in the county adjacent to where I'm pastoring now but only about 20 minutes away.

TJ: Anything else you wanna say about yourself? Who are you? I mean, tell us about your life.

Joshua: Oh. Married to Lydia. We have two kiddos. Willow is four. Roland is 16 months. We've been married for seven years. We wanted to leave a rural place. In fact, I left. I thought Bloomsburg was the big city when I left there. Which really only had like 12,000 people when my university was in session. 

TJ: It's four times the size of where you live now. 

Joshua: Yeah, it is. And then we came to Wellsboro for a pastoral internship and tried to leave three times. Wanted to go to bigger and better places, but the Lord kindly kept us here and I'm so thankful.

TJ: Stuck in the middle of nowhere.

Joshua: Love it. 

TJ: So Josh, before we get into the topic for today, your wife has a special talent. 

Joshua: She's an author. 

TJ: She's an author. Yep. What does she write? 

Joshua: She writes fantasy novels. Young adult fantasy novels.

TJ: I imagine myself writing fantasy. 

Joshua: Yeah. No you don't. 

TJ: I fantasize about it. Yeah. Nice. No, no, I don't. But I have read portions of Lydia's book. Yeah. My daughter has read the whole thing and loves it. 

Joshua: Oh, praise the Lord. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. 

TJ: And I'll give you a sneak preview. I memorized the first sentence. It's really good. 

Kaka is dead. Oh, snap. So there it is. If that didn't wet your appetite a little bit, where could people find the book? Seven Lives Saved, written by Lydia MacClaren.

Joshua: Yeah, you can find it on Amazon. Just search Seven Lives Saved. And Lydia MacClaren should show up as the author. 

TJ: Written by a rural pastor's wife. Yeah. From a rural place. Oh yeah. So highly recommend it. I also recommend you think about the topic we're talking about today, and that is how to use the stuff that God has entrusted to you for his glory.

So we're kind of demystifying what does it mean to live for God's glory? And one of the ways that you do that is by trying to think through what are the things God has given me Skills, abilities. I think those are the same things. Resources, resources, money, and one that you might not think about very often.

Property, and that could be rented or owned the place that you live. God can use that for his glory. Josh, you've been thinking about this because you were un homed. 

Joshua: I was un homed for a little while. Yeah. So, I was serving as a pastoral assistant and then, an elder at Christ Church in Wellsboro. And then, the Lord saw fit to call my wife and I and 80 other saints to go and plant a church.

TJ: So you planted a church in a rural town. 

Joshua: Planted a church in a rural town. 

TJ: That's a thing all by itself. Yep. We'll talk about that maybe some other day.

Joshua: One of the things that we quickly found was that we were living in one community and driving 20 minutes to pastor and serve another community.

And we knew that that wasn't a long-term solution. So what we ended up doing is we sold our house and we bought property. On the property was a dilapidated home that we could not live in. I would never want anyone to ever live there, let alone my wife and my two children. So we tore the house down, and by God's grace, because of the experience of my father, my brother-in-law, my nephew, we built a house.

TJ: Before we get there though, during the time that you were on home Yeah. You had housing insecurity? 

Joshua: I had housing insecurity. I lived in a camper, yeah. For five months and then a small two bedroom downstairs apartment for five months. 

TJ: Okay. And how did that limit you from being able to be what we're get what we're starting to get to, which is hospitable?

Joshua: Yeah. Once it got cold. And even before it got cold, I literally just had a pile of house in my yard. So the ability to invite not only church members, but friends, relatives, and then even guests to our church or people that we were seeing to share the gospel with. Felt inappropriate or almost impossible because we had nowhere comfortable to have people.

We couldn't care for them. It would be so hard to cook. It would be hard to, to really just use what the Lord had given us at the time. So we ended up, you know, trying to use restaurants as we could. 

TJ: There we go. That's what I was gonna do. I was gonna throw you the curve ball, but you're already hitting it. Was that season an excuse not to do things with other people?

Joshua: No, and I want, I will say that we were not perfect in that by no means. But we did recognize that there are still people to care for and there's still people that the Lord has placed in our lives. So even if we don't have this tool, we still need to get at it somehow.

TJ: And you started to say you did restaurants. 

Joshua: Yeah. Restaurants or even using like a third party home and saying like, Hey, you have a home and you are an elder, or you're a deacon, or you're a member of our church. We want to get together with this couple. Can you invite us both over? Or, you know, we want to connect with this family.

Can you invite us both over so that we can. Fellowship together, pray together. Get to know this couple together. 

TJ: So, dear listener, you live somewhere. You may live in an apartment, you may live in a trailer. You may live in a stick-built home. Some combination. I'm not sure if anybody lives in a camper. You might be our only one, Josh. But there could be.

Joshua: Yeah. Warm places where rent is through the roof. That's true. Yeah. You buy a camper, you live in a campsite. 

TJ: Yeah. So wherever you're at, you need to think of everything you have as belonging to the Lord and God wanting to use it for the sake of his kingdom and your home.

What you might think of as like your castle or your personal source of refuge actually isn't yours. So Josh, can you tell us a little bit about the theology that goes into driving you to use that place that should encourage our listeners to say, wherever I'm living, I should try to think about how to leverage that for the kingdom.

Joshua: Yeah. Just the simple principle of the fact that God owns everything, everything belongs to him, and the things that He's given me, I am to use for his glory. I think of what the Apostle Paul says in Romans chapter 12 present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to the Lord.

This is your spiritual act of worship. And I think when he says, present your bodies, I think he's not just saying our literal bodies. I think he's saying all of yourself. Everything that you have, everything that you are is a living sacrifice for the sake of God's glory. 

TJ: Yeah. There are some other passages of passages of scripture that talk about it.

Some are for elders. Like first Timothy three and Titus one. 

Joshua: You're supposed to be hospitable. 

TJ: Yes. Yep. But is it just for leadership in the church? 'cause you're a pastor, like of course you're gonna be thinking of these things. 

Joshua: No, I don't think so. What better place to one another, one another in a local church than.

TJ: Did you stutter or did you mean to say one another twice? 

Joshua: No, I was meant to say one another. 

TJ: Right. You won another. 

Joshua: You're one anothering, one another. 

TJ: One another. I just didn't want anybody to miss that. That's great. Yeah, and scripture tells us to do these things like in Hebrews 13 when we're told not to neglect showing hospitality even to strangers. 

Joshua: In so doing, you entertain angels.

TJ: Right. 

Joshua: Is that the same passage? 

TJ: Perhaps? Yeah. Some have entertained angels unaware. I wasn't gonna say that weird part. But yeah, I think it's great. It is great and encouraging. You're gonna have to go talk to your own pastor about what that means. One Peter four says, show hospitality to one another.

Mm. Love it. Without grumbling. So you know that there's a temptation to grumble and complain about having to do it. Oh, the kids are in sports and we're outta the house too many times. Oh, my house is too messy. Oh, our house hasn't been updated and it's not as nice as other people's houses. Oh, our driveway's too steep.

You know, there's a million things you could come up with. But, the Bible tells us not to grumble about the fact that we're to show hospitality to others. It's really important we do it. Did you say Romans 12? Yeah. 

Joshua: Okay. Yeah. 

TJ: Yeah, that was another one I had on my list here. So yeah, there several places and if you go Old Testament mode, you're gonna see a major tenet of being a Jew was caring for sojourners people traveling. Showing hospitality to the stranger was a big deal in Jewish culture because the heart of God is wrapped up in. 

Joshua: Well, and we're about to preach Acts chapter 10, and we listened to our brother sermon and he said one of the turning points in Peter's life as a Jewish Christian, accepting Gentiles, was accepting them into hospitality.

Yeah. He invited two Gentile men whom Cornelius sent for him. Yep. To come to Cornelius. He invited them in. 

TJ: Table fellowship. Yep. Yeah, so you know, the simple takeaway here is no matter where you live, and no matter how remote your town is or whatever, there are people in your community that don't know Christ and Jesus has placed you there in that community at this time.

He picked you to live during this time, and he's worked the circumstances of your life together to lead you to the place where you live now. So you're there to show the love of Christ to the people in your community, which requires showing hospitality. So my encouragement for you as you think about this episode is how can I leverage the things that God has given me to show hospitality to others?

Who can I have sit at my table? Who can I have for a campfire in the backyard? Who can I have just come hang out at the baseball game, but I'm gonna bring drinks and snacks so that we can have a meaningful conversation? Think of ways that you can use the stuff God's given you so that you can show hospitality.

And if you are one of our target listeners, which means you live in a small town where there's not a healthy church. Then you especially have a responsibility to show what the church is like, to show what the Kingdom of Heaven is like. And I don't say that to put more pressure on you. I just want you to think about the reality that Christ wants to make himself known.

And you're a Christian who's there, in a place where there's not that many Christians concentrated and the light of the gospel will shine through you. And it is a tall task, but with the Lord's help you can do it. He's given you everything you need to do it, and you'll actually find great joy in doing it.

Amen. Yeah. Well, hey, I wanna thank you for listening to this episode. This has been a ministry of the Brainerd Institute for Rural Ministry. We want to see a healthy church in every rural community, and we're just kind of going county by county asking is there a healthy church in this county? Taking responsibility for the region to make sure that every man, woman, and child has repeated opportunities to see, hear, and respond to the gospel.

If not, we have our work cut out for us and you might be part of the solution. So keep being faithful. Pray that the Lord will raise up a congregation in your community so that his glory is seen in and through the place you live, even out there in the middle of nowhere. For now though, what do you say? We get back to life.

Back to rurality. Bye-bye.