Steve Sikes Blog
Steve Sikes Blog
I remember as a teenager going out the back door of our farm house at 5:30 am to feed the hogs, milk the cow and walk my show-calf. I had to pass through the dining room to go outside, and many times that’s where I would see Mom… sitting at the dining room table with a lamp shining over her head reading her Bible before the sun’s rising. I didn’t think so much about it then – it wasn’t an uncommon sight for me to see. But now that “Polaroid picture” of Mom reading her Bible early in the morning goes across my mind quite often.
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Mom’s days were always full with: helping Dad with the secretarial work at the children’s home; being the home’s chorus director; being the children’s home barber of the 65 boys, including our family; being the mom of 13 children; etc. Jam-packed days! Yet, Mom still found time to start her mornings with reading and prayer.
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I’ve never met a more positive person and servant than my mother. Her infamous line, when asking someone to join us for a meal or a place to sleep, has always been (as long as I can remember), “There’s always room for one more.”
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When I was preaching in Texas and going to graduate school at Abilene Christian University, I took Patti to a good old fashioned beef & beans country cookout with guitar music. The proprietor of the establishment came over to our table and we began talking. I discovered that at one time he had been a preacher and he discovered that I had grown up on a farm on the Texas/Oklahoma border. He then began to share a story about the time he was in preaching school and had gone with a group to a town not too far from our farm to knock on doors and share the gospel. He said on the way back home their car broke down and they walked to the nearest farm house. I’ll let him tell the rest of the story in his own words…
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“We walked up to this farm house around 8:00 pm and knocked on the door. When the door opened there was a mother holding a newborn baby in her arms surrounded by a whole passel of children of all different ages. When we told them our car had broken down, up the road a piece, she invited us all in. She and her husband fed us, gave us a place to sleep and helped us get our car fixed the next day. I’ll always remember what this mother told us that night before we accepted her invitation to come in and spend the night, “Please stay with us. There’s always room for one more.”
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I looked at that proprietor and said, “You stayed at my farm house! That was my mother and my family at the door that night!” (Mom had just returned home from the hospital with a newborn baby!)
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The older I get and the more I read my Bible, the more I realize that the heart of God can be summarized by Mom’s same words of hospitality, “There’s always room for one more!” Listen how the apostles, John and Peter, describe God’s heart of redeeming hospitality:
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John 3:16-17 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”
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2 Peter 3:9 “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.”
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Happy Mother’s Day to all of you mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers of hospitality! God’s arms are wide, His table is spread, and truly “There’s always room for one more!” God is good! Mr. Steve
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