They were three months away from having their first child when they invited me to live with them. I was 22, finishing my last semester of college in a new city. Even then, I knew it was a costly invitation. Now, 12 years later and a decade into women’s ministry, I know it’s one thing to welcome someone to live in your home in general; it’s an entirely different thing to invite her in during your most tired and tender days. But that’s exactly what this couple did.

We didn’t know each other particularly well, but they knew I loved Jesus, worked at their church, and needed a place to live. They had an extra bedroom, and to them, that was all the equation needed to make sense. Their home became my home. I ate their food, used their paper towels, and carried their burdens as they carried mine. Before I knew it, their family became my family.

In Mark 10:29–30, Jesus promises that anyone who leaves behind “house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands” for his sake and the gospel will receive two rewards, present and future: a hundredfold family now and, in the age to come, eternal life. It’s a promise that Jesus fulfills through his people, the body of Christ.

Expand Your Vision of Family

Jesus’s promise of a family extends beyond the nuclear unit. This vision of family is built not on a shared bloodline but on the shed blood of Christ. The hundredfold family doesn’t come by way of marriage or birth but by being adopted into the family of God through Jesus’s sacrifice (Eph. 5:1).

The hundredfold family is built not on a shared bloodline but on the shed blood of Christ.

As a single woman in my 30s, this is good news. The promise of a family found in the God’s people is good news not only for the single but for the lonely, the isolated, and anyone looking to belong. It’s also good news for the believer who has experienced the cost of losing family or community or severed cultural ties to follow Christ.

This family doesn’t happen by accident. It’s formed by believers sharing Jesus’s vision and taking steps to cultivate it. It requires each of us to think about how to help others know that they are indeed a sister or a brother. It means that if we’re in Christ, we must remember that our family isn’t limited to those who share our last name or live within the walls of our home. It includes the brothers and sisters in our churches, those in our neighborhoods, and every blood-bought believer around the globe.

When believers live as the hundredfold family, it benefits not only those inside the church but also the watching world. Those who haven’t experienced the good news of the gospel have a chance to see our love for one another, turn and glorify the Father, and ultimately become a part of this hundredfold family themselves (Matt. 5:16).

Invite Others into Your Life

Do you have an extra bedroom that you could offer to a single person, a widow, a college student, or someone who needs a place to belong? If not, how else could you invite someone into your home and daily life? What does it look like to communicate to the people around you that what you have is theirs because it’s ultimately God’s—your home, your family, your money, your food, your time, and everything in between? How might you orient your life around fellowship, like those in the early church (Acts 2:42–47)?

It could be preparing an extra plate of food for someone you’ve invited to your home for dinner or making space for someone to join your family vacation, tag along to your child’s sporting event, or take the seat next to you at church. It might look like establishing an open-door policy with your friends and neighbors in such a way that they know if they show up, you’ll be ready to receive them like the brothers and sisters they are.

This kind of inclusion is often costly, inconvenient, and even uncomfortable. When I lived with that couple, although I tried to contribute to household chores like any good family member and be responsible for much of my own groceries and expenses, I know that adding another person to their home came with a financial burden. Sharing space also meant that everyone needed to die to preferences, giving up things like the gift of walking around the house in your pajamas. It required self-awareness, boundaries, mutual respect, and open communication, which comes with uncomfortable conversations from time to time—not unlike being part of a nuclear family.

Look to Your Older Brother’s Example

Yes, reorienting our lives in this way will cost us. But think of the costly, inconvenient, uncomfortable price that was paid so we might be included in God’s family. Swinging open the doors of our home and the parameters of our family becomes an opportunity to model the sacrificial love and radical inclusion of our older brother, Jesus Christ. The cost is high, but the reward is immeasurable.

While I don’t have the husband and kids I imagined I’d have at this point in my life, I’ve found the promise Jesus makes in Mark 10 to be true. I have no lack of family.

While I don’t have the husband and kids I imagined I’d have, I have no lack of family.

I don’t live with that couple anymore, but their boys, nearly teenagers now, still affectionately call me Sissy. God has given me more brothers, sisters, and children than I can count, with access and invitations to more homes than I could imagine.

Psalm 68:6 says, “God settles the solitary in a home.” Maybe that home is yours.