Andrew Jones on the Hazard of Hotels

Concerning the ongoing discussion among Christian leaders about the need for us to carefully guard our moral purity, Andrew Jones (aka TallSkinnyKiwi), renowned blogger in the emergent church movement in the U.K., wrote a very interesting piece entitled, Haggard and the Hazard of Hotels. Jones spells out the precautions he takes when traveling alone, including avoiding staying certain places.

He writes (typos included),

Most of the time I travel alone but i am careful here i stay. If i have a choice, I crash on a friends couch. In summer I bring my tent. I even crash on airport floors to save a few bucks and travel time. If i don't know anyone in a city, I usually stay at a youth hostel. Its really cheap and i stay in a room with 5 or more people. I have to sleep with my wallet and passport in my pocket or under my pillow but it keeps me away from hotels where i am all alone and where weird things happen.

Here’s the deal. Hotels can be treacherous places for people of God to stay at because of the spiritual residue from weird and dark things that have happened in that room. OK - some of you will think me loony here. And some of you don't believe in demons. But let me play it out. Hotels, like a particular house in New Orleans, have been the ruin of many a poor boy. Some hotels are famous for the part they had to play in the destruction of careers and downfall of movie stars. Fatty Arbuckle at St Francis Hotel, San Francisco (pictured above) comes to mind every time i walk by that hotel. And there are others.

Hotels are often places where anonymously weird, perverted, dangerous, evil things of a dark nature happen - all attracting the attention and the attachment of evil spirits. Permission is granted to those spirits in those places and I don't think that permission is withdrawn once the people are gone. That means if you end up in a hotel room where weird things have just happened, you really need to do some kung fu in that room and cleanse it out before you put your bags down and settle in for the night. Really. And someone close to you should know where you are.

Those are very interesting words coming from someone who is part of a movement whose theology many evangelicals view with suspicion, and yet they obviously evidence a very deep desire to pursue personal purity at all costs. I wonder how many of those same critics are as serious about being careful in their own, personal lives as Andrew is?

His words remind me of something I heard Cliff Barrows say at Billy Graham’s Amsterdam ’86 Conference for Itinerant Evangelists. Cliff stated that when he enters a new hotel room, the first thing he does is drape a towel over the television set and place his open Bible upon it as if it were a pulpit. Even back in the eighties, well before the proliferation of online porn, Barrows had been deeply impacted by learning how many ministers he knew had fallen into the sin of watching dirty movies as a result of spending too much time alone in hotel rooms. He was determined to avoid that trap with God’s help, so he established these specific boundaries in his own life in order to reinforce his own best intentions.

In the same vein, someone once told me about hearing the late Dr. Lester Sumrall say that when preaching out of town, he never went directly back to his hotel room alone after speaking. Instead, he always asked the host pastor, or a male staff member that pastor recommended, to go out with him for a cup of hot chocolate and chitchat before retiring. Apparently, he believed taking the time to unwind over a cup of hot chocolate before going to his room was an important safeguard to his own moral purity. He also felt the hot chocolate included certain chemicals that helped replenish the nutrients his body had burned while preaching and praying for the sick. Dr. Sumrall had discovered that, by taking the time to unwind in safe company before going to his hotel, when he did get to his room, he was tired enough to go straight to sleep instead of being so wired on adrenaline that he would be tempted to stay up flipping channels until the wee hours of the morning. Let me mention, as an aside, that Dr. Sumrall’s out of print but still available biography, My Story to His Glory, is an amazing, “must-read” for any missionary or preacher.

For me, the bottom line in all of these discussions is that true spirituality, as I once heard Dale Yerton put it, is “naturally spiritual and spiritually natural.” There is a mysterious mix of the natural and the supernatural in the ministry God accomplishes through us that enables us to become and do so much more than we could ever hope to in and of ourselves. We must be very vigilant to never, ever forget, that no matter how much God uses us, we always steward “…this treasure in vessels of clay.” (2 Corinthians 4:7 NIV). We are still human, still vulnerable, still utterly dependent upon the God who created us and called us.

I will never forget the story an extremely gifted, anointed worship leader shared with me over dinner after service one night at a pastor’s conference where I ministered several years ago. It had been such a joy to receive from the ministry of a true psalmist during the sessions. When I went out of my way to speak words of affirmation and appreciation to him, he told me how, not long before, he had experienced something very unusual in a similar meeting. On that occasion, when he walked out on the stage with the band behind him and a very large crowd in the room in front of him, as he took his guitar pick in his fingers and was about to strike the first note, suddenly, it was as if all knowledge of how to play the guitar completely left him! He told me that, in an instant, in spite of many years of training, practice, and experience, he could not even recall how to play the initial notes! He stood there, bewildered and embarrassed for several seconds, while the crowd began to fidget restlessly, wondering what was wrong. Then, just as quickly and completely as it had left him, his musical ability came flooding back into him in an instant. As he struck the first chord, he said the voice of the Holy Spirit whispered to his heart, “That’s just so you will never forget where all this comes from!”

May God help us all to never forget where our gifts, our reputation, our circle of influence, our network, even our character and our integrity really come from, and may we never forget how much we need His ongoing help to both serve and honor Him…!