Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 88
December 27, 2019
When You Need Strength for the Battle Ahead
Wendy Speake is a passionate Bible teacher with a hunger for Jesus like no other. With a background in Hollywood as a trained actress, she ministers to women’s hearts through storytelling and biblical life application, whether on the stage or on the page. She’s led thousands in feasting on God’s Word through her annual online sugar fasts, and I’m delighted to have her share some of the truths she’s uncovered with us here. It’s a grace to welcome Wendy to the farm’s front porch today . . .
As we near the end of one year it’s common to fear the battles that loom before us in the next.
God’s Word, however, should give us courage as 2020 advances: “Do not be afraid or discouraged because of the battles you face. They are not yours but mine.”
“Though you believe that Christ is your eternal victor, it’s hard to believe that He can bring victory to your circumstances today.”
Wrapping up one year as you prayerfully prepare for another, you may wonder if it’s true.
“Is this Bible promise for me? Are my battles not my battles, but the Lord’s? Is He that intimately aware of the foe I face that He’d call my fight His fight? Is He just waiting for me to turn my face to Him as I await marching orders?”
Perhaps that’s where you are right now: afraid at the start of another year, afraid of the same addiction, same illness, same broken-down relationship, broken-down body, same negative inner dialogue, same old enemy!
Though you believe that Christ is your eternal victor, it’s hard to believe that He can bring victory to your circumstances today.
A little over a year ago my husband and I traveled to Israel. The landscape brought every Bible story I’d ever read to living color.
One day we drove through the shepherds’ field outside of Bethlehem on our way to Herodium. Eight miles south of Jerusalem we climbed the arid mountain where Herod the Great built the vacation palace which would later become his tomb.
When we reached the summit, our guide turned his back on the ruins we thought we had climbed to see. Lifting his hand, he invited us to take in the view.
360 degrees of Israel.
Pointing to the south, he directed our gaze to a patchwork of greens and browns. “Down below, in the valley at the base of those hills, is where God rerouted the armies of the Moabites and the Ammonites, as Jehoshaphat and the people of Judah watched on.”
“Instead of looking down into the valley filled with enemy-armies, they looked up and sang praises to the God of angel-armies.”
That was all he said, all the geographic context he gave before turning our attention back to the remains of the extravagant fortress we’d come to see.
Only I couldn’t take my eyes off the valley below. I was still facing south, remembering the story of how God had invited His people to stand back and see His Salvation!
Do you know the story? In 2 Chronicles 20:1–30, Jehoshaphat, King of Judah, received word that “a great multitude” was advancing against him. Afraid, King Jehoshaphat “set his face to seek the Lord and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah.”
The people of Judah gathered together to fast and pray, and the Lord responded in a radical way. He said to those who were battle-weary:
“Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army. For the battle is not yours, but God’s. . . . Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Go out to face them tomorrow, and the Lord will be with you.” (2 Chron. 20:15,17 NIV)
Immediately, Jehoshaphat fell on his face and worshiped. And all the people of Judah followed him to the ground. Every one of them prostrate before God. That’s when some of the Levites—Israel’s worship leaders—stood up and started to sing.
“How often do we sing before the victory?”
Instead of looking down into the valley filled with enemy-armies, they looked up and sang praises to the God of angel-armies.
And as they sang, “the Lord set ambushes against the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir who were invading Judah, and they were defeated” (v. 22 NIV).
The priests sang, and God saved! His muscle and His might brought salvation as Jehoshaphat and all of Judah looked on. Empty-bellied from fasting, but full of faith, believing.
How often do we sing before the victory?
How often do we worship the deliverer before the deliverance?
Yet that’s the invitation. This isn’t some antiquated Bible story.
This story is our story as we set our faces to the One who brings down every stronghold in our lives, that we might experience His strong hold! “Do not be afraid or discouraged because of the battles you face. They are not yours but mine.”
Take a lesson from Jehoshaphat.
Start your year with fasting, prayer, and worship.
“We get to march into the new year shouting God’s victory in our lives and singing His praises too.”
Just as Joshua and the Israelites shouted in victory before the walls of Jericho fell, and just as the Levites sang their praises before God did anything praise-worthy, we get to march into the new year shouting God’s victory in our lives and singing His praises too.
Are you facing the enemy of addiction?
Addicted to sugar, addicted to social media, addicted to affirmation, addicted to an unhealthy relationship?
You may not be able to break you free, but I know the One who can!
For the past six years I’ve led an army of Jesus-hungry women to their knees during our annual 40-Day Sugar Fast.
Though it started as a tool for those who struggle specifically with sugar addiction, it’s become a stronghold-crumbling, bondage-breaking season for everyone who joins us.
Running to sugar or shopping to cope with the battle-stress of life never works. Never.
Here at the start of the year, make the radical choice to run to Jesus instead.
When you’re in need of saving, run to the Savior! When you’re in need of deliverance, turn to the Deliverer.
Don’t run from sugar-high to sugar-high throughout the coming year; run to The Most High in 2020.
“Every battle is His!”
Don’t hide your face in Facebook either; come face-to-face with Jesus in the Good Book!
Every battle is His!
It’s not food’s job, alcohol’s job, Amazon Prime’s job, Instagram’s job, or coffee’s job to deliver you—not from your weariness or your loneliness, your physical ailments or emotional pain.
Jesus alone is Savior—let Him save!
Here’s why: Every battle belongs to the Lord when we belong to the Lord!
That’s why we sing His praise before He does one praise-worthy thing!
Wendy Speake is a trained actress and heartfelt Bible teacher who ministers to hearts through storytelling and biblical life application. During her career in Hollywood, Wendy found herself longing to tell stories that edify, encourage, and point audiences to Jesus Christ. Today she does just that, writing books, speaking to groups across the nation, and leading multiple online fasts and Bible studies each year. Wendy hosts her annual online sugar fast every January, (the next one begins January 6, 2020) and her book The 40-Day Sugar Fast was just released.
The question Wendy dares you to ask is: Would you give up sugar to experience the sweet presence of God in your life? Many of us think that if our bodies become healthier, then we’ll be healthier. But a healthy body doesn’t do us a lot of good if we are spiritually malnourished.
If you run to sugar for comfort or reward, eat mindlessly or out of boredom, feel physically and spiritually lethargic, or struggle with self-control, the 40-Day Sugar Fast will help you discover not only freedom from your cravings but an entirely new appetite for the good things God has for you. It’s a process that begins with us giving Jesus our sugar and ends with Jesus giving us more of Himself—the only thing that can ever truly satisfy our soul’s deep hunger.
[ Our humble thanks to Baker for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
December 24, 2019
A Modern Day Christmas Eve Miracle
I stood in Bethlehem once.
There were stars unblinking in their brave hope, right there over that little town of Bethlehem.
I’d stood there, my neck craning, for a long time, right outside the Church of the Nativity, looking up with a holy imagination and prayers that deeply know that He’s the realest reality.
“No matter any outcome… Hope always still comes.”
And then I’d finally turned and bent low to walk into the Church of the Nativity — because there is no finding Hope until you humble yourself to believe.
Our guide said the door is impossibly low so that pilgrims couldn’t ride their steeds, their camels, their donkeys, straight into the Church of His Nativity.
No one gets to meet God unless they get off their high horse, get down off of whatever other hopes and laurels they’re riding high on, counting on.
The doorway to God is made only for those who make themselves small and choose God their as all in all.
I’d stood silently with that for a long time by the carved inner door and something settles into me:
Any problem shrinks low when we highly exalt Christ.
When you bend low through that door and you come close to the place in Bethlehem and kneel down and touch the place where the Maker of the Heavens delivered Himself into earth, where the Creator of the Cosmos birthed Himself as a creature… where God came to this sod?
You’re crushed by unfathomable grace.
God is with us. God was one of us.
God let His divinity fill a container of skin and filled His lungs with all our atmosphere of ache.
We aren’t alone in this mess. We aren’t alone in any hopelessness.
“Hope resuscitates what you can’t afford to let die.”
Us on this pale blue dot of a planet in the vast blackness of the cosmos — we are “the visited planet.” He came. He sees. He knows. We are not alone. God is with us.
Kneeling there in Bethlehem, wrecked by the incomprehensibility of the Master of the Universe pulling on flimsy flesh, climbing over the walls of this world, slipping into time through the back door of the universe that is Bethlehem — all I can think was the the Holy Other curls His newborn fist in the cradle of a barn feed trough — and we are saved from ourselves.
We are saved from our hopelessness— because God came with infant fists and opened wide His hand to take the nail sharp edge of our sins.
Emmanuel, God is with us in our ache and He gave us more than explanations for all our messy brokenness —
God gave us an actual experience of Himself, because God knows explanations can be cold & Christ’s arms are warm.
When you kneel exactly where they say the Star-Maker first came and grazed earth, where the Hope-Bringer first inhaled all our dark into His holy lungs — you kinda exhale at how we’ve all been swept into the Light of the Land of the Living.
When you let your fingertips trace the stars they’ve engraved right into the floor of the Church of the Nativity, when you run your hands across those stars, over and over again, you can see how One came through all the cosmic dark like a star — and you can see all His starry light embracing your own naked broken, aching heart.
There is brokenness and failing and hurting and falling and grieving and heartache and there are times you don’t know how to breathe —but there is always, always, always Hope.
Hope is contagious, blazing, risky thing — and it can light a thousand more nights with countless stars.
Stories may not have gone as we hoped — but Hope is not gone. Hope comes down and Hope never stops coming.
No matter any outcome… Hope always still comes.
We can’t ever afford to lose Hope — or we lose our future, our faith, our fight, our fortitude.
The Star-Maker, the Wisdom-Carrier, the Hope-Holder — He took on skin and come with lung and lips and warm breath because this is the gift that all the heart bruised need: Hope resuscitates what you can’t afford to let die.
Let your broken heart prepare Hope room.
If you don’t let your heart prepare Hope room — it’s your own house that comes crashing down.
Prepare Hope room and room for the prodigal to come home, and the hard-hearted to change, and the hurting to not hurt, and the wounders to heal and the impossible to find a possible way, and let nothing stop you from following the star this Christmas.
“And there’s no performing Christmas, producing Christmas, or perfecting Christmas. There is only Christmas finding us — grace finding even us. Hope finding even us. God with us.”
Because Christmas is coming right now for our grief.
Christmas is coming right now for the sadness you can’t speak out loud, for the unspoken broken that you fear might break you, the Hope-Holder is coming — and Christmas is coming right now to crush all fears and despair and dark.
Because Christmas is about how Jesus came like a star through the dark, shut out the darkness by moving into our space, moving right in front of all our darkness — and eclipsing all heartbreak with His Light.
A heart can keep burning within…
And when I’d ascend the back stairs from the basement of the Church of the Nativity with its starry floor…. I stand at the back of the Church of the Nativity for awhile, looking up at the lit stained glass brokenness of His birth, rising there above the altar. Stand there — waiting. Waiting for God knows what.
Waiting for God.
And that’s the moment when I’d heard the slosh of water, heard a spilling of water, up near the altar.
And then a woman, bent and small, she’s stepped out of the shadows — with her mop.
I watched as she’d began this slow choreography of grace across the floor — with her mop.
She’s mopping up the birthplace of God.
She’s mopping up the mess down here — a bit like God came down here to mop up our mess. Our mess of hopelessness and fears and brokenness.
“We aren’t abandoned in all this — we get to let it all go and abandon ourselves to God. We get to let go — and be small and let God do it all, be our all, make a way through it all. We get to let go — and let God near.”
But I can hear music? Music echoing — ?
Where in the world is the music coming from? Haunting notes, high and lovely. From the dark? From behind the altar?
Her shoulders, her shoulders, are moving with the notes.
The music’s coming from her. The music’s coming from within her.
She turns with her mop and the whole thing feels like I’ve walked in on the heavenly host welcoming Him, anointing Him and I kneel low — like shepherds who have to bow in worship too — and something in me brims…. and spills.
O little town of Bethlehem…the hopes and fears of all our years…
We aren’t abandoned in all this — we get to let it all go and abandon ourselves to God.
We get to let go — and be small and let God do it all, be our all, make a way through it all.
We get to let go — and let God near.
And here is this exquisite woman with her bent back and humble mop letting her heart pour out to God, in the place where God first touched this sod, first let his loud cry mingle with humanity.
“Find favor with God — and fear has no way to find you.”
And I’m a kneeled mess and can’t stop spilling, my shoulders moving with the breaking of my heart over the beauty and rightness of her lowly offering right where He Himself came low and offered Himself.
The woman leans her mop up against a pew.
She steps in close toward me.
And then she cups my face in her wrinkled, warm hands.
What in the world is happening?
And then she gently kisses my one wet cheek — and then kisses my other wet cheek.
“Favor isn’t grace for an easy trajectory — but enough grace for a hard task.”
My tears are being kissed by a stranger — an angel? — in the birthplace of God. There’s hope in our hells when we become like Jesus to each other.
And all I can hear is this angelic whispering to a heartbroken world: “Do not be afraid — for you have found favor with God.”
Find favor with God — and fear has no way to find you.
And favor isn’t found merely with God — favor is found beside God. Favor is found by those who let God stay the closest beside them.
Favor isn’t grace for an easy trajectory — but enough grace for a hard task.
The woman’s eyes search me and my eyes search hers — and it’s this holy moment in Bethlehem, in the Church of the Nativity. This is a meeting. Our eyes meet and rest in each other — with each other. God with us.
And she nods and smiles and I try to smile brave through tears.
Bethlehem helps me to breathe a bit: You don’t have to work for the coming of the Lord—you don’t have to work for hope, work for rescue, work for Christmas.
There’s no performing Christmas, producing Christmas, or perfecting Christmas.
“Wherever you are—in a soundless cry or hidden brokenness or in your ache—God always wants to be with you.”
There is only Christmas finding us — grace finding even us. Hope finding even us. God with us.
He will prepare your heart for the coming of the Lord.
“This is the true preparedness of heart for coming to Christ—the preparedness of coming to Him just as you are,” Charles Spurgeon wrote.
He unfolds Himself in the stench you want to hide, in that mess that is your impossible, in the mucked straw you don’t want anyone to know. Rejected at the inn, holy God comes in small to where you feel rejected and small. God is with you now.
Wherever you are—in a soundless cry or hidden brokenness or in your ache—God always wants to be with you.
You are not ever left alone in this. We are never left alone in this; God is with us.
You always get your Christmas miracle. You get God with you.
The Woman with the Mop in the Bethlehem Birthplace of God, she stands in beside me, touches my streaming tears with her fingertips, wipes my cheek in this caress of communion and this right here is our modern day Christmas Eve miracle:
He kisses us with grace and holds us with hope and wraps us with love and we are safe.
And the Angel with a Mop in Bethlehem, she wipes away a bit of my spilling, and what happens tonight in Bethlehem wipes away all of our tears and all of our fears and all of our hopes are meeting Him right now.
He’s come and all of the unhappy things are going to become undone.
Read the Full Love Story of Christmas and know the Greatest Gift:
Jesus comes from the kind of family tree —
that proves He comes for your kind of family tree.
For the hurting & busted & messed up, Jesus comes to whisper:
“PEACE. I am with you & I am ALL YOUR PEACE.”Because God is with us on Christmas Eve —
there is no room in any inn, any heart, any mind, any space for worry.
3 Award-Winning books for the Whole FamilyThe Greatest Gift (adult edition): Best Devotional of the Year, ECPA, 2014
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift (Family Edition): Best Inspirational Book of the Year, CBA, 2016
The Wonder of the Greatest Gift: Best Devotional & Gift Book of the Year, CBA, 2019
(pop-up edition with your own 14 inch tree, 25 days of readings, 25 day advent flap calendar, hiding all 25 Biblically inspired ornaments! For any age)
When our Christmas Eve is about Staying in the Story, being with Him —
Peace leads us — and we have ourselves The Greatest little Christmas yet!
December 23, 2019
Minus All These Things for a Perfect Holiday (& The Most Amazing (Free) Gift For You)
Two days before Christmas, I’m standing at the kitchen table, giving my baby girl her daily beta blocker meds to slow down the racing pace of her broken heart.
We do this every single morning, afternoon and evening, her and I, three times a day of her heart-slowing meds.
“God takes broken hearts —- and gives us His.”
But this morning — I kinda wonder, in the final holiday crush of things, if there’s anything to slow down my own heart pounding with all the holiday things that need to still happen, that still need to get done.
The light catches on the Advent candle and something catches in me:
The things you can bake, make, or fake for Christmas — can’t fix the things that aren’t things.
The things that you can buy and wrap for under the tree can’t wrap your life up with a neat bow.
There are relationships that are still cracked and bruised. There is still brokenness and dysfunction in places you hoped had healed. There are still failures and loss that are tender to the touch, and there are hearts that are racing with overwhelm … and breaking achingly slow.
Our favorite family heirloom
And there is snow melting slowly out in the orchard… and a story I once heard seeps into the edges of my heart-racing thoughts, a story of a girl named Taylor Storch who had headed with her family to Colorado for a little skiing.
Thirteen year old Taylor had laughed loud as she skiied down the mountain before she had fallen — crashed — down a straight rocky slant of the earth. By nightfall, she was gone, slipped off this earth and Home, and her parents, Tara and Todd, were signing papers to give away Taylor’s still-warm heart.
They ended up giving Taylor’s heart to a woman in Arizona whose heart was failing so weary that she couldn’t get off the couch anymore — a woman named Patricia Winters.
Taylor’s mama had only one request. Taylor’s mama had called Patricia Winters and asked her if she could come hear Taylor’s heart beating inside of Patricia Winter’s chest.
“When God leans in close to all our hurting places here, what He actually hears — is the still-beating heart of His own Son.”
Taylor’s mama flew from Dallas to Phoenix and knocked on Patricia Winters’ door, and Patricia Winters opened the door and she opened her arms and she welcomed them in. And Taylor’s mama fell into her arms and the two mothers just held each other, Taylor’s heart beating right there next to her weeping Mama’s.
And then Patricia Winters reached over and handed Taylor’s Mama a stethoscope.
Thrum. Thrum.
Taylor’s mama could hear it loud and long, right there in her ears….
Like a thunder vibrating right through her —
Her daughter’s still-beating heart.
What Taylor’s Mama
really hearing — was the heart of her girl in a different body.
And I pick up my own little girl’s daily heart medicine.
And I stop, my own heart slowing, profoundly moved.
The turkey won’t make the holidays, and the lack of cookies won’t break them, and what you didn’t get done or made or bought or cleaned can’t wreck the holidays. You don’t need the perfect gift, the perfect table, the perfect traditions, the perfect capture with the perfect filter for the instagram — to make all the broken things perfect.
“When you don’t think you can forgive what’s happened, when it’s His heart beating in you — you can forgive in a heart beat.”
All the hurting places this holiday that I am trying to fix with all the things, with gifts and baking and decking and making — all the things I desperately wish I could fix in a heart beat?
God comes to change in a heart beat.
I can hear my own heart:
Thrum. Thrum. Thrum.
My own heart’s racing, aching, and failing to make the perfect holiday …
But that’s the point in the middle of the holidays:
Your heart can’t make all the broken things right with all the right gifts, your heart can’t fix all the things by making all the Christmas fixings, your heart can’t forgive all people that get under your skin.
Your heart can’t do it all. That’s why He gave you His.
When God leans in close to all our hurting places here, what He actually hears — is the still-beating heart of His own Son.
You don’t need any thing to make a holiday.
Things don’t make a holiday — only a heart can.
“These days are holidays not because of all we’ve bought and done but because we’ve been bought with His Love and He’s finished it all.”
Only the set-apart holiness of a heart can make holy-days.
Only a heart that is holy enough to make holy-days.
Things don’t make the holidays — only His holy heart can make these days holy-days.
When you don’t think you can forgive what’s happened, w hen it’s His heart beating in you — you can forgive in a heart beat.
For unto us a son is given — so we are forgiven and we can forgive.
These days are holidays not because of all we’ve bought and done but because we’ve been bought with His Love and He’s finished it all.
These days are holidays because these are days set apart to simply see the grace that is present in all of our days, to see the blessings we already have, the great grace gifts He’s already bestowed.
These days are holidays because these are the days we slow down and see what we too often miss: When we count all the ways He loves us — we realize we have all the grace we need for the holidays right here.
You don’t need all the things for the holidays, you simply need one thing — a heart willing to see it: There is still love and grace beating at the heart of the universe.
After I put away her heart meds, I turn there in the kitchen and see the Christmas tree is right here by the fireplace — and it’s right there, what we all need most at Christmas:
The Tree is where God’s grace does heart transplants: God takes broken hearts —- and gives us His.
Every Christmas Tree testifies to the hope of heart transplants: Christ goes to Calvary’s Tree to give us His own heart.
“Every Christmas Tree testifies to the hope of heart transplants: Christ goes to Calvary’s Tree to give us His own heart.”
Jesus minus all the things from the holidays — equals the perfect holidays.
You don’t need all the things, all the list of to-buy things, to-bake things, to-make things — because you’ve been given the heart of Christ and that is what you need more than anything, because it changes everything.
His heart is at the heart of what makes the perfect holy-days.
And two days before Christmas, I breathe calm. If we’ve been given Christ’s heart, is there anything else we need? (Romans 8:32) All the overwhelm I feel — is overwhelming gratefulness. That’s all I need: a heart full of thankfulness. Thankfulness unwraps joyfulness here.
Thankfulness makes what’s little into love, what’s hard into holy, what’s now into the present.
And I scoop up our baby girl, both of our hearts slowed and steadied and sure, and we pause to gaze, not at the things under the tree… but to wonder simply at the grace of the lit Tree and hearts can burn within us.
It’s true, even now: Miracles can happen in a heart beat.
What’s at the heart of Christmas — are not things — but the heart of Christ
And from our family here on the farm to yours, wherever you are, can we slip these two free gifts under your door with all our love?
Gift Tags For Intentional Act of Givenness
for treats to give out down your street, gift-blitzing your whole community!
(The Voskamps are headed right now into our own little country town with these tags and bags full of treats to surprisingly GIFT-BLITZ all the people in the stores and streets: Love came down — and you are seen and loved! #BeTheGift! #LiveCruciform #TheBrokenWay)
Print out this free printable card, write your own letter to the recipient, a Celebration of Words of Affirmation, tuck in an envelope with the accompanying tag (with a little gift card, if you’d like) — and let them know you cherish them as The Most Amazing Gift. (Or print out enough copies of the card for several people to give one recipient a stack of several cards and GIFT-BLITZ them with love!)
The most priceless gifts — don’t have to cost anything.
The most meaningful things to give — aren’t things — but love given from your heart.
Love came down and gave you His heart — so go and freely share His love everywhere. It’s all that we all need. Minus all the distracting things — and just let His heart of love & grace be everything.
December 21, 2019
The Christmas Edition: Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [12.21.19]
Happy, happy, happy weekend!
Some real, down in the bones JOY to celebrate today! Links & stories this week 100% guaranteed to make you smile a mile wide & believe like crazy in a Good God redeeming everything — and that there’s love everywhere & for ((you))!
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you & your people right here:
Meg Loeks
Meg Loeks
Meg Loeks
Meg Loeks
Meg Loeks
long pause: take in all the breathtaking beauty and wonder of the season right here
a Christmas never to ever forget — when it’s shared with a friend
‘Anybody need a grandma for Christmas?’: Craigslist ad touches hearts
Jakub Perlikowski
Jakub Perlikowski
Jakub Perlikowski
can you even?!!? extraordinary ice caves in Iceland… these and more, must come see!
the story behind ‘It Is Well With My Soul’
kindness is contagious… let’s be kind
Want to preach Gospel to yourself?
Free Stress-Free Holiday Sticky Notes for Your Soul, right here: No Stress Holiday ManifestoPrint this set of 25 Note Cards, one for each day in December.
For mirrors and sinks and dashboards, for pockets and walls and office cubicles. For this Christmas.
Each card is an affirmation, a prayer, for each day this month.
They are quotes from The Greatest Gift and Unwrapping the Greatest Gift, rewritten to be words that you can pray every day,
to keep the focus…to celebrate Christ!
some really clever wrapping ideas – so who knew?!?
so we gathered ’round this one!
David Hemmings
David Hemmings
David Hemmings
anyone else wanna squeeze in for a warm hug?
the very, very long wait: for those gifts you just can’t wait to give
every year right about now: The Thrill of Hope
because we all need to be found
THIS: anything really is possible
tears: 25 Reasons to Praise God This Christmas
because we all need someone to believe in us
never, ever give up
yes, yes, yes: Messiah
… to be honest — well, sometimes you just have to get really real about your marriage —
because maybe this is meant for somebody right now:
What Can Turn Around A Marriage
Light of the World: this one never, ever gets old
Our favorite family heirloom
…yeah, it can end up being mighty hard some days to scrounge up much peace when you’re a liar, a thief, a cheat. When you’ve wrecked holy things of home and hearts, crushed your priceless people with expectations, been a hypocrite in more than a thousand wincing ways.
Ask me how I know.
But there’s a way for all of us who are burdened by brokenness to find peace this season:
The Key to Quit Anxiousness through the Holidays
Amen: The Reason for Christmas Day
Hard family stuff at Christmas? Yep, right there with you.
Kinda heartbroken over some unspoken broken? Yeah, that.
Where in the world is a bit of the real Christmas Spirit? Yep.
How a Charlie Brown Christmas like this is just for us:
Why a Little Charlie Brown Christmas is best (About Fears & Heartbreak & Hard Families At Christmas)
When Hope Came Down
Come experience a Christmas that restores your Hope again
Jesus came down — and a bit of heaven can begin now, even here. With every step, we are walking into our forever now. Come let Jesus touch your wounds & heal your hurt with His tender Hope.
This Advent, Stay in the Story that the rest of your year, your family, will need.
3 Award-Winning books for the Whole FamilyThe Greatest Gift (adult edition): Best Devotional of the Year, ECPA, 2014
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift (Family Edition): Best Inspirational Book of the Year, CBA, 2016
The Wonder of the Greatest Gift: Best Devotional & Gift Book of the Year, CBA, 2019
(pop-up edition with your own 14 inch tree, 25 days of readings, 25 day advent flap calendar, hiding all 25 Biblically inspired ornaments! For any age)
When our holidays are about Staying in the Story, being with Him —
Hope finds us again — and we have ourselves The Greatest little Christmas yet!
again and again: His Name Shall Be
never a Christmas without this one… absolutely exquisite
So we’re just going to go ahead & say it out loud here right now, Lord — that it’s easy for our hearts to snag on things & to be torn & for us to lose our hope.
It’s easy for us to have a hole in our heart & all our hope leak right out….
So we think that our crazy family can’t change,
that there’s no hope left for our hard things,
that the person looking back in the mirror at us hasn’t got a hope in a dark night of changing.
And You hold our hearts today & whisper:
“Wait with hope. Hope now; hope always!” Ps.131:3
Christ is coming! Christmas is coming!
And if Christ is coming — can anything overcome Him?
Light is always stronger than darkness!
When you really believe in Christmas —
you believe there is really Hope for everyone, for everything —
for every moment, even us.
And our hearts kindle again into flame, Lord —
cupped in Your safely-carrying hands.
.
[excerpted from our little Facebook family … come join us each day?]
That’s all for this weekend, friends.
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re – joy, re- joy, ‘re- joys’ again
Share Whatever Is Good.
December 20, 2019
Finding Fearless Love In Your Own Backyard
What I love most about Bob Goff is that he can be anyone’s friend. He never meets a stranger and he certainly is intentional about showing grace and love no matter the person. Bob’s love for people often lands him in situations where he gets to show the love of Jesus in unusual and memorable ways…including this story of a backyard marriage proposal for a stranger. It is a joy to welcome Bob to the farm’s front porch today…
There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. 1 John 4:18
Our backyard in San Diego spreads right down the to the water, and Sweet Maria and I like to sit on our back porch.
We meet a lot of new friends out there, and we’ll never forget Ryan.
He was strolling down the dirt path by the water when he suddenly stopped and started waving.
“Hi, I’m Ryan and I’m in love,” he said.
“That’s great, Ryan!” I shot back.
Then he continued: “I came here because I was wondering if I could ask my girlfriend to marry me in your backyard.”
We shouted “Yes!” immediately. Ryan went big with his plans: he had twenty friends cook dinner for them, then they danced in our backyard and he took her out on our boat to pop the big question.
The night ended better than a fireworks show, with water cannons from a Coast Guard boat spraying the stars like they were on fire.
I think about Ryan all the time, his fearlessness to be bold and his willingness to put extravagant love on display.
He ran the risk of her saying no or getting embarrassed in front of all his friends. Yet he pushed through the fear that he might look silly with the better chance that he’d get the girl.
“Love is worth the risk because love always wins.”
He did all this because his feelings for his beloved were greater than his fear of what others might think if it didn’t go as planned.
When God said perfect love casts out fear, He knew what He was talking about.
He knew the other thing bigger than fear was love for other people.
He knows love is powerful enough to pull us outside our heads long enough to take risk for other people.
Love is worth the risk because love always wins.
When looking at those dreams and goals that you’ve been putting off because of fear remember where your help comes from.
“Fixing our eyes on God, living in the love He has for us, is a fool-proof way to love your neighbor better.”
Jesus came to us, lived with us, walked with us, so that He could intercede at the hand of the Father for us.
When fear drives our decisions we are letting it get in the way of the relationship that the God intends for us.
His plan is for us is to live in His love.
Let’s let perfect love be more powerful than fear.
Let’s let the love God has for us fuel our love for people. The next verse in 1 John states that we love because He first loves us.
Fixing our eyes on God, living in the love He has for us, is a fool-proof way to love your neighbor better.
That’s all God wants.
He wants us to know we are His beloved and to love people better because of it.
What risks will you take for someone today to love them more?
Bob Goff is a New York Times best-selling author with his first two books Love Does and Everybody, Always. Now Bob is back with a year-long devotional made up of his distinctive, entertaining, deceptively profound reflections on what it means to live every day in light of the grace of God.
Built on Bob’s trademark storytelling and unique way of helping us to see things in a new way, Live in Grace, Walk in Love takes us through an entire calendar year of meditations on how we can step out in love and confidence in every aspect of our lives. More than a tweet, less than a blog post, these devotional readings — accompanied by Scripture — will inspire and galvanize you live a more liberated, love- and life-giving existence than you ever thought possible.
[ Our humble thanks to Thomas Nelson for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
December 19, 2019
Why a Little Charlie Brown Christmas is best (About Fears & Heartbreak & Hard Families At Christmas)
There’s a bunch of kids here, sloshy with hot-chocolate, who just keep playing a Charlie Brown Christmas.
And yeah, I’m not ashamed — so what if it took me a few takes? Because when I finally saw it, I was entirely taken:
Only when Linus retells the Christmas story and repeats what the angel announces, “Fear not!” — does Linus drop his blanket for the first time.
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift (Family Edition): Best Inspirational Book of the Year, CBA, 2016
The Wonder of the Greatest Gift: Best Devotional & Gift Book of the Year, CBA, 2019And I choke it back and swig down more of my frothy, chocolatey mug.
The first message of Christmas is ‘fear not.’
“The first message of Christmas is ‘fear not.'”
The birth of Jesus — banishes our fears.
Maybe the Christmas Spirit is about letting go of our security blankets.
Maybe the Christmas Spirit is letting go of the security of masquerading perfection — to be secure in a perfect Messiah who saves us from our mess.
Because the Spirit of Christmas releases us from the fear of scarcity — and gives us the security of abundance.
Moves us from the fear of not enough grace, not enough means, not enough us —- to the security of more than enough to give — because we’ve been given Him.
“We talk glibly of the “Christmas spirit,” rarely meaning more by this than sentimental jollity on a family basis. But . . . [the Christmas Spirit] ought to mean the reproducing in human lives of the temper of Him who for our sakes became poor at the first Christmas,” writes the fine man of the Old Book, J.I. Packer.
“It is our shame and disgrace today that so many Christians… go through this world in the spirit of the priest and the Levite in our Lord’s parable, seeing human needs all around them, but averting their eyes and passing by on the other side. That is not the Christmas spirit…
For the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor––spending and being spent––to enrich their fellow humans, giving time, trouble, care and concern, to do good to others — and not just their own friends —– in whatever way there seems need.” J.I. Packer
“The Christmas Spirit is about having the same spirit of Christ.”
The Christmas Spirit is about having the same spirit of Christ.
‘For God so loved the world — He gave.’ Love lives given.
The Christmas Spirit isn’t about getting gifts — as much getting to be the Gift.
Be the Gift of grace, of peace, of hope, of reconciliation.
Maybe the Christmas Spirit is letting go of the security of being right, the security of being distant, the security of holding certain people at arm’s length.
Our 24 hole wooden Advent wreath, with Mary on a donkey, headed toward the manger and the coming of Emmanuel.
Once, on a Christmas evening, under this comforting blanket of stars poking through the dark, I threw open the door of our beat-up Ford and I took that first step toward a door that had been long shut, and it felt terrifying and terribly freeing, and maybe we only win our battles when we lose our need to be right.
I hadn’t been there in years. I have no idea how long it had been since her and I had talked with any kind of warmth.
The Christmas Spirit is about having the same spirit of Christ. Love lives given.
Every slow step toward her door, the snow crunched, like bitterly cold things that have long stung, could be crushed, giving way to amazing grace.
I’m telling you —
Sometimes you want to turn your back when a relationship gets hard — but you want to face freedom more.
Sometimes you want to continue your cold war — but you want to be part of peace on earth and in your heart more.
Sometimes every step toward peace with someone — is a journey of a million heartaches within you.
But if He can take a journey of a million light years to meet us in the stench of our manger mires — to make peace with us —-we can take one step after another and make peace across the aisle, the street, the table.
The spirit of Christmas — is about not having a spirit of fear.
“The spirit of Christmas — is about not having a spirit of fear.”
I knocked kinda feeble on her door, willing the other hand holding a gift for her not to stiffen so tense, and she opened that door and sometimes when we break into a smile, some of the pain breaks, and we breathe.
Angels still speak — and to us:
Do not fear — even here.
You can let go of the security blankets — He who comes, makes you secure.
“You can let go of the security blankets — He who comes, makes you secure.”
I reached out my arms — and she reached out hers.
And it can happen: That Big Dipper tips over all of us and pours out the Christmas Spirit, and our spirits can come home for Christmas.
She handed me a plate of her pecan pie and we talked by the tree and it wasn’t Hallmark perfect but it was perfectly honest and imperfectly real and all tasted like a slice of heaven to me and I could feel it:
Maybe the Christmas Spirit is letting go — to let the Spirit move.
Maybe the Christmas Spirit — is about letting the Spirit heal you.
Maybe the Christmas Spirit —- means: Reconcile for Christmas.
The Wonder of the Greatest Gift: Best Devotional & Gift Book of the Year, CBA, 2019
The Greatest Gift (adult edition): Best Devotional of the Year, ECPA, 2014
Our 24 hole wooden Advent wreath, with Mary on a donkey, headed toward the manger and the coming of Emmanuel.
I exhaled when I wrote it on a piece of paper here, taped it up over the little Christmas tree right there at the sink, and it felt like a kind of healing:
Let go of Plan A — Go with ‘Plan Be.’
“Let go of Plan A — Go with ‘Plan Be.'”
Fear not! Even now, it’s okay to let go of the security blankets — and go with “Plan Be.”
Plan Be — lets other people just be.
When you let other people just be — and don’t try change even one of their heart beats — you become a safe place for your people. And your people can safely come home for Christmas. The Spirit of Christmas is about letting His Spirit do the changing — in all the people and us.
Simply asking how someone’s heart really is — is the gift every heart really wants most.
Simply asking how someone’s heart really is — is the gift every heart really wants most.
Plan Be — chooses to simply Be Present.
Be present to the moment as it is, to people as they are, to God with us now, Emmanuel.
Be present — and fear not. This is the gift you can have any moment.
Be present to broken hearts — because this is how you give your heart to Jesus.
The kids and I wrap up presents for those who live across fences, across aisles, across the world. The Christmas spirit only asks you to Be Present. Give yourself the gift of God.
Steam rises from hot chocolate mugs before the fire.
Live Plan Be: Be Present — Be the Gift.
We could all come home to each other for Christmas.
Heard the weather forecast this morning say they’re calling for a white Christmas.
Let it be, let it be, let it be.
What more could any of us want than a little Charlie Brown Christmas of letting go?
To let God come.
Read the Full Love Story of Christmas and know the Greatest Gift:
Jesus comes from the kind of family tree —
that proves He comes for your kind of family tree.
For the hurting & busted & messed up, Jesus comes to whisper:
“PEACE. I am with you & I am ALL YOUR PEACE.”
Because God is with us —
there is no room in any inn, any heart, any mind, any space for worry.
3 Award-Winning books for the Whole Family
The Greatest Gift (adult edition): Best Devotional of the Year, ECPA, 2014
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift (Family Edition): Best Inspirational Book of the Year, CBA, 2016
The Wonder of the Greatest Gift: Best Devotional & Gift Book of the Year, CBA, 2019
(pop-up edition with your own 14 inch tree, 25 days of readings, 25 day advent flap calendar, hiding all 25 Biblically inspired ornaments! For any age)
When our holidays are about Staying in the Story, being with Him —
Peace leads us — and we have ourselves The Greatest little Christmas yet!
December 18, 2019
What Can Turn Around a Marriage
So yeah, about last night? It was exactly 30 spins around the sun since this lanky farm boy first asked out this quaking-shy farm girl to a youth Christmas banquet.
“Marriage is the art of finding each other, though you’ve lost each other a thousand times.”
When he came to the door, my dad thought he was all of 12.
I stood more than an inch taller than him in my patent pumps, awkward hand prints on my black velvet dress from my own sweaty palms.
Neither one of us had ever been on a date before — and neither one of us would ever end up dating anyone else.
On our way to that Christmas banquet, with the heat cranked too high in his brother’s borrowed VW and the pine scent of the car freshener making me sorta green, we kinda got turned around and completely lost.
Levi Voskamp
Our favorite family heirloom: 24 Candle Advent Wreath & Manger with Star: Joywares.ca
Levi Voskamp
Our favorite family heirloom: 24 hole wooden Candle Advent Wreath & Manger with Star: Joywares.ca
Levi Voskamp
24 hole wooden Candle Advent Wreath & Manger with Star: Joywares.ca
Levi Voskamp
Last night, the farm boy asked me out all over again — and drove me down that very same dark winter road we got lost on as nervous 16 yr-old kids.
“The whole of marriage turns on The Turn.”
I looked over at him:
Marriage is the art of finding each other, though you’ve lost each other a thousand times.
Every day you lose the person you are, and I am, because this is what is means to grow.
You are becoming and I am becoming, and somehow we have to keep turning and coming to each other.
The whole of marriage turns on The Turn.
The Turns come tender and small and can’t afford to be missed:
It’s you turning to mention what happened today and me turning to really listen to what you’re saying between the words, and it’s me turning to brave a bit of my heart and you turning to make me seen.
“It’s always in The Turn that love is once again found.”
If we miss each other’s turns — we eventually lose us.
We almost have.
It’s never too late to make us-turns.
It’s never too late to say:
Though I hurt and feel burned, I will turn —
I will turn to you and tear down bits of the barriers I’ve built to protect my heart and I will turn even here and now
into a place of meeting.
Because I’m waiting and watching for your Turns,
listening for the beat of your heart in all of the spaces in between things,
so when we feel lost and wandering alone, we can still turn,
and find ourselves safely home.
Driving down a road where we once were lost, you turned to me last night and you took my hand —
and I smiled and brimmed:
It’s always in The Turn that love is once again found.
December 17, 2019
The Key to Quit Anxiousness through the Holidays
Sure, you can go straight ahead & light the Peace candle, but it can end up being mighty hard some days to scrounge up much peace when you’re a liar, a thief, a cheat. When you’ve wrecked holy things of home and hearts, crushed your priceless people with expectations, been a hypocrite in more than a thousand wincing ways.
Ask me how I know.
It’d be kinda pious, if that was all humbly self-deprecating — instead of devastatingly honest. How many times have I dry wretched, but you can’t hurl yourself out of your wretched self?
“The pieces of us that we try to keep burying — is what keeps burying our peace.”
I don’t know who left out this devotional titled, “Still Point” but it beckons to me the second week of Advent, the Peace week.
I just happen to open it to this unexpected excerpt from the Scarlet Letter, with the shame-ridden Reverend Dimmesdale stumbling through the night streets to climb the town’s public scaffold — the Puritans’ own rendition of Calvary. The tortured, self-loathing pastor’s desperate to somehow publicly pay his pound of flesh for all that relentlessly haunts.
He’s wild for his own scarlet letter — and yet can’t bear the shame.
I close the book, lay it on the bedroom windowsill.
Who isn’t haunted by all kinds of inner thoughts — that you don’t want anyone to know? Who isn’t undone by all kinds of failures — that you’d never want on display?
Our favorite family heirloom
The Greatest Gift (adult edition): Best Devotional of the Year, ECPA, 2014
joywares.ca
The Wonder of the Greatest Gift: Best Devotional & Gift Book of the Year, CBA, 2019
24 Candle Advent Wreath & Manger with Star: Joywares.caI watch the snow soundlessly fall, burying the fields, the woods, in white.
Hiding anything is an illusion — because can anything hide from God?
And maybe that’s the moment I start to dig out, start to find myself:
The pieces of us that we try to keep burying — is what keeps burying our peace.
“When we hide pieces of ourselves — we never find peace.”
I can feel gusts of December cold air leaking in around the edges of the window. I wonder if: What drives some of our anxiousness — is anxiousness to not be found out for all of who we are. Maybe if we were really known — we don’t know if anyone would really love us?
The glass pane feels frigid under my fingertips.
Maybe: There are things in our minds and hearts that we never want fully found out — because we’re terrified we’d find out that no one fully loves us.
When I see snow whipping around in the orchard, you can hear it at the same moment, the house, the back windows, crying a bit with this driving wind.
Maybe: Our ache to be taken and accepted as we are — is what drives us to take and hide parts of ourselves we believe are unacceptable.
A blast of wind blows a skiff of snow off the back step.
Maybe the secret to peace — is to have no secrets.
I press my forehead against the clear glass. And maybe — there is no maybe, no question at all:
“Because God is with us — there is no room in any inn, any heart, any mind, any space, for worry.”
God fully knows what you never want anyone to know — and He needs you to know, even now, that you are His Beloved.
What had my brother-in-law messaged last week?
“Hey — just following up on our conversation at church….” We’d all lingered long afterward the last prayer, kinda oblivious to the cold.
Stood there talking about how we are all called to carry each other’s brokenness — but we can’t do that if we’re all wearing masks of fake holiness.
“What if we really knew: There is nothing that has been said, done, or thought is so big that it requires it be paid for twice….He paid for it all….all the known and not known.”
That’s when his words started to swim a bit in a brimming grace. Yes:
If Christ didn’t pay for all the unspeakable things, the shameful things, the things only He knows — then our salvation isn’t the real thing.
If Christ doesn’t take all of us, in all of our judgement — then our salvation would actually be fraudulent.
What if — the judgement, the abandonment, the rejection you are anxious about in ways you try to ignore — doesn’t even exist.
What if — the peace you long for is yours right now because no matter what happens, ever — you always, miraculously, get to belong?
“There is a peace that passes all understanding because there is One who stands in your painful places — and takes that pain.”
What if there is no maybe about it, ever:
“Therefore is now no condemnation… “Those who enter into Christ’s being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you…” Romans 8 MSG.
A gust blows snow off the edge of the eave, like burdens can lift.
As I turn from the window, I just happen to glance down at my wrist — and it jolts me.
There it is.
I’m wearing my own scarlet letter.
There, a small cross.
First inked on my wrist on a late summer afternoon, not far from the actual Calvary, on a hushed back street of Jerusalem itself.
Permanently inked by a man who introduced himself as Wassim Razzouk, whose family has been serving Christian pilgrims since the 1300s — more than 26 generations inking proof for pilgrims of their pilgrimage to the Holy Land. To the Cross.
I’d sat in front of Wassim in that stillness of a stone-walled Jerusalem shop and traced how small I wanted that cross, that one symbol, right there on my wrist, and he’d drawn it slow and I’d nodded.
That.
Our 24 hole wooden Advent wreath, with Mary on a donkey, headed toward the manger and the coming of Emmanuel.And there it is, etched right into me, my own Scarlet Letter, unashamedly right there under my fingertips, what pays the price for everything — and gives the greatest gift of peace through everything. A Cross that patently proclaims my brokenness — and yet piercingly renames me Beloved.
And that one Scarlet Letter?
That one Scarlet Letter Cross is
my penance,
my providence,
my path,
my protection,
my purpose,
my passion,
my peace —
my person.
“Whatever you can’t stand about yourself — Jesus stands closest to kiss that place with grace, and you can feel it come over you — that peace that passes all understanding.”
That Scarlet Letter Cross — is my alpha and omega, my beginning and my end, my everything. Like learning that one letter by heart could transform my heart, I find myself tracing and retracing that Cross countless times a day, right there like peace speaking under fingertips.
Whatever love, provision, hope, acceptance, grace, restoration you need — will not run out — because Your God will never run out on you.
Whatever you fear doesn’t exist — because your God exists.
Whatever you can’t stand about yourself — Jesus stands closest to kiss that place with grace, and you can feel it come over you — that peace that passes all understanding.
There is a peace that passes all understanding because there is One who stands in your painful places — and takes that pain.
24 Candle Advent Wreath & Manger with Star: Joywares.ca
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift (Family Edition): Best Inspirational Book of the Year, CBA, 2016
The Greatest Gift (adult edition): Best Devotional of the Year, ECPA, 2014
Our 24 hole wooden Advent wreath, with Mary on a donkey, headed toward the manger and the coming of Emmanuel.When I light the Peace Candle — I can read it there in the middle of the Advent Wreath — etched in the side of the manger, the only gift we need: Emmanuel.
God with us.
Because God is with us — there is no room in any inn, any heart, any mind, any space for worry.
The Peace candle burns with a red hot love that brands even us as His — and all that doesn’t matter burns away.
Read the Full Love Story of Christmas and know the Greatest Gift:
Jesus comes from the kind of family tree —
that proves He comes for your kind of family tree.
For the hurting & busted & messed up, Jesus comes to whisper:
“PEACE. I am with you & I am ALL YOUR PEACE.”Because God is with us —
there is no room in any inn, any heart, any mind, any space for worry.
This Advent, Stay in the Story that the rest of your year, your family, will need.
3 Award-Winning books for the Whole FamilyThe Greatest Gift (adult edition): Best Devotional of the Year, ECPA, 2014
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift (Family Edition): Best Inspirational Book of the Year, CBA, 2016
The Wonder of the Greatest Gift: Best Devotional & Gift Book of the Year, CBA, 2019
(pop-up edition with your own 14 inch tree, 25 days of readings, 25 day advent flap calendar, hiding all 25 Biblically inspired ornaments! For any age)
When our holidays are about Staying in the Story, being with Him —
Peace leads us — and we have ourselves The Greatest little Christmas yet!
December 16, 2019
When you don’t want want to miss out on the true meaning of hospitality: start here
Food has always been about more than just the physical transaction of sustenance. It has the ability to fill in deeper ways; ways that penetrate not just the stomach, but the soul. Melissa d’Arabian believes in the power of the family meal and in cooking for the person, not the plate. But this discovery didn’t come by winning a cooking reality show. It came by years upon years of learning to see God in His perfect provision and accepting His invitation to fill us in ways that matter most. It’s a grace to welcome Melissa to the farm’s front porch today…
guest post by Melissa d’Arabian
Ilearned about hospitality at an early age.
When I was five, my mom was raising my sister and me on her tight budget, but she was determined to have friends over to celebrate the Christmas season.
We gathered simple ingredients: margarine, sugar, flour, eggs, baking powder, vanilla, flour. While Mom creamed the margarine, I added the sugar.
Working in sync, Stacy, Mom, and I created a simple sugar-cookie dough. We spooned it onto baking sheets, and in minutes she pulled them from the oven: melt-in-your-mouth cookies, crisp on the bottom but still chewy and just slightly crumbly. They were misshapen and simple, but they were special.
Together we’d created a gift we were excited for our friends to share.
“I saw the ability of food to connect people.”
Later that day we welcomed our girlfriends—Mom’s and ours—into our tiny, unimpressive home.
We ate those awkward sugar cookies and sipped hot chocolate made from powdered mix and hot water.
This was not a fete worthy of the society pages or even a paper invitation. But it didn’t matter. The joy we shared in being together, celebrating the season with friends and food, made me fall in love with cooking.
I saw the ability of food to connect people.
That first holiday gathering brought us such joy that it evolved into an annual event we came to call our Mother-Daughter Holiday Tea.
Some years we would go all out, cooking for weeks ahead of time and stocking our freezer with goodies. Other years, finances or busyness meant we served a threadbare menu of cookies and carrots and celery sticks.
I learned quickly from Mom that the people were always more important than the food.
When Mom died my junior year of college, the holiday teas stopped without notice.
Joy Prouty
That first Christmas I was alone without Mom was even lonelier because I had also lost my yearly touch point with all the significant women in my life. My mom’s best friend, Jerri, encouraged me to start a holiday tea again when I felt ready.
I tucked the idea into my heart for nearly two decades.
In 2006, I revived the tradition by baking cookies for my sixteenth mother-daughter tea—the first with my daughters Valentine and Charlotte—and inviting local mom friends, who brought their daughters.
“The most important thing we give our guests is our attention and love.”
The very next year, we added the girls’ twin sisters, Margaux and Océane, to the guest list. All our girls have come to look forward to the annual party, claiming it’s their favorite day of the year.
The first tea I hosted after winning The Next Food Network Star was in Seattle, where we had moved for Philippe’s job, and that tea was a lesson in the true meaning of hospitality.
The day before the tea, a Pacific Northwest wind and rainstorm caused our pipes to burst. The emergency plumber we called did his best to fix the problem, but there was simply no way I could do any cooking in time.
In an attempt to avert a total tea-party catastrophe, I sent my husband to the store. He came home with a pretty sad assortment of rejected birthday cakes, day-old grocery-store cookies, and even some Chips Ahoy!.
The next morning, I tried to keep my spirits up as I arranged industrial-produced chocolate chip cookies on my prettiest platter and gingerly wiped the words Happy Birthday off a refrigerated cake.
I then greeted guests with a smile as they walked in the door, reminding myself that Julia Child believed in never apologizing for the food. The disappointment was the cook’s to bear alone. And I was definitely bearing disappointment.
To add to the dreary mood, the rain was unrelenting. Our guests—wearing high-tea dresses and heels—would have had to park below our house and walk uphill ten minutes in the rain, except that Philippe offered to act as valet. He shuttled every single guest up the hill and then parked their cars for them for all three hours of the party.
“Sharing food connects us and reminds us how similar we really are despite our human-created societal constructs.”
This party was set up to be a complete disaster. But guess what?
None of this mattered to anyone.
What could have been a disastrous party ended up a being a total joy.
That day I shed some of my “Martha” tendencies. The Martha in the Bible was overly concerned about the details of entertaining her guests, while Mary focused on Jesus.
When Martha complained about her sister not helping but rather sitting and listening to Jesus talk, He told Martha that Mary was the one whose heart was actually in the right place.
On that rainy, muddy, broken-pipes day, God saved me from becoming Martha in my hosting, and He redeemed the disaster by opening my eyes to being in the presence of precious friends.
Have you ever had a last-minute disaster you thought would ruin a party or gathering? I’ll bet it didn’t.
The good news is that the point of the party is never for the host to look good.
The most important thing we give our guests is our attention and love.
The food is a conduit, certainly, but it’s secondary. People matter more than the platters on the buffet table.
“Jesus welcomed all—foreigners, strangers, people who were different from Him—into His fold.”
Sharing food connects us and reminds us how similar we really are despite our human-created societal constructs.
As a result, our hearts are more open, and there is space for the Holy Spirit to do His work.
We can all host even if cooking isn’t our natural gift.
In fact, we are told specifically to host: “Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling”(1 Peter 4:9).
Jesus welcomed all—foreigners, strangers, people who were different from Him—into His fold.
We can take comfort in knowing that at any given moment, we are actually being hosted ourselves by God!
Whatever we do here on earth, we are doing at the invitation of God as His guests.
So take comfort in knowing the pressure is off.
Just welcome and serve.
Celebrity chef, television host, and the winner of Food Network Star season five, Melissa d’ Arabian is the best-selling author of Ten Dollar Dinners and Supermarket Healthy. Melissa enjoys sharing her table with her husband, Philippe, and their four daughters in their home near San Diego.
In her newest book, Tasting Grace, Melissa shows how food is not an afterthought to God, but an invitation to lean more into His grace.
Whether you are a mom struggling to throw together a healthy meal for your family each night or a single woman longing for fellowship around your table, you will draw encouragement and inspiration from Melissa’s reminder that all food, first and foremost, is a gift from God. When you return to Him as the source, you will find the freedom to enjoy His beautiful and delicious creation.
[ Our humble thanks to Waterbrook for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
December 14, 2019
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [12.14.19]
Happy, happy, happy weekend!
Some real, down in the bones JOY to celebrate today! Links & stories this week 100% guaranteed to make you smile a mile wide & believe like crazy in a Good God redeeming everything — and that there’s love everywhere & for ((you))!
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you & your people right here:
Jakub Kozioł / Instagram
Jakub Kozioł / Instagram
Jakub Kozioł / Instagram
Jakub Kozioł / Instagram
Jakub Kozioł / Instagram
pause at the breathtaking views he shares with us here
cheering loudly, Rend Collective!
when you’re grateful to be sharing the holidays with family and friends this year…
gather ’round? Here Are 25 Wildlife Photography Award Finalists – these photos are amazing!
Terrence has spent Christmas Day on his own for the last 20 years…
It was time to bring him some love at Christmas
please don’t miss this one… tears
it would be a grace to meet you here early next year
An event designed for pastors and ministry leaders to explore what it means to shepherd and lead in the way of Jesus: the singular emphasis of this conference is to commune with Christ
please visit here for additional info
when love becomes an instinct… had to share
…you can make your last minute Christmas gifts the best gifts of all for those who are looking for someone to just show up…right where we are.
Let’s give presents that change lives this year:
There’s No Time Like the Present: Give the Gift of Presence This Christmas
loving each other — is kinda the best
Want to preach Gospel to yourself every day through December?
Free Stress-Free Holiday Sticky Notes for Your Soul, right here: No Stress Holiday ManifestoPrint this set of 25 Note Cards, one for each day in December.
For mirrors and sinks and dashboards, for pockets and walls and office cubicles. For this Christmas.
Each card is an affirmation, a prayer, for each day this month.
They are quotes from The Greatest Gift and Unwrapping the Greatest Gift, rewritten to be words that you can pray every day,
to keep the focus…to celebrate Christ!
so many tears here… her Thank You Project — and her voice
Kellie Haddock is a singer, songwriter, wife and mom. As a former widow, she’s lived through tragedy and found new hope and joy on the other side.
Her music draws from real-life stories of beauty, heartache, hope and the celebration of life.
JoyWares
… that wonderful time of the year to pull out one of our most favourite family traditions:
Our 24 hole wooden Advent wreath, with Mary on a donkey, headed toward the manger and the coming of Emmanuel.
five Julliard-trained pianists on Steinways? couldn’t stop watching this one
oh my heart
thank you, Scott Sauls…I’m Dreaming Of A Small Christmas
…unto us a Child is born and He shall reign forever more
Javier Elis
inspiring and beautiful…4 Things I’ve Learned From Living Without Hands
Beyond grateful for the saving work of Compassion International
a story of hope and healing… and letting your light shine
oh yes! … an adoption party like no other?!?
cheering on good men who never give up
Our favorite family heirloom: wooden Advent wreath, with Mary on a donkey, headed toward the manger and the coming of Emmanuel.
The Wonder of the Greatest Gift: Best Devotional & Gift Book of the Year, CBA, 2019
Post of the week from these parts here
It can be lonely this time of year…
and sometimes we can feel deeply alone.
Hard time are given — but hard times alone are unbearable.
And we are given SomeOne who bears the hard times with us…
This is profoundly changing everything for me:
The 1 Unlikely Word that Heals All (Christmas) Brokenness
we circled ’round this one!
because sometimes we do the unexpected
Come experience a Christmas that restores your Hope again
Jesus came down — and a bit of heaven can begin now, even here. With every step, we are walking into our forever now. Come let Jesus touch your wounds & heal your hurt with His tender Hope.
This Advent, Stay in the Story that the rest of your year, your family, will need.
3 Award-Winning books for the Whole FamilyThe Greatest Gift (adult edition): Best Devotional of the Year, ECPA, 2014
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift (Family Edition): Best Inspirational Book of the Year, CBA, 2016
The Wonder of the Greatest Gift: Best Devotional & Gift Book of the Year, CBA, 2019
(pop-up edition with your own 14 inch tree, 25 days of readings, 25 day advent flap calendar, hiding all 25 Biblically inspired ornaments! For any age)
When our holidays are about Staying in the Story, being with Him —
Hope finds us again — and we have ourselves The Greatest little Christmas yet!
again and again: O Holy Night
on repeat this week: Gloria
…whatever’s going down, fear can’t get to us, panic can’t upend us, worry can’t undo us—because when we exhale, we can hear Him like a warm breath:
“I am with you.
There’s no need to fear the big things, the little things, anything, for I’m your God.
I’ll give you strength when the weight of it all wears you down,
I’ll help you when you’re hurting, when everyone’s hurting,
I’ll hold you steady when everything wildly tilts,
I’ll keep a firm grip on you—
so you can rest tonight, because you are held.”
Even now, we’re just wild enough to dare believe that:
There is never, ever, ever ever anything to fear—
because there is nothing ever, ever, ever
in the universe that can
ever—EVER—
separate us from
the loving hands of God.
And all the people
hold on to each other
because they belong to each other and they all behold a Grace
that holds them all and
we all whisper our brave
Amen.
[excerpted from our little Facebook family … come join us each day?]
That’s all for this weekend, friends.
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re – joy, re- joy, ‘re- joys’ again
Share Whatever Is Good.
Ann Voskamp's Blog
- Ann Voskamp's profile
- 1368 followers
