  Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. - 1 John 5:1
Faith and love are two key components that make us people of God. They are such small words yet hold so much weight. Being born into the family of God means that we’ve entered into a larger family circle- a family of believers. It’s a big family composed of people from all over the world and possibly your next door neighbor. Regardless where we came from or how God adopted us, we have one thing in common to unite us. And that is the love He lavished on us! Paul writes in 1 Corinthians that when it comes down to it, three things remain, “And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.” At Christmas time, it’s easy to feel the warmth of the holiday and the love of friends and family. However, not everyone is as blessed as some. For some, it is difficult to fill the base of the tree with gifts let alone put food on the table. For others, it means remembering the loss of a loved one or those that can’t make it home for Christmas. The night Mary gave birth to Jesus, the first Christmas, her situation was certainly not merry and bright. She gave birth to a baby without a midwife, in a barn, and put her newborn in a feeding trough. But in that moment, love was born. The greatest gift that God gave to his people and that we can share with our brothers and sisters is love. It says in 1 John, “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” On the darkest of nights, in less than ideal circumstances, God lavished his love on us. Enjoy these easy Peanut butter no-bake cookies that look of beds of straw. Ingredients ½ cup creamy peanut butter ¼ cup honey (or maple syrup for vegan)! ¼ cup coconut oil measured in the solid state. 2 TBS unsweetened cocoa powder ¼ tsp sea salt 1 tsp vanilla 1 cup quick cooking oats ¼ cup shredded unsweetened coconut Instructions Line a cookie sheet with waxed paper, set aside. Combine peanut butter, honey salt and coconut oil in a saucepan and heat, stirring continuously, until melted and well-combined. Stir in vanilla and cocoa powder. Add quick-cooking oats and mix well. Add coconut and stir until completely combined. Drop 1 TBS portions of mixture onto your prepared baking sheet. Continue until you’ve used all your cookie mixture. Let cool in the refrigerator or freezer until hardened. Serve cold or frozen! Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator! Adapted from Joy Food Sunshine Written by: Abigail Elliott
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 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. - Luke 2:11
When Christine and I were dating we decided one time to make popovers. I’d mentioned my love for them and she responded with a blank look. I was determined to make some for her. I was visiting her at college and we scrounged up the necessary utensils and ingredients and enjoyed our time together in the kitchen. But when the time came to remove the popovers from the oven it was a disaster. Somehow I’d ended up with a dozen little pucks so inedible that not even the birds had any interest in them. I could blame it on the use of a dorm kitchen and dorm tools. I was certainly a very inexperienced cook. Maybe the ingredients had been subpar. I kept going over the recipe I’d been given, making sure that I’d used all the right ingredients in the right proportions. I’ve been cooking long enough now that I think I know what happened. I think that the person who wrote down the recipe for me had thought about some step or other that it went without saying, forgetting that the recipe was being written down for me. “Surely I don’t need to tell Joel,” the thinking went, “to unwrap the stick of butter before adding it to the batter.” That’s what happens when we’ve been doing something for a long time: things become old hat to us and they go from being something we delighted to say to be something that might go without saying. Let me say it: you will never have a Christmas worth having if Jesus is not the first ingredient. If you get everyone the perfect gift, on time and under budget, but Jesus is not the first ingredient, it’s all for naught. If it snows on the way home from the Christmas Eve service and all the next day while you sip hot chocolate in your pajamas, but Jesus is not the first ingredient, it amounts to nothing. Praise him today. Talk about him and talk to him, all day long. Make it all about Jesus or you’ll spend the next few days looking over your recipe, scratching your head, and wondering what you did wrong. Here is a Popover recipe to try (hopefully successfully). Merry Christmas! Written by: Joel Tate   “...to shine on those living in darkness, and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.” Luke 1:79
Christmas is a season of overabundance for many. We inundate ourselves with a warm fire, too much food, too much family, and too many presents. Like most things American- we like to go big! I’m not saying big is not wrong, and I love Christmas heartily. But if we lose sight of Jesus, the joy of Christmas becomes temporal. Surrounded by people, success, money (etc.) you can still feel alone, depressed, or hopeless. Without Jesus, humans are truly in a desperate state. When Zachariah, the father of John the Baptist refers to Jesus’s coming in Luke, he highlights this truth. Without Jesus humanity was living in darkness and in the shadow of death. Christmas is the coming of Jesus, our Savior who rescues us from this darkness, and brings us into the light! (Matthew 4:16) How amazing is that? Praise God! Before Jesus, I turned to many different things to find meaning, and I did find happiness, but quickly found it to be fleeting. How desperate were you before you came to know Jesus? What things did you use to try and fill the God-shaped hole in you? Consider what Jesus liberated you from when you first asked him to come into your life. Praise him for it today! While we are now Children of the Light, may we also not lose that hunger for Jesus. Would we be desperate for more of him daily (John 8:12). His Word, His presence, His will. Would we be desperate for those around us living in darkness (1 Peter 2:9). Would we live each day with an understanding of the life we came from and the life we are headed to. Would we love those around us with an understanding that they are living in darkness, but we can call them to the light (John 1:5). Break out a cardboard box and make a Shadow Puppet Theatre with your kids today. It’s a great activity if you’re stuck inside. Written by: Mary Weinstein   But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. - Luke 2:10
If I was to wake the kids up at 2:00am on Christmas morning with strobe lights and the fire alarm and then told them to not be afraid because I had good news of great joy (I had finally finished putting together the last toy,) I think the children and you, the reader, would all question why I was telling the children not to express a fear that my manner of rousing them seemed calculated to produce. We see something of the same strange contradiction in the angels’ repeated imperatives throughout the nativity account. Whether appearing to teenage girls or unsuspecting shepherds the angels are always eager to pronounce the same counterintuitive command: “Don’t be afraid.” On the face of it, it seems that if the angels didn’t want their audience to be alarmed they would have changed the manner of their appearance. They would have come in benign incognito. But God was not interested in tamed angels and timid shepherds. It suits him, his glory, and his redemptive plans for his angels to be terrifying and his people to be fearless. Resist the temptation to make the angels soft and fuzzy, to make the story all rounded edges and sweet sentiment. There are mysterious kings from the East, a murderous tyrant, a baby born to be brutally sacrificed, a foreshadowing feeding trough, divine beings with supernatural powers. Christmas, at its best, is kind of spooky. And the Christian, at his best, is fearless. And fearless not because we are exceptionally brave, but because we understand that the ones who really deserve to be frightened by all of this are the forces of darkness. We see the angels and feel much the same way that American servicemen might feel when the loud rumble of American F-16s’s is felt through the soles of their boots. That’s why no experience of Christmas would be perfect without some fearlessness in the mix. This Christmas, please the angels with a pumped fist and a confident response. You’ve been given good news that will cause great joy for all the people. With the season of feasting upon us, one thing’s for sure: You can never have enough butter. Spice up your Christmas this season by making Compound butter. Bring butter to room temperature, and add herbs to your liking. Consider parsley, rosemary, thyme, sage, etc. Reform and freeze on wax paper, or in ice cube trays. Written by: Joel Tate   And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. - Romans 5:5
Have you ever followed a recipe that was billed as being “foolproof?” There is something perverse and self-defeating in me that always seems to take that as a challenge. “Foolproof fudge?! Ha. Clearly, they’ve never been with me in the kitchen. Let me see here; I see it says ‘milk’ here on the recipe, but I don’t see where it specifies that it should be milk from a cow. Why don’t we go with milk of magnesia? I think I’ve got some of that here.” But I love the idea of a recipe I can’t mess up, something where the inclusion of the right ingredients produces a perfect outcome, however imperfect the cook. And Christmas isn’t foolproof in the sense that it is safe from fools, but it is the only hope of safety that the fool will ever have. And the ingredient that makes Christmas come out right even if everything else is wrong? Hope. Hope does not put us to shame, because God’s already added the ingredient of a love that’s been perfectly poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. That’s it. God’s love, our hope. Don’t fail to give yourself fully to the experience of hope this Christmas. Hope with everything you have that the Christ who came as a baby is coming back as a king. Hope that the power that was great enough to bring Jesus down to us will prove great enough to bring us up to him. Hope that all the wrongs will be made right, that his kingdom will come and that his will be done here as it is in heaven. Hope it all, being confident that “hope does not put us to shame.” Make snowman pancakes! I was going to suggest that you make foolproof fudge, but I didn’t want to provide you with a recipe I have never successfully used myself. So here’s an idea that only requires that you be able to make pancakes and sprinkle sugar. I won’t even insult you with directions. And, if you’ve ever seen the show “Nailed It,” you’ll know why I’m asking you to send me a picture of your snowman pancakes. Please. Written by: Joel Tate   And she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger because there was no guest room available for them. - Luke 2:7 The irony is thicker than any eggnog that ever got poured. We agonize, for instance, over which tree to bring into the house and how best to adorn it because of course, we can not settle when it comes to the details of how we celebrate. Celebrate what? The time a weary mother settled regarding the matter of her newborn son’s first crib. The details of the Nativity account all underscore the humility into which the Christ child was born, and not with embarrassment or apology. This was how it was supposed to be. How it had to be. We are told in James 4:10 to “humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.” And G.K. Chesterton quips that the reason that angels can fly is that they take themselves so lightly. When you bake without a leavening agent you don’t get a loaf of bread; you get a brick of something featuring all of the bread’s ingredients without any of its edibility. The same goes for celebrating the season. Unless you have a leavening agent, something that will make it rise, the inclusion of all the other ingredients will do you no good. Humility is that leavening agent that makes the whole season rise. When we refuse to take gifts, our preparations, our traditions, our menus, and ourselves too seriously and are content to celebrate in humility the humility of that celebration we find a great weight lifted. Don’t ever try to do Christmas without first working some humility into the whole batch. Make frozen whipped cream hearts for your hot chocolate. Mix an 8 oz tub of whipped cream with ¼ cup of water, whisk together until thoroughly blended. Line a shallow dish or pan with parchment paper and spread the whipped cream mix out on the parchment paper at least a ½ inch thick. Freeze overnight. Cut with cookie cutters and transfer to chilled, parchment lined container and return to freezer for 15 minutes or until use. You can also add shaved chocolate, sugar, or sprinkles to the top of the whipped cream mixture prior to freezing. Written by: Joel Tate Subscribe to receive each day's devotional in your inbox.  Glory to God in the highest heaven,and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests. - Luke 2:14 Vermont is really into maple syrup. Mention Aunt Jemima and you’re likely to get some sidewards glances. We like the real thing, and we’re not shy about it. Would that we were similarly uncompromising in other areas. In our world, peace often refers to the absence of conflict, or a vague idea of wellbeing. In Hebrew, the word for peace as translated from the text above as Shalom. A word which indicates wholeness or completeness. Shalom is the type of peace that allowed Jesus to sleep in the middle of a storm (Matthew 8:23-27). It's not calm surroundings, financial or political stability, or even physical health. Shalom is an inner peace that transcends our current situation. This is the Peace God has for his people. As children of God we are in possession of Shalom (Colossians 3:15). It may not always feel like it, but the one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit is peace (Galatians 5:22-23). How was Jesus able to sleep on the boat while the disciples panicked? He understood his position with God, he rested in Shalom. God is a provider, redeemer, and rescuer, but Shalom is trusting and resting in him regardless of the storm around us. You are a child of Jehovah Shalom. Are you resting in Shalom today or are you focused on the storm? Consider your bird friends this winter- and make some bird seed ornaments. Fun to make, fun to use as outside decorations, and fun to share with your feathered neighbors! If you don’t have saved kitchen grease, consider using coconut oil or peanut butter. Written by: Mary Weinstein Subscribe to receive each day's devotional in your inbox.  And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God… - Luke 2: 13 Just imagine what it would be really like to be a shepherd in a field taking care of your sheep when all of a sudden an angel appears to you telling you to go find a baby lying in a manger and then all of a sudden the sky in front of you fills with angels loudly singing. Your adrenaline would start pumping and your heart rate would absolutely increase. Whether you believed in the Old Testament prophecies or not, you couldn’t ignore what just happened and go find this baby. If you look at it this way, it brings more excitement to what happened. Even better, the shepherds were the first people to get the birth announcement. Most moms send out birth announcements a couple days or weeks after the baby has been born. Mary made out better than that; God sent angels to shepherds on her behalf to announce the birth of the Savior. Perks of being the mother of Jesus. I encourage you to thank God in your quiet time today to be truly joyful that the Savior of the world came to earth. And then actually tell someone how excited you that Jesus came for you. Angels filled the sky to announce the arrival to shepherds, we can certainly tell our friends that our Emmanuel has come. A couple of my favorite songs about this verse: 1. Emmanuel by Love and the Outcome 2. Glory in the Highest by Meredith Andrews Enjoy these spicy ginger cookies: Ingredients: 1 1/2 cups almond flour 2 Tablespoons coconut oil softened 1/4 cup pure maple syrup 1 Tablespoon blackstrap molasses 2 teaspoons ground ginger 1/8 teaspoon fine sea salt 1/4 teaspoon baking soda Directions: Combine all of the ingredients in a medium bowl, and mix until a thick batter is formed. Chill the batter for 30 minutes in the fridge, to make sure it’s nice and firm before scooping. Preheat the oven to 350 F and drop the batter by rounded tablespoons onto a baking sheet lined with a Silpat, or parchment paper. Use a wet fork to flatten each dough mound, into your desired cookie thickness. If you’d like a sugar topping, try sprinkling a bit of low-glycemic coconut crystals over the tops before baking. Bake for 8-10 minutes, until firm around the edges, but still soft in the center. Allow cooling on the pan for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. (Adapted from Detoxinista) Written by: Abigail Elliott Subscribe to receive each day's devotional in your inbox.  When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face,so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. - Matthew 6:16-18 Fasting is kind of a lost art these days. I attended a Christian school until high school and once a year the high school and middle school fasted for a day a half. It was hard! But I didn’t know what a fast was until I participated in it for the first time, and let me tell you the feast we had was like the best meal I’ve ever eaten. We fast for a spiritual purpose. It’s counter-cultural, don’t you think? Fasting comes when we’re in our bibles. Matthew 6:16 “when you fast…” not “If” you fast but When. And Jesus says the same thing in Matthew 9:15 “they will fast..”. We fast in this life because we believe in the life to come. We fast from what we see and can taste because we have tasted the goodness of God and we are more hungry for him than any food we can eat here John 4:32 says, “ But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” How to start fasting David Mathis, pastor, and author of Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus through the Spiritual Disciplines gives us some great steps on how to start incorporating fasting into our lives that I really liked. Fasting sounds pretty easy but the world tells us no.
In the spirit of Christmas, we are in the season of Advent which is the season of anticipation. We are anticipating the coming of Jesus to save the world. We practice fasting during this season because we want to be alert and ready for what the Holy Spirit has to reveal to us. And we also have the blessing of when we’re doing God’s work we get hungry. We have the benefit of scripture and our brothers and sisters to fill us. I encourage you to share a meal with someone, that isn’t a believer or invite them to church or the Christmas Eve service. Written by: Abigail Elliott Subscribe to receive each day's devotional in your inbox.  When one of those at the table with him heard this, he said to Jesus, “Blessed is the one who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God."- Luke 14:15 Billy Graham is quoted for having said:“My home is in Heaven. I’m just traveling through this world.” Heaven is God’s Kingdom, and our home. If you are a follower of Christ, you can look forward to an eternity spent with God in Heaven. In heaven there will be fellowship with God, and celebration (Luke 13:29, Matthew 8:11). During December I generally don’t buy anything but groceries. I know Christmas is right around the corner, and so I’m likely to be blessed by gifts from friends and family. My family doesn’t remind me daily that they’ve gotten me a gift, and I don’t need to see wrapped presents to reassure myself. I know that they love me, and I can count on those gifts. Yes I’m very spoiled. Small children often have that same confidence. They know that their parents are going to get them gifts, the thought of questioning that reality never crosses their minds. The beautiful, wonderful, exciting, shout-it-from-the-rooftops truth is that you are a resident of Heaven. God has promised you eternal fellowship in heaven, where everything will be new (Isaiah 65:17). Jesus purchased your visa with his life. Live like a resident of heaven. Live in the confidence that you will spend eternity with God. Live like nothing on earth will last (1 John 2;17), including all your resources (2 Peter 3:10), and even your body (1 Peter 1:24). Live knowing this life is like a vapor compared to your eternal fellowship (James 4:14). In anticipation of New Years, consider making a Vision Board for 2019 (Here’s a template for structured Christian Vision Board). This is a fun activity for Children and adults. Make your Vision Board with Luke 14:15 in mind. What can you aim for this year that will challenge you to live in faith and trust? Written by: Mary Weinstein Subscribe to receive each day's devotional in your inbox. |
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