Do you feel inadequate regarding doing hospitality? That's the best way to feel!

I know I talk a lot about hospitality and if you’ve been around awhile, you know why I do. It’s not the same as entertaining. Do you understand the difference enough to go ahead and open your home, for heaven’s sake?

Today we have Dr.Janice Brown to talk about rethinking Biblical hospitality.

Dr. Brown is a specialist in the work of C. S. Lewis and Dorothy L. Sayers. And she’s taught on the college level as well as High School English, some of the time for missionary kids in Papau New Guinea with Wycliffe Bible Translators. She's a wife of 56 years, mother of 3 and grandmother of 6. Origninally from Newfoundland, she currently resides in Pennsylvania.

Some gems from our conversation:

• We are more like God when we invite in our creativity, whether it's something physical we make as in making dinner or in making someone feel loved and seen as God loves and sees us.
• Hospitality is to invite someone in—but in a wider, deeper sense, it's to give of yourself, your space, your focus, your concern and your attention.
• When we do hospitality, God uses us, the host, in a grand and simple way to provide stability for someone who hasn't had that resource growing up.
• God uses what we have and makes that enough.
• There's a preciousness in the idea that out of our poverty or sense of inadequacy that God uses us.
• Poverty fosters generosity of spirit and motivates us to share more.
• We honor others' individuality by inviting them into our homes even when it feels hard to "put up" with what we feel is strange or uncomfortable.
• The meal is the vehicle to engage with others and foster intimacy.

Follow Dr. Brown on her writer's page on Facebook under Janice Hudson Brown. And find her books on her Amazon author page.

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Are you a morning person??

I’m all about the invitation and today we are invited to hear about creating a morning routine that fits your real life – sound good? And here’s the best part: We can begin to love our mornings just in case you don’t and learn, really learn to experience God’s mercies are new each and every morning.

Help me welcome back the darling Jennifer Dukes Lee from Iowa , to talk about her new book, How to Love Your Morning. Jennifer is a Proverbs 31, (in)courage contributor and bestselling author and she’s going to help us reframe our mornings to wake up with hope, joy, and purpose. She will be giving a copy of How to Love Your Morning so leave a comment below or on social media to be entered.

She will be giving a copy of How to Love Your Morning so leave a comment below or on social media to be entered.

Some gems from our conversation:

• The hard days are when I really need my morning ritual where I offer all myself to God for that day.
• The morning person isn't the one who wakes up early, she's the one who is aware of who she is waking up to be.
• God has a soft spot in his heart for mornings—I found over 200 verses regarding that great time of day.
• I can't wait for the perfect morning to carry his hope, love and grace throughout the day.
• Mornings are for spiritual breakthroughs with God.
• Routines sound mundane and guilt-ridden; rituals sound sacred and holy.
• God works through unlikely means to care for his people—Ok, Lord, send the ravens!
• Each new morning is a gift to savor, treasure and reflect the hope and goodness of God.

Jennifer Dukes Lee is a bestselling author, speaker, and morning evangelist from Iowa. She is the author of several books, including Growing Slow, It’s All Under Control, and Stuff I’d Only Tell God. She wants to live her life in such a way that you can’t help but want more of Jesus.

Follow Jennifer at jenniferdukeslee.com

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Do you need some courage right now in your life? Maybe just to get out of bed? Or to go to work? Or to come home from work? As children of God, we get to rely on him to give us this strength – we also get a home advantage: other people who come alongside and say to us on a regular basis: Courage, Dear Heart!

Lois encourages us to pray and focus on God’s sovereignty when needing courage and hope, no matter what’s happening in our lives.

I’m happy to introduce you to my friend and fellow writer, Lois Flowers who wants to say to you today, “Courage, dear heart!

Lois is a mom to two young adult daughters and wife to one good man. She’s an author, editor and lifelong Midwesterner who values authenticity, loves gardening and is unapologetically addicted to "The Great British Bake Off." She writes often about the pain and loss of losing one's parents.

Get her free resource that will be your own version of gaining courage:

A 7-day devotional called Faith, Fear, and the God Who Goes Before Us.

Some gems from our conversation:

• I've learned that God knits our families together in the most miraculous ways as we wait on him.
• I hope to leave a legacy of someone whose life was marked and driven by prayer.
• I tell my stories so that others can be encouraged by seeing themselves in some small way and be strengthened by God in the same way that he's strengthened me.
• I'm not a patient person but I've learned to hold things loosely while in God's waiting room.
• I've always typed my prayers to help me focus (and because I have terrible handwriting.)
• Everything is fair game when I'm praying but I wait best when I end each prayer with, "Thy will be done."
• God's plans and purpose are not always clear to me but Psalm 139:16b helps me trust him in the meantime: "all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be."

Courage, dear heart! Love, Lois (and Sue!)