New Years

Place: Home Book: Believing God Day by Day: Growing Your Faith All Year Long by Beth Moore Food: Hot Mexican Dip

One thing remains common to our New Year’s celebration in every place we’ve lived: Hot Mexican Dip. Our family has enjoyed it from Minnesota to Texas. Uffda you Minnesotans may want to leave out the jalapenos. Texans, y’all might want to add candied sweet heat pickled jalapenos.

The recipe was my great-aunt Gloria’s. I smile at what she would think about it going into a blog. I don’t know where she got the recipe, but I do know it was one of her family’s favorites because it appears in the Remembrance Cookbook they put together in her honor. In their words, “May the Lord bless you as you read and cook!”

In the introduction to Believing God Day by Day: Growing Your Faith All Year Long Beth writes, “The book…is my attempt to articulate my own personal journey…while encouraging you to join me in the blessed experience.” I’m a Beth Moore fan. I appreciate Beth’s heart for bringing the love of God to people, her encouragement to be in a relationship with Jesus. I enjoy the way she makes scripture come alive through her ideas and stories. I may not agree with her on absolutely everything, but I’m a fan. One of her best-selling books is Believing God, a book about not only believing IN God, but BELIEVING God. Believing His promises. Believing God Day by Day: Growing Your Faith All Year Long is a spin-off of Believing God, breaking the larger book into daily doses of these ideas – one for every day of the year by date. The scriptural inspiration for these books can be found in Isaiah 43:10, “‘You are my witnesses,’ declares the Lord, ‘and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me.'”

At the time my great-aunt Gloria passed away, Beth Moore was relatively unknown outside of South Texas and wouldn’t publish her first bible study for a couple of years. Gloria never read a Beth Moore book or participated in one of her bible studies, but she did talk openly about her faith. She believed in God and she believed God. I think Gloria would be pleased her dip recipe is paired with Beth Moore’s book. Like Gloria’s dip, Beth can be cheesy, her message can heat things up, her studies are full of meat, and her message fills you up yet leaves you wanting more.

Happy New Year! And be blessed!