evangelical 360°

Ep. 27 / How Gratitude Transforms Our Darkest Moments ► Ann Voskamp

• Host Brian Stiller • Season 1 • Episode 27

Share episode

What if the obstacles in your path aren't problems to overcome but divine opportunities to be shaped into Christ's image? In this soul-stirring conversation, bestselling author Ann Voskamp shares her harrowing journey from witnessing her sister's tragic death at age four to becoming a globally recognized voice on gratitude, suffering and faith.

Ann opens up about the paralyzing fear that followed childhood trauma—leading to ulcers, self-harm and eventually agoraphobia. Despite these struggles, she found faith through a neighborhood Bible club and later discovered how intentional gratitude could transform her relationship to suffering. "Faith gives thanks in the middle of the story," she explains, offering this practice as a fulcrum for leveraging life's heaviest burdens.

The conversation takes a profound turn as Ann unpacks her latest book, "Waymaker." Rather than finding an easier route through difficulties, it explores how God uses our obstacles to reshape us: "Our way is self-formed. God's way is cruciform." This insight became painfully real when her father died in the same farmyard where her sister had been killed decades earlier—on the very day her publisher returned edits for the manuscript.

Perhaps most movingly, Ann shares how adopting a daughter from China with half a heart (hypoplastic left heart syndrome) deepened her understanding of our relationship with God. We aren't merely followers of Christ but "kin to the King," adopted into divine family through Jesus' sacrifice. This filial relationship moves beyond legal forgiveness to emphasize attachment and intimacy with our Creator.

For those seeking a practical framework, Ann offers her S.A.C.R.E.D approach—Stillness, Attentiveness, Cruciformity, Revelation, Examine and Doxology—as a way of life that keeps us connected to Christ through life's deepest valleys. This isn't just about surviving hardship but thriving in God's presence regardless of circumstances.

You can learn more about Ann's books and journey through her website and find here on Facebook and Instagram. 

And you can share this episode using hashtag #Evangelical360 and join the conversation online! 

____________________

▶ Watch Interviews on YouTube

▶ Sign Up for FREE Dispatches From the Global Village

▶ Free Downloadable eBook "Here's Hope"

▶ More Info: evangelical360.com

#evangelical360


Brian Stiller:

Hello and welcome to Evangelical 360. I'm Brian Stiller, your host, and I'm pleased to share with you another conversation I have with leaders, changemakers, influencers, those having an impact on Christian life around the world. I'd also love for you to be a part of the podcast. You can share this episode. Just use hashtag Evangelical360, and then join us in conversation on YouTube.

Brian Stiller:

My guest today is Ann Voskamp, whose book 1,000 Gifts A Dare to Live Fully, right when you Are, remained on the New York Times bestseller list for 60 weeks and has sold over a million copies. Her mother has seven children. Ann and her husband live on a farm in southern Ontario, canada, where she strives to guide her family with the wisdom of these words, and I quote where she strives to guide her family with the wisdom of these words, and I quote gratitude isn't only a celebration when good things happen. Gratitude is a declaration that God is good no matter what happens. End of quote. I've just finished reading one of her most recent books Waymaker Finding the Way to the Life You've Always Dreamed. Ann's writing is raw, elegant, vulnerable, filled with joy. I'm so pleased that she's here to share with us today.

Brian Stiller:

Ann Voskamp, thank you so much for joining us today on Evangelical 360.

Ann Voskamp:

Oh, the grace and privilege and joy is all mine. Truly Thank you.

Brian Stiller:

But, Ann, I got to ask you this question. A mother of seven living on a farm in southern Ontario how do you end up on the New York Times bestseller list over 60 weeks on your book, 1,000 Gifts. How did that happen?

Ann Voskamp:

Only.

Ann Voskamp:

God right, like totally only only God Flattening the most unexpected, unlikely thing. Literally, I live in the backside of the wilderness. I live on a farm in Canada, married to a farmer. Only God could have done that. First of all, there was no marketing plan for that book in any capacity at all At the time I wrote that book. I mean, I had no numbers, I didn't know, I couldn't have a site meter on the blog at all at that time and Zondervan was a publisher and they went in on the back end to look and they thought maybe I had 800 blog readers a day. So like no, no quote unquote platform at all.

Ann Voskamp:

And I didn't intend to write a book. I didn't take a book proposal to an agent. I was just writing about on my own online journal. That was just easier for me to search than writing in a journal. But I didn't have comments or any social media at all. It was really just a journal for me to be able to record how gratitude to God was radically changing my life. And an agent found me blogging and asked if I was interested in writing books and I said, oh no, I have little kids. And it was my husband who said well, if the Lord opened a door, you should walk through that door till the Lord closes it. So literally, only God did that.

Brian Stiller:

And I'm sure people who are watching today would be fascinated to know just a bit about your life. And then we'll get into one of your books.

Ann Voskamp:

Actually, my husband and I were both born in the same hospital, delivered in the same room by the same doctor. Our kids were born in the same room in the same hospital not the same doctor though. So I've lived my whole life in the same place. I was raised in a non-Christian family. They were not believers. Yet my first memory I write about this in 1000 Gifts my first memory is being four years old and standing on a chair beside my mother at the kitchen sink washing dishes, and through the farm window we could see my little sister Amy. She was 18 months old and she was toddling after a stray cat in the farmyard. It was the beginning of November, so there were service trucks, a propane truck that came into our yard farmyard to fill the corn dryer bin up with propane, and he didn't see my sister and she was crushed and killed in front of my mother and I.

Ann Voskamp:

And when something so traumatic happens when you're four years old, I lived with a lot of fear that something terrible could happen at any moment. So by the time I was in grade two, seven years old, I was diagnosed with ulcers and was hospitalized, and then, by the time I was in my teens, I didn't know how to process that pain and I was cutting. And then by the time I got to my university, I was at York University. I was having panic attacks and was diagnosed with agoraphobia. I was just. I was very, very fearful, and sometimes you can have a cerebral understanding of God in your mind, but it has to actually migrate down into the marrow of your bones that you can, that our faith in God is a deep enough trust in God that it actually allows us to relax into the non-anxious presence of the Lord. And that has been a long journey for me, brian.

Ann Voskamp:

I came to a saving knowledge of the Lord through Child Evangelism Fellowship, good News Bible Club. Actually it's my husband's. Mom and dad were Dutch immigrants that came across in the 1950s, were Dutch immigrants that came across in 1950s, and so a Dutch immigrant woman with a grade six education opened her home up through Child Evangelism Fellowship For 23 years. They had between 60 and 80 kids every Friday night in their home and they had another spin-off Good News Bible Club, another Dutch immigrant woman from their church. They encouraged her to start a Good News Bible Club and the two clubs would merge at certain times during the year and I was one of those kids on a neighboring farm that came and gave my life to Jesus.

Ann Voskamp:

But it was a journey to understand that Jesus had saved me, but he had saved me for himself and when I live in Christ I don't have to—his perfect love casts out all fear. So, really, the journey of picking up a pen and starting to write down the things that I was grateful for, counting all the ways that God loves me, really starting to have a lived, embodied experience of God's perfect love for me, that his, his grace, his provision, the Jehovah Jireh who met me with all of these provisions yesterday, that I've counted all these gifts, his provision, the Jehovah Jireh who met me with all of these provisions yesterday, that I've counted all these gifts, he's the same Jehovah Jireh that is going to provide for me tomorrow. So Thanksgiving really started to build the planks of trust from yesterday into tomorrow and into a deeper relationship with the Lord.

Brian Stiller:

Did you always have this gift of language? Were you aware of this as you were growing up?

Ann Voskamp:

I always really loved writing writing in lots of ways. To be honest with you, I see writing as my handicap. Like lots of people can live their lives and they can see the hands of God moving throughout their day. For me, I have to slow down enough to either pick up a pen and journal or with a keyboard and start to write to go, oh, see how God was working through this situation, in this situation. And writing was a way for me to connect dots and to slow down enough to see, as I write words, that I actually encounter the word and see how the author of our lives is writing a redemptive story through the days of our lives. And I came from farmers who told good stories and liked to tell good stories. And I remember my Uncle Elmer and my grandfather telling great stories that you would just want to. When Grandpa and Uncle Elmer would come, we would all turn off the television and just listen to their stories at night. I came from good folk, hardworking folk, who could tell good stories.

Brian Stiller:

So you become a farmer's wife, you marry a farm boy, yes. And you begin that journey and you end up with birthing six and adopting one. So you have seven. Yeah, how do you manage life, mother of seven and a farm boy, along with?

Ann Voskamp:

I'm so grateful. I'm so grateful. My husband he is the youngest in that Dutch family, so he was the youngest of nine, so he came from a really big family. Daryl and I, we came here to this farm I think we were 20 and 21. So we were really young and we had six children across 10 years, so there was a lot of little kids.

Brian Stiller:

It sounds like it.

Ann Voskamp:

It was kind of intense and I was at York University. I was taking a concurrent program before we got married. I was taking a concurrent program in child psychology and education, so I thought I was going to end up being a teacher. So when all of our little tribe came along, I ended up homeschooling. So I was homeschooling all of the kids and you know what? It was crazy and a little bit wild, but it was wonderful.

Ann Voskamp:

I believed a great schooling day was could I read to the kids aloud between two to three hours every day. So that was my goal was to read and read and read, and we used to take out a hundred books at a time out of the Kitchener Waterloo public library and bring home stacks of books. So I really like, for me in a lot of ways, writing. I was always a journaler but in terms of writing a lot of that came through homeschooling, that I was reading, reading, reading to my kids and I wanted, I believe, great books. When you open them up, they can take you into. They can take you all the way around the world. They can take you into biography and all kinds of great faithful disciples of the Lord and their faithful lives all around the world. So I saturated the kids and I in all kinds of books which also then stoked me for like, oh, can I write the very humble story of God's life in our own life.

Brian Stiller:

I know that your book 1000 Gifts was the bestseller, but I'd like us to come more into a more recent book of yours called Waymaker. Now, I bought this book. I had heard about you.

Ann Voskamp:

Can I ask how in the world did you hear about a farmer's wife in southwestern Ontario?

Brian Stiller:

Friends were talking about you. Have you heard about this, Ann Voss? What? How do you pronounce that last name? And so it was Christmas time and I was out buying gifts for my wife and I was at the bookstore and I saw your book and I thought I've always wanted to read you, and of course, I buy books for my wife for Christmas so I can read them. That's why we buy books, right? What I would like to do is to take you to some of your beautiful language, very expository ideas on faith and life. What is the thesis of Waymaker and how did this evolve? As a writer, as you were thinking about your next project?

Ann Voskamp:

Writing for me really comes out of the fabric of my everyday life. So when I wrote, when I wrote 1000 gifts, that really was telling a very I'm not telling. I'm not writing any stories telling anyone to do anything prescriptively that I haven't actually had to really work out in my own life. So 1000 gifts really was about look at, you can't simultaneously feel fear and gratitude at the same time in your own brain. And this is the story of what happens when you actually take God's commandments seriously to give thanks and everything. And so I told that story. But as I was living that out, I realized, oh, when you start to give thanks for all that you've been given, realize everything is a gift you own nothing. It's all meant to be given back into the world. So my next book was the Broken Way. How do we live broken and given out into the world? Just. My next book was the Broken Way. How do we live broken and given out into the world? Just as Jesus took the bread at the Last Supper, gave thanks for it, then what does he do? He breaks it and he passes it on. So the next book, after 1,000 Gifts, was the Broken Way, about how do we live a life broken and given out into the world.

Ann Voskamp:

Waymaker really tells a story of as we then chose to live a cruciform life, a life shaped and formed by the cross, giving out into the world. Part of that story was the Lord called us into adoption, adopting a little girl from China who literally has half of a heart. She has hypoplastic left heart syndrome, so she has come through multiple open heart surgeries and, unless the Lord works a miracle, shiloh eventually someday will need a heart transplant. So us reaching out to adopt Shiloh really was started with gratitude, realizing how much we've been given. How can we then not reach out to those we are all esters inside the gate who need to reach out to those outside the gate and pass on the grace we've been given?

Ann Voskamp:

Waymaker tells the story of adopting one little girl with a broken heart, how, in my own marriage, I broke my husband's heart and how I literally myself ended up with heart failure and in the hospital. But it's a book really about trying to make a way, not just make a way to adopt a child in China, not just about how to make a way in a marriage when you're in a difficult time, but ultimately realizing whether it's adoption or marriage. Both of those relationships are metaphors for union and communion with God. We think we want a way through, be it in our marriage relationships and our family relationships and all kinds of when we feel caught between a rock and a hard place. We think we want a way through when, ultimately, we need a way of life that keeps us in the way himself. So I'm telling a larger story about a marriage and an adoption and hearts that are. It's all really metaphor, for what does it mean to live in deep intimacy and communion with God and have a way of life that keeps us close to his heart?

Brian Stiller:

Your subtitle of this, called Finding the Way to the Life You've Always Dreamed of, I thought set it up well. Let me pick one quote, and this deals with suffering. You write by the lie that your life is supposed to be heaven on earth and suffering can be a torturous hell. But life is suffering and suffering is but the cross we bear. Suffering and suffering is but the cross we bear, and I love this Part of Earth's topography the cross on our way to heaven.

Brian Stiller:

What did this emerge from in your own life?

Ann Voskamp:

I think I really realized in so many ways. I didn't realize it, but subtly but subtly, I had started to buy the lie that consumerism all around us can be feeding us, that if you live your x, y or z, buy this, get this, live out this particular formula. There is a way to navigate life such that you avoid suffering, which, even when you're deep in God's word, deep in a faith community, you can slowly start to buy the lie that, oh, I should be able to traverse the topography of life, somehow get from point A to point B through my life without suffering. And I didn't realize that in some ways, maybe, maybe, had I started to buy into a prosperity gospel in some very, very nuanced ways that I wasn't even aware of. Where, I think, when you really start to realize, wait, we follow a suffering Savior. How do we expect to follow a suffering Savior without suffering ourselves and realizing that everything in our lives, the suffering, everything, why is God doing this to us? All of it is a sanctifying experience to make us more cruciform, to make our lives shaped more like a cross when we pick up a cross and bear it, that proximity to Christ's suffering, that proximity to bearing our own cross, is going to form and shape us more Christ-like. That, ultimately, is the life we say, we dream of, that we say we ultimately want.

Ann Voskamp:

Sometimes we just don't want the way we have to traverse to become more cruciform and ultimately, that is through suffering. Do we have a way of life that allows us, invites us to embrace suffering Is a gift from God because it is going to form and shape me more like Christ himself. That's an upside down way of thinking. That's a paradigm shift that can't just happen once in our life. We need to have a way of life that keeps us with that frame of mind. Otherwise it's very easy to slip into oh, if God really loves me, I won't face suffering. If God really loves me, I won't face loss. And we know from scripture we face loss and suffering such that God might be glorified and we might become more like him.

Brian Stiller:

Our natural instinct is to fight. Suffering is to avoid it. So when suffering comes, how does one make that paradigm shift to move from fighting suffering to embracing suffering? How does that come about?

Ann Voskamp:

That is maybe the most insightful question ever Like. That is the crux to so many of our stories, brian, that right there, I think in my own life that is a daily intentional discipline that comes from a lot of it stems from. Do I have a way of life that has me every day picking up a pen and giving thanks, not in a Pollyanna kind of way, not in an IE kind of way, but actually can I pick up a pen and I actually have a discipline of picking up a pen and writing down in a journal all the things that I don't want to give thanks for, that seem like things that cause deep pain and suffering for me? Can I give thanks even for those things? Because in the giving thanks for those things that begins a paradigm shift to go, even the things that are hard, can I count them as good gifts? Can I count them as good gifts Because I believe Romans 8, 28,.

Ann Voskamp:

The Lord is working all things together for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose, and his purpose is such that I become more like Christ. So do we have a discipline and a way of life to go? Can I trust that the way I see the world is different than the way God sees the world, and without the lens of the word the world warps. Can I pick up the word and use it as a lens to see through my life and go oh, I might see this as a difficult thing, but if I can give thanks for it, I can trust that God is redemptively working through this difficult thing. I say it over and over and over to myself Faith gives thanks in the middle of the story. Can I give thanks in the middle of a story that seems hard? Can I gives thanks in the middle of the story? Can I give thanks in the middle of a story that seems hard? Can I give thanks in the middle of a story that I don't actually want? Because if I can give thanks in the middle of the story, I'm trusting that by the end of the story the Lord has worked this redemptively for my good and his glory. I also want to be careful when we pick up God's word.

Ann Voskamp:

He has a whole book, psalms that's very honest about lament. When we give thanks in hard places and hard stories in the midst of suffering and pain, we don't do it from a place that denies pain and suffering. We can come to God honestly with our real lament and with our heart, howl about how difficult and painful this circumstance is, and our heart can echo the heart of David. And when David gets to those end of the Psalms, again he can say give thanks to the Lord, for his love and kindness endures forever. So it's not either or it's both, and I can come to God and say God, here's the pain and suffering, and I can pray like Jesus prayed Take this cup of suffering from me. I don't want this cup of suffering. And at the same time I can also pray not my will, but your will be done, and I will give thanks even for this bread of suffering, and trust that you are going to use this not only to sustain me but to make me more like you like you.

Ann Voskamp:

So, in your experience, is Thanksgiving the fulcrum on which we lever the weight of suffering? Such a profound question, brian, in my own personal experience, yes, waymaker breaks down my own way of life, rule of life, with that acronym, sacred, and that acronym stands for stillness, attentiveness, cruciformity, revelation, examine. And then the D of SACRED is doxology. Again, it comes back to thanksgiving, because thanksgiving is your act of trust that God is not. God is not wasting these tears, god is not wasting the suffering and pain.

Ann Voskamp:

It's an act of trust to say I am going to thank you for this because your ways are higher than my ways, you, from my perspective, I would write the story this way, but I am not God. You are God who sees a far greater story. God, you are God who sees a far greater story. So I might be in a story where, lord, I don't understand the why of this way. But the only one that can understand this story and how my story connects to someone else's story, which connects to someone else's story, which connects to someone else's story, is the one who is the way, himself, the author of all of these stories. So from my perspective, I can say this is too painful, this is a terrible way. I would never write it this way, but I am not the author of a million, million million stories, so I have to trust the way of the waymaker himself that he's writing a bigger story

Brian Stiller:

given that this book, way maker, ends with the story of the adoption of your, of your little girl from china.

Brian Stiller:

this, this, this paragraph that you write, let me quote we aren't merely a ragtag, limping bunch of followers flailing behind god. We aren't merely a motley tribe of wounded drifters rallying around God, and we aren't merely a straggling remnant of wanderers leaning on God to split a way through everything to make an easier way to some oasis in our imagination. In Christ, we are more than mere followers of God. We are akin to God. We are the clan of Christ, the house of the holy, of the tribe of the Trinity, family of the Father, sibling of the Savior, and we are bone of God's bone wed to him, adopted by him, secured, fastened and bound as one to him, and he has made a way for us to be seen and saved, secure and safe. Now there's a mouthful, but adopting and having seven children, that just gives you a working metaphor for what we are in God's family.

Ann Voskamp:

I think it's the etymology, the root of the words, to me understand. We know that he is King of Kings, king, lord of Lord, king of Kings, and yet in the root of the word King is the word kin. So when we worship, he is King of Kings worthy of all our adoration and praise and at the same time, all our adoration and praise, and at the same time it's almost incomprehensible to fathom that we are kin to the King of Kings because of his sacrifice on the cross, that he, because of his blood, shed for us on the cross. When we say yes to his blood covering all of our sin, to His blood covering all of our sin, he is adopting us in by His blood so that we are His child, we are bone of His bone, grafted in to the family of God. That image, for me, truly moves me to tears. It's hard for me to comprehend that kind of grace. And yet I've also experienced adopting Shiloh, knowing I mean. Our children say all the time mama, you're not supposed to have favorites, but we all know that Shiloh is your favorite. And for all of our kids will say, besides Jesus, shiloh is the best thing that ever happened to any of us, realizing that, though she was born to parents literally on the other side of the world, she is not only as she, grafted into our hearts, we're grafted into hers, and that is a work that only the Lord can do, and that what we experience as a family through adoption, we also get to experience spiritually in the family of God, which is absolutely mind-blowing and I think, for us to understand. As we worship the Lord, as we are discipled by the Lord, he loves us enough to be kin with us and make us kin to Him. That is, I think, part of the crux of Waymaker, part of the thesis of Waymaker.

Ann Voskamp:

Actually, waymaker was written twice over because I wrote the book only telling the adoption story, and then you'll see later on in the book I'm sitting down with a theology professor from Biola. It's actually Kyle Strobel, lee Strobel's son, and I was asking him about. It's actually Kyle Strobel, lee Strobel's son, and I was asking him about like, how do we have an understanding of communion and union with Christ? And it was him who said, who told me, that you know, we have a very judiciary understanding of Christ's atonement on the cross, that, yes, he has paid for us, like in a court, he has made the sacrifice for us so that we are free. But if we only have a judiciary understanding of our relationship with Jesus, then we walk out of the courtroom and we don't have ongoing communion with him. And it was Kyla who said we have to have an understanding beyond a judiciary relationship with Christ and understand that it's also a filial relationship, the person who pays the price in the courtroom. He hasn't just made a legal transaction, he's actually made a filial, a family transaction. Then when you walk out of the courtroom you're not walking out and kind of thanking him at a distance. You are now part of a family and attached.

Ann Voskamp:

So ultimately, waymaker really is about do you have a way of life that keeps you attached to God? Because we look at marriage strong marriages are about attachment. We look at adoption and strong. That is all about attachment and ultimately our relationship with Jesus is about attachment. We look at adoption and strong. That is all about attachment and ultimately our relationship with Jesus is about attachment. He didn't go to the cross. That penal substitutionary atonement happens at the cross. Atonement for, ultimately, for at-one-ment.

Ann Voskamp:

He wants to be that close to you, to have an at-one-ment, an intimate relationship with you, which again to have an at-one-ment and intimate relationship with you, which, again, I'm having paradigm shifts, brian, all of the time

Brian Stiller:

and there is a great interest and you read this in the New York Times and other major communication pieces that there's a growing interest in spirituality in our culture and the Gen Zers are really into this. But I was caught by something. You had this interesting line. You said the father's mother tongue is always the son. So in your, obviously your books touch on the idea of spirituality. I mean, you're speaking into the spiritual sensitivities of people, but you frame your spirituality in a theistic way where Jesus becomes the language of the Father.

Ann Voskamp:

I think there's a growing sense globally, a searching spiritually, because we know we're made, we're more than Adams, we're made with souls that are seeking meaning and and purpose and and home belonging. But I I keep coming back to John 1, 1, in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. And in Greek, the Greek translation of that word, word, is logos, literally the logic of the universe, the complete understanding and meaning of the universe comes back to the one who is God incarnate. So I believe that, first of all, I believe that this is a created world. This world is not by accident. It has too much intelligent design. It cannot happen by accident. So who created this world In the beginning was the word. It comes back. If you want logic, if you want meaning, if you want understanding, it all comes back to the word. If you want a soul compass, that soul compass has to come back to the word. If you want to know a way through, you need to have a way of life that keeps you in the word. I think we know this in our own souls. We are made up of more than atoms. We are made up of more than atoms we are made up of words and stories and it comes back to can I live my story under the authority, the authority of the author himself? The one who has all authority in my life is the author of the universe, of this sacred text and of my life.

Ann Voskamp:

In 2022,. I finished my master's degree at Wheaton in evangelism and leadership. I'm currently at Biola, working at my doctorate in spiritual formation and soul care, but my coursework? At Wheaton, we took a lot of courses in apologetics and looking at what does it work. At Wheaton, we took a lot of courses in apologetics and looking at what does it. How is this world made? What does it look like for people? Looking for meaning and, ultimately, what is the most compelling argument for this word is is lived apologetics. How? What is it? How does our lives literally change? Because this word becomes our compass, and I hope, through the writing of 1,000 Gifts, the Broken Way, waymaker, my other books, my book that I just released last week, love to Life that each of these books, it's lived apologetics. This is what my life was like, apart from Christ. Look at how there is now healing and wholeness and peace and living into his non-anxious presence because of Christ.

Brian Stiller:

And let me come back again to this notion of him being the waymaker, and I'm going to pull a quote from your book Waymaker, press the ear to the ear to the seashell and hear it. If the way you're walking doesn't have crosses, afflictions, persecutions and self-denial, you're not on Christ's way. His ways are waves and ours the shore, always resisting. Our way is self-formed. God's way is cruciform. Our way is wide and self-comforting. Our way is self-formed. God's way is cruciform. Our way is wide and self-comforting. His way is narrow and self-denying, and our way rarely crosses his, as his way always means a carrying of a cross. Let the shore give way to the kiss of the waves and their caressing, sculpting ways. So, as the way maker, he isn't just making a way, but he's re-sculpting us as we make the way.

Ann Voskamp:

That is exactly it. We keep thinking we want a way through, as opposed to understanding that God is using all of these things, the obstacles in our way, to actually shape us into a new way of being. I say it over and over again in Waymaker Can we shift our paradigm? Can we shift our understanding to realize the obstacle is the miracle, the obstacle in the way is the miracle that we're actually looking for, because the obstacle will cause us to turn towards him. The obstacle can turn us towards him in prayer. The obstacle can go ahead and cause us to reassess our priorities, our longings, our wantings, the idols in our own hearts. The obstacle is the miracle, because the obstacle turns us, drives us deeper into Christ's heart. And I think if you ask anyone that has faced deep suffering stories that they would do anything to change, we're all carrying our own unspoken broken. When you sit with those people, they will all testify. I would have never asked for this. I didn't want this story, but this terrible thing, if I lived, surrendered, gave me more of Jesus than I had otherwise, I wouldn't do anything to change the story.

Ann Voskamp:

Ultimately and ultimately, brian, I wrote the book Waymaker and submitted it to my editor, the publisher and the day the publisher went to return to me my edits for that book, the date was written at the top of every page of the manuscript April 29th 2021, which was also the same day that I stood in the same farmyard where my sister was crushed and killed under the wheels of a service truck, because my father was crushed and killed in the same farm yard under the wheels of a tractor on April 29th 2021. So here I was. Every time I went to do the edits of this book, waymaker, I am looking at the date. It felt like the enemy of our souls hissing at me.

Ann Voskamp:

Do I still believe all that I wrote? Is he still a way maker when not only does something terrible happen in your family once, but it happens twice? Is God still good now? And I can honestly say that actually, the manuscript became sweeter to me Jesus, the truth of who he is, the cross that we bear, that makes us more cruciform through a deeper valley of suffering than I ever could have imagined. But, yes, not only did I believe it more. Actually, there were parts of it I edited because I believed it even to a greater degree than I did when I wrote it. So I really truly can say, not from a trite place, but from the deepest valley, from the deepest valley, that the places of suffering actually give us more of Jesus, in a way that we could never access otherwise.

Brian Stiller:

And you use an interesting acronym, SACRED, as a way of framing your thoughts and the way you process. Give us a quick outline of SACRED and what that acronym stands for in your mind.

Ann Voskamp:

It actually comes from the Israelites fleeing Egypt and standing there at a pot between the Pharaoh and his army coming up against them and them standing there in front of the Red Sea. So it's coming from Exodus 14. So sacred. Can we have a way of life For me? Actually, we now have a journal called Sacred Prayer that comes it's the practical journal that comes out of Waymaker, so you can pick that up and it lays it out for you every day.

Ann Voskamp:

The S of sacred is stillness. Be still and know that I am God. Be still and trust that the Lord will do the delivering for you. The Lord will fight for you. So it's starting each day, not from a posture of hustle and performance, but a posture of surrender and stillness before the Lord.

Ann Voskamp:

The A of sacred is about attentiveness. Can I have a posture of attentiveness to hear the questions that God asks me every day? Because I think that sometimes, in places of suffering, we have all these questions of God. Why did this happen? How are you allowing this to be like this, as opposed to being attentive to the questions God asks us every day? Who do you say that I am? That's frame shifting every day. I know that my father is the ava, king of the universe. What do I have to fear? So, starting every day, with who do I say that you are God. The second question, the same question that he asks Hagar in Genesis where are you coming from and where are you going to? That's a locating of our soul. If we say in real estate that what matters most is location, location, location, in our walk with the Lord, what matters most is location, location, location of our soul in relation to God, if we say we want to have a relationship with him, do we have a way of life that slows down enough to locate ourselves and say where am I coming from right now and the trajectory I'm on, where am I going to? So to attend to that question every day? And the third question to attend to every day, the A of sacred is question Jesus asks his disciples what do you want? Which is a very clarifying question when you realize, oh, is what I want? Is it aligned with the will of God? Do I want what he wants? So to slow down every day and say, okay, lord, this is actually what I want and purify me so that my wants aligns with your will.

Ann Voskamp:

The sea of sacred is what I keep coming back to over and over again is cruciform. How do I live a cruciform life? A life that looks like a cross, with one hand stretched out to God and one hand stretched out to people? That posture of cruciformity is a posture of surrender. So, every day, asking Lord, how do you want me to live cruciform today? What does surrender look like for me today? What do you ask me to sacrifice so that I can reach out to you and I can reach out to people and being really intentional about what it looks like to live a cruciform life.

Ann Voskamp:

The R of sacred is revelation. We say we want to weigh through, but do we have a fresh revelation of who God is from his word? So, every day, to write down this is what God has revealed to me about his heart, about his character, about his way and his will, so that I don't go out into the day until the Lord has revealed more of himself to me. If he is the way, I want more of a fresh revelation of him. The E of sacred is examine. To slow down enough and examine my own heart. Over and over and over again, over 360 sometimes. In scripture it comes back to do not be afraid. So to slow down enough and ask my heart what am I afraid of? Because really, we're being driven by two things all of the time we're either being driven by fear or by love. So if we can slow down enough to say what am I actually afraid of here, love, so if we can slow down enough to say what am I actually afraid of here, what is driving me in ways that are motivated by fear, and to actually all kinds of psychiatrists they didn't we name it to tame it. So if we write it down, we name the fears, we are taming the fears, and then immediately to follow up with the d of doxology, because it's impossible to feel fear and gratitude at the same time. So can I go ahead and say here are my fears, lord, and then I'm going to turn to Lord. What can I thank you for today?

Ann Voskamp:

I think, ultimately that acronym of sacred, whether it can be. I've had so many letters from people who've said you know, I started off journaling sacred every day using that acronym and my time with the Lord every morning. And now it has, which is beautiful, but now it's migrated for a way of thinking in my day to day life where I'm like, oh wait, I can feel the overwhelm. Wait, where do I start? I start with stillness. I'm going to be attentive.

Ann Voskamp:

What does it look like to live cruciform? Lord, give me a fresh revelation. So it actually moves from just a way of journaling to actually to be a way of thinking, like an actual way of being in the world. And I think ultimately, I think ultimately sacred is about sacred means to be set apart. How am I setting apart my mind and my heart for union and communion with the one that I am made for? So for me, you'll see, you'll see the migration of where I've been, 1000 Gifts was about gratitude and doxology. Broken Way is about living a broken and given life, a cruciform life. Waymaker is kind of the synthesis of all of these things into a rule of life, a way of life, because you'll see cruciform and doxology right there in the acronym sacred.

Brian Stiller:

And thank you so much. Let's do this again, can we?

Ann Voskamp:

By all means. I just want to thank you for your leadership, both in Canada and globally, and the testimony of your life has just blessed me in so many ways through all of the ministries that you have touched. So just thank you for such a time as now, for your voice and your leadership, and really, really grateful just to be able to create this space that listeners can lean in and say what does it look like to walk with the one who is love himself?

Brian Stiller:

Thank you, god bless.

Ann Voskamp:

God, go with you, thanks.

Brian Stiller:

Thank you, Ann, for joining us today and for giving us the opportunity to hear some of your story and to be inspired by your faith and way of life, and thank you for being a part of the podcast. Be sure to share this episode. Use hashtag Evangelical360 and then join on the conversation on YouTube. If you'd like to learn more about today's guest, check the show notes for links and for info, and if you haven't already received my free e-book and newsletter, go to brianstillercom. Thanks again, until next time.