We hope you liked Day 1 of the Abiding in Him devotional from our Art & Faith Creative Retreat in Italy this past month. We had such a great time with everyone who joined us and it was amazing to see God weave this theme throughout our time together there.

If you’re following along with our blog posts this week, we are sharing the 7 day devotional I wrote for the retreat as well as sharing photos from the retreat. We hope you’ll join us as we revisit our retreat from last month and share more about what the Lord doing is doing through them.

The last we left off we were in Venice, Italy with about half of the group (we gave everyone the option to join us for 3 nights before the Bellagio retreat) and we explored this beautiful Venetian city with them.

The morning we left Venice to start the retreat in Bellagio with everyone, we hired a private shuttle service to take us straight from Venice to Bellagio. I’ve used the same company in France & Belgium and was hoping for the same great service… but that wasn’t the case. The driver showed up about 30 minutes late and when we got to Bellagio he didn’t want to drive us all the way to the hotel b/c he said his bus was too big to fit. Well, these are things that happen when you travel and it all worked out in the end…. but I’ll be honest and say that I do like to have things run seamless and it didn’t happen that day. Part of what the women enjoy on our retreats is that they don’t have to think about much of that stuff because it’s all organized for them and our desire is for things to run smoothly. But just like life… things happen and what was so great to watch was how gracious and understanding these women were! It was a blessing to us for sure. Just look at these cuties in the photo below! (this is half of the group because we split up on the photo tour that day) We had one hubby join us too… and he was a joy to have along!

Saturday was also the day that everyone joining us just in Bellagio were met in Milan to be shuttled to Bellagio as well. This transfer ran much more smoothly as this is the normal company I use from Bellagio and they know exactly where to be and where to go. :)

We ALL met up on the beautiful pergola of the Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni and had a welcome reception together. This is all while we had my daughter and a few other helpers go around the town of Bellagio getting everyone’s luggage in their rooms, the gifts and fun goodies in their rooms and their keys and passports sorted out! All of this goes on behind the scenes while the ladies (and a few hubbies and 9 mancubs… more on that later :) were enjoying food and conversation, relaxing in one of the most beautiful places on earth!

That night was an early dinner (well 7pm being early in Italy…) at our favorite pizza place in town where they served us family style so everyone could try all their wonderful pizzas and pastas! Oh this makes me miss everyone again… it was truly an incredible group of people who connected so quickly and are deeply loved and missed already!

We’ll share more tomorrow from the week. Here is Day 2 of the Abiding in Him Devotional below. Thank you to those who contacted us through our website today to get the devotional, we hope you are blessed by it.

Abide in Him - Day 2

So how do we get filled up? Let’s talk about ABIDING today and what it means to abide.

I think the word Abide is beautiful.  It evokes this sense of relation, connection.  Here are some definitions of the word:

Abide :  1 : to remain stable or fixed; in a state a love that abided with him all his days. 2 : to continue in a place, “I will abide, or dwell in the house of the Lord.” Psalm 23:6   3 :  to accept without objection.

1. To Remain.  Fixed to.  First, we must see that our ability to be filled up and abide in Christ is by FAITH in Christ.  It is through our Heavenly Father who sent His son Jesus to die for our sins that we may have an ever lasting relationship with Him.  “For by GRACE you have been saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is a GIFT of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.  For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” Ephesians 2:8-10. Our abiding in Christ began when we made a commitment to live for Christ, and we continue to live it one day by day. Consider that abiding in Christ is a life long journey…

2. To continue. To keep doing the same thing.  I think of this word as something that may be hard to do for us.  Like that classic “I Love Lucy” in the chocolate factory, where life keeps coming at us, with its worries and difficulties and trials… and we may think we are fighting a loosing game sometimes!  In our culture we’re always looking for the next new thing, not wanting to stay and continue in the same.  The latest fashion trend, the new “self help” book that’s going to make the difference, or that new relationship that’s going to be better than the last one.  Just look at our divorce rate and we can see that it’s hard for us to “continue in a place.”  We want what’s new and shiny and attracts our attention.  The world has a way of doing that… distracting us and getting our eyes off of Jesus and that daily abiding.  But abiding in Christ is remaining, continuing to daily make a choice to surrender our will and allow God’s Word to fill our minds, direct our path and transform our affections. 

3. To abide is to have communion with God.  How amazing is it to know that we can have a relationship with our CREATOR and be in communion with Him!  To accept the Word of God as LIFE & TRUTH and not only believe it, but obey what it says.  Because life with Christ gives us access to a life-giving, soul-thriving, joy-producing journey with God through Christ (John 15:11) and the Holy Spirit, whom He gives to us as our Helper. (John 16:7)  

Let us remain at the feet of Jesus today!

Ask yourself today:

1. Begin this morning with a fresh commitment to live your life for Christ.

2. Abiding is a continuous thing… a lifelong journey. What are ways we can remain in Him?

3. Read John 15:1-8

4. Pray and give this day to the Lord. Ask Him to live through you, to help you abide in Him daily, and to stay connected to the Vine and bear fruit for His Glory.

5. Journal or Draw what you are hearing the Lord speak to you about your lifelong journey.

Thank you again for following along with us. Tomorrow we will share Day 3 of the devotional as well as more of what we did during the week in Bellagio.

We also will have a GIVEAWAY that starts tomorrow so don’t miss out!

As we’ve mentioned, we would love you to follow along and journal or draw your devotional notes in a Traveler’s Notebook like we did in Italy. Did you know that we designed our own custom Traveler’s Notebooks with our friends in Bellagio, Italy and they were a gift to each student at the retreat! And guess what… we brought some home with us for our SHOP! We will have some fun new colors and we will share how we designed them a little bit bigger and with more straps to hold more inserts so you can have a big chunky TN for all your journaling and planning needs! They even have our logo stamped on the back as well as “Made in Bellagio, Italy” from our dear friends who own the amazing leather shop in town, Quelli Della Pelle! If you’ve been to one of our retreats, you already know and love these people… and now you can have something from both Art & Faith Creative and Quelli Della Pelle in a joint collaboration just for you!

So stay tuned and check back for the shop to have some new fun items in it soon!

Have a GREAT day,

Laura