Most authors dream of selling a million copies of their books … Joyce is a bit different.
She wants to GIVE AWAY A MILLION COPIES of her first book in E-Book format.

Chili and Chocolate Cake is not your average inspirational book; and is as unique as the title. The author shares her message of forgiveness, restoration, and hope for hurting women– especially those who have experienced the loss of a child through abortion, miscarriage, or stillborn birth. This book is a shining testimony to the power of God to heal the broken heart. Author Joyce Schneider’s dramatic life and the miraculous change from a tortured young women to a great woman of God will encourage every reader. God even used the stability gained from preparing chili and chocolate cake to weave the thread of His grace throughout her troubled life. Get ready for an outpouring–from the barren days of the past, to springs of living waters; rivers that will refresh long after you close the pages of this book.

Thank you for being a part of our Million Copy Give Away

 

Chili and Chocolate Cake
My Recipe for Staying Anchored in the Storms of Life

Chapter One – What Does Chili Have To Do With God?
When I told one of my friends the title I was thinking of for my book, she laughed and said, “People may think it’s a cookbook.”

So I want to start off by saying, this is not a cookbook, although I will most definitely give you my recipe for chili. The chocolate cake I can’t claim fame to; Betty Crocker gets that.

Chili and chocolate cake represent stability in my life during a time when nothing was stable…a time when I was being tossed around, as my husband said to me one night, “…like a ship in an ocean.”

That’s not exactly how you want your husband to describe you, but he was 100% correct, and unfortunately at the time, I had no clue as to how to calm the seas that were surrounding me and threatening to capsize me as each new wave came crashing over my life.

Where to start? That is the big question. There are so many beginnings, so many endings, and so many places I’m still in the middle of…

“Gratitude. More aware of what you have than what you don’t. Recognizing the treasure in the simple–a child’s hug, fertile soil, a golden sunset. Relishing in the comfort of the common–a warm bed, a hot meal, a clean shirt.”
– Max Lucado

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 4:6,7 (NKJV)

You are going to get to know me quite well by the time you finish this story, but let me start off by giving you a little background information. I am forty-four years old, and I live in southwest Florida, with my wonderful husband of nine years, Bobby, and my two sons, Carson, seven and Chase, who is five.

I’m just a regular person; a wife, a mother, a friend.

“I am only a small container of Your Spirit, Lord. Let others be affected by the spill-over.
– Neva Coyle

I volunteer each week for my son’s first grade class at school, teach Sunday School to a group of rambunctious two-and-three-year-olds, lead a weekly mom-based Bible study, and do a hundred other activities that fill my day. I am probably a lot like you.

I grew up in a Christian home in southeast Ohio, with a loving family and I went to church all my life. Unfortunately I never knew what it meant to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I heard lots of people talk about it, but I just never could figure out what the big deal was.

I would hear testimony after testimony of what God had done for others, and as much as I wanted to know Him, for whatever reason, I just didn’t know how to let him into my life. Part of me was extremely fearful of a God who could hurl lightning bolts and strike men down dead, but another part of me was rebellious and a huge know-it-all, someone who didn’t need God. Someone who thought she could take care of herself.

Now, I had prayed the prayer of salvation when I was young, probably at the age of about eight or nine, but I still never felt like Jesus was really a part of my life. I would pray and pray, but never felt like He ever answered me, or even heard me for that matter.

I’ll get to more of that part of the story a bit later, but for now, the best place to start is in the middle. (We’ll work through the beginnings and the endings together as we go.)

“When we confine our relationship with God to only the accumulation of information about him, we may miss the experience of his presence or fail to realize that the act of adoring God is very different from merely reading about adoring him.”
– Brenda Waggoner, Fairy Tale Faith

My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth. And by this we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before Him. For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things.
I John 3:18-20 (NKJV)
Excerpted from Chili and Chocolate Cake: My Recipe for Staying Anchored in the Storms of Life by Joyce Schneider. Copyright © 2005. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.