By Kristin and Danny Adams
Editor’s Note: Kristin and Danny worked for years in the entertainment industry in various roles. In 2016, a lip-sync video they posted on YouTube went viral, and now has over 300 million views. This story, taken from their book The Road to Love and Laughter, looks at one important chapter in their lives that literally made them move.
Kristin
Early on in our marriage, Danny began a tradition of getting away to the mountains for a couple of days every January to fast and pray, specifically for our family, business, and ministry. He prays more than once a year of course (haha), but this annual prayer and fasting getaway is of marked importance and has had a profound impact on our family throughout the years.
I call it his “Old Testament” getaway. He goes away to pray, to hear from God, and to gain vision and direction for the upcoming year. Then he comes down the mountain and tells the people (me and the kids) what he learned. We listen and obey for a few days, then, much like the Israelites, we rebel for the rest of the year, and then he has to go back to the mountain the following January to do it all over again.
Personally, I love when Danny goes away. Yeah, it’s cool that he’s “hearing from God” and everything, but y’all, I’m at home, getting things done. I don’t know if it’s because there is one less mouth to feed or what, but I always end up having oodles of extra time to myself, which I’ve learned that all married couples need in order to stay sane. Also, I’m an extremely competitive person who thrives on deadlines, so when Danny leaves for any set amount of time, it’s like I’m suddenly in a competition with myself and the clock to bang out as many things as possible before he gets back. I’m painting something. Cleaning out drawers. Plucking my eyebrows. Taking long showers. Rearranging rooms. Watching a rom-com. Calling girlfriends to catch up. And, my favorite, sleeping in the middle of the bed!
Oh, and I also pray for Danny while he’s away. Sheesh, I do have a soul. I’m not completely self-indulgent. The point is, his time away in the mountains is a blessed time for both of us. It gives me such peace and confidence as a wife to know that my husband, the spiritual head of our household, is choosing to make God a priority. And it frees up time in my schedule to tackle my to-do list, which is incredibly rewarding for my type A personality. It is truly a win-win.
Danny
One of my mentors inspired me to start the tradition of fasting and praying. Simply stated, biblical fasting is refraining from food for a spiritual purpose. Daily devotions are essential as well, but getting away from our normal routines to fast and pray often takes our relationship with the Lord to the next level. In Psalm 42 we see King David cry out to God during his time of prayer and fasting, longing to know and experience God in a more intimate and powerful way. If we want a deeper connection with the Lord, or in any of our relationships, quality time spent together is crucial for the overall health of the relationship. We make time for the things we care about. Jesus was intentional about getting away and spending time with his Father. If Jesus himself chose to do it, how much more do we need it? Longer stretches of being saturated in God’s presence, day and night, allows time for your flesh to become quiet so that the Holy Spirit can be heard.
The first year I started this tradition was January 2010. I took a list of things I was hoping to take to the Lord in prayer during my time away. I fully expected answers to everything on my list. Most of them were work related or personal things I was dealing with. But I quickly realized that this time alone with God wasn’t about my agenda. It was about aligning myself with his agenda, being still, and hearing his voice. He sees our end from our beginning. He’s all about the big picture. Yes, he cares about the details, but always with the end in mind. Once he reveals the vision, then he establishes his priorities in your heart. So I got to the mountain, set my list aside, and then left the mountain with a new list. Everything on God’s list pertained to faith and marriage. I didn’t know at the time that he was preparing my heart for what Kristin and I are doing in ministry now. The two subsequent years when I went to the mountain, he repeated the importance of our faith and unity in our marriage. That’s how important faith and unity are to God. They bear repeating. God didn’t allow me to move on to “my” list or anything else until I was faithful to commit to the directives he originally gave me.
Kristin
Back in 2013 Danny headed out for his yearly trip per usual. He had his overnight bag, Bible, journal, and an assortment of juices and soups. There is little to no cell service at the spot he stays, so it is a time for him to truly unplug and turn off the ambient noise so that God’s voice can be amplified and heard clearly. In spite of my accomplishing a lot of menial tasks while he’s away, I eagerly await for him to return from these trips because he always has something incredible to share.
That year in particular, I remember wondering what our “word of the year” would be. Peace? Joy? Shalom? Hopefully something feel-good and inspiring that I could have etched into a piece of wood to hang over the fireplace. At least, that’s what I was hoping for.
After he walked through the door, rocking the handsome scruff from not shaving for a couple of days and smelling of a man-in-the-woods type cologne, I eagerly asked, “How was your time away? Did God speak anything to your heart?”
“I have so much to share with you,” Danny said. “But the big news is that I feel like he’s telling me that we should move to Indiana.”
To which I replied, “Uh, are you sure he’s telling you to take me with you?”
He carried on about some other spiritual downloads that had supposedly occurred, but I don’t remember anything he said after he dropped the we’re-moving-across-the-country bomb on me. Move to Indiana? Has the man done lost his mind? Not once in the almost 15 years that I knew Danny up to this point had we talked about moving to Indiana. This was not happening.
But, being the good Christian wife that I am, I politely said, “Well. Let me go pray and see if the Lord shall confirmeth these things that which you have saideth.”
As I walked to the bedroom to pray, I began to tell the Lord what he should do. Basically, I was like, “God, you need to give me something super-spiritual sounding to confirm to Danny that this is not what we are supposed to do.”
So I grabbed my journal and pen, sat on the bed, and waited for God to give me something. I couldn’t believe the words that flowed: “Go, go, go. What’s going to look like the end to a lot of people is going to be just the beginning of what I have in store for you and Danny.”
Well, that’s obviously not what I wanted to hear. But God doesn’t always give us what we want. He gives us what we need, and this mandate was spot-on, whether I liked it or not. As some of my favorite Bible teachers say, “Let’s unpack this passage.”
First off, “Go, go, go” is crystal clear. God knows me so well. I need things to be made plain, so he gave it to me straight.
Secondly, “What’s going to look like the end to a lot of people . . .” referenced that both of us would be leaving almost 15 years of career experience and relationships in Los Angeles. For people who have careers in the entertainment industry, leaving the entertainment capital of the world for the corn capital of the world seems like a career-ending move.
Finally, “is going to be just the beginning of what I have in store for you and Danny” is the part of the mandate that requires faith, because it’s filled with both so much promise and yet so many unknowns at the same time. For years, Danny saw us working in ministry together in some capacity. At one time, early in our dating relationship, the very word ministry made me feel sick to my stomach. I had a narrow mindset of what ministry meant and thought that particular profession was a call reserved for a handful of select people. You know, like Billy Graham and … okay, just Billy Graham. I thought that if Danny and I went down the ministry road, we would be pastoring a church or going door-to-door with salvation tracts, and both those options made me queasy. So I came out of the bedroom and told Danny that he was right: God wants us to relocate to Indiana. We were excited for a few days, feeling like we had this new God-given direction and vision. We began making plans.
But then two years went by and we still hadn’t packed one box.
You read that right. Two whole years. It took us two years to obey what God had clearly told us to do. Well, correction. It took me two years. Danny would’ve left California to start our new lives in Indiana the next day. Remember, he’s the high-faith guy, and even if we were called to door-to-door ministry, that wouldn’t frighten him. It would actually excite him. For me, because of the many unknowns and dots that still needed to be connected, I thought, “Hey, wisdom says to wait so God has more time to connect the dots. Let’s do God a favor and postpone our move so that he can have more time to line things up perfectly before we go.”
Also, every day, I would go outside and it would be 85 degrees and sunny, again. Getting smacked in the face with perfect weather every time you leave your house will have you quickly forgetting you ever heard from God. Why would God place those beautiful mountains and that magnificent ocean right there if he didn’t want us to stay and enjoy his creation? That would seem like a blatant waste of his divine handiwork. What’s the rush to move to Indiana? Let’s just stay one more winter in California, and then we’ll go. Also, why would God tell us to go somewhere without giving us a clear plan for jobs or without providing the specifics of how this was all going to work? That’s so unlike him, right?
Wait a minute . . .
Abraham.
Moses.
Noah.
Elijah.
Ruth.
Joseph.
The Israelites.
John the Baptist.
Paul.
Jesus . . .
Kristin and Danny.
The promise doesn’t always come with provision at the start. Often provision comes as you go.
So after waiting two years to give God time to connect more dots, we knew less than if we had just gone when he told us to go in the first place. My television work in LA began to dry up, along with our finances. This was a self-inflicted wilderness we were experiencing. We weren’t deliberately disobeying, but delayed obedience is still disobedience. It’s like we tell our own kids: “Do what we asked right away, all the way.” God told us to go, go, go, and instead, we stayed, stayed, stayed.
We needed the kind of obedience that Jesus spoke of when he said, “If you love me, you will obey” (John 14:15 GW). Ultimately, my hesitation to obey the Lord was rooted in a fear of failure and of what other people might think. If we moved because “God told us to” and then ended up failing, what would that say about God? What would it say about our faith?
The verse “faith without works is dead” (James 2:26) became uncomfortably real. We had the faith but lacked the action. Sincere faith should make you move . . . pun intended.
But here’s how good and merciful God is. In the midst of our delayed obedience, he still continued to find ways to bless us. We may have not been in his perfect will at the time, yet he chose to love, teach, encourage, and strengthen us anyway. The lessons we learned during this time ended up being instrumental for our overall spiritual growth and fortitude. One blessing that stands out the most is when a couple at our home church, whom we didn’t know well, came up to us after service one Sunday, handed us a check for $1,000, and told us specifically that they wanted to “sow into our ministry.” You know—the “ministry” we didn’t even have at the time? The word that used to make me queasy? Yeah, they were sowing into that.
This couple had no idea that God had told us to move to Indiana and that we had been dragging our feet for two years. And none of us had any idea that in just one year’s time, we would be running a full-fledged ministry both online and in person through live events. But God knew, and in the midst of my hesitation to follow God’s lead, he graciously used the faith and obedience of another couple to bless and encourage us. That’s when I learned firsthand that obeying God isn’t just about getting blessed. God always has someone else in mind on the other side of our obedience. In the kingdom of God, obedience is often about someone else. The ripple effect of obedience is eternal, and that’s why he cares so much about it.
After this experience, we’re convinced that most of the time, it’s not that we need more faith. Jesus said that all we need is faith the size of a mustard seed. That’s not very much. So, no, it’s not that we need more faith. We need more obedience. We need to put our faith into action and do the thing that we already know to be true in our heart.
________
Taken from The Road to Love and Laughter: Navigating the Twists and Turns of Life Together by by Kristin and Danny Adams. Click here to learn more about this book.
What’s the secret to keeping love alive and full of laughter? Kristin and Danny Adams, the couple behind numerous hilarious viral lip sync videos, draw from their own experience in marriage and entertainment to encourage you to live loudly, love radically, and laugh uncontrollably.
Every relationship needs plenty of love and laughter. But how do you keep the fun going when the road gets hard? Viral video creators Kristin and Danny Adams’s journey has involved more “heated fellowship” than their hilarious lip sync videos might lead you to think. Kristin and Danny invite you to:
- Turn roadblocks into opportunities for growth, wisdom, and even laughter
- Have faith in God to sustain you in difficult times and bring back your joy
- Let go of the fear of change and find courage to face all of life together
- Face the “laugh blockers” that get in the way of the joy of connection
Rediscover the joy of your unique connection for a deeper and more fulfilling marriage journey.
“You will come away changed. . . . This is a must-read!” — Jefferson and Alyssa Bethke
“With humor and so much wisdom, this story will leave you inspired and feeling like you’re not alone.” — Jeremy and Audrey Roloff
Kristin Adams is part of the husband-and-wife duo whose February 2016 lip-sync YouTube video went mega-viral and kinda, sorta completely changed their lives. To date, it’s been viewed over 300 million times and has grown their online community to one million people. Before they started making videos, Kristin worked in the entertainment industry as a television host and correspondent. Now, they work together full-time to produce online family-friendly content where God is always welcome. And when they aren’t making videos, they homeschool their two children (Harper and Holt), travel across the country hosting and emceeing live events, speak at marriage conferences, and perform their “Laughter Is the Best Medicine” program.
Danny Adams is part of the husband-and-wife duo whose February 2016 lip-sync YouTube video went mega-viral and kinda, sorta completely changed their lives. To date, it’s been viewed over 300 million times and has grown their online community to one million people. Before they started making videos, Danny worked in the entertainment industry as an actor, comedian, and stunt man for sports commercials. Now, they work together full-time to produce online family-friendly content where God is always welcome. And when they aren’t making videos, they homeschool their two children (Harper and Holt), travel across the country hosting and emceeing live events, speak at marriage conferences, and perform their “Laughter Is the Best Medicine” program.
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