Tag: bible study for women

When I Fell in Love….

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I can’t say exactly when I fell in love with this man.

He was on stage the first time I saw him, portraying Mr. Elton in a production of Jane Austen’s Emma (my favorite), and I was an audience member.   I laughed loud and long when he delivered the first line of the play while pretending to read from a book:

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

I heard my laugh hit the silence of the auditorium.  Apparently, I was the only one who got the joke (as a character from Emma read the first line from Pride and Prejudice).  And so I slumped into my chair wishing someone—anyone—shared my sense of humor.

I actually met him a week later after a college worship service.  Someone in the crowd pointed to the guy up front strumming the guitar.  “See that guy,” he said, “You just saw him on stage last week.”

Unbeknownst to me, this young guy who led worship and the drama ministry and acted in productions based on my favorite literature had just prayed a daring prayer two weeks before.

He told God he wasn’t looking for a relationship any more.  He was content to be single until God hit him over the head with a 2 x 4 and told him “Thou shalt marry this girl.”

I met him two weeks later.

And a week after that, I was the new pianist on his praise team (and he’s still my worship leader even now).

I fell in love with the way he used his gifts and talents for God’s glory.

There was his calmness, too.  I loved my dad, but life with him wasn’t calm; it was loud much of the time and sometimes downright volatile.  This man, though, measured his words with wisdom and careful thoughtfulness.

And the first time he dropped the word “obsequious” into a sentence effortlessly, I think I experienced whiplash. (I’m a sucker for SAT words).

Add to that his quick and witty humor that kept me giggling endlessly in the corner of the praise team section, and I realized that he was smarter than me and that was okay.

We’ve never been an opposites-attract kind of couple.  We’re probably two of the most alike people who God matched together.

Except for the fact that he only cares about doing what’s right and not whether it pleases anyone else while I’m a people-pleaser.

And the fact that he can rest and take time (perhaps . . . dare I say it . . .procrastinate) and I’m neurotically pushed to do and do and do relentlessly, first, fastest, and rest when you die.

I can’t say when it happened, but at some point I fell in love.112339-20130114

I can’t speak for him and say exactly why he fell in love with me.

Nor can I say exactly why God loves any of us either, surely not my awkward, nervous, uptight, worrying self.

Amazingly, though, this isn’t a “fall in love” kind of love at all.  God doesn’t grow to love any of us over time or awaken one morning and realize how much He cares.

He loves us.

It really is the beginning and the end of our story.

Like the first time I saw my daughters, I loved them in an instant.  I didn’t slowly grow to appreciate their character or develop feelings for them over time.

In Jeremiah, God declares:

“before I formed you in the womb I knew you”  and David similarly prayed, “you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb” (Jeremiah 1:5, Psalm 139:13).

God loved you before you squinted your eyes at the first burst of light, screamed out and got cleaned off, bundled up and handed to your mom.

He loves you when you feel loved and when you feel overlooked, when you received a blessing and when you endured a trial.  This love of his doesn’t wax or wane, change or alter or depend on us and what we do or say or feel or think.

We’ve never been good enough, pure enough, beautiful enough, or wise enough to earn it.

But even though we’re unworthy, even when we’ve strayed, even when we’ve felt that seemingly incurable distance from Him or poured out in painful honesty what’s troubling us…

Still He loves.

He says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness” (Jeremiah 31:3).

And what can we do with this everlasting and unfailing love, so amazing and confusing because it’s far more than we deserve?

“We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

Originally published September 24, 2012

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  Her upcoming book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, will be released in the Fall of 2013!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2012 Heather King

Not Perfect, But All

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It’s beautiful.

Not perfect, but beautiful.

The stitches aren’t tightly even, each one the same and pulled taut against the next in one long continuous line of knitted row after knitted row.  There are mistakes.  There are corrections.

There is learning.

But the beauty is there, unmistakable, the beauty of a gift, of an offering that took sacrifice and thoughtfulness and care.

Why else would an eight-year-old devote so much of her summer vacation to discovering the favorite colors of others and knitting them hand-made scarves to suit?yarn heart

As she knits, she learns.  Each scarf goes faster.  Each row becomes more even.

Less mistakes.  Less dropped stitches.  Less recovery and fewer requests: “Mom, can you help me?”  At first, I’m checking almost every row, periodically unraveling stitches to reach the start of all the trouble.

Two steps forward, one step back.  Sometimes more.

Now, though, her needles fly and she doesn’t carry me mistakes to fix; she brings me finished work with pride, with joy in the making and joy in the giving.

She hasn’t made a single scarf for herself.  Only for others.  Even her sisters line up stuffed animals who (clearly) need mini-scarves for the fall and winter season, and she knits a special order for a toy monkey and toy cat.

But those first scarves, like the wobbly steps of a weak-kneed toddler, aren’t perfect.

Still she gives.

And they are still beautiful.

I look up on a Sunday morning from my place at the piano keys to see one of the recipients on the church stage, draped with a yellow scarf,  a handmade gift from my daughter.

She wears the present with joy and I’m struck by the beauty—the beauty of one who cherishes the treasured offering of another without criticism, complaint, or the impossible standards of hostage-holding perfection.

And I’m struck by the beauty of my daughter, who gives not to show off, but to show love.

Perfectionism paralyzes….

We hoard and we hide because our offerings aren’t perfect.

She’s more capable, more talented, more equipped, more recognized…

He’s more educated, more bold, more articulate….

We compare, we fret, we worry, we feel so insufficient, and so we don’t offer any gift at all for fear of the failing.

My daughter knitted this summer.

I edited, proofread, wrote.

I sat in front of a word processor staring at the final draft of my book, tasked with proofing the text for the very last time, looking for spelling errors, for periods out of place, and for missing words.

My impulse was to hold on.

It’s been over two years since I finished writing that book, and now looking back I want to tinker and adjust, alter and amend.   I want to patch this here and fix that there.

But at some point, I had to attach the file to an email and hit send.  Off it goes, out of my hands, into the hands of the editor and on to the printer.  It’s done and I can’t go back anymore.

Perfectionism screams, “There’s always more to do.  Don’t ever offer up what isn’t absolutely right.”

But then there would be no offering.

Not now.  Not ever.  I’d wake up one day long from now and realize that I never gave because what I had was never good enough.

Better to offer as my daughter does: 

Giving with passion…

Giving with love…

Giving out of hard work and effort and time…

Growing, learning, improving, but only through the doing and the giving….  That is, after all, how we learn, not with the giving up or the hiding away, not with the wishing for more or the lost opportunities.

We learn through the mistakes, through the process, through the work itself and through the handing it over, an offering to God, a gift to others.

God didn’t call perfect people or those already equipped.

He called those willing to go and do.

Like the prophet, Amos, we know our own weaknesses, but we give anyway:

Amos answered Amaziah, “I was neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but I was a shepherd, and I also took care of sycamore-fig trees. But the Lord took me from tending the flock and said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel’ (Amos 7:14-15 NIV)

A shepherd.  A fig-grower.  That’s what he was.

God called

He obeyed.

God used.

God received the glory.

Thus, we lay down our gifts all full of holes and mistakes, with corrections and revisions, ones that aren’t perfect but ones that we labored over long.  We place them down on the altar and offer them up for His use, for His glory, for His name.

And then we go back and strive again, never for ourselves, always to give anew.

Never giving perfect.  Instead, giving all.

Heather King is a busy-but-blessed wife and mom, a Bible Study teacher, writer and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  Her upcoming book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, will be released in November 2013!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2013 Heather King

Sweet and Simple Moments with God, Book Review

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Sweet and Simple Moments With God, Book Review

The One Year Sweet and Simple Moments with God Devotional
by Kim Newlen

Kim Newlen’s devotional for women is aptly titled, The One Year Sweet and Simple Moments with God Devotional.  It’s just that—sweet and simple.  For women wanting a quick morning sweetandsimplepick-me-up and encouraging word with your morning cup of coffee or tea, this devotional is a great start.  The book is also laid out beautifully—colorfully eye-catching with fun and flowery headers on each page.

Her stories are engaging and real.  The devotionals themselves are quite brief and are centered on one short verse written out at the top of each page, taking only a few minutes to read through each day.  At the end of each entry, there is a ‘key’ with a challenge on how to apply that day’s lesson to life.

Ultimately, how much you love this devotional will depend on what you are looking for.  If you want something more thought-provoking, deep, or challenging for your spiritual walk, you’ll probably need to find another devotional to use.  My personal preference tends to be for the deeper studies and discussions of the Bible.  I’d also love to see a devotional that matches up with a one-year Bible reading plan instead of hopping through the verses of Scripture.

But if simple and sweet is what you want (and sometimes in this busy and crazy life that’s what we need!), then this could be a perfect fit.

I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review and the opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

The Answer We’re Seeking…And The FaithDare

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I failed my driver’s test at least twice.  I say “at least” because I might have blanked out and actually failed it three . . . possibly four times.  It’s hard to say.  It’s enough to tell you that I still refuse to parallel park even now.

So, when a friend of mine in college said that sometimes he just needed to drive, I didn’t get it.  Driving was stressful for me, parking even more so.  For him, though, it was like therapy.  Overwhelmed and overcome, he’d just cruise down the highway with an unimportant and undefined destination.

Today, for the first time, I understood.  Kissing my older girls goodbye and waving to them as they left on the school bus, I walked my toddler to the minivan and helped her into her seat. Then we drove.

As a mom, I’ve generally lost all control over the music in the car, so I let my two-year-old sing for a while about numbers, pirates, monkeys and queens.

Then I announced, “Mommy’s turn” and flicked a switch, only to hear:

Shine Your light so I can see You
Pull me up, I need to be near You
 Hold me, I need to feel love
Can You overcome this heart that’s overcome?
{David Crowder *Band singing SMS (Shine}

That’s when I knew why I was driving.  Just like my friend, I was overwhelmed and overcome.

It’s been one of those seasons of ministry and of life when you’re surrounded by death, cancer, divorce, adultery, abuse, child custody battles, the loss of babies, alcoholism, financial Silhouetted female in front of sunset skycrisis, and unemployment.  I’ve been praying for many miracles these days.

In her book, Knowing God by Name, Mary Kassian wrote about El Oseh Phela or The God Who Works Wonders, focusing on the fact that “The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great deeds of terror, with signs and wonders” (Deut. 26:8). 

She notes the phrase “outstretched arm . . . implies a work not yet fully completed–a work in progress.  The image of a mighty hand and an outstretched arm illustrates that God is intentionally involved in history on an ongoing basis” (p. 66 emphasis mine).

It’s part of God’s character, His name, a promise based on who He is that He sometimes chooses to deliver us with all of the glory of signs and wonders.  And it’s now, not just thousands of years ago for Moses or Joshua, for Elijah and Daniel.  It’s for us, too.

Yet, at times we’re looking for the fireworks, lightning bolts, and parting seas of miraculous intervention, only to overlook the answer He’s already given to our prayers of desperation—through the ministry of others.

That’s why God fed Elijah once miraculously with food carried in the claws of ravens and then fed Elijah miraculously through the generosity of the widow of Zarephath (1 Kings 17).  It was God’s way of meeting Elijah’s needs and blessing the widow at the same time by allowing her to be part of God’s activity.

Sometimes we are the miracle God is sending to another. 

We are the blessing He has offered; we are the provision; we are His answer to the tearful prayers in the night.

Not that it’s because of our own ability or volition.  It’s God’s generous way of allowing us to be used in service and His gracious method of linking people together, knowing that we need the connection and relationship that it brings.

The Message says it this way:

Those of us who are strong and able in the faith need to step in and lend a hand to those who falter, and not just do what is most convenient for us. Strength is for service, not status. Each one of us needs to look after the good of the people around us, asking ourselves, “How can I help?” That’s exactly what Jesus did. He didn’t make it easy for himself by avoiding people’s troubles, but waded right in and helped out” (Romans 15:1-4 MSG)

In The Faith Dare , Debbie Alsdorf writes:

We were created to connect, to do life together, to bear each other’s burdens, to care with our whole being for those whom Christ loves (p. 191).

Maybe we’re praying for God’s intervention in situations and it really is going to take His mighty hand and outstretched arm to deliver.  But maybe we’re praying for the miracles and God’s already given the answer . . . and the answer is us.

You can watch the video for SMS (Shine) by clicking here or by clicking on the image from the blog.

Originally posted as “And the Answer Is…,” on May 18, 2012

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  Her upcoming book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, will be released in the Fall of 2013!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2013 Heather King

A Matter of Opinion: Breaking the Chains of People-Pleasing

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I looked ridiculous.

Standing on my deck in sopping wet clothes, barefoot with no makeup and my hair still not fully dry from my shower, I sprayed down a bunch of blankets and clothes with my garden hose.

Yes, I watered my laundry.015

I had a reason of course.

It was cleaning day (so unlike I Love Lucy, I was not dressed in pearls and heels), and sometime during my normal routine, I realized that one load of laundry had been shushing around in the washer all morning….as in, it was just cycling round and round endlessly without ever draining the water and spinning the clothes.

So, I pulled every last piece of laundry out and hauled it all to the deck.  Water pooled all over my floor, soaking my socks and shoes, and I stripped them off and plopped them by the back door.  After I had yanked out every blanket and sock, I bailed out the washing machine by hand, first in buckets and eventually with a tiny plastic cup.

I was pretty proud of myself for successfully launching ‘Operation Rescue Clothing’ until I realized that everything I had just placed out in the sun to dry had been hauled out of soapy detergent water.

So, clearly I needed to rinse it before it dried.

With the hose.

Naturally.

What else to do . . . drag it all back in the house, flooding every room in the process, so that I could rinse everything out in the shower only to haul it all back outside?

So, I improvised.

After a minute or two of standing there with the hose spraying water on my laundry, I realized I looked (and felt) like a sponge that could have been wrung out.

And it occurred to me how embarrassing it would be if someone saw me out there, looking ragged and wet and watering my laundry instead of my veggies and flowers.

But I shrugged it off because it didn’t really matter what anyone thought of me.  The fact was that I had done what needed to be done.

And isn’t that the important thing?  .

Unfortunately, not to me, not all the time.  It’s not so simple for me to shrug off the opinions of others.

Yes, I could be a charter member of People-Pleasers Anonymous, and this could be my own personal prison, the chains that keep me doing what is expected but not what God intends.

In the end, though, I know the truth that could set me free: God’s opinion about us is all that matters.

But it’s a realization that’s so hard to hold  onto.  I understand, I agree, I know it all in my head.

Yet, the truth doesn’t root itself deep enough in my heart to break those chains of people-pleasing and appeasement right off my hindered soul.

Here, though, I pause in my Bible reading to consider what God said about King Hezekiah:

“He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord…” (2 Kings 18:3 ESV). 

The Message says it this way, “In God’s opinion he was a good king… (2 Kings 18:3 MSG).

In God’s eyes….in His opinion….

It’s God’s opinion that counts, that helps us put one foot solidly down on the ground after another, moving in the confident assurance that we are pleasing to Him.

In What Happens When Women Say Yes to God, Lysa TerKeurst writes:

God is the only one we should be living for, and we need His grace to handle the successes and the failures, the applause and the criticism, and everything in-between.  Sometimes our efforts will be fruitful and other times fruitless,  but as long as we please God, it’s all for good (p. 59).

John Bunyan wrote:

If my life is fruitless, it doesn’t matter who praises me, and if my life is fruitful, it doesn’t matter who criticizes me.

In Song of Solomon, the bride endured her brothers’ ridicule as they sent her out to labor in the fields. She begs the king, her beloved:  “Do not gaze at me because I am dark” (Song of Solomon 1:6).

That’s what she’d been told, the insults and judgments about her worth and beauty that had tainted her heart and mind.

But the king declares with love:

“You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you” (Song of Solomon 4:7).

Others pointed out the flaws and others could have applauded her beauty.  Either way, she could have spent her whole life captive to the accolades, the pats on the back, the criticism, the naysayers, the insults, and the apathy.

But the King saw through eyes of love and grace and set her free.

This is all that matters for me, too—the opinion of my God, who looks with eyes of grace on me.

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Originally published as ‘A Matter of Opinion’, July 18, 2012

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  Her upcoming book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, will be released in the Fall of 2013!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2013 Heather King

An Origami Failure Learns to Fold

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I am a failure at origami.

My oldest daughter, crafty soul that she is, begged me to help her with some origami projects.  Knowing my handicap for all things artsy and craftsy that require following a pattern, I decided that our best option was to purchase an origami book for kids, complete with simple step-by-step instructions and special papers.

Surely if children can supposedly follow these directions and magically fold panda bears and peacocks, I (in all my grown-up wisdom) could also understand and succeed in folding a paper zoo.  I can, after all, read, and that seemed to be the minimal requirement here.

I was wrong (of course).001

Our origami sessions together typically go like this:

Open book, choose the simplest pattern we can find and then select an appropriate paper.

Fold the paper in half.  Then open it back up.

Fold it in half the other way.  Then open it back up.

Crease here, flip the paper, crease there.

Smile in confidence at one another in the assurance that we have finally mastered this whole origami thing.  Look at us!  Our paper absolutely totally matches the diagram in the book.
We return to the instructions with renewed confidence.

Reverse internal fold, flip, crease, outside reverse fold, open up, fold to center, reverse, flip, spin around, repeat, pull out the flap, push in and squash, inflate, rotate, fold and unfold, mountain fold.

Wait, what?

Pretty soon I’m sputtering in frustration and my daughter is just randomly folding and flipping her paper.  I’m talking to the book as if it could answer me, “What does that mean?  How do you do that?  How come you don’t show a picture of the step in between this and that?  Is this what it is supposed to look like?”

I begin sighing those deep-shoulder heaving sighs that say, “Oh, I should never have bought her this origami book for Christmas.”

Then I declare with supreme Mom-wisdom that what we really need here is a YouTube video with step-by-step instructions.  We Google search.  We find a video.  We pause it after each step and make our paper look like the paper on the computer screen.

We fold.  We create.  We conquer (sort of).

The fact is that I’m not adept at following picture patterns in books and matching my every move to the instructions given, not with origami, sewing, knitting or crafts of any kind.

I have too many questions that the pattern doesn’t answer and too many places where I can go wrong.  I can’t visualize the finished product and the steps needed to get there.

What’s true for me in arts and crafts is sometimes true in life also.  We all can choose the patterns for our lives and then we make continual choices, daily decisions, to yield, bend and fold . . . or not.

Paul tells us:

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will (Romans 12:2 NIV).

The pattern of the world isn’t meant for us.  The world’s priorities, its pursuits, its dialogue and messages, and its destination all fold us into a crazy mess of disorder and frustration.

We can choose instead to “follow the pattern of the sound words . . .in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 1:3 ESV) and to “obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance” (Romans 6:17 ESV).

Yes, Scripture is our pattern to follow and Christ is our model: the picture in the book that tells us what we should look like in the end.

Yet, while we may choose which pattern to follow, the world or the Word, God Himself takes a hands-on approach to our lives.  “We are God’s handiwork,” after all—the result of His efforts, the creation He forms and re-forms daily (Ephesians 2:10).

So, He is at work folding and unfolding—sometimes moving us forward and then back again.

He creases us now, teaching us and working on us in ways that we won’t understand until years later when He uses those grooves as part of His plans for us and our ministry.

He flips us around.  He pushes us beyond what we thought were our limits.  Sometimes He trims our edges.

Sometimes we complain and balk at the confusing pattern as it unfolds.  We look at the folds He has made in us and think He must be getting it all wrong.  Surely this can’t become that.  It’s confusing and we don’t see and understand.

But He does.  He knows what it takes to transform a piece of paper into a penguin or a peacock.  He knows how to conform us “to the image of His Son” (Romans 8:29).

Originally published on August 6, 2012

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  Her upcoming book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, will be released in November 2013!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2013 Heather King

Turning Aside and Saying Yes to God

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I wasn’t ‘supposed’ to be there or so I thought.

Shopping off schedule, not on my normal day, shifting things around to accommodate other schedule shifts, cramming activity into the overstuffed container of life.  And now here I was, shopping at a Wal-Mart in the middle of the afternoon instead of during my normal morning jaunt through the store with a shopping cart and a coupon book before the crowd arrived after lunch.

I pushed my way through the sale items at the front of the store with my focus on my mission—shop, gather the items on my list without distraction, save money, and leave.

But then I saw her, a friend at the pharmacy counter.  Stopping for a quick ‘hello,’ the kind of cheerful greeting we small-town folks exchange in the Wal-Mart all the time, I pushed my cart to the side of the aisle hoping not to be in the way of other annoyed shoppers on mission.

This friend, though, didn’t need just a cheerful chat, but a sharing-the-heart kind of talk, a prayer right there in the middle of Band-Aids and Tylenol.

God sent her to the Wal-Mart at just that moment and then He rocked my world all crazy, turning my schedule upside down and sent me right on into that Wal-Mart at the exact same time she would be there.

I like to hold this white-knuckled control over my calendar and my agenda, fitting everything in just right and not being willing to bend, to flex, to rearrange and adjust, not without whining and complaining at least.

Yet, here is what happens when I release, open my palms and offer up the plans, saying ‘yes’ to God even in the daily.20931038_s

A few days later, God over-turned my normal routine again with special school events and unexpected trips to the post office.  There I was driving down the Main Street of town when I ‘shouldn’t’ have been and I was thinking of the to-do list items to cross off, the errands to run, the destination and the mission all over again.

But He opened my eyes to see ‘her,’ a woman I knew limping along the sidewalk painfully slowly.

I didn’t even debate over my plans.  Instead, I zoomed into the nearest driveway and she climbed into the mini-van (after I shoved aside the napkins, papers, and other Mom mess) so I could drive her to work.

A little blessing for her.

A huge blessing for me, this reminder of God’s divine agenda, the appointments He sets for us and the way I can miss them so easily in my stubborn addiction to having my own way.

C.S. Lewis wrote:

“the great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant (or unexpected) things as interruptions in one’s own life, or real life.  The truth is, of course, that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life.”

God’s involvement in my agenda isn’t always painful or unpleasant, but it does have this way of being unexpected.  Like Proverbs 19:21 says:

“Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.”

Yes, I’m a ‘many plans’ kind of person who learns slowly to yield to this God with a perfect purpose.

God interrupts, intervenes, and now I must choose—whine and complain, reject and insist on my way, or submit and adjust and trust His plans, like Moses in the wilderness outside Mount Horeb as he tended his father-in-law’s sheep.

Moses wasn’t meandering along, aimless and purposeless.  He had a plan to lead “the flock to the back of the desert, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God”  (Exodus 3:1).

But God lit a fire within a bush and captured Moses’s attention.

What if Moses hadn’t stopped?  What if he waited until later, choosing to finish his own plan and then return to check out the curiosity?  Or if he’d ignored the interruption, adamantly determined to do things his way, in his own timing, and in his own strength?

Oh, how Moses would have missed out on God’s glory and God’s purposes for his life and his people!

Instead, Moses yielded.  He said, “I will now turn aside and see this great sight” (Exodus 3:4).

This turning aside is what God teaches me in this walk of obedience, the willingness to be interrupted, the trusting Him with my agenda and not worrying and fretting over the unexpected and the out-of-control.

Turning aside when I see God at work, I join Him there and give Him praise.

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Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  Her upcoming book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, will be released in the Fall of 2013!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2013 Heather King

Magic Tricks, The Family Calendar and Radical Obedience

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He made rabbits appear out of nowhere.  He seemed to read minds.  He pulled colorful bouncy balls out from behind children’s ears.

The magician at our local library amazed my kids, particularly my middle daughter who checked out four books on magic that day and altered her future career plans.

“I want to be a magician who tells jokes,” she declared.

Today, I am feeling a little like a magician without the recognition and the jokes.  No fabulously mysterious cape, no collapsible magic wand hiding a bouquet of flowers, no long flowing sleeves to stash cards and colorful scarves, and no top hat from which bunnies appear.  My Mom-attire is much less impressive.

And yet, every year at about this time, I perform a seemingly magical feat that defies all explanation, a trick that doesn’t necessarily astonish audiences, but probably should.

I set the family calendar for the new school year.8496988_s

Astonished? Amazed? Flabbergasted? Speechless?

Maybe you should be.

Even those of you without kids or with grown children can easily find your calendar as overstuffed as ours.

Of course, there are things outside of my control, like the school schedule and when ballet classes are offered.  So, I wait for official announcements and postings, hoping God performs the necessary miracle to make it all fit just right.

Then I sit down and scan the mess.

There are non-negotiable activities that instantly earn a place on the weekly agenda.

There are the things I believe God has asked me to do this year, which I choose to obey.

There are the “Oh please, mommy . . . .” activities like gymnastics, soccer, swimming lessons, 4H, Girl Scouts, fencing (yes, fencing), art and sewing classes.  This we carefully narrow down.

Then there are the 50 other possibilities that are wonderful and good: The Bible studies, prayer meetings, committees, volunteering, and classes.

When we think we’ve made it all fit, unexpected birthday parties and get-togethers, after school activities, and events squeeze into the corners of Saturdays and evenings.

Of course, it’s all good.  And maybe, just maybe, if I don’t let my kids take swim lessons every time they are offered my daughter won’t make it to the 2024 Olympics.  That would obviously be the world’s loss.

But today, as I was reading in 1 Corinthians, I was reminded of the one thing that sometimes gets nudged out of our lives by the incessant activity we magically jam, cram, and squeeze into our calendars until they burst.

Paul wrote:

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:1-3 ESV).

Even if we invest our time in everything good and noble, we might be mis-managing our calendars.

Ultimately, speaking God’s language, knowing God’s Word, giving away to the poor, and sacrificing our very lives are all worthy, but even they are utterly meaningless if we don’t do them in love.

So then, what about committee meetings and weekly groups and gymnastics lessons?

Yes, meaningless without love.

Thus, I’ve been praying this year about leaving room for God’s love in our family calendar.

We’ll do what is necessary, what God has asked us to do, and we’ll love our children by allowing them to (within reason) develop gifts and talents God has given them.

And then I’ll refuse to feel guilty for declining to do every other good thing that comes my way.

Sometimes radical obedience is missions trips, quitting jobs, massive moves, full-time callings, speaking up, reaching out.

Sometimes what’s radical is obeying the smallest promptings of His Word, and this is how I determine to obey God, asking for His direction and choosing not to commit or promise or enroll until He confirms His will for our year.

May my agenda be His agenda.  My plan, his plan.  My schedule, His schedule.

I’m instantly challenged—an activity I planned on for the fall may not happen.  I think of ten things I could do to replace that on my schedule.

I pray instead.

And I hear this prompting, “Embrace rest.”

That’s a radical call for a doer like me and it takes radical obedience to let it go and enjoy the breathing room over the suffocating schedule.

After all, in the end, Paul tells us that “the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor. 13:13) and love doesn’t require magic, but it does require time.
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Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  Her upcoming book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, will be released in the Fall of 2013!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2013 Heather King

Going Back to a Broken Heart: Inspired by Obedience

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She told us she didn’t think she could go back.

But there she stood on our church’s stage, holding the microphone in one hand and lifting up letters, prayer cards and gifts in the other to show us what happened when she returned.

The year before, she had traveled to Honduras with a group focused on blessing orphans and she’d shared her testimony then with questions:

How could these little children be so in need?  Was there any hope for them at all?  Where was God in this?  She knew He was there, but it was hard to see.

That’s what she asked then and her heart had been so broken by what she saw there….could she endure the breaking again and return a year later?

Perhaps she shouldn’t go.  Perhaps it was too hard, just too heavy, too much, too sad, too overwhelming.

I understand the compelling lure of self-preservation, the way we can choose distance and the safety of objectivity, of statistics, of pictures someone else displays and the testimony that someone else gives without wading into mess ourselves.

I’m willing to engage this far….but no farther.

I am willing to give or serve or care until it hurts, until my heart cracks open and I’m clinging hard to faith when the world beats so hard with evil on the innocent.

I can sit in the balcony of a church sanctuary and tearfully listen as she describes the orphanage facilities, the care (or lack of) for the children, the danger and the hurt.16954296_s

But she stands there with the microphone and I see the beauty of one who was called and equipped and one who went not once, but went again.

She holds up a tiny pink fuzzy toy, an elephant I think.  A little girl with one leg from cancer in an orphanage had given that to her as a memento, “so you won’t ever forget me.”  That’s what motivated the gift of her only toy.

And there are other gifts.  Trinkets to keep at home on her dresser.  Beaded bracelets dangling from both her arms.  Notes and cards from children and teens.

They say it over and over in their messages, “Don’t forget me…..Always remember me….”

Children unloved, unnoticed, rejected, abandoned, betrayed, tossed out, sold, used and abused, and what they most want is for someone on this planet to remember they exist.

My own unborn baby kicks and rumbles and I lay my hand on my pregnant belly as I listen to her talk about the unwanted ones while responding to my own very wanted child.

She says the teen girls have one outfit of clothes that they wear every day and I think of the closet bulging already from gifts of baby blue sleepers and hats, blankets and bibs, outfits we oohed and aahed over together as we pulled them out of the bags sent home with us from church.

The beauty of her testimony, though, is that she put her heart on the altar and willingly went back to that place of brokenness, and this time she can say where God is at work, where there was hope and grace despite the pain.

Foster moms tell me it cuts deep wounds in them to love a child and then release him to biological family, but they choose to love anyway.

And I see a picture on my Twitter feed, a young boy about eight years old standing in a store posing for a picture while his adoptive mom clicks the camera.  He’s showing off his new clothes and she’s thrilled.  Orphaned at one years old, growing up on the streets of Africa and now he is home….chosen….loved, but it’s been a journey.

It’s not that God calls all of us to this same ministry, but He calls some to have hearts willing to be broken.

He told His prophet Hosea not just to marry a prostitute, but after she left him to pursue her lovers,  to “Go again, love a woman who is loved by her husband, yet an adulteress”  (Hosea 3:1 NASB).

God told Ezekiel not to mourn his wife’s death: “but you shall not mourn and you shall not weep, and your tears shall not come. Groan silently; make no mourning for the dead…”  (Ezekiel 24:15-17 NASB).

Their hearts broke in obedience.

If that’s God’s calling, then we can trust Him with our own hearts, trust Him enough to obey even when it’s hard and our instinct is to snatch our hands back from the hot stove and cradle our hearts to protect them from pain.  We can trust Him enough to go and to go again and enough to sing, “Break my heart for what breaks yours” and mean it (Hillsong United).

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Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  Her upcoming book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, will be released in November 2013!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2013 Heather King

Declaring Dependence and the Faith Dare

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Right now, he’s linked to me, soaking up nutrients and oxygen from my very blood, connected to me by a stranded cord that is his very grip onto life.

But there’s the delivery room and suddenly we’ll no longer be one tiny human and one mom adhered together into a cohesion of flesh and blood.  He’ll be held by the doctor and I’ll grab for my glasses to see this separate person, this tiny creation who has been nudging at me all these months and growing inside of me all this time.

For nine months you can only imagine his face, imagine what gymnastic feats he’s performing as he knocks your pregnant belly from side to side.

Then I’ll see him.  Then I’ll hold him.  Then we are two.

Right there in that moment when the doctor holds up a baby and announces, “it’s a boy,” right then he is on a journey to independence and I’m the one who is supposed to train him for that.

I have time to cuddle, to pray, to advise and teach, to tussle blond hair and put the Band-Aids on the scraped knees, but only for so long.1Peter5

Enjoy it.  Don’t miss it by blinking too long, my older and wiser mom-friends tell me.  Independence comes soon enough.

My eight-year-old daughter announces she wants to home school for college so she doesn’t have to leave home.

My four-year-old daughter declares that she’d just like to keep this family and not have one of her own.

But my seven-year-old daughter says it with this wild excitement, “I’m going to go live at college!  I can make my own rules and do what I want to do.”

It began in the delivery room, the separation from me, the first breath of their very own lungs taking in that air all on their own and so it goes.

This is my job as a mom, to love them into independence, teach them how to do and what to do on their own.

But that’s not God’s desire for me as my Father, not His parental mission or responsibility.  He’s doing the opposite, wooing my independent heart into trust and showing me the lesson of the vine:

Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me (John 15:4 NASB).

This abiding life, the never separating from God, never stepping out on my own and depending on my own strengths or abilities sounds so simple.

It’s not.

It takes effort to remain in Him.

Dependence after all can feel so uncomfortable, so helpless, so out of control, so uncertain.

In Faith Dare, The: 30 Days to Live Your Life to the Fullest, Debbie Alsdorf challenges readers to a “fasting of self.”  She says,

for thirty days you will be placing your self and what you want to do aside, replacing them with the truths in each day’s dare, and concentrating on what God is saying to your heart that day (p 15).

Maybe it’s normally food (chocolate or soda for me!), or media, or social media that makes up our fast.  Denying self means this sacrifice of what we want in order to pursue God’s heart, faith-dare-250throwing down idols and strongholds and choosing Jesus, just Jesus, only Jesus.

But maybe for me “fasting of self” means a denying of self-reliance, self-assertion, self-direction.  It requires that submissive gentleness, the willingness to follow God’s lead wherever, whenever, without worry or anxiety about the journey’s destination or timetable.

Control, worry, anxiety–remove the deceptive disguise and what lurks there?

Pride.

Peter surprises me when I read his words:

Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you (1 Peter 5:6-7 NASB).

Humble yourselves.

How?

By casting all your anxiety on Him.

John Piper writes:

One way to be humble is to cast all your anxieties on God.  Which means that one hindrance to casting your anxieties on God is pride.  Which means that undue worry is a form of pride (Future Grace p. 94-95).

It’s my stubborn independence borne from this ugly pride that stirs up worry, after all.  I fret because I’m trying to make every detail fit together just right, every problem solved, every conflict resolved, every decision made just perfectly.

I’m trying to do it.  I’m reasoning it out, planning in the night, charting possibilities on paper.

Me, me, me.

John Piper continues: “Faith admits the need for help.  Pride won’t.  Faith banks on God to give help.  Pride won’t.  Faith casts anxieties on God.  Pride won’t.”

Daring faith is denying independence and choosing dependence, throwing over the pride that says, “this all relies on me” and purposefully resting in Him.

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Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  Her upcoming book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, will be released in the Fall of 2013!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2013 Heather King