Tag: Bible Verse

Weekend Walk: Feeling Needy but Giving Praise

1 Comment

I want to say a big thank you to John King over at Smoking Newspaper and Bill Jones at I Was Thinking the Other Day About... for their guest posts this week!

And I want to give a shout out of congratulations to Wesley for winning the book giveaway!!!  I hope you enjoy reading Don’t Smoke the Newspaper and Other Lessons Learned by a Pastor.  And if you didn’t win, you can check out the book on Amazon.com here!

*******************************************************************************

On Thursday morning, I pushed a cart all around Wal-Mart.  It was already feeling a bit crowded and crowded to me is like narrow and close to others, like an MRI for someone with claustrophobia.  My heart beats a little faster, I’m certain my temperature shoots up about 5 degrees and I feel like I could just sit down on a random store bench and cry.

But I survived with a cart nearly overflowing, shopping for my family, for church events, for prayer group breakfasts, shared meals, and Operation Christmas Child.  My massive list had been divided into five sections for all that week’s events.

Then I had to go back the next day.

Because while I had seemingly put every item on the Wal-Mart shelves in my cart the day before, I hadn’t bought all of the necessities for the prolonged power outages carried along on the wind and rain of Hurricane Sandy.

I was an optimist, hoping the storm would turn or move north or simply disappear off the radar.

So, I reluctantly went back.  Two trips to Wal-Mart…Two days in a row…With a 3-year-old… Pressed in on every side by every other person in my town also rushing the aisles for water, canned goods, paper products, and batteries.  One friendly guy (not an employee) scaled the now-empty shelves and reached to the far back to hand down the last four cases of bottled water to those of us waiting below.

When I arrived home from picking my other daughters up from school, I loaded the cans of soup into the cabinet and piled the water in the laundry room.  One of the girls yelled that her drink spilled and I reached my hand across the kitchen counter to yank off a paper towel….

Only to find that it was the last one on the roll.  A quick search through our pantry revealed no hidden stock of paper towel rolls.

I was completely out.

That’s right.  All of that shopping, and I still didn’t have everything I need.

Sometimes life feels just about that way.  Fill up, consume, search, receive…and still we long for more, still there is the desire, still there is the need.

Perhaps we’ve tended to certain areas, all of our energy and sweat-browed focus exhausted on just getting through this one challenge.  Then we finish.  We make it.  And we realize all that we’ve ignored, the other needs now screaming out for attention.

One crisis ends, another arises.  Storms that never made it onto our radar suddenly threaten.  Or maybe, like me, you’ve squinted your eyes shut to the possibility, choosing optimism ….or willful blindness.

We’re needy folks.  Like baby birds sucking down the prize worm, we so quickly lift our heads and scream for more.

And it’s not that our needs are always imagined or that like spoiled consumers we’ve mis-defined “needs” and “wants.”

Sometimes it’s just because we’re thoroughly dependent on a Dependable God, aware of our insufficiency, surrendered to our out-of-control state and trusting in His guidance, mercy, care, and provision.

This week, I’m not sure what kind of power and Internet outages I might experience with the coming storm.  You might not hear from me as “regularly scheduled” or maybe I’ll happily be online for regular devotionals.  Just know I’ll be up and running as soon as I can.

In the meantime, here’s a verse for the week to remind me of all that God provides to someone as needy as me and that I can give praise and be true deep-down grateful for each need He satiates.

And that I needn’t scream in fear and desperation—because He’s provided before, He will take care of me again.  That’s what gratitude does.  It gives us peace.

And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus. To our God and Father be glory for ever and ever.  Amen
(Philippians 4:19-20)

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

Weekend Walk: It’s Better With a Friend

2 Comments

It’s 61 degrees outside right now and the sun shines down on the girls playing in the backyard. Folks along the street are raking and leaf-blowing.  Last night, I stepped out of my car into the chill and breathed in deep the smell of chimney smoke from fireplaces being lit the first time this fall.

Perfect weather for the pumpkin patch.

We go every year and have taken pictures of my oldest out in the pumpkin field way back when we could barely gather her hair into a ponytail.

This year, though, I surprised the girls by secretly inviting a friend to join us on our family field trip.  We stopped by to pick her up and when I opened the minivan door to present her to my daughters, the squeals of joy were fit for any celebrity popstar or princess.

Today we did all of the normal fall faire.  We climbed on tractors and scaled hay mountains, ran through a corn maze, oohed and aahed over fluffy ducklings, laughed at the rooster’s rockstar hair-do, sat still for face painting, and searched an entire pumpkin field for the one perfect prize—for painting, carving, or pumpkin pie baking.

This year, though, we did it all with a friend and, while we’ve always enjoyed our trips, that made it even better.

About a year ago, a good friend of mine pointed out the tiniest passage in Scripture to me.  Following a long litany of King David’s advisors and assistants, including men in charge of the vineyards and the treasury, his sheep and goats, donkeys, camels, olives, grapes and olive oil, as well as men appointed as his wise counselors and as tutors for his sons . . . one name stands out:

Hushai the Arkite was the king’s friend (1 Chronicles 27:33).

He must have been a special and trustworthy friend indeed to be named among all those who were valued for their position, knowledge, and responsibility.  He was valued for relationship.

Shouldn’t we all build into a friendship like that?

Thus, my verse for the week reminds us that in a world that pushes and races us through to-do lists and accomplishments and an ever-hectic dash from here to there and from this to that, sometimes what God really wants us to be is a friend.

Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their efforts. For if either falls, his companion can lift him up; but pity the one who falls without another to lift him up (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 HCSB)

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer for www.myfrienddebbie.com 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

Weekend Walk: Needing Big Hair

2 Comments

Hiding the Word:

I ran my comb through my wet hair this morning and glanced into the mirror.  Bells certainly chimed somewhere and little stars likely danced around my head because I had an epiphany.

What I need as a writer, what I really and truly need to fill in some of my voids and deficiencies, is big hair.

Stay with me on this one:  How many female Christian writers can you think of who have a flat hairdo?

This was an astonishing revelation.  Every conference I’ve attended and DVD I’ve watched is led by beautiful women with big hair.   Anita Renfroe even posted a picture of herself at her salon this week with her hair covered in Saran Wrap and painted with hair dye and highlights. Even those without particularly high coiffures tend to wear it spiky, in a daring, edgy, cool kind of way.

I, however, do not have big hair, spiky hair, colorfully highlighted hair, or “cool” hair.

So, it seems clear that what I really need is a personal style team.  If they could just pop by every day and apply my make-up, fix my hair and then pick out my outfits, it would just be perfect.  It would be particularly helpful if they could make me beautiful while I’m busy doing other things.  As it is, I never seem to have time to blow dry my own hair.  Maybe they could do it for me while I wash dishes.

Isn’t it sad how easily our culture of the external seeps in?  How there is always something that we “need” and it’s usually what the person next to us has.

What I really need is . . . her job, his house, her car, her marriage, their kids, her ministry, her spiritual gift . . . her hair.

The Psalmist, Asaph, reminded us that there shouldn’t be anything on earth we long for more than God Himself.  We may not have the personal stylists we dream of or the health, wealth, and prosperity the world assures us we need.

But we have Jesus.  We have the Holy Spirit active in us.  We have God’s very own Word to us written down and at our fingertips throughout every day.  This is what we truly need.

Our verse for the week, to remind us of what we’ve already been given is:

 Whom have I in heaven but you?
    And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
 My flesh and my heart may fail,
    but God is the strength of my heart
    and my portion forever.
(Psalm 73:25-26 NIV).

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer for www.myfrienddebbie.com 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. To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2012 Heather King

Weekend Walk, 06/16/2012: Happy Father’s Day

Leave a comment

Hiding the Word:

Happy Father’s Day weekend!

One of the things my husband and I have learned (and perhaps are still learning) in this whole parenting life is that each of our daughters is a unique original.  Her gifts, talents and weaknesses don’t mimic her sisters’.

They don’t respond to the same discipline strategies either.

With our youngest, we’ve discovered that even the slightest remonstrance, a serious look and the word no, can catapult her into deep sobs.  She’s just that sensitive.

The other night, she was perky and giggly at bedtime instead of the tired and obedient toddler we’d prefer to see at 8:00 or 9:00 or even 9:30 at night.  Even her older sisters complained.

My husband called her out of the room and she emerged with a sheepish grin.  He looked her in the eye and practically whispered the words, “It’s time to sleep.  You need to go into your bed quietly. No more playing around or talking.”

She bawled.  It was perhaps the most tragically despairing cry I’ve ever heard.  So, he scooped her up and hugged her, stroked her hair and promised that he loved her, but that she needed to obey. Slowly, she progressed from sobs to sniffles to calm and toddled off to her bed . . . laid down quietly . . . and went to sleep.

Aren’t you thankful that God our Father has compassion on us, knowing exactly the grace, the guidance, the blessing, the provision, and the discipline we need?

Here’s a Father’s Day verse to meditate on this week that reminds us of God our Father’s abounding love for us:

‘As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him” (Psalm 103:13 NIV)

Weekend Rerun:

The Writing on The Wall
Originally posted on October 5, 2011

 ”There is no one on earth who does what is right all the time and never makes a mistake”
(Ecclesiastes 7:20, Good News Translation).

My two-year-old created a masterpiece with a purple marker and a piece of paper.

Then she made a masterpiece on my kitchen wall.

I caught her standing back to admire her mural, giggling with pride.

Walking her back to the paper, I reminded her where art belongs without yelling or even raising the volume of my voice a decibel.  She took one look at my stern face, listened to my firm “no” and burst into truly remorseful tears.

I scooped her up to hold her, but she ran out of the room and I found her lying face down on a pillow, pouring out heavy sobs of brokenness.

All because she had made a mistake and done something wrong.  All because she wasn’t perfect and because I had to correct her.

Surely we all can shrug our shoulders and say, “We all make mistakes sometimes.”  Some of us can even get theological about it and quote “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

But then there is that moment when you need grace because it’s not “all” who sinned or “all” who made a mistake.

It’s you.

It’s me.

Please don’t tell me you missed that part of the blog where you discover I’m not perfect.  The part where I sin.  The part where I have a bad attitude sometimes.  The part where I make silly mistakes and stupid decisions and act like I’m in an I Love Lucy episode.

And every time I’m the one in need of grace, I react like my two-year-old—-run away, bury my face and sob.

Grace sounds so wonderful when you’re explaining it to someone else or extending it to another. But when you are the one who needs grace, oh, how painful it is sometimes. 

Grace addresses sin.  Forgiveness always requires a wrong.  Erasing always requires a mistake.  Strength always highlights weakness just like perfection always reveals imperfection.

Admitting that we need a Savior requires personalizing the message of redemptive grace.

Ecclesiastes 7:20 says, “There is no one on earth who does what is right all the time and never makes a mistake” (Good News Translation).

So, that means we’re doomed to imperfection sometimes?  Guaranteed to need forgiveness?  Certain of mistakes and assured of being wrong occasionally (or often)?

Yup, that’s us.  That’s you.  That’s me.

So, when we mess up, we can engage in the horrors of self-condemnation.  We can become weighed down by shame and guilt—

that we are a mess
that we’re stupid
that we’re an idiot
that we never do anything right
that we deserve whatever punishment we get
that God can’t ever use someone so broken

Or we can accept the gift extended to us by a God who specializes in forgiveness. As Emerson Eggerichs wrote, “Mistakes can’t be undone, but they can be forgiven.”

But how do we move on after a mistake?  How do we walk humbly, yet not live paralyzed by shame?  How do we serve gratefully rather than withdraw altogether, unworthy as we are? How do we let the past shape us and not destroy us?

David experienced this same struggle.  He was a godly king turned adulterer and murderer.  Faced with the magnitude of his sin, still he continued serving on the throne of Israel, still he wrote Psalms of praise to God.

It wasn’t easy.  In Psalm 51:3, he says, “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.”

But David acknowledged the need for grace, accepted forgiveness and moved forward in joy.

He brought to God the only acceptable sacrifice: “My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise” (Psalm 51:16-17).

God doesn’t desire our brokenness because He rejoices in our shame or needs our degradation.  He wants us to remember that He is God, not us.

We can begin to feel perfect, strong, capable, worthy in our own strength. But if we really are all those things, then who needs grace?  Who needs a savior?  Our worship and ministry can become tainted with self-exaltation. It becomes all about us and not at all about Him.

But when we accept grace, we acknowledge that we’re never worthy, not now, not ever.  Thomas Merton said,

“God is asking me, the unworthy, to forget my unworthiness and that of my brothers, and dare to advance in the love which has redeemed and renewed us all in God’s likeness.  And to laugh, after all, at the preposterous ideas of ‘worthiness.’ ~Thomas Merton~

Yes, we advance in His love.

We don’t need to be shamed by our sin, by our foolishness, by our scattered-brains and accident-prone clumsiness.  We should be humbled.  We are reminded that even though we are not perfect; He is.  Though we are not good enough; He is always sufficient.  Even though we are never worthy, He is worthy of all our praise.

And so we ask Him to forgive us.  We accept His grace.  And then we, like David, ask him to help us move on.

David prayed:

“Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.   Then I will teach transgressors your ways, so that sinners will turn back to you”
(Psalm 51:10-13).

We pray this as well.

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer for www.myfrienddebbie.com 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.  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2012 Heather King

Weekend Walk, 01/21/2012—Perfect Peace

Leave a comment

Hiding the Word:

Every week, I share a memory verse with you for the week.  We write them down on index cards or post-it notes and review them each day.  I don’t just memorize; I meditate on the verse.  I pray it through and ask God to teach me from this Scripture and how it relates to my life and to the rest of the Word of God.

Two weeks ago, I started a passage from Philippians that ultimately addresses the peace of God.

Now, here I sit, still thinking about peace.  Maybe it’s because in a scary world marred by sin, peace is hard to attain.  Certainly hard to maintain.  Every time I settle my heart and fix my eyes on Jesus, a news story upsets my stomach.  Or a phone call shakes my world a bit.

So, here I am again choosing a verse on peace and once again I am reminded that we have the power to reject and destroy this gift from God.

You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you (Isaiah 26:3)

God promises peace, but we must have steadfast minds—-focusing on the things of God.  We must trust in Him—controlling our stormy emotions.

This is how we prepare our hearts for peace.  This is how we guard and protect the gift of peace He gives.

Weekend Rerun:

Live Long and Forget or Prosper
Originally Published 06/13/2011

Not long ago, I wrote these words in a message to a friend, “Middle school was an absolute nightmare for me.”

Oh, it so was.  I had great friends; it wasn’t peer pressure or mean girls that made it so miserable.  Yet, those were difficult years for lots of reasons all piled together forming one mountain of middle school angst.

Most of the time, I forget those preteen emotions.  They have little presence in the workings of my everyday mind and heart.  Yet, just occasionally I am reminded of them.  Although it takes some purposeful recollecting, and although the pictures are unclear, almost as if they happened to someone else—yes, I do still remember.

Joseph knew more than most of us about enduring hard times and living through moments he’d rather forget.  Narrowly escaping being murdered by his brothers, he had instead been sold into slavery, falsely accused of rape, tossed into prison and left there—not for days or weeks, but years and years.

Time passed and Joseph was freed, even elevated to power in a whirlwind of activity.  Now second in the land, lesser only than Pharaoh, he married and had two sons.  The names he chose for them have made me pause.

Before the years of famine came, two sons were born to Joseph by Asenath daughter of Potiphera, priest of On. Joseph named his firstborn Manasseh and said, “It is because God has made me forget all my trouble and all my father’s household.” The second son he named Ephraim and said, “It is because God has made me fruitful in the land of my suffering.”   Genesis 41: 50-52

Manasseh, God has made me forget.  In some ways, through the sheer distance of time, we cannot remember the details of the past clearly.  Sometimes that’s God’s grace, that our past of pain grows hazy in the light of present blessing. 

Yet, do we ever forget, truly forget, all our trouble?  Did Joseph?

Surely he was now in a foreign land, an adult and no longer a teenage braggart annoying his brothers. No more following sheep in a field; now he managed a world power.  His life seemed totally broken off from the long-ago upbringing by a doting father. The coat of many colors probably wouldn’t have fit over his frame any longer.

But did he forget?  Truly forget?

Not by the way he reacted to his brothers’ sudden appearance in Egypt, begging for food in the midst of famine.  Not as he spotted their faces in the crowd of travelers.  Not as he invited them to a personal audience.  Not as he conspired to see his younger brother and father once again.  Not as he returned their silver.  Not as he fled the room to cry in privacy after talking with them all once again.

Is it not so much that he forgot, but instead that he learned and grew, matured and transformed?  Through trouble, God had refined him.

Not Manasseh.  Not forgetting.  But Ephraim.  Being made fruitful in the land of my suffering

It seems so much less about a past wiped clean from memory and so much more about allowing God to work “for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28), even during those moments and seasons and years we would prefer to forget.

It is the treasure of God’s presence while in darkness, the discovery of fruitful grace in a barren land, the finding of fresh water for a parched soul.

So it was for Joseph’s brothers, who dug down deep into the sacks of grain they carried back from Egypt.  Suddenly their hands felt not wheat, but silver.  Secretly, Joseph had placed treasure in each bag.

Beth Moore in The Patriarchs wrote:

“In the midst of His unfolding plan, He’d buried treasures for them to unearth at times they least expected.  Do you feel in deep peril?  At great risk?  Your God has given you treasure.  Search for it.” 

We can stand at life’s blackboard and erase and erase and erase in attempts to forget.  Oh, could we just forget how we felt in that moment, how we went through that trial, how we hurt, how we cried, how we were afraid, how we were broken.

But we would miss the treasure hidden there.

When you find yourself in famine, dig deep for the treasure of God.  Perhaps God in His grace will cover over pain with forgetfulness, replacing memories of hurt with the blessing of intimacy in His presence. Yet, even more precious than forgetting is allowing Him to make you fruitful in the land of your suffering. 

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer for www.myfrienddebbie.com 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.  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2011 Heather King