Tag: Christianity

Remembering: One Lump or Two?

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Originally posted on August 3, 2011

My soul, wait in silence for God only,
For my hope is from Him.
Psalm 62:5

It’s my nightly routine.

Place favorite mug on the counter.
Heat up the water.
Lay tea bag in the mug.
Pour steaming hot water in and let it steep.
Add spoonfuls of sugar.  (Yummy and sweet).
Splash in some milk.

Evening tea.  It’s been years since I’ve gone to bed without drinking it and it’s become a sort of security blanket.  I’m not sure if I could sleep without a cup.

Even worse, maybe I’d lie awake just because the tea wasn’t in my favorite mug and instead dumped into some random coffee cup grabbed from the cupboard.  That’d be like someone trying to swap a precious teddy bear for some unfamiliar spare stashed at the bottom of the toy box.

Last night, I sat down to my steaming cup, took a sip,  . . .

gulped and grimaced.

Instead of sweet tea, I tasted bitterness.  I’d filled the sugar canister, but never spooned any sugar into my mug.

Have you ever been a little disappointed?  You hope for something sweet and taste undrinkable bitterness instead?

The Israelites wandered through the desert for three days, searching for water.  Each day, their hunt must have grown more desperate.  How long could they survive out there, moving through endless wilderness without water to drink?  And then they arrived at Marah and there was water and they felt that rush of joy that accompanies salvation!

But the water was bitter and undrinkable.  It seemed like cruel disappointment considering their true need.  They weren’t asking at that point for luxury; they were asking for necessary provision and it seemed like God had failed them.

Yet, there at Marah, “Moses cried out to the LORD, and the LORD showed him a piece of wood. He threw it into the water, and the water became fit to drink” (Exodus 15:25).

The Israelites placed their hope in their water-finding abilities.  They hoped for an oasis or a stream in the desert. And when they found what they had been looking for all along, they also discovered disappointment.

Moses placed his hope in God instead, knowing that even bitterness can be transformed into water for the thirsty.

When we place our hope in God, we will never be disappointed. But when we instead look for what we think we need, we misplace our hope in:

the job we think is secure
the financial answer to our bills
the debt program that’s going to transform our life
the 401K that’s going to make our retirement comfortable
the weight loss program that is going to make shedding the pounds easy
the husband who is going to make us feel loved and not lonely any more
the ministry that we can put our energies into
the friendship that makes us feel connected
the church with the programs we think will fit our needs

There are oh so many places to deposit our hope and each could yield bitter disappointment.  But the Psalmist wrote: “My soul, wait in silence for God only,
For my hope is from Him” (Psalm 62:5).

We wait for God only.  Not God plus the answer to our problem.  Not God and the life preserver from some friendly bystander who sees us drowning from the shore.

God.  And if He what He offers to us is a program or plan or a friend, then we accept His gift, but we never depend on the gift itself. 

We hope in God alone.  Only He can provide what we truly need.  And if it’s insufficient or bitter, He can transform it into plentiful abundance and sweet blessing, making “everything beautiful in its time” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

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

Veggie Tales, a Rubber Duck, and a lesson on Grace

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We have a Veggie Tales system at our house.

My girls tumble all over themselves, hooting with laughter and interrupting one another, to explain to me the very funniest parts of a Veggie Tales video.

And then I tell them how very funny that really is and then how it’s kind of like the Bible account, but here’s “the rest of the story.” This, of course, isn’t nearly as funny as the way singing vegetables without hands have told it, but I give it my best shot.

So, when my daughters finished telling me yesterday how King George, the cucumber who collects rubber duckies, had stolen the only rubber ducky owned by his neighbor, a tiny asparagus…I told them (a slightly modified) Biblical version of King David and Bathsheba.

Skipping the more explicit issues of adultery, I emphasized that King David (err…George) didn’t have Uriah smacked in the face with cream pies. David essentially murdered him.

Why?

Because David wanted Uriah’s wife for himself.

My oldest, my everything-is-black-and-white-without-any-gray kind of girl, wrinkled up her nose in confusion.  “But mom, I thought David was a good guy!  I thought he loved God.”

Oh, and there is the heart of the matter.  That, my sweet girl, is the whole point.

How desperately we try to categorize and define people, sorting them perpetually into good and bad, and ultimately we’re trying to decide who is the hero and who is the villain…who is worthy and who isn’t.

But grace demolishes all these overly simplified judgments, these definitions and categories we shove people into.

That we cram ourselves into.

After all, don’t we even do this for ourselves?  We—I— begin to feel worthy of God’s affection and deserving of His pardon and His sacrifice.  Like I’m one of the “good guys” in this epic story of salvation.

I’m a church girl, not a murderer, after all.

Nothing like David, lusting after a beautiful woman and killing her husband.  Even his failure to take control of his sons and defend the rape of his daughter raises my eyebrows.

Oh yes, there’s ugly sin there, and if we just focused on those portions of his story, we’d easily define him as one of those ungodly kings, too self-focused and pleasure-motivated to be of any use to God.

And yet, he’s the hero of the Sunday School lessons week after week.  The brave lad who conquered Goliath.  The true and loyal friend of Jonathan.  The God-anointed king of Israel.  The poet and musician who penned the words we still sing in worship on Sunday mornings.

He’s a bad guy?  He’s a good guy?

He’s a crazy messed up human, who chose right and chose wrong, but who repented before God.  His testimony can’t be anything other than grace, grace, marvelous grace of a God who always calls the unworthy.

It is because of that realization that David wrote the song of repentance:

Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
blot out my transgressions.
  Wash away all my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin.

 For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is always before me.
(Psalm 51:1-3)

It’s the sobbing out of a man who remembered, oh yes, I am unworthy.

In Luke 14, Jesus tells of a master hosting a banquet.  Those wealthy and important enough to receive an invitation declined to come, too busy making excuses to consider the loss.

So the master invited “the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.”

‘Sir,’ the servant said, ‘what you ordered has been done, but there is still room.’

“Then the master told his servant, ‘Go out to the roads and country lanes and compel them to come in, so that my house will be full.” (Luke 14:21-23).

Joni Eareckson Tada writes, “in this parable, the master’s grace is not lavished on the deserving but on the undeserving.  The unacceptable.  Those who shouldn’t be invited…God’s grace is not a response to what men do.  God’s grace is a divine initiative which is totally unconnected to a person’s merit.  And not only is the grace of God an initiative but a radical one that most would consider outlandish if not mad” (Diamonds in the Dust, p. 355)

This is why Paul reminds us:

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God (Ephesians 2:8)

and

He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy (Titus 3:5).

We too easily slip into complacency, overlooking the glory of the gift He’s given, assuming that we deserve it or somehow our “goodness” merits the affection He bestows.

But we’re the unworthy ones feasting at the banquet table.

And it’s all because of His mercy.  It’s all a matter of grace.  I’m determined to remember that today and to give thanks.

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: The Discipline to Keep on Going

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With rain storms and wind, unexpected days off school for my kids, and then packing all my activity into the other three days of the week, some of my normal routines fell by the wayside this week.

Like walking.

By the time I finally hopped out of my car and stretched my legs into a stride on the sidewalk of our town, it’d been five days since my last true “exercise” (unless you count hauling deck chairs and bicycles into the garage in preparation for a hurricane ‘exercise.’)

All that time off and my legs were starting to ache from the lack of movement.

Starting a good habit is tough, with stops and restarts, good days and bad, and not so successful attempts until you find what works.  Then day after day, week after week, you practice the discipline of not just thinking about it or talking about it or dreaming it, but really getting up each day and making it happen.

It’s finding a way to make exercise a reality and cutting that beloved Coca Cola from my daily diet.

It’s setting aside that time to walk and pray.  It’s carving out just 15 minutes at least to sit down in the quiet of God’s Word and His presence.

It’s choosing to put the clothes away when they’re clean rather than let them hide in the dryer for a day or two or three ….or the next time you do laundry.

It’s walking away from Facebook and Pinterest and Twitter instead of losing an hour or two or three….

This is all discipline.  At first it aches to begin.  The pain of those first faltering steps may make you want to quit.

But when you’ve persevered and now it’s habit and part of what your everyday life is like ….then it aches to stop.

Sometimes we treat that time with Jesus as such a burdensome, difficult thing.  How do you fit it in?  How do you avoid the distractions of telephone–and children?  How do you get interested in these Ancient Words?

But then that time with Him is so sweetly life-giving and we ache, not from the doing, but from the not doing.   That’s what happens when my quiet time gets pushed back and back in my day until I’ve managed to cram in activity and I’m exhausted and grumpy.

My soul is aching for my Savior and protesting my lack of time with Him.

I’m reminded this week of the Psalmist, who expressed that longing for His God more perfectly beautiful and true than anything else I’ve ever read:

You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you;
I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you,
in a dry and parched land where there is no water (Psalm 63:1)

This week, if you haven’t established the discipline of time with Him, I urge you to make it happen.  It’ll never just magically occur on it’s own. You have to choose Jesus.

And if you’ve let it get crowded out of your life, if it’s slowly been pushed away, pay attention to the aching of your longing soul and start the discipline afresh.

And if it’s part of your life without question or fail, keep it up, my friend!  Even when it’s hard or quiet, remain steadfast.

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

Bad Habits, Hand-Me-Downs and Choosing Grace

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Some days, you must choose grace.

Not just to give, but to receive it, take it in, soak it up past the superficial skin and let it seep down deep into your soul, into the places of self-condemnation and records of wrongs and mistakes and imperfections.

Like yesterday.

It was a day of frustrating grocery shopping with lost coupons and a store that hadn’t stocked the chicken that I needed for almost a week’s worth of family meal planning.

And having to skip out on my exercise because I had to trek to a second grocery store to find said elusive chicken so I could feed my family more than one meal in the next seven days.

Then I finally unloaded it all at home, over-budget, discouraged, and frustrated with my non-exercising self for messing up my fitness plan.

As I sorted the groceries onto shelves and into drawers, I noticed the dirt in the corners of my kitchen floor, the apple juice splatters, the toothpaste in the bathroom sink, the laundry piled in the basket.

Wow, I just can’t ever keep this house clean enough.

And that writing project I planned for the day…didn’t get done.

There were the three tantrums from my preschooler at the school library and the devotions I put off until 9:00 that night.

At the end of the evening, after dinner and bath time, and after my kids didn’t practice the piano, I read one chapter in a book to my daughters and sent them off for “independent reading” before lights out.

It had rumbled inside me bit by bit all day, but as we finished up that little bit of reading time together, my daughter reached over and turned down the corner the page to hold our place.

And I felt the full rush of failure.

I’m a page-turner-downer from way back.  Despite a lovely, inspirational, unique and large collection of bookmarks, I fall back on a long-established bad habit.  I just dog-ear my page and snap the book shut.

Unfortunately, it’s a bad habit I’ve unwittingly passed along to these daughters of mine.  In fact, it’s so extreme they’ve even coined a term for it, transforming the word “chapter” into a verb.

“Mom, don’t close the book until we ‘chapter it!” they say and I dutifully slip the corner of the page down.

In that moment I thought: I’m passing along my bad habits to my children, handing them down like ill-fitting jeans and worn-out shoes.

Unfortunately, some of them aren’t as immaterial as dog-eared book pages–like stressing perfection too much, having too little patience with ourselves and others, and not accepting grace in the wake of messy failure.

This is why my oldest sobbed in frustration as we studied for her big science test the other day.  Because she forgot the definition of one term among 30 and felt like a big horrible failure.

I assured her with a hug and an uplifting of her chin so her red, swollen eyes looked up to mine: “Baby girl, you’re doing awesome.  It’s okay to make mistakes when we’re learning!  And even if you get it wrong, you’re doing your best.  You’re working hard here.  Isn’t that what counts?  Isn’t that the point? And don’t you know that I love you no matter what?”

Oh, but I recognize the source of her hand-me-down of perfectionism in my own mirror.

Don’t we all have days where it seems we meet with more failure than success? Where Satan can barrage us with reminders of the mistakes from long ago and the crazy mishaps of today.

Where every mom on Facebook seems to have it all together, gourmet meals for their family, a spit-n-shine house, Martha Stewart-like crafting ability, time to bake, snazzy Scrapbook pages, award-winning kids, and time for family service projects….”

Or maybe you feel it at your job or in your ministry or with your friends.  What you should be doing.  What you failed to do.  What you said that was wrong. How you fall short.  How you could be better.

The pressure of perfection is far too much for our imperfect selves tripping along in an imperfect world.

And that’s the point, sweet friend.  It’s not to get everything right.  It’s to get what really matters right and doing our best and just laying it all out, as insufficient as it is, as an offering before a gracious God who just wants our heart anyway.

Paul told Timothy: “The whole point of what we’re urging is simply love—love uncontaminated by self-interest and counterfeit faith, a life open to God” (1 Timothy 1, MSG).

Sometimes we have to stop and ask, “What matters here?”

Then we have to choose to receive the grace He offers, deciding it’s okay if we didn’t get it all perfect today and if our life got a little bit messy.  Doesn’t God love us?  Didn’t we try our best to walk in that love?  That’s the point and that’s enough.

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

Present and Accounted For

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“Where are you going, Mom?”

My three-year-old has a radar system that rings alarms and sets off alerts if there is a possibility that I am going out…and leaving her at home.

That morning, she had caught me slipping on my socks.  I reassured her, though, “Just putting on my socks because my feet are cold, baby girl.  I’m not going out.”

“You’re staying here?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not leaving?”
“No, sweetie. Mommy’s staying with you today.”

Seeing as how a hurricane raged off the coast of Virginia that morning, staying in seemed like a good idea.  We had stocked up water, canned food, and batteries and hunkered down until the storm passed.

She didn’t understand all that, though.  Snuggling in close to me, she pressed her cheek against mine and cooed, “Mommy, I stay with you.”

Of course, she can’t, not all the time, not forever, not every minute and each second of day after day after day.  But for this moment and surely in this storm, here I was snuggling with her and remaining present.

We sang it at church Sunday morning, leaving the weather reports and streaming satellite images about the approaching hurricane behind for a short time.  We gave praise, declaring, “You are My Shield, My strength, My Portion, Deliverer, My Shelter, Strong Tower, My very present help in time of need.”

This is our way of singing Psalm 46 back to God:

God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
  Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
  though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging (Psalm 46:1-3). 

Normally, I sing this song imagining God as my Tower, my Shelter in the most fearsome storms.

But what good is a tower-of-brick if it isn’t nearby when you need to hide?  And what is the point of a refuge that is too far away to reach in times of distress?

It is God’s constant, faithful presence that makes Him effective as our Refuge and our Strength, our Defense and our Deliverer.

That is why “we will not fear,” not during storm or raging sea, or mountains crumbling or news reports of flooding and fire and disaster.

Because He is present.  Not just here in this moment and maybe leaving us later in the care of others while He slips out for a meeting or relaxes with friends or fills a cart with groceries at the local store.  We needn’t trip to His feet in alarm when He pulls on His socks or takes His jacket down from the pegs in the closet.

He is always, ever, constantly, faithfully, never-changing, perpetually, every second of every day present with us.

This means He didn’t close His eyes, turn His head, blink, snooze, or simply grow too distracted to care when the mountains crumbled and the waters roared.

No, our God doesn’t promise us a world without frightful shaking and uncertainty.  It’s a sin-plagued planet, aching and groaning for the perfection of eternity.  Hurting and death and sickness and tears are part of life here.

But He promises to be with us and be the strength and shelter we need for whatever rages outside.

Moses plead with God simply for this presence.  Days on that holy mountain, shining with reflected glory, and Moses still longed for more of God.

The Lord Himself promised:  “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” (Exodus 33:14)

His presence.  Our rest.  Without Him, turmoil and worrying and stress.

Then Moses said to him, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?” (Exodus 33:15-16).

Like Moses, we pray, knowing that without God’s presence, we are a mess and a disaster, and we are alone and lost, no different than those who don’t know Him at all.

His presence is what sets us apart.  That’s what gives us hope for each new day and peace and that’s what others should notice about us–Christ in us, the hope and glory.

Today is a day to praise God for His presence:

You Never Let Go (David Crowder* Band): “When clouds brought rain, And disaster came…When waters rose, And hope had flown.. Ever faithful, Ever true.  You I know.
You never let go

Made Me Glad (Hillsong): “He has delivered me from all fear; He has set my feet upon a rock. I will not be moved! I’ll say of the Lord, You are my Shield, my Strength, my Portion, Deliverer, my Shelter, Strong Tower, my very present help in time of need!”

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

Lowering the Hands, Releasing the Fists

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“Mom, why do turtles have shells?”

My preschooler draped herself across the sofa, seemingly inert and bored, but truly thinking about the great mysteries of the world.

“The shell keeps their soft body safe and protected.”

“Oh.  Okay, mom.”

So far, so good.  Her questions simple, her mind and heart trusting and easily satisfied by easy answers.

My middle daughter was never so quick to accept and move on.  A conversation with her could go something like this:

“Mom, why do turtles have shells?”
“To protect their soft bodies from harm.”
“Why are they in danger and need protection?”
“Other animals might try to catch and eat them, or they might be stepped on or run over…”
“Why do some animals like to eat turtles?
“Some animals are herbivores and eat only plants and some are carnivores and eat meat.  Turtles are meat.”
“Why do animals eat other animals?”
“Because after the fall in the garden of Eden, one of the curses was the destruction of the peace between animals in the animal kingdom and now some animals would be food and others would eat other animals.”

Falling back on theology or “because God said so” became my frequent defensive position.

This curiosity about the world, I love.  This exploring and questioning and wondering “what if” and “how come”–while it occasionally makes me explode and bluster out  “because God made it that way” or “because I said”– ultimately I appreciate.

Ultimately I understand.

Because I’m a questioner, too.  I want to know “why” and “how come” and “what about” and “why not?”  I want to pester God with question after question like a three-year-old first discovering the world around her.

More than that, more than asking God true and honest questions, I nag and whine and push and nudge.

Oh, and it’s even more than that.  I’ve been Jacob up all night wrestling the angel of the Lord.  I’ve locked my grip with God’s and fought hard for what I thought constituted a blessing, for a victory, for triumph over circumstances and over the Enemy who’s been battering at the walls of my life.

Yes, I’ve pummeled the chest of Christ with my fists, fighting and demanding, manipulating even, making promises, issuing threats, and crying for mercy, help, deliverance—for rescue.

I’m being honest with Him, I tell myself, and honesty is something God treasures in us.  He never asks us to fake it or play happy-faced Christian when life is a mess and this mask we wear becomes increasingly ill-fitting.

God desires truth.  Job, Habakkuk, David, Asaph, Elijah, Jonah, Mary and Martha laid their complaints before God, plead their case, and He listened and answered with awe-inspiring mercy.

He didn’t strike them down with lightning.  He let them empty out hearts filled with fear, hurt and anger and then He answered, not always in the way they expected or wanted, but still He met them in the place of pain and questioning and carried them on out.

Now, though, I’ve been studying the fruit of the Spirit and found I didn’t really get it before.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23, NIV).

Gentleness is on that list.  All those years of sermons and Sunday school lessons and I thought this meant “being nice, not hurting others with our words, kindness and tact.”

The Message translation however, describes gentleness as: “not needing to force our way in life.”

Is this Gentleness?

In Living Beyond Yourself: Exploring the Fruit of the Spirit, Beth Moore defines the root word here “praotes” as “the complete surrender to God’s will and way in your life.  The term basically means to stop fighting God” (p. 178).

Gentleness is submission to God, His will and His way, His plan and His timing and all He has determined for us.

It means dropping to our knees and pouring out the honest struggles of our heart, but deciding at last, “Not my will, but yours be done.”

It’s singing with true conviction, “Have Thine own way, Lord,” and “I surrender all.”

No more fighting God.

How then can I still be honest with Him?  How can a prize-fighter like me lower the hands and open the fists, cease fighting and nagging and choose instead to trust?

Does this require me to be fake after all?

There is my answer in the verse itself, “but the fruit of the Spirit is…” not the fruit of my own discipline or maturity, strength or ability.

This is what the Spirit at work and alive within me does—the impossible, the new, the Christ-like—As I yield and grow in the Spirit, so slowly I trust more, believe more, fall in love with Jesus more and understand how much He loves me more.

And I stop fighting Him.

I drop the knee, I bow the head, I cry the tear, I confess the pain, I trust my God and the Spirit works out Gentleness in me.

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: Feeling Needy but Giving Praise

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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!

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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

Devotions from My Garden: Guest Post!

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Today, I have a special treat for you!  Bill Jones over at I Was Thinking the Other Day About is guest-posting here and sharing a devotional from his garden!  I hope you enjoy and take the time to check out his blog of devotional thoughts and encouragement.

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I marveled at our backyard’s beauty. The white phlox beamed beside the weathered picket fence. The hibiscus was nearly eight feet tall and had smothered itself in pink blooms. Long tendrils of the guara held out their flowers and danced as the bumblebees did touch and go landings. Cardinals and bluebirds were bright spots of color at the feeders.

Several years earlier the yard was just an expanse of pasture. Over time I built the garden’s structure and established the flower beds. The fence came first and defined the back of the yard. I think I actually applauded in satisfaction when the gate’s latch clicked in place and fit perfectly.

A working gate deserved more than a dirt path, so a walkway of red concrete pavers came next. The addition of a pump house with a barn style roof and weathervane on top added a rustic touch to the scene.

The bahia grass in the old pasture was so thick that my tiller just dragged me along as it bounced over the top. I’m sure it was comical to watch, but to me it was frustrating. With that obstacle, it became a struggle to transform sections into flower beds. Many exhausting sessions of hand work were required but the transformation did occur.

The histories of many of the plants also came to mind. The oak leaf hydrangea was 12 inches tall when planted. Now it covered an area twenty five feet across and has been the mother plant of several more now spaced around the yard.

I bought the pagoda plant sight-unseen. What a surprise we had when it produced spectacular orange blooms over a foot tall that did look like a Chinese pagoda – with multiple stems and flowers in layers that decreased in circumference from the bottom to the top. And they were like butterfly magnets.

Standing there, remembering the years of work that had been involved, I could have shouted “Look at this great garden I have built!” Thankfully, I thought better of it and didn’t.

I thought of King Nebuchadnezzar who gazed at his city and said: “Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty? (Daniel 4:30 KJV) At that moment, God showed him who had the power and majesty. The King spent the next seven years eating grass like an ox.

I didn’t mimic his words. Not from fear of having to eat grass, but from the realization that without God I could have done nothing. I praised the Lord for the beautiful flowers and birds He created. I thanked Him for the strength to build the fence. I thanked Him for the time, resources and opportunities He had provided.

That day I knew what the Apostle Paul meant when he wrote that he had planted and Apollos had watered but God gave the increase (1 Corinthians 3:6). Paul was writing of spiritual growth, but in my physical garden I understood that while I may have built and planted and watered, it was God alone Who, in His power and majesty, had completed it and made it beautiful!

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

More Than Snapshot Faith

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Originally published 10/21/2012

“Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight”
(1 Peter 3:4)

Today is picture day at school and I may need a vacation to recover.

The aftermath of this morning’s preparation is like an explosion in a boutique.  I returned to the house after waving goodbye to my daughters on the school bus and surveyed the damage.

Headbands, combs, clips and ribbon left a trail from the bedroom to the kitchen and the living room.

Pajama bottoms and tops and rejected dresses were strewn across every piece of furniture in sight.

A pile of not-good-enough shoes sat beside one dresser and a stack of pink and white stockings next to the other.

The morning’s activities had tired me out.  Even though we had planned their outfits for a week and carefully laid out their chosen wardrobe the night before, the morning had still been crazy with changed minds, fresh inspiration, and forgotten items.

And then there was the meltdown over the headband.  It involved many tears, angst, stubbornness, threats of punishment and varying opinions about the definition of “matching.”

I imagine my house this morning looks a little like King Xerxes’ court appeared as he searched for a second wife.  It was the biggest beauty pageant of all time and after 12 months of preparation (“six months with oil of myrrh, and six months with perfumes and preparations for beautifying women”), it all came down to one night (Esther 2:12).  One chance to knock the socks off the king and be chosen as his bride.

Yet, Esther was not dependent on beauty treatments, over-the-top jewelry, and exotic perfumes.  Hers was the beauty of consistent character and long-term loveliness of the heart and so she found favor with the king and became queen of the Persian empire.

Like the other women in this great Persian beauty pageant, we Christians sometimes focus too much on dressing up and dousing ourselves with perfume.  Our emphasis is often on the “picture days” of the Christian walk, on the posing, the practiced smile, the activity, the special occasions.

But our faith isn’t about snapshots.

We don’t prep ourselves for five minutes in front of a camera.  Did we greet everyone with joy on Sunday morning?  Did we say the right things in Sunday school?  Did we wear the right clothes?  Did we know the words to the songs and nod our heads at appropriate points in the sermon?

Our heavenly king isn’t making judgments about our beauty based on one night’s impression. That means mistakes don’t determine the rest of our lives.  If you’ve blown it this morning with your kids, made some bad choices, or messed up how you handled that situation, God’s grace provides you with restoration, renewed mercy and the fresh start of a new day. 

That’s why Moses is about more than his disobedience when bringing water from a rock (Numbers 20).  It’s why David’s ministry didn’t end with adultery and murder or why Peter wasn’t cast off forever after denying Christ.

It also means the moments of triumph don’t set us up on permanent religious pedestals.  God isn’t deceived by the external beauty treatments we apply.  Peter wrote, “Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight” (1 Peter 3:4).

The beauty of our faith isn’t determined by those extraordinary seasons of spiritual victory, crisis or sin.  God is far more interested in the daily wardrobe of our soul and what happens when the cameras aren’t turned in our direction.

Oswald Chambers wrote:

“it does require the supernatural grace of God to live twenty-four house of every day as a saint, going through drudgery, and living an ordinary, unnoticed, and ignored existence as a disciple of Jesus.  It is ingrained in us that we have to do exceptional things for God—but we do not.  We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things of life, and holy on the ordinary streets, among ordinary people.”

My oldest daughter’s goal for picture day was to look just like a real princess.  My middle girl wanted to be “as cute as can be.”  And they succeeded. This one picture, though, won’t make them beautiful or ugly, cute or goofy.  They are always lovely and always loved.

It’s the same with us.  What’s far more important than how we look in a posed portrait is the ordinary, unnoticed, unexceptional holiness that we live out day after daily day. 

It’s the praying in the prayer closet, the doing dishes and washing clothes for your family.  It’s the ministry to a friend and your faithful, hard work at your job.  It’s responding with kindness and having patience with your spouse.  It’s putting the mistakes of the past behind you and it’s obeying God today with a cheerful heart.

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

Guest Post and Giveaway!

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We’re throwing a little party here today in honor of Pastor Appreciation Month.  So, grab a slice of cake and enjoy this post by John P. King over at Smoking Newspaper.  He’s a former pastor who has written a funny and insightful book about lessons learned in ministry.

And what would a party be without a present?

So, I’m going to give away a signed copy of his book.  All this week, I’d love to hear from you just one thing that you have prayed or will be praying for your pastor.  One word or a quick sentence is fine.  Let’s encourage and inspire one another to pray for our pastors this month. It’s okay to duplicate others’ ideas.  If it’s what’s on your heart, just share it!

Leave a comment here or on Facebook.  Each comment gets you an entry and I’ll draw the winner using random.org and announce it in Saturday’s post.

And by all means stop by John’s blog and check out his devotionals. He’s even posted the first chapter for you!  If you don’t win the book, you can find it on Amazon.com here: Don’t Smoke the Newspaper and Other Lessons Learned by a Pastor.

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When I was pastoring in Oregon, a young man approached me and told me that he believed the Lord wanted him to be a pastor.  As we talked, the first question he asked me as he wrestled with what God wanted him to do was, “What is pastoring like?”  I have to admit that I wasn’t ready for that question.  That one was a little different from the normal question, “What does a pastor do?”  I had heard that question a hundred times.  It’s a whole lot easier to answer about what one does than what something is like.  However, a job description complete with responsibilities of both the spiritual and mundane, and a list of daily, monthly, and yearly activities was not what he was after.  He wanted to know what he would be experiencing, not doing, if he followed the Lord’s call.

I thought for a moment and searched for a description of what my work, what my life, was like.  I took this young man to the pulpit of the church and had him look out over the seats.  I said, “Imagine all of the people of our church sitting in the pews.  Now understand that on any given week, half of them will be experiencing some kind of victory.  Life will be good for them.  Imagine that all the people on the left side of the sanctuary are standing up because they are handling life.  On the other hand, all the people on the right side are sitting down because life is handling them.  They are going through some kind of struggle; a temptation, or trial, or tragedy.  And as they go through, they will come to you looking for help commensurate to their need.”

“Next week, they will all switch places.  The people on the right will be standing in victory, and the people on the left will be down, slogging through the difficulties of life.  And the next week, they will switch back.  And then switch back. And back again.  And again.”

I explained to him that when dealing with the Christian life and the daily ministry we all should be engaged in, the apostle Paul wrote in Romans 12:15, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.”  That is what the pastorate was like; rejoicing and weeping.  Only the problem was, as I had mentioned earlier, the people who are toughing things out will always come to you. Unfortunately, the people in victory rarely do.  So you are always tilting to the ones who are “weeping,” whichever side of the aisle they are on.  The pastorate is a see-saw ride of moving from one hurting group to the next from one week to the next.

The look on his face said he was neither amused nor enthused.  Of course, I didn’t want to leave him like that, so I proceeded to tell him what a pastor does.  No, not the proverbial, full job description as mentioned earlier, but the one-line biblical definition.  Most people think that the pastor’s job is to minister.  You hire them to do the “ministry.”  However, Ephesians 4 makes it plain that the five-fold ministry, including pastors, was given to the church by Jesus Christ “…for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ.”  (Ephesians 4:12).  As a pastor, he would need to train the people to do the ministry; to rejoice with those that rejoice, and weep with those that weep.”  If he didn’t, then he would carry the load of “ministry” all by himself, and believe me, if he did, he would either be miserable or he wouldn’t be in the ministry for long.

With an understanding of what it’s like to be a pastor, what are my encouragements through all of this?  They are two-fold.

  1. Get engaged in the “ministry.”  It is not the pastor’s job to do it all.  It’s their job to   train us to do the ministry.  It’s not their job to build up the body of Christ.  It’s their job to equip us for the building up of the body of Christ.  If we aren’t doing our part, the body won’t grow and it will make their job exponentially more difficult.  However, if we are doing our part, then the church will grow and it will make the pastor’s job a delight.
  2. Rejoice!  Remember, the pastor has their own life and family problems to deal with too.  If the only things they ever hear from us are the hardships, it will only make them want to quit.  Pastors take great delight in their people’s triumphs and victories.  Trust  me, as a former pastor, I LOVED hearing about what God was doing in the lives of my congregation.  There was never any jealousy.  It didn’t matter if it was something “ministry” oriented or some kind of encounter with God in their daily lives.  Rejoicing  with my people always made my day.

So as God moves in your life, tell your shepherd.  They really do want to hear about it.  And don’t forget to take your place in the ministry.  Your pastor needs you.

Joy in Christ,
Rev. John P. King, M.A.
Copyright © 2012 John P. King, Used with permission
Verses from the NASB

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.