What a Letdown

February 6, 2015Leave a comment

My toddler and I have daily disagreements about what he needs.

I say he needs a nap. He thinks he needs unlimited playtime.

I say he needs healthy food, like the banana I sliced up on his highchair tray. He thinks he needs the cookie hidden at the top of the snack cabinet.

I say he needs a diaper change. He feels the need to scream at the top of his lungs, contort his body, writhe and wriggle to avoid being cleaned up.

After I win that battle and clean his little bottom, I say he needs a new diaper on. He runs away giggling because he thinks he needs to hang out in the nude.

I say he needs to come out of the bath when the water is cold and his fingers are wrinkling like prunes. He says he needs to stay in the bath. Period. Like, forever.

Momma says he needs to play with his books, his blocks, and his toy trucks. He thinks he needs to play with my smartphone.

I say he needs to color with the crayons on paper. He disagrees, believing he needs to color with the crayons on our books and then eat the crayon.

I tell him he needs to pet the cat gently or not at all. He thinks he needs to jump on the cat, pull the cat’s tail, sit on the cat and then stretch out with his whole body covering the cat and ignore the hissing and growling.

I know what he needs in order for him to be healthy, well-fed, well-rested, clean, and safe.

Yet, if I gave him what he thought that he needed, he’d be naked and starving, covered in his own feces, utterly exhausted and mauled to pieces by an irritated feline.

Perhaps part of growing up is learning what we really need.

Or perhaps we never truly learn.

After all, don’t I sometimes pray for what I need and discover through temporary disappointment and ultimate awe that God knew better? His “no,” though painful in the moment, becomes my salvation.

God loves us enough to give us what we really need rather than what we’ve mistakenly asked for.

Four men carried their paralyzed friend on a cot to see Jesus. They tried to shove through the mob that was packed into the house, but they failed.

So, they climbed onto the roof, hauled the stretcher up there, broke down the thatch, and lowered their friend into the middle of the room.

They pushed and pushed and pushed through every obstacle so their friend could have what he ‘needed.’

Mark writes:

And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven” (Mark 2:5 ESV).

Forgiveness?

Is this what they wanted?

In his book, The One-Year Experiencing God’s Presence Devotional, Chris Tiegreen writes:

Clearly they came for one thing: healing. They wanted their friend to walk. He wanted to walk. A miracle was all they had on their minds. So a declaration of forgiveness, while a nice spiritual touch, might have been a letdown.

Let down.

Is that how we feel when we come looking for the miracle, and He heals our heart instead?

So often we come to God with the practical need and the specific requests, telling Him our problems and sometimes even telling Him how to fix them.

His desire, though, isn’t just for our best; it’s for our spiritual best. It’s to break down every obstacle to His presence and cut through every barrier to intimacy with Him.

We ask to walk.

He grants forgiveness first.

That man stood up off that mat and walked out of the house with his friends. His physical need was met. But more importantly, Jesus answered his true spiritual need first.

And, what do any of us really need?

A better job? A healed marriage? An end to conflict? A bigger house? A good doctor’s report?

Yes. Maybe.

But more than that…..we need mercy. We need grace. We need His Presence. We need hope. We need forgiveness.

When we seek Him, truly seek Him, searching for His face, listening for His voice, longing to know Him and to talk with Him, He gives us what we really need.

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you (Matthew 6:33 ESV).

Lord, what I really need is You.

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, is available now! To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Come Messy

February 4, 2015February 4, 20151 Comment

My son slipped the yogurt out of the fridge while I was packing school lunches for my daughters.

He carried it delicately over to the living room coffee table. Then he shoved his hand down through the foil lid and started eating it.

With his fingers.

When I caught him with his snack, he popped his hands up to the top of his head, covering his light fuzz of hair in vanilla yogurt.

Bath time!

He eats with his hands. He plays with his food. He dumps out any drinking cups we leave lying around and then splashes in the mess.

He has a magnet for the cat food and would love to lay down in the litter box and act like it’s a day at the beach.

In the morning, he makes a mess of breakfast and makes a mess of playing.

Then he hears that first hint of sound from behind the closed door of our bedroom. It’s his clue—Dad is awake and getting ready for work!

My baby boy runs to the door and stands crying until we open it up so he can throw himself against Daddy’s legs. For the rest of the morning routine, Daddy has to brush his teeth one-handed and eat his breakfast with a toddler on his lap, and shift the toddler from hip to hip while he puts on his coat.

Daddy is here. My son will not let him go, not until we pry his hands and body away and Mom holds him tight as he cries and watches Daddy head out the door.

Usually, we’re in a mad scramble to wash my little one’s hands before he snags onto Dad’s pants leg in the morning and refuses to let go. After all, Dad hardly wants to head to work with vanilla yogurt and banana all over himself.

But I read through this verse again this week:

but Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:14 ESV).

We’ve heard it a million times and I’ve heard the sermon illustrations before.

Come to Jesus like a little child:

Come trusting.

Come simple.

Come excited.

Come small and insignificant.

Come unhindered.

And it’s true. All of it.

Jesus welcomes us just as we are. He invites us! He’s pleased to see us and pleased to spend time with us.

photo courtesy of Viktor Janacek, picjumbo

But there’s something more, I realize, as I wipe my son’s face and hands yet again this morning.

Come messy.

Too often we’re frantically scrubbing ourselves up before we let Jesus see us.

We think our prayers have to be ‘just right.’ We think our Bible time has to be ‘just so.’

We put off spending time with Him because we haven’t gotten it all together.

But the easiest way for Satan to defeat our prayer lives is to tell us prayer has to be hard and that we’re not good enough, so why bother even trying?

Maybe we think that’s in Scripture somewhere: “Come to Me when you have it all together and know how to pray for 30 minutes and haven’t lost your temper in a week and have had a 20-minute quiet time at 5 a.m.”

But that’s not what Jesus says at all.

He says to come as a child.

He also says:

“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28 NASB).

In A Praying Life, Paul Miller writes:

“The criteria for coming to Jesus is weariness. Come overwhelmed with Life. Come with your wandering mind. Come messy.“

We don’t have to pretend in His presence. We don’t have to be something we aren’t. We don’t have to be perfect.

When we’re a mess and when we’ve messed up, just come. Come without guile. Be real and honest. No need to clean up and make ourselves sound “holy.”

Just. Come.

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 book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, is available now! To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

If I Put a Spoon Under My Pillow, Will It Snow?

January 30, 2015January 29, 2015Leave a comment

“This is it.”

My kids are desperate for snow. More specifically, they are desperate for a snow day.

Apparently, so are their teachers.

In early January, the tiniest picture of a snowflake appeared on my weather forecast. The details said wintry mix overnight, no accumulation, yada yada yada, blah blah blah.

My kindergartner arrived home from school that day with specific instructions from her teachers.

Place a spoon under your pillow.

Wear your pajamas inside out.

Flush an ice cube down the toilet.

Her older sister calls out, “And do a snow dance! You have to do the snow dance.”

It was simple math to them. Do this + this +this + this = guaranteed snow day.

It did not snow.

This week, snow was again in the forecast. My Facebook filled with chatter and pictures of weather maps all foretelling the great snowstorm of 2015.

It snow-dusted, just enough to turn the world a little white. Not enough to cover the grass even. Not enough to delay anything, much less close it down.

I don’t mind really. I enjoy snow well enough, but only when it’s outside and I’m inside with a book and a cup of cocoa.

But my kids mind. A lot. They are Virginia girls, desperate for at least a few sizable snowfalls a season.

Every single time there is a whisper of a snowflake or two falling in the night, our town is abuzz, the Wal-Mart shelves clear out of milk and bread, and my children brace themselves for a real and true snow day.

“This is it.” That’s what they think.

Maybe Joseph felt the same way.

All those years, he waited and waited, holding on perhaps to a distant memory of those visions from God of his family bowing down to him.

He waited in a pit while his brothers plotted his death, and then settled for selling him into slavery.

He waited as an Egyptian slave, working faithfully and with integrity for his master.

He waited when he was falsely accused and thrown into an Egyptian jail.

So many times, he might have thought, “This is it. This is my big moment of rescue and redemption!!”

But it wasn’t.

There was the night in the Egyptian prison when Pharaoh’s cupbearer and baker came to Joseph with dreams they couldn’t understand. Joseph interpreted the dreams, but then asked for help, saying to the cupbearer:

But when all goes well for you, remember that I was with you. Please show kindness to me by mentioning me to Pharaoh, and get me out of this prison. ¹⁵For I was kidnapped from the land of the Hebrews, and even here I have done nothing that they should put me in the dungeon (Genesis 40:14-15 HCSB).”

This is it.

That’s what Joseph thought. “Here’s my chance!”

Then the cupbearer forgot about Joseph for another two years.

Waiting is hard enough. But getting your hopes up and then discovering disappointment, is even harder.

Joseph could have given up. Maybe he did.

Years later, though, that cupbearer finally did remember Joseph. And, perhaps when Joseph least expected it, God came through.

In God’s perfect timing. In God’s perfect way. God came through.

Had the cupbearer remembered Joseph years before like he had promised, Joseph might have made it out of prison. Maybe. Perhaps. We’re not really sure. Pharaoh could have just dismissed the cupbearer’s story as little more than a novelty.

But in this precise moment, the Pharaoh needed someone to interpret his dream, and Joseph was the one to do it.

Interpreting that cupbearer’s dream had seemed like a wasted opportunity, yet years later that is what God used to rescue Joseph from prison.

What we do today might not seem to matter, but God doesn’t waste our faithfulness.

His timing is precise and perfect, even when it doesn’t feel like it in the moment, even when disappointment presses in, and even when the waiting feels like it can collapse your heart.

We can’t place our hope in circumstances or people like a forgetful cupbearer.

We can’t always decipher God’s plans and predict when “this” really is it.

We can’t make it snow despite all of our snow dances and inside-out-pajamas.

We can, however, live God-glorifying lives day-in and day-out, being faithful even to the most mundane tasks that earn us no worldly recognition or honor.

Our hope, after all, isn’t in circumstances or people or ‘connections’ or our own abilities. They will take us on an endless emotional roller-coaster of misplaced expectations and inevitable disappointment.

Our hope, though, can be rock solid, unshakeable and steadfast when we place it in Him and Him alone.

“Rest in God alone, my soul, for my hope comes from Him” (Psalm 62:5 HCSB).

Why won’t anyone sit in the back of the minivan?

January 28, 2015January 28, 20154 Comments

The middle seat in our minivan is prime vehicular real estate.

My daughters make mad dashes to the minivan in order to hop in that prize seat first. No one, after all, wants to sit in the back.

And, nothing gets these girls ready to rumble like one sister hogging middle seat privileges. They have some sort of tracking sense, a radar for what’s “fair” or “unfair.”

Their memory tangles up with rhetoric. I don’t think they really keep accurate records of seating assignments every time we drive in the minivan, but somehow they sound like they are testifying in a court of law:

“I have not gotten to ride in the middle seat for one whole week! You have had 6 turns more than me and now you cannot sit in the middle seat again until I have gotten to sit there 6 times.”

There are tears and the occasional meltdown. Sister pits herself against sister. They take sides and form alliances to gang up on the offending sibling and rain down minivan justice.

Let’s be honest. It’s a whole ugly mess sometimes.

And maybe the ugly comes out in us some days, too, as we fearfully try to scramble into the ‘best place’ or grab our own chance at God’s favor and blessing.

I’m not exactly sure how Abraham did it, but I want to learn from him how to stop fretting over my position and start rejoicing in my relationship with Christ.

He and his nephew Lot stood high enough to overlook the land. Their employees had been fighting. Abraham and Lot were both too wealthy to travel together any longer. They needed separate space and well-defined territory.

So, there they stood, preparing to divvy it all up: “This is mine. That is yours.”

Abraham let Lot choose first.

Maybe I’d be a mess of worries and desperation in that moment, wanting to protect my blessing, hope, and future. I’d probably be praying under my breath: “Please don’t choose the best spot. Please don’t choose the best spot.”

Or, at the most, I’d offer to flip a coin to make the whole process more fair.

But Abraham trusted.

Abraham knew that nothing Lot did in that moment could hinder, interrupt or destroy God’s perfect plan for his life.

He didn’t have to push or shove his way to the front of any line. He didn’t have to fight or rumble in order to stake out prime territory. He didn’t grab for the ‘biggest slice of the pie’ or scramble ahead of everyone to try to ‘get the best seat.’

Maybe we’re worried about that sometimes. We see the blessings of God as if there’s a limited supply. If He blesses her, then that leaves less blessing for me.

Or maybe this world seems like such a noisy place and social media has only turned up the volume. Sometimes it feels like we need to shout in order to be heard.

But I want to be Abraham.

I want to trust God enough not to fret or worry over territorial choices or the fear that someone will end up with a better plot of land or a greater blessing.

I want to be able to extend my hand and say, “You first…..”

I want to stop pushing and striving to get ahead and simply trust God to take me where He wants me to go.

Lot chose the best looking land, of course. He snatched up the prime real estate in a selfish effort to look out for himself.

He couldn’t see the corruption and enmity and culture of sin that ruled the land he was choosing: Sodom and Gomorrah.

Sometimes, the blessing we’re so sure we want is the worst possible future God could give us.

He sees. He knows. He loves us. Sometimes loving us means telling us “no” in the moment.

We can trust Him.

Instead, the Psalmist said,

He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me (Psalm 18:19 NIV).

When we trust Him, He delights in us indeed.

When we choose humility over pride, He sees and takes joy.

He will bring us to that spacious place, and it will be perfect, just right, hand-picked and God-designed for you.

Dear Daughter, Remember That Nightmare About Divorce?

January 23, 2015January 22, 20158 Comments

Dear daughter,

Remember that morning when I found you slipping quietly out of the bathroom into a corner of the house all alone?

I stopped that mad rush of cereal pouring, hair brushing, and shoe finding to smooth down your wild morning hair and ask if you were okay.

Those tears, the loud kind that burst uncontrollably out of your soul, they shook your whole body and I couldn’t understand what you were saying because those words stuck right in your throat.

A nightmare.

I rocked you just as if you were still my baby girl (even if your head touches my shoulders now).

What was it about?

I expect monsters, fire, death or even a bad grade on a test.

But you tell me one….slow….word….at a time: I dreamed you…..and……dad……got……divorced.

You stun me. We hadn’t fought. There was no tension in the home. No need to fear.

Hadn’t you watched us hug and kiss goodbye every morning? Hadn’t you seen me stop cooking that dinner and setting that table every evening to hug your dad and welcome him home for the night?

Why are you afraid?

But it wasn’t really about us at all. It’s about a scary world where marriages don’t often last and your friends split their time between dad’s house and mom’s house. It’s about a friend telling you, “My dad doesn’t love my mom anymore. He doesn’t love any of us.”

Even the safe place seems like shaky ground.

I tell you the truth.

How we are happily married and being together even now is joy.

I tell you how seriously we take that vow we made when we said, “I will love you forever” and slipped those rings onto our fingers.

Sure, we meant romance love and feeling love, but we also meant committed love, covenant love, I-will-make-our-marriage-a-priority love.

Divorce smashes the lives of good people, Christian people, godly women and honorable men. It’s real and ugly and I don’t want to sugarcoat the danger.

Sometimes even the best wife who has done everything right walks that hard road of aloneness and betrayal.

But I want you to know this, too. There were decisions I made as a teenage girl, as a single young woman, that made this marriage I have beautiful–not perfect perhaps, but lovely—from the start.

I want you to hear this wisdom: sometimes a good marriage starts when you’re 13 and that first boy asks you to the school dance. Remember this:

1. Do what God has called you to do—Don’t worry about boys, love, dating, or marriage. Focus on Jesus. Grow beautiful and strong in Him. Go to the college that’s right for you, not the one a boyfriend attends. Fulfill your calling and your potential. Don’t look for love; let God bring it to you.

2. Wait for God’s best—That first boy who asks you out isn’t necessarily “the one.” You are beautiful, smart, funny, strong, kind….Boys might swarm around you; don’t be swayed. I saved myself body, soul, and mind for the one man who was God’s best for me and your dad is totally worth it.

3. Make sure He’s in love with Jesus—Attending church twice a year, saying you love God but couldn’t be bothered with discipleship or Bible-reading or Christian service? That’s not loving Jesus. That’s calling yourself a Christian without the fruit. If you want to respect your husband as a spiritual leader, he needs to show that leadership before the wedding day.

4. Fall in love with your eyes wide open—You won’t find a perfect man. No person is perfect and no marriage is perfect either. Know what his flaws are in advance and be committed with a plan to love him, not change him.

5. Ask hard questions–Some couples marry without talking about kids, career plans, church, or money. Ask the hard questions before marriage. Don’t just shrug your shoulders and figure love will carry all. Love dies on battlefields like those all the time.

6. Give and Receive Respect–If he annoys you with stupid jokes, doesn’t understand or care about what you have to say, can’t hold a job, loses his temper easily, or embarrasses you in public now, he sure will later. Marry someone it’s easy to respect and be proud of. And, make sure he treats you as the precious gift from God that you are, valuing your opinion, not dominating you or devaluing you. Paul wrote to “Outdo one another in showing honor” (Romans 12:10 ESV). Make that your goal because kindness always matters. It matters when you’re dating, when you’re first married, and when you’ve been married 20 years. Give respect and kindness; expect respect and kindness

7. Build the friendship–That friendship you develop before marriage is what you should cultivate every year after “I do.” So when the kids are grown and gone, the freshness of young love fades, and your body ages and changes, you’ll still be best friends.

Marriage can be beautiful and holy, a sacred place where God transforms us to be more like Christ, where joy grows, selfless and sacrificial love blooms, and you help each other produce fruit as individuals and as one together.

This was my prayer for my own marriage on my wedding day. This is what I pray for you even now:

For because of our faith, he has brought us into this place of highest privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to actually becoming all that God has had in mind for us to be (Romans 5:2 The Living Bible).

Love,
Mom.

Having Hope When You’ve Been Stepped On

January 5, 20151 Comment

My daughter was about two-and-a-half when she stepped on a butterfly.

We do this every spring as we prepare for Easter, order a cup of caterpillars and follow their journey to new life. We watch the change, marvel again at the miracle: how the tomb doesn’t always mean death; maybe it means resurrection.

We remember that we are the ones who die to self and then gain new life in Christ, like caterpillars willingly spinning themselves into tight dormancy only to be made new.

We watched those caterpillars climb all over the tiny plastic cup for about a week. Then they scaled the sides of the cup, flipped themselves upside down and wrapped themselves into a chrysalis.

They looked dead for a week.

One morning, I shuffled around the kitchen, moving through routine with my eyes barely cracked open. Poured cereal. Made tea. Oversaw teeth-brushing and hair-brushing.

Then I saw the wings.

The chrysalis had cracked open and there in the morning light sat our first butterfly, fanning his wings slowly, testing the air, while the other caterpillars remained entombed.

Over the next day or so, the other new butterflies pushed their way out and flexed their wings.

We squeezed drops of sugar water on freshly cut chrysanthemums and watched the butterflies strengthen. First they sat in stillness. Then they hopped to the bottom and explored. Then they started flying around in circles, eager for freedom.

So, we set them free.

We gathered into the garden in the warm sun of a spring Saturday and one by one released each butterfly into our garden.

But we forgot to explain the difference between butterflies and bugs to my youngest daughter, I suppose.

When one of the butterflies flew up and then back to the ground, she squashed it. Quick as any reflex, she just stomped down her tiny foot on the ‘pest’ just like we would any spider.

We all tried to stop her. It was like a slow motion moment in a film, with us leaping to try to rescue the butterfly and prevent the impending doom, but failing in the end.

Amazingly enough, that butterfly still lived. We eased him and his bruised wing onto a flower where he could enjoy some food without needing to fly.

Maybe you’ve been that butterfly.

Eager to fly. Excited for freedom. Hoping for beauty.

Then crushed, bruised, broken.

Maybe you’ve started this year with anticipation, holding your breath for that first sign of good news.

And you’ve already felt like a giant foot has squashed you to the ground.

Maybe it seems like nothing ever changes even though you desperately long for it to change.

Proverbs 13:12 says:

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.

Hope isn’t a fickle whim, a fanciful impression that maybe good things will come your way.

Hope is a steadfast knowledge, an anchor of truth that without a doubt you know: God is good and He will take care of you.

And when you feel a little bruised and battered, like a butterfly crushed at that first taste of freedom, hope can feel a little shaky, a little elusive, a little hard to see in the deep of the dark.

Surely Noah must have had those days, floating on that ark long, long after the rain had ceased and the world was covered in a blanket of endless water.

How long, Lord? When will this end, Lord? Will we ever get off this ark, Lord?

Are we stuck here forever? Will we walk on dry land again? Can we please live without the stench of a floating zoo in our nostrils day and night?

He started sending out messengers of hope: ravens and doves.

He was desperate for the sign, the assurance of dry, solid ground.

The dove brought him an olive leaf. More than that, the dove brought him renewed hope.

Max Lucado writes:

“An olive leaf. Noah would have been happy to have a bird but to have the leaf! This leaf was more than foliage; this was promise. The bird brought more than a piece of a tree; it brought hope. For isn’t that what hope is? Hope is an olive leaf—evidence of dry land after flood… (From A Love Worth Giving)

And so, when we are weary and defeated, we can seek hope. We can send out those doves and ravens and ask God for a sign of dry land after flood.

And so, when we are strong, we can be the dove for another. We can bring olive leaves to the hurting. We can bring reminders of hope and God’s faithfulness to those who can’t see the solid ground.

Do you need an olive leaf today? Do you need to bring an olive leaf to someone else who is hurting?

Here are 30 Bible Verses on Hope to help.

Nobody wants to drink lukewarm water in this house: One Word 2015

January 2, 20155 Comments

My daughter tells me her water is “soggy.”

And my other girl chimes in: “I don’t want this old water. I need fresh water.”

Then she bops her head up and down for emphasis: “Really. It needs to be FRESH.”

I pick up the cups of water I poured just two hours before and dump them into my plants. At least foliage appreciates lukewarm refreshment.

Or, perhaps I’m feeling particularly savvy that day, and I pop in an ice cube before handing these daughters the same cups of water.

Either way, my youngest girl guzzles it down and lets out a satisfied “ahhhh” in gratitude.

It’s fresh water she wants. Cold. Newly poured.

Even if the water she has isn’t stagnant or stench-ridden, hot or unhealthy, it sat just a little too long in that Tinkerbell cup and now she needs new.

Normally, as a mom I protest a little. Two hours is not enough time to de-freshen water, I tell her. It’s not ice-cold, but it isn’t ‘soggy,’ or undrinkable.

It still prevents dehydration.

But my soul takes this in because surely she’s discovered what I’m longing for.

For “Fresh.”

My Christian walk isn’t stagnant or rancid, but still I long for ‘new’ and ‘more.’ I don’t to walk out of 2015 the same way that I walked in.

Each year, I choose this One Word and a Scripture to meditate on all year long to focus my heart, mind, and life.

The first year, I chose “Breathe” (Psalm 62:2 MSG).

Then last year, I spent 12 months meditating on “Presence” (Exodus 33:14 NIV).

These were spiritually life-changing for me, not just a random New Year’s task that seems so important on January 1st but loses all meaning by January 31st and not just a cute catchphrase that is temporarily inspiring but ultimately meaningless.

So I prayed over this year’s focus and searched Scripture until I read it:

A generous person will prosper; whoever refreshes others will be refreshed (Proverbs 11:25 NIV)

Re-fresh.

Already, I relax into the grace of this.

So often, New Year’s is a time of heaping burdens on our backs.

Resolutions. Reading plans. Prayer plans. Devotional plans. Health plans. Schedule plans. Clutter plans. Relational plans. Educational and job plans.

This is what we want to do, do, do this year.

Piled on top of that are the bricks we haul around of recrimination, regret and self-condemnation because of all the plans that failed last year and the year before that.

There are the projects we didn’t finish and the resolutions we let fall by the wayside. There are the 15 pounds we were supposed to lose. There is the study we started and never completed.

So, we carry “Failure” from one year onto the next and chain the new year before it’s even begun.

What if we started Fresh?

What if we let the past go and we eased into the new year with devotion and relationship with God instead of any agenda or program?

What if we take this in?

he leads me beside quiet waters,
he refreshes my soul (Psalm 23:2-3 NIV).

He does the work. He leads; we follow. He offers us the cool water to drink and we guzzle it down and let it drench our parched soul.

The beauty in this promise is that as we pour out encouragement, blessing and generous helpings of grace to others, He will refresh us.

Proverbs 11:25 tells us that God looks after the generous. He refreshes those who refresh others.

Not with leftovers or scraps or day-old water, either, but with the deeply satisfying draft of the Living Water only He can give.

I can try to fill up from the tap of the world or the tap of self-accomplishment or the tap of taking care of me, me, me.

But it will be ‘soggy’ and old, tepid and bitter.

It’s Jesus I need. And not the Spiritual experiences I had ten years ago or five years ago or yesterday.

I need Jesus—Fresh—-now—-newly poured into my life day after solid day.

This year, I am praying that God will do this work:

Refresh me with His Word: (Psalm 19:7).

Refresh me with rest in His presence: (Psalm 23:2-3).

Refresh me through service: (Proverbs 11:25).

Refresh me through a pure heart (Acts 3:19).

Refresh me with His people (1 Corinthians 16:18).

It’s strength we need for the weary days and revival we need for the dead and broken within. It’s a filling up so Christ is splashing over the tops of our lives so that we can pour out to others with generosity and grace. It’s rest in His presence rather than perpetual motion, and it’s new, cold, Living Water we need from it’s only true Source.

Refresh us, Lord, we pray.

What Can Make You Lose Every Time

December 29, 20143 Comments

I watched as this college friend pulled clothes from her suitcase and packed them into a duffel bag for the Thanksgiving weekend at home.

She still had an empty dresser and a full suitcase 3/4 of the way through the college semester.

I am not like this. I am an insta-unpacker. The moment I arrive at a hotel, I nest. I empty every bag, tuck every item away, fill the mini-kitchen and set up the bathroom sink.

When we return home, I’m going to unpack no matter how late it is. I’m going to start that load of laundry and pull out the toiletries because it cannot wait until morning, not if I want to get any sleep.

Maybe I looked lost in confusion as I watched my friend move clothes from one bag to another because she stopped to explain it to me.

It wasn’t procrastination or laziness.

It was perfectionism. It was that ugly enemy that paralyzes us with the lie: If you can’t do it perfectly, then why do it at all?

“I was so busy,” she said, “I knew I didn’t have time to put my clothes away just right, so I left them in the suitcase.”

Beth Moore wrote:

Perfectionists always lose (Esther).

It’s the same way my son chose to crawl rather than walk for weeks and weeks. People asked me, “Can he walk yet?”

Yes, he could walk.

Did he always choose to walk?

No. It amused him to walk a little from room to room or place to place. But when he wanted to get somewhere with certainty and with speed, he dropped to all fours and crawled like a rocket.

Perfectionism does this; it paralyzes us into this one place of development. We’re comfortable here. We move along well enough. This is what we know.

Why choose stumbling? Why choose uncertain steps and potential embarrassment?

This is what we lose when we demand perfection from ourselves: We lose the journey of grace, the way God walks alongside, the way He steadies us with His strong hand and smiles at our progress. The way He cheers us along and encourages us on the weary days to persevere and not give up, to get up and try once more because He is with us, after all.

Jesus said these words to His disciples and it could have broken over their weary souls like the cracking of a whip, so they felt trampled and beaten and hopeless:

You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:48 ESV).

Be…..perfect?

It’s tucked in just one tiny verse after the beatitudes and after Jesus tells them not to retaliate against their enemies, not to get divorced, not to lust, not to sin when they’re angry, and to love their enemies.

Yes, do all this. And be perfect.

That would have caused me some religious whiplash. If I were taking sermon notes on that hillside, I’d have written it down on my bulletin with exclamation marks and references to look up later in case the preacher was wrong.

Hadn’t the Pharisees preached legalism and works-based faith? The religious elite told them to be perfect, be perfect, be perfect and if possible, be more perfect, because that’s what it took to please God.

Here I am at the end of my 12-month pursuit of the presence of Christ, and I’m ending the year with this: Abandon Perfection.

But how do you move on past a verse like this?

Be perfect? That’s impossible. I’m a mess some days, broken and faulty and prone to sin.

So, Jesus, does that mean we’re hopelessly blocked from Your presence and Your favor because this perfection just trips us all up?

Oh, but here’s the grace we perfectionists need.

Ravi Zacharias writes:

Perfection, then, is not a change in the essential character but the completion of a course...We can never be who God is, but we can complete the task he assigns us to do” (The Grand Weaver).

Jesus didn’t mean we had to attain that holiness on our own or get everything right and never falter or sin. He knows we can’t.

He asks us, though, to move forward. Take those steps. Make progress. Obey Him.

When He tells us to move, move. When He plants us, bloom. When He leads us, follow. When He prompts us, go. When He nudges us, yield.

Perfectionists lose because we get so focused on the end that we despair in the middle and simply give up. Or we never begin in the first place.

But God asks us to just take a walk with Him, rest in His presence, trust His direction, enjoy His company. Then we’ll be where He wants us to be, with Him….and that’ll be perfect.

To read more about this 12-month journey of pursuing the presence of Christ, you can follow the links below! Won’t you join me this month as I ‘Abandon Perfection?

Christmas Devotions: When you find something good, don’t keep it to yourself

December 26, 20141 Comment

It’s an annual surprise.

Some afternoon, usually in March, I hang up my gray winter coat for the last time of the season.

There’s no official ceremony or anything and the groundhog’s shadow-predictions never prove perfectly accurate.

It’s just a simple thing. One day I casually drape my coat across the hook in my closet and there it lingers through spring, summer and fall.

Then, on a morning (usually in November), I stop deceiving myself into thinking that sweaters are enough to keep my teeth from chattering. I reach past my fall jacket in the closet, pull down that same wool coat from its trusty hook, slip my hands into the sleeves and dip my hand into the pocket.

Whatever I left there eight months before is what I’ll discover on that first pocket search of the winter season.

I’ve pulled out Mom-things, like pacifiers and baby socks (don’t all moms pop baby socks into pockets)?

Grocery store receipts unfold like magician’s handkerchiefs—always one more emerges from hidden corners.

There are pens and paper clips, ticket stubs, rocks for my daughter’s collection, hair clips and ponytail holders, cough drops, and maybe even tissues (unused, thankfully).

There’s generally little treasure among the trash. Mostly my life out and about with my kids consists of periodically dumping the overflow of their stuff into my pockets when my hands are full.

Occasionally, though, I reach into that winter coat for the first time in November and pull out coins. Better yet, a dollar or two or three….or even ten.

That’s enough to make this girl happy dance in the middle of my closet.

Then, pulling myself together, I announce the news to my kids, post a happy-face announcement on Facebook and tell my husband the story later that night.

Discoveries, after all, are meant for sharing. They’re the kind of spill-all-over joy that we can’t keep quiet about.

Maybe that’s how the Shepherds felt standing on that darkened hillside with snoring sheep.

Perhaps it even explains what the angels were doing, singing their praise songs in the night sky to an audience of somnolent herdsman about a Savior being born.

All of heaven exploded with the “good news that will cause great joy for all the people!” (Luke 2:9), the Messiah, the Lord. They couldn’t contain the excitement!

One angel made the announcement, but others crowded the sky and joined in the chorus: “Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God” (Luke 2:13).

The angel’s joyful news sent the shepherds tumbling all over themselves to see “this thing that has happened, which the Lord had told us about” (Luke 2:15).

When we hear good news, don’t we long to see with our own eyes, to experience this joy ourselves?

That’s what sharing our testimony does: it ignites passion, it incites curiosity, it encourages a searching and finding of the truth, the Savior, of salvation.

Then, when the shepherds found the manger and peered over the corners at the baby-King, “they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them” (Luke 2:17-18).

They had discovered Jesus and no way could they keep that quiet.

No matter how many times Jesus asked those he healed in his ministry to keep quiet about it, still they rushed home and called up the local newspaper to tell their story.

Jesus himself finally told one man to:

“Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you” Mark 5:19.

Surely his story is our story, too. We have this testimony, of what He has done and the mercy He has shown.

Our God-stories, the discoveries of how He’s been so good to us, those moments of amazing grace and unexpected mercy in the middle of the daily grind, are all meant to be shared with others.

And the miracle of Christmas is ours to tell and ours to share; it’s the hope that others need and the joy this desperate world is searching for.

So, sing it! So, tell it! Don’t let that familiar feel of your salvation, the way apathy closes us in a cozy blanket of complacency, ever let us overlook the awe of this:

God loved us so.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16

Originally posted October 19, 2012

Dear Daughter: Welcome to Double Digits…..

December 19, 2014December 19, 20141 Comment

Dear Victoria,

I remember the day I turned 10 years old.

I stood in the kitchen next to the fridge, still in my pajamas. My eyes blinked away sleep and my hair was a mess, and I ran my hands down the sides of my PJ’s to smooth them out.

My dad said, “Did you expect to look or feel different today?”

That shook me awake.

I hadn’t really been thinking anything. I just stood in the moment without being all philosophical or deep.

But I guess it looked like I was examining my progress in life. Had I grown overnight? Changed? Matured?

Was I a different person today than I was when I stood in that same kitchen yesterday and chose between cereal, oatmeal and a Pop Tart?

Of course, growth doesn’t happen all in one night. One magic 8-hour stretch of sleep doesn’t change who you are or what you look like.

But this year, all year, our family and friends have looked at you and then shaken their heads in wonder at me.

“I can’t believe it….”

That’s what they say.

They don’t even have to finish the thought. I know what they mean. We think of you as a baby still and yet there you are standing so tall and thin, that long blond hair waving down your shoulders.

You may be growing up, but there are still little wisdom-pearls this momma wants to give you. Now that you are days away from your tenth birthday, here’s what I want you to know:

You are loved

We sat around that table last month and you girls asked me the same questions we’ve been over time and time again. “What was I like as a baby, mom?” “What did I do?” “What was my first word?”

I told the stories again–How you were so strong, Victoria. Even in the hospital you held your head up that first day as if you were 4 months old, and doctors and nurses marveled at you.

Then I said how you cried and cried and you would scream it all out and fight for what you wanted.

But it turns out that story I was telling hurt your heart. You felt like I was picking at you, like your sisters were better babies or somehow this was a competition of performance and you hadn’t measured up.

Beloved girl, never forget that you are loved.

This world will scream lies at you. Sometimes your own feelings will bully you.

Hold on to the truth: No matter what, you are totally and thoroughly loved by us and by God. We adore you and we always have.

Even before I ever laid eyes on your beautiful face and you gripped my fingers with super-baby-strength, I loved you completely.

Own your own faith

That day you cried about my ‘baby stories,’ I told you to hold on to your testimony. We saw that change in you. It was this dramatic turning.

Yes, you worked us hard as new parents. But that moment you prayed for Jesus to be your Savior, your heart turned over. All your strength, determination and focus transformed with salvation into solid rock faith.

You stand up for what is right. You set your heart and mind on things above.

You pour your heart and mind and soul into everything you do, working harder, harder, harder than those around you. You set goals and you push at them without giving up.

Keep at it, my girl. In life, yes. In faith all the more.

You’re going to step out into the big wide world and find that people don’t believe what you believe. People don’t obey God. The world is broken and wrecked with sin.

You may be mocked, ostracized, tempted.

Do not forget your testimony. You are a Jesus-girl and the older you get, the more that faith needs to be yours apart from your dad and me.

Don’t just listen to me read the Bible—-read it. Don’t let me pray for you—-pray. Don’t watch me worship—–worship. In the end, it’s got to be between you and God.

Now is the time to pick up your faith in your own two hands.

We are in this together

Maybe sometimes during the next few years, it’ll feel like no one understands.

Maybe you’ll feel alone. Maybe it’ll seem like the world is against you. Maybe your dad and I will appear harsh or stern or out of touch. Maybe you’ll look at us and wish you were allowed to roll your eyes because these parents of yours are loony or even mean. Maybe you’ll feel embarrassed to ask or start those tough conversations with me.

But, baby girl, we are in this together.

You and me, girlfriend.

I am never your enemy. I am not against you. I am for you. Always.

And this space between us is a safe and honest space. You can tell me. You can ask me. You can sob it all out even when it’s ugly crying.

No one is gonna celebrate you, pray for you, love on you, or have your back more than your dad and I do.

Sweet girl, there is so much more I want to say, but really—doesn’t it all come down to that? Always remember, you are loved.

Love,

~Mom~

We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them (1 John 4:16 NLT)

^{The LORD your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing (Zephaniah 3:17)}

Heather C. King – Room to Breathe

"He's solid rock under my feet, breathing room for my soul" Psalm 62:1-2 (MSG).

Tag: devotions for moms

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Re-fresh.

Refresh us, Lord, we pray.

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Christmas Devotions: When you find something good, don’t keep it to yourself

Dear Daughter: Welcome to Double Digits…..

My devotional for today:

My devotional for today:

My devotional for today:

My devotional for today:

My devotional for today:

My devotional for today:

Re-fresh.

Refresh us, Lord, we pray.

My devotional for today:

My devotional for today:

My devotional for today:

My devotional for today: