Tag: devotions for women

That’s What He Said

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Psalm 33When my middle daughter turned six, we took her and some friends to the circus for her birthday.

Before the show, we ordered six Happy Meals from McDonald’s.  The cashier asked me each time, “Is this for a boy or a girl?”

For a girl.  All girls.  Six—yes, six—girls.

When we finally filled up every cup, unwrapped all the straws, and handed around the food, the manager popped around the corner to see us.  “Six girls!  Shew.  I just had to see all six of them.”

We assured him only three belonged to us.

At the circus, the birthday girl sat next to her friends on one end of the row.  My husband and I sat all the way on the other end. 

After each act, though, my brand new six-year-old shot all the way across six seats to climb into her Daddy’s lap.

She was scared.  Every time the music grew the least bit dramatic, she was sure the dragon in the show was coming out and it was a real dragon and it wanted to get her.

Sometimes you just need to be safe with Dad.

We need nothing less from God, open arms and the chance to climb up into His lap when life grows tense and what’s waiting behind the curtain feels ominous and overwhelming.

Later that night, I asked my girl, “Did you enjoy your birthday trip to the circus?”

“Yes,” she raved, “It was fun.  But I didn’t like that my friends kept saying, ‘The dragon is coming next!’ even when it wasn’t.  And they said “The dragon is real,” and it wasn’t.”

“Didn’t Mommy and Daddy tell you the dragon wasn’t real and you didn’t need to be afraid?”

“Mmmm-hmmmm.”

“And who do you think is most likely to tell the truth about things like that?  Mom and Dad or other kids?”

Pause for silent thought.

These were just friends, sweet, good friends who weren’t out to scare her or trick her.  They were making guesses and playing games.

Even so, she chose to listen to mistaken experts and believed their well-meaning false reports.

In the book of Matthew, some phrases jump off that page chapter after chapter:

“All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet . .. ” (Matthew 1:22).
“For this is what the prophet has written” (Matthew 2:5).
“And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet” (Matthew 2:15).
“Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled” (Matthew 2:17).
“So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets” (Matthew 2:23).
“This is He who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah” (Matthew 3:3).
This was “to fulfill what was said through the prophet Isaiah” (Matthew 4:4).
“This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah” (Matthew 8:17 and 12:17).
In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah (Matthew 13:14).

Matthew tells us that God stays true to His Word.

Even though it seemed unlikely and impossible, even when it took a long time, He fulfilled every detail of His promises through Jesus.

 

In her book, The Shelter of God’s Promises, Sheila Walsh writes:

“The two Hebrew words we translate into English as “promise” are the words dabar, meaning “to say,” and omer, meaning “to speak.”  In other words, when God says something, when God speaks, that is as good as it gets.  He means what He says, and He says what He means.  It would appear as if we, humankind, had to invent the word promise because what we say or speak cannot always be trusted, so we upped the ante with a new word.  But when God speaks, He cannot lie” (p. 12).

The word “promise,” then, exists for our benefit, not God’s.  Every word He utters is truth, reliable truth, unwavering truth.

We combat other voices every day:

Well-meaning friends and family, even our fellow Christians, who make guesses and share opinions about what’s next for us.
Circumstances that scream reasonable-sounding assertions of hopelessness, abandonment, and utter despair.
The world shouting out its unfiltered opinion all day, every day.
Our internal dialogue with Satan’s interjections of shame, condemnation, and doubt.

But today, we can choose to ignore this fear-filled noise, climb up into Abba Father’s lap, and rest, knowing that we are His.  We are loved, safe, protected, and more, because that’s what He said is true.

Originally published on APRIL 23, 2012

The Parenting Magazine Crisis

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1 chronicles

New Mom + Parenting Magazine Subscription = Monthly Mom Crisis.

When I was that fresh, idealistic young mom with that first chubby cheeked babe, I had big, big plans to get it all right.

Every month that magazine arrived.  I scanned it for creative ideas, ripped out yummy recipes, and dog-eared pages with fun activities.

Then I grumped around the house for a day or two.

I cried occasionally.

Because, according to the magazine, good moms don’t ever serve their kids macaroni and cheese.  If said mac and cheese happens to be from a box, good gracious, you are one of “THOSE” moms.  You know—-the Bad Moms.

Also, Good Moms have Good Kids who always choose the steamed vegetables and rice pilaf when dining out.  These perfect children never order the pizza and chicken fingers on the menu.

Limit screen time.  Join play groups.  Teach kids to share.  Teach them to care.

Involve them in service projects and ideally live abroad so you can expand their vision of the world.

Teach them sign language and then a foreign language.

Make all your dinners a month in advance and freeze them.

Kids must have an allowance and a weekly chore chart or they will end up lazy, unemployed and bankrupt.

Discipline this way.  Play with them that way.

Work outside the home.

Don’t work outside the home.

And never, ever, ever expect your kids to play on their own or entertain themselves with siblings or friends without your intense and continual involvement.  You must play cars, dolls, and blocks with them for hours.  Good moms never get bored building towers and are never too busy to color.

I finally asserted myself and cancelled the subscription.  Who needs to pay for a monthly self-esteem destroyer?

The truth is, I do some of those Good Mom things, but no one can do all of them.

When we try to do everything, we won’t do anything well.

We end up weighed down by overwhelming expectations and impossible demands.

How much better to celebrate victories, to keep a balanced perspective, and to choose what’s most important right here and right now?

How much better to lean in close to God day after daily day and ask Him, “What do you have for me, Lord?  Right here.  Right now.  Show me what’s next.”

The world is full of opinions about who we need to be and what we need to be doing.  It’s a noisy place and everyone has something to say.

And we need to know what is right and true and what is guilt-loading nonsense.

It means saying no to being like everyone else, to trying to be perfect, to trying to do everything, to keeping up with every great idea on Pinterest, Facebook, and mommy blogs.

It means no longer being paralyzed by everything, so I can do the right things well.

King David placed a weighty task on the shoulders of his son, Solomon.  He handed over the plans for the temple with instructions on dividing the labor among the Levites, how much gold to use for the lampstands and the cherubim, and the available supplies.

This was the right thing, the God-thing, that God had designed, purposed and planned for Solomon to do.

And it still could have felt like too much.  How could Solomon even begin?

David told his son:

Be strong and do the work (1 Chronicles 28:10 NIV)

and again:

Then David continued, “Be strong and courageous, and do the work. Don’t be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord God, my God, is with you. He will not fail you or forsake you. He will see to it that all the work related to the Temple of the Lord is finished correctly (1 Chronicles 28:20 NLT)

Be strong.

Don’t be afraid.

God is with you.

So, do the work.

Pick up right where you are and begin.  One step at one time.

You don’t need to do everything.

You just need to begin with this one thing.

And God is with you.  He will not fail or forsake you.

When we lean our weary and overwhelmed souls onto Him, He shoulders the load.  He makes sure the work is done well.

Maybe that’s the lesson Solomon needed so that when God told him, “Ask me for anything….” Solomon knew what to say:

Give me the wisdom and knowledge to lead them properly, for who could possibly govern this great people of yours?” (2 Chronicles 1:10 NLT).

Help me do the work.  That’s what Solomon said.  Show me how to fulfill this calling.

And isn’t this my heart, too?

Lord, show me how to do this well.

Let that be our prayer, our constant heart’s desire.

Originally posted August 15, 2014

More than a spoonful of sugar

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Ephesians 5-1

I kept checking the tickets that I printed off weeks before.  Did I have the right day?  The time?

Every time I unfolded the creased sheets of paper and read the details, I marveled at God.  Really and truly in awe.

It started with such a simple thing, the Broadway show, Mary Poppins, coming to good old Virginia on its final run on stage.

I made the first tentative request:

Lord, I know this isn’t something I need and I do need other things instead and this is crazy and extravagant.  And I understand if you say, ‘no,’ because I know it’s a silly thing anyway, but oh how I would like to go.

It felt so selfish to even ask.  Normally I stick to the basics: car repairs, bills, car tax payments…that kind of thing.

But then we received unexpected Christmas money, enough to pay for exactly five seats to see the Broadway show for my whole family.marypoppins-1-1024x768

And I’m struck right then by this kind of extravagant grace, the way our God loves to bless His children, enjoys giving them good gifts, promises to give us what we need and then sometimes does more, giving us the very desires of our hearts.

Why then, knowing His character, do I treat Him like such a stingy Scrooge of a God so often? I hesitate to even ask him for another coal for the fire.  

I avoid His gaze and stammer out requests as if I’m a burden, a pest.

Even when it’s a Need and not a Want, I pray and ask, but give Him an out, not truly trusting that He will do this, that He could do this, that He would want to do this for me.

“Well, I guess if you don’t provide it’s just Your will and Thy Will Be Done,” that’s what I pray in a sort of hyper-pious acknowledgment of His sovereignty without any confidence in the might and mercy of His character.

But what would have happened if blind Bartimaeus had been hesitant about his need, reluctant to ask, limiting his request and thereby limiting his Savior?

Jesus asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?”

“Lord, I want to see,” he replied.

Bartimaeus didn’t try to give Jesus an easy out.

“Lord, I’d like to be a little less blind than I am.  Jesus, if you could just correct my vision a little bit I’d at least be able to walk around.  Could I see in just one eye?  Could you maybe provide me with a guide or seeing eye dog to help me out?”

No, Jesus asked what he wanted and Bartimaeus wanted to see—see all the way.

And Jesus didn’t just open his eyes to the minimum amount necessary for mere survival.

He made the blind man see, truly see, abundantly, without reservation or drawback…100% see.

Sometimes our God tells us “no,” out of love and His infinite wisdom. He’s no over-indulgent parent giving into the whims of spoiled children.  And He’s no prayer request vending machine, automatically dispensing answers indiscriminately to whoever puts in the coin.

But there are times it just gives Him so much joy to give us not just the daily bread, but the Krispy Kreme as a special treat.

Paul wrote:

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us (Ephesians 1:7-8 NIV)

and

Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that (Ephesians 5:1-2 MSG).

He’s no miser, this God of ours, rationing His gifts to us and frowning grumpily when we need….or even sometimes when we want.

And while we trust His “no” when He declines a request, one of the reasons we trust His love and best intentions for us is because “no good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly” (Psalm 84:11 ESV).

If He knows it’s good, it blesses Him to give it.

And it blesses us to receive it as the lavish, rich, and extravagant grace it is, not what we deserve or have earned, but what He has given anyway simply because He loves.

Originally posted FEBRUARY 22, 2013

Choosing to love by choosing to listen

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Psalm 116-2

My daughter didn’t talk for a long time.

Oh, she understood everything I said and communicated in lots of other ways, but she just refused to really, truly talk as a toddler.

Then one day she opened up with a tidal wave of language.  She didn’t learn how to talk one tentative, uncertain word at a time.

She just talked.  It was as if she’d been storing up years of language until she could express anything and everything she felt.

And now….

Now, she’s a talker.

She wakes up in the morning talking.  She leaves for school talking.  She climbs into the minivan after school still talking.

We live with a steady stream of conversation from the first “good morning” to the final “goodnight.”

I love to watch her face and her hands.  She throws every part of her body into what she’s saying.

Her head bobs and her hands fly to her hips as she says, “Really!  I did that.”

She arches her eyebrows.  She scrunches up her nose.  She’s a non-stop flow of enthusiastic communication.

My introvert self sometimes recoils from conversation.  Sometimes I’m bound to slink away where it’s quiet, even if it means hiding in the corners of my own mind and ignoring the noise around me.

I have an insatiable need for nonverbal time.

Besides that, I’m a task person more than a people-person.  I think tasks.  I do tasks.  I complete tasks.  And sometimes I let those tasks take priority over people because I’m mixed-up that way and this is the pit of sin I fall in over and over.

So a few weeks ago when this little girl would sidle up to me ready to chat, chat, chat, I started turning my whole body toward her so she could see my face.

I put down the book.

I closed the computer.

I  left the dinner on the stove to simmer so I could listen to her.

Sometimes, life is a whirlwind of crazy in my house.  There are moments when it’s not possible for me to flip off the activity so I can flip on my listening ears.

So, I tell her that.  I say, “Give me five minutes.  Let me finish this and then I can listen.”

Then I keep my promise.

I don’t know if she can feel the difference between the distracted me and the attentive me, but someone once told me, “Listening is an act of love.”

And I choose to love her in the way that her soul needs to be loved.

I learn this, but I never seem to master it. Could any of us?

Could we ever get to the place where we’re experts at loving through patient and compassionate listening?

Yet, God does this for us.  He bends low to hear our cries, leaning into us so He hears our every word and our every heart’s cry.

Because he bends down to listen, I will pray as long as I have breath! (Psalm 116:2)

More than that, He quiets the noise of heaven at the sound of our prayers.

In his book, The Great House of God, Max Lucado highlights the volume of heaven based on the first eight chapters of Revelation:

The angels speak. The thunder booms.  The living creatures chant, ‘Holy, holy, holy” (4:8) and the elders worship…The souls of the martyrs cry out (6:10)…The earth quakes and the stars fall…One hundred forty-four thousand people…shout in a  loud voice (7:10).

Heaven is louder than my house in that mad rush through our after school routine of homework and piano and change your clothes quickly for dance lessons and make dinner and pack lunches and sign agendas and rush out the door (hurry, so we won’t be late!).

Heaven is louder than my minivan.

But,

When He opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour (Revelation 8:1 HCSB).

Half an hour of total heavenly silence ticks by.  In the quiet, an angel steps up with:

…a large amount of incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the gold altar in front of the throne. The smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, went up in the presence of God from the angel’s hand (Revelation 8:3-4).

The prayers of the saints enter God’s presence in the hush of heaven.

The way I listen to my kids, my husband, my friends should be how I want to be listened to….should be how God listens to us.

He bends down to us.

He quiets the noise.

He gives us access to His presence.

How can we be better listeners for those around us today?

I am not your servant

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John 15-15

“I am not a servant.”

My youngest daughter says it first in a matter-of-fact tone.

I can’t hear the other side of the conversation so I don’t know what request prompted this response.

I do know she gets her answer from me.

I say it sometimes to my kids when they ask me to hop up from the dinner table (before I’ve even taken a bite of my own food) to get them something they could easily get themselves.

I say it when they call out “Mom!” while they are watching TV and ask me to stop working to get them a drink of water.

I say it to remind them that, while I love them and I love to do nice things for them, sometimes they treat me like unpaid kitchen help.

And that’s not right.

So I listen in as my daughter repeats her response broken-record-style.

“I am not a servant.”

“I am not a servant.”

Then she sings it in a high opera voice, “I am not a servant…..”

Finally after what seems like the twentieth repetition of this phrase, her older sister bends over and picks something up off the floor.

The six-year-old has grown wise to this new trend, how her older sisters think because she’s smaller, she must perform all tasks menial and low-to-the-ground so they can continue with whatever far-more-important thing they’re doing.

She’s standing up for herself.

After all, what she really wants, what she truly desires in her little sister heart-of-hearts, is for these bigger girls to play with her.

She doesn’t want to fetch dropped Legos off of the floor.

She doesn’t want to get them a paper towel or find them a sharpened pencil.

She wants to be friends with them.

Shortly before His death, Jesus said something profoundly moving to His disciples:

I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.  (John 15:15 NIV).

Not servants, but friends.

He offered them so much more than the menial tasks of mindless obedience, the fetching and finding and picking up of hired help.

He called them friends.

For the disciples, friendship with Jesus didn’t change what they did.   Jesus loved by serving sacrificially and humbly, and He told them to do the same.

But He invited them into His heart and His plans.

Of course, it doesn’t mean we aren’t serving God day in and day out, loving others in humble of ways, emptying ourselves so we can drench another in the compassion and mercy of Christ.

There is, after all, beauty in late night sessions with a sleepless baby and days spent tending to sick children.

There’s beauty in the ugly, the mess, the pain, and the exhaustion of caregiving.

There’s beauty–God-glorifying beauty— in heading out the door each morning to a job that demands everything you’ve got and more so that you can provide for your family.

The beauty isn’t in the act itself.  It’s not in the changing diapers or the washing away filth.  It’s not in taking out trash or sitting through mind-numbing meetings where supervisors pile on work.

It’s that you’re doing all of that for someone else.

Your labor on behalf of others may not earn you any earthly regard.

You may trudge through another day of work without a nod in your direction and a genuine ‘thanks.’

Your child may overlook the fifty lunches you’ve made for her and complain the one day you forgot that she likes Oreos, not chocolate chip cookies.

And you can feel absolutely invisible.

But right in that moment, Christ chats with you.

He tells you everything the Father taught Him.

He asks if you’ll take part in His agenda, in His passion and plan for loving others with grace, mercy, compassion, generosity, and humility.

Not because He only values what we do for Him.

Not because we earn His favor by going, going, going all the time.

Not because He wants us constantly to be doing at all.

It’s because He’s offered us His presence—in the moments when we’re sitting at His feet and the moments we’re stooping to wash the feet of another.

He desires friendship, and friends aren’t acting out of duty or serving out of compulsion.

We’re living and breathing and serving and loving because He’s given us access to His very heart.

Our friendship with God means we do and we cease doing at the impulse of His love: our lives, our hearts, our actions guided and motivated by His very own love at work in us.

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.

 

What other moms say when they find out you are having a boy

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Deuteronomy 33

After having three girls, when I found out I was having a son, other moms chimed in with tons of wisdom.

They told me to be quick with the diaper changes or I’m bound to get peed on.  (I did.  At least twice.)

They told me to prepare for climbing, running, growling, and dirt (lots of it).

They told me no one would love me like a son, not ever.   “It’s different than with a girl,” they said.

One mom told me how her son would cradle her face in his tiny palms and say, “You’re bootiful, Mommy.”

And another mom told me her son announced he was going to marry Mommy when he grew up.   When she explained that Daddy had already married her, the little boy scowled and said “Dad’s lucky.”

Mom after mom told me that no one treasured her as unconditionally or completely as her son had when he was little.

And then.

Then older moms started warning me.  They are still offering forebodings of doom.  I’ve had several depressing conversations just this week about my future.

“When you have a daughter, you have a friend for life,” they say, “but a son ditches you as soon as he finds a wife.”

I get it.  “Leave and cleave.” I don’t want my son to be a stunted mama’s boy.  I don’t want to break up his marriage by pitting myself against his wife or refusing to let go.

But I wouldn’t mind if he chooses a wife I could get along with or calls me once in a while.  I wouldn’t mind a visit here and there and I’d hate it if he only hung out with ‘her’ family instead of sitting around our holiday table sometimes, too.

I’ve been enjoying this season with my son, loving and loving it.

I love train shirts and train toys and train books and conversations about trains.

I love airplanes and bulldozers and how we have to point out the fire trucks every time we walk past the fire station on Main Street.

I love making faces at him in the mirror and growling out funny voices.

I love toting along a few trucks everywhere we go.

This is my great joy.

But this week, other women have been telling me to enjoy it now because I might as well kiss my son goodbye in a few years. So I’ve been more than a little sentimental and emotional.

It’s my nature and my way to pray about my kids’ future, their choices, their passions, their careers, their spouses, and my son is no different.

A week of prophetic doom, though, has my heart more fearful than hopeful or prayerful.

And then I read Jacob’s blessing for his son, Benjamin:

‘Let the beloved of the Lord rest secure in Him, for he shields him all day long, and the one the Lord loves rests between His shoulders.”  Deut. 33:12 NIV

I don’t know what may have your heart turning somersaults of fear instead of clinging to hope this week, but my kids’ future has done it for me.  It’s made me clingy and tearful.

Yet, this verse offers me security and peace.

This isn’t the season for me of farewells or parenting adult children and worrying over their not-so-adult decisions at times.

This is my season of early morning snuggles on the sofa before everyone else awakes and making pancakes in the shape of Mickey Mouse.

It’s my season of listening to all of their news about their day at school, laughing at funny lunch escapades and wiping away tears when another girl gets mean.

It’s my season of bedtime hugs and bedtime stories.

And it’s my season of lifting children up….up into my arms, snuggled into my chest….up onto my shoulders, high so they can see, high so they can be carried and so they can rest.

That’s what God does for His beloved.

He lifts us right up out of the mess and the weariness and sets us between His shoulders and tells us to ‘rest.’

Don’t strive.  Don’t fight.  Don’t wear yourself out trying to keep moving forward on your own.

Let Him carry you.

High up there on the shoulders of our God, our perspective shifts.

Stop fretting about the future.

Life doesn’t depend on us to fix it and make it happen; our future depends only on Him and He is so dependable.

We are safe from danger.

We can cease striving.

We see the big picture.  All that trouble we were in below looks so small from our new spot on the shoulders of the Lord.

So I choose to rest here with the Lord, enjoying safety, enjoying this season, enjoying His presence, enjoying being His beloved–handing over fear and holding on to hope.

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

Copyright © 2015 Heather King

Why I hope you don’t see me

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1 John 1

Years ago, I read about a man who had one daily habit he still maintained after decades and decades upon decades of marriage.

Every morning, he woke up before his wife and everyone else in the house.  He took a shower.  He shaved.  He brushed his teeth.  He combed his hair.  He dressed.

He wasn’t trying to give his wife more time in the bathroom either.

He said he always wanted his bride to see the best of him—the washed, brushed, shaved and dressed side of him.

I remember thinking the sentiment was sweet.  Every so often, I feel a bit guilty when less-than-the-best-of-me is rushing around the house getting everyone ready for school in the morning.  Maybe the guy had it right.  Maybe I should do the same.

But I don’t.  I’ll be honest.

The truth of my life is that my kids are my alarm clock and they seem to wake me up early enough already.

My son is the first sound I hear right across the house— “Mom!!!”

And, he doesn’t seem to mind the sight of me as I pad into his room in bare feet and lift him out of bed, carry him to the sofa and snuggle down with him for a few minutes of quiet before everyone else awakes.

He never complains about my bed head or my morning breath or my yoga pants and t-shirt.

He seems pretty content simply to enjoy my presence.

And in those moments of quiet as we wait for the rest of the house to cease their slumber, I quietly pray and consider the day (and try to actually wake up).

Maybe those few minutes of heart-grooming are what I need anyway.

Because facing my husband, my kids, the blur of the morning activity with my mind set on Christ feels like it reaches down into deeper parts of my soul than any session with make-up and a hair dryer anyway.

And surely what I want for them to find in the morning is a wife and a mom reflecting Jesus, even before I’ve had caffeine and a few minutes in front of the mirror.

Not that I’m begrudging some hygiene and grooming, of course.  No need to forego personal care indefinitely!

But I’ve been thinking lately about what it would look like for me to be a tabernacle for the Spirit of God, a place where His glory dwells, just a building really, an outer frame where Christ lives within.

And, after all, that’s what we’re supposed to be.

John 1:1 tells us:

The Word became flesh and took up residence among us. We observed His glory, the glory as the One and Only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth (HCSB).

He took up residence here.  The root of this phrase is “He tabernacled among us.”

This is Christ dwelling among men, housing the very nature of God within the confines and restrictions of human flesh.

And now— His spirit dwells within us, and He should still be visible, not hidden away—not by our skeletal frames, not by the skin, not by the makeup, not by the outfits, not by the coordinated shoes and handbags.

Whether we’re still in our pajamas or we’re dressed to the nines, people should see God’s glory all over us.

Because, that’s what happens when God’s Spirit dwelt in the Tabernacle out in the wilderness with Israel.

34 Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. 35 And Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.  (Exodus 40:34-35 ESV).

The cloud of God’s glory settled on that mobile sanctuary and you couldn’t see the building itself for the glory surrounding it.   It was completely covered by the cloud of His presence.

All you could see was Him.

And, that’s what I want.

Yes, in the morning.

Yes, when I’m stressed.

Yes, when I’m annoyed.

Yes, when I’m hurt.

Yes, when I’m rejoicing.

Yes, when I’m failing.

Yes, when I’m weeping.

Yes, when I’m serving

ALL the time yes—may God’s glory settle on my life with such a cloud of His presence that people can’t see me through the thickness of it.

They can only see Him.

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.

Copyright © 2015 Heather King

Giving without holding anything back

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Proverbs 21

We have entered birthday party season.

That’s when school is in swing and the invitations start coming home rapid fire, weekend after weekend.  With my three girls all in school now, birthday party season has become a significant family investment.

We now have ground rules.

My kids announce the latest invitation before the minivan door even closes at the end of the school day, and I ask this all-important question:

Is this a real, actual, true friend?

This isn’t just a peripheral acquaintance whose last name you don’t know.  This isn’t the kind of ‘friend’ who sits across the room from you, one you never play with on the playground, and someone you’ve never actually seen eat lunch.

This is an actual friend.  You can tell me her full name, her likes and dislikes and something she might have in her lunchbox.

Once we’ve passed the true friend test and the calendar test (does this even remotely work with our crazy schedule), we’re on to planning a gift.

My kids love picking gifts for their friends.

Now, they sometimes lose a little perspective.  It happens.  We scan the aisles of the local Wal-Mart and they pick out gifts in the $50 range.

I re-direct them until we finally find IT: the perfect gift for the true friend.  Into the cart it goes and we tote it home with excitement.

Then, my kids spend the next week gazing longingly at this present as it sits on my dresser waiting to be wrapped.

It’s a good present.

In fact, it’s now exactly what they themselves would like for Christmas (hint, hint, hint).

My youngest daughter asks me, “Mom, did you happen to buy two of those?”

Now, I know full well my Mom-intentions.  I will surely buy this same prize gift, wrap it up for her and set it under the tree for Christmas morning.

But she doesn’t know that…and I don’t promise her that.

Maybe I want her to be surprised.

But maybe also this—I want her to give away the very best without knowing if she’ll get it back.

Sometimes we’re reluctant gift-givers.

We give out of excess.  We give from confident positions of wealth and security.  We give what we know we can do without.

We clear out cabinets of unwanted canned food during food drives and sometimes we don’t even look at the expiration date.

We clean out closets and send on clothes that are worn, outdated, faded, and even stained.

Yet, our offerings to God and our gifts to others should require sacrifice, not just out of our more-than-enough; we should give our best gifts to a God who has given His ALL to us.

And when we give, we let go.

We don’t hang on tight, trying to dictate how our gift is used, making sure God makes the most of it, making sure the sacrifice was worth it, making sure we’ll get it back.

I read this week what God asked His people to give:

You are to give them the firstfruits of your grain, new wine and olive oil, and the first wool from the shearing of your sheep (Deuteronomy 18:4 NIV).

I’ve always thought about their sacrifices to God needing to be unblemished, needing to be pure, needing to be worthy.

But what God asked here was for the gift of the first: the first grain, wine, oil, and the first wool from a newly sheared sheep.

In her book Scouting the Divine, Margaret Feinberg describes how the first shearing is a once-in-a-lifetime offering:

Each sheep’s best wool comes only for its first-ever haircut, with every subsequent shearing decreasing in value.  I was intrigued by the idea that God asked for…a shearing that could never be recovered.”

They had to give God what they knew they would never ever get back from Him.  They had to trust that He’d care for and provide for them anyway.

We also have to give and trust God with the results.

For me, it means giving God my best writing and not telling Him what to do with it.  Just laying it down and leaving the results up to Him.

As a mom, it means skipping sleep and sometimes missing meals, certainly giving up moments of peace and my own personal agenda (and so much more).

We sacrifice as wives, as friends, as moms, as leaders, as teachers, as caregivers.

We give and give and give and give.  We pour out.  We take our greatest gifts, the very best of our offering, and we lay it right down, and we sacrifice without knowing if we’ll get anything back.

Because this is our offering to God: Not just the gifts themselves, but how we trust Him to care for us even when we’ve given our best away.

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

Copyright © 2015 Heather King

When you’re tired of asking everything else, ask Who

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Psalm 86-15

My daughters wrestle with my son. They tickle him and bounce him down on the bed.  They invent games, make-up reasons to chase him.

He, in turn, grabs the light sabers and initiates a duel.

They squeal through the house.

But then….

Mom calls the girls to homework time, or reading time, or piano time, or some such other responsible nonsense.

My son’s answer to the abandonment by his favorite playmates?

Scream across the house at the top of his lungs:

Wauren!!!!

Tat-Tat!!!!!

Climb all over them on the piano bench.  Pull at their pencil-holding arm while they try to fill in the homework worksheet.  Yank them up out of the sofa and demand that they chase him again.

Wauren!!!

Tat-Tat!!!

These are the nicknames my son has bestowed on my girls.  Toria (Victoria), Wauren (Lauren), and Tat-Tat (Catherine).

He calls for them all day long.  He summons them for playtime through the afternoon and evening.  He cries for them when they climb onto the bus and when they head off to bed for the night.

Names matter to this two-year-old right now.  He’s learning to get attention (more like demand it.)

And these are the names that matter most: His family.  He knows his Mom and Dad.  He knows these three sisters who adore him.  And he points to his own chest and names himself:  “An-dew.”

I love in the book of Ruth how Naomi asks her daughter-in-law about the first day of gleaning in the fields.

Ruth probably came home tired after the day of working.  Yet, her arms were full of her day’s pickings.  She must have been rejoicing, thankful, excited!

After all, gleaning could be risky for a young woman on her own.  Who knows where you could end up: a field with a dishonest farmer or, even worse, one with a lusty field hand.

But Ruth returns home safe and returns home with abundance.

So, Naomi asks, “Where did you glean today? And where have you worked?” (Ruth 2:19 ESV).

Ruth knows the real answer isn’t about the where.  She doesn’t launch into geographical descriptions or give the name of the farm.

Instead of answering Where, Ruth tells Who: “The man’s name with whom I worked today is Boaz” (Ruth 2:19 ESV).

Kelly Minter writes:

“Isn’t the who always so much more significant than the endless how’s, what’s and why’s we endless fret over? I tend to toil over details, trying to figure out how things are going to work out, where help is going to come from.  It is then that I am most in need of Jesus…”(Ruth).

My son knows what matters most right now is his “Who.”

Ruth knew that her “Who” mattered far more than the “Where.”

Surely we should know the same.

I fail at this so often.

My kids had to ride the bus home from school, something they hadn’t done in four years.  I’ve been picking them up all this time.

So, I fretted over that change in the routine all that day.  I prayed about it and asked others to pray about it.  I watched the clock and distracted myself with activity, anything to keep my mind off what might happen if things went wrong.

I forgot my Who.

My faithful God, the God who loves me and loves my children more than I ever could, can care for them.  I need to trust Him to hold them in His own hands and stop freaking out over the tiniest details as if I’m the one who is really in charge here.

Maybe this is the hardest thing, for a mom to entrust her babies to God.

I want to hover, want to protect, want to plan out every detail and avoid every hurt or disappointment.  I want to combat every bully and avoid every bad influence.  I want to control the conversations on the playground and every detail of their day.

But I need to trust my Who.

I trust in His faithfulness:

But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious,
    slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness (Psalm 86:15 ESV).

We can worry over countless details every day.

We can sink under the incessant pounding waves of anxiety:

Where are you going to find safety and provision?

How is this all going to work out?

When will this trial be over?

What am I going to do about this?

Or, we can erase all of the excess and get down to the essential:  Whom do I trust?

Who is my God?

He is faithful.  He is gracious and compassionate.  He is able, strong and mighty and oh so merciful.  He is our Provider and our Shepherd.  He is Love.

He is our perfect Father.

We can rest in Him.

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

Copyright © 2015 Heather King

 

12 Bible Verses for When You Are Feeling Small

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verses-for-feeling-small

  • Psalm 37:16 ESV
    Better is the little that the righteous has
        than the abundance of many wicked.
  • Proverbs 15:16 ESV
    Better is a little with the fear of the Lord
        than great treasure and trouble with it.
  • Isaiah 11:6 ESV
    The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
        and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,
    and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together;
        and a little child shall lead them.
  • Isaiah 40:29 ESV
    He gives power to the faint,
        and to him who has no might he increases strength.
  • Zechariah 4:10a ESV
    For whoever has despised the day of small things shall rejoice, and shall see the plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel.
  • Micah 5:2 ESV
    But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days.
  • Matthew 11:25 ESV
    At that time Jesus declared, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children
  • Matthew 13:31-32 ESV
     He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. 32 It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”
  • Matthew 19:14 ESV
    but Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.”
  • Matthew 25:21 ESV
    His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’
  • Luke 12:32 ESV
  • Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.
  • Luke 16:10 ESV
    “One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much.