Today, Not Tomorrow

January 28, 2013January 29, 2014Leave a comment

“I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation”
(2 Corinthians 6:2b NIV).

“I don’t always obey Mom and Dad, but I do obey God.”

It made sense to her six-year-old mind. Well, sure I might not obey my parents, but at least I’ve got the God-thing covered.

What’s a little family Bible time without some lessons on what this all means? So, it didn’t take two seconds for my husband and me to jump on this one with a little Scripture quoting: “Children obey your parents.”

That’s what God says, we tell her, so you can’t obey Him without obeying us.

Oh.

I understand what she’s going through because most of us grow too comfy with our own sins and misbehaviors. We try to justify or ignore, or create some arbitrary system of categories and hierarchies.

Well, I might gossip…..but I don’t lie.I might tell white lies….but I don’t tell all out whoppers.
I might lie….but I don’t steal.
I might steal….but I don’t murder.

The truth, of course, is that we’re all sinners, and sinners don’t just make mistakes, accidentally mis-step, or suffer from minor character flaws.

We sin.

And while we might try to dilute the definition a bit to take the sting out of the conviction, Scripture says, “…everything that does not come from faith is sin” (Romans 14:23b NIV).

We know what sin does, don’t we? We know because so many of us have dragged that heavy burden along with us, refusing, forgetting, or just plain failing at leaving it behind. It holds us back. It keeps our hands encumbered instead of free to raise in worship and to extend in service.

Hebrews 12:1 describes it this way:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us (NIV).

Before we can run forward and make progress in this race, we’ve got to begin by leaving some things behind. We’ve got to throw everything off that hinders. We’ve got to un-knot the tangle of sins that are tripping us up.

We’ve got to ditch the load and then run free.

In a new year, so many of us are looking forward to goals and expectations, but we won’t go far without throwing over what has entangled, encumbered and ensnared.

Angie Smith writes, “Part of moving forward is always letting go of what has held us back, and it is never less than a battle.”

The truth is we can’t drag it all along after us and still expect to move forward with God. We’re inhibited and stuck.

So that worrying….that gossiping….that perpetual busyness and never resting….that sharp tongue…that lack of grace….that lack of faithfulness to our commitments…that pride…that jealousy…that disobedience…that bitterness…that unforgiveness…that fear.

Whatever it is, it’s got to go.

Why not begin letting it go today?

At Women of Faith last summer, Christine Caine taught on the plague of frogs that struck Egypt in Exodus. The nation was overrun by frogs, just as Moses had warned Pharaoh:

“The Nile will teem with frogs. They will come up into your palace and your bedroom and onto your bed, into the houses of your officials and on your people, and into your ovens and kneading troughs.The frogs will come up on you and your people and all your officials” (Exodus 8:3-4).

Imagine frogs everywhere, between the sheets of your bed when you lie down to rest and in your kitchen, jumping all over your food.

That’s too many frogs for anybody!

So when Pharaoh begged for Moses and Aaron to pray that God would end the plague and remove the frogs, they agreed. They even went beyond that. Moses said Pharaoh could choose the exact day and time when the frogs would disappear.

Shockingly, he didn’t say, “Right this very second!” or “Before I go to bed tonight and have to sleep with another creature in my bed.” He didn’t want it “over with by dinner so I can eat my food without it tasting like frog.”

He wanted the frogs gone, “tomorrow” (Exodus 8:10).

Why did he do this?

Why do we do this?

If God has promised us deliverance, if He’s asked us to leave something behind, if He’s challenged us to lay it down and move forward, why do we linger here?

Why do we endure one more day and another and then again of hindrances and snares instead of letting go?

Today is the day of salvation. Let it be today—not tomorrow—that we ask God to search our hearts, to know us, to reveal the anxious thoughts and the waywardness and help us lay it down, let it go, so we can move on (Psalm 139:23-24).

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.

Recalibrating the Measure

January 25, 2013January 29, 20142 Comments

I had been wooed by the digital display and the sleek design, but I should have stuck with the tried and true older model.

The new scale promised to be scientifically accurate because of some high-quality triple sensory design. It could track the weight gain and loss of two different people by storing the weigh-in results in its memory.

So I brought it home from the store, opened the package, read the instructions, dropped it down on the floor and stepped on. Then I scowled.

This didn’t seem right.

I tried again a few days later and then after a few more days, I tried again.

According to this handy dandy super scale, I was gaining about a pound a day despite snacks of yogurt and granola, exercise sessions and water.

I could rail about the injustice of the world or blame the metabolism shifts in my 30s, but how could I argue with such a scientifically accurate device?

Finally, I carried out two scales from the cabinet: The old one with the tiny arrow that scrolled through the numbers and eventually landed on a miniature line and the new one with the flashing white numbers against a black display.

They were different. A lot different. I pushed the digital one around a bit and stepped on and off a few times.

I’d been using a faulty measure.

What else am I using as a faulty basis for my thoughts and emotions, my plans, my faith?

A.W. Tozer wrote: “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”

This, after all, is our foundation, our measure by which we weigh the world, and the filter through which we understand our circumstances.

But it’s not just what we think that matters, certainly not what we say. We can confess:

I believe God is faithful.
I believe God can provide.
I believe God forgives me.
I believe God is all-powerful.
I believe God is with me.
I believe God will never abandon me.

All that sounds good and right. We say what we’re supposed to say. Sing the words we’re supposed to sing.

We might even think we mean it.

But sometimes we’re really looking at the world through circumstances and emotions. Slowly, without changing what we’re saying, we’ve still changed what we believe.

The Israelites wandering around the wilderness outside of Egypt professed belief in the God who had led them out of slavery.

When Pharaoh’s army chased them to the edge of the Red Sea, however, they complained: ”Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die?” (Exodus 14:11).

When they realized they could no longer shop at the Egyptian grocery stores, they whined: “you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death” (Exodus 16:3).

And when the desert diet proved restrictive, they remembered: “The fish we ate in Egypt at no cost—also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic” (Numbers 11:5).

They said they believed in God and His miraculous power, but, as Kelly Minter writes in her study on Nehemiah:

“whenever the Israelites faced difficulty in the desert they chose to believe something false about God. Three of the biggies were that he had abandoned them, withheld from them, or wouldn’t meet their needs” (p. 125).

It is Nehemiah’s prayer, centuries later, that reminds the people of the truth:

You did not abandon them in the wilderness
because of Your great compassion….

You did not withhold Your manna from their mouths,
and You gave them water for their thirst.

You provided for them in the wilderness 40 years
and they lacked nothing (Nehemiah 9:19-21).

But in the middle of the wilderness, with Egypt behind them and the unknown ahead, without a meal plan or a guaranteed buffet, Israel believed false things about God.

And I get that.

It’s hard to see the truth when our eyes are shut tight to the wonder of God or our bad attitude is crowding out the glory from our field of vision.

We’ve decided we’re stuck.
We’ve determined to feel unhappy.
We’ve felt cheated and gypped out of what we really want.

So we just rack up more and more circumstantial evidence, cementing what we feel.

And we believe it. God can’t use this situation. God abandoned me here. God is withholding from me. God can’t rescue, save or provide. God doesn’t know what He’s doing.

That’s false evidence, a faulty measure, a shaky foundation.

Today, let’s pray for God’s eye-opening grace, for His perspective, for a reminder of His goodness, for revelations of truth. Just like Nehemiah did, let’s recount the goodness of God rather than letting our dissatisfaction or hurt determine what we see and what we believe.

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

Super Glue, Broken Things, and Wholeness

January 23, 2013January 29, 20141 Comment

“Mom, I have to show you,” my three-year-old said.

She had dragged in the cat bed while I was in the shower and as I got ready for the day, she chattered away about what she had collected from around the house. Out came some books, some toys, some Barbie clothes.

She giggled about them. How funny to pile them all into the cat bed!

Then she reached the bottom and stepped back nervously, asking me to peek inside for the final object.

I leaned in closer for a look. Picking up the mystery object, I fingered it and spun it in my hands until I realized that I was holding a small head.

I glanced back at my tiny girl, shifting nervously on her feet, her eyes moist and ready to overflow with tears.

“Did it break?” She nodded and I scooped her up and gave her a hug. We looked on my dresser where the Willow Tree angel sat, a mother (now headless) cradling a baby. “We can glue it back together,” I assured my daughter and she grinned and skipped away.

Brokenness seems to be following me around these days: A broken mother on my dresser…A bowl I dropped on the kitchen floor while making dinner, then swept up in pieces and tossed into the trash…The ceramic chimes my daughter had painted after Christmas that fell off her dresser and cracked in three places.

We moms know about broken things.

Some of them I could glue together, not quite as good as new, but enough to hide the cracks and broken places from most casual onlookers. But the bowl I had to toss away, too shattered to be useful anymore.

It’s one of the beautiful ministries of God to us, the way He chooses to bind up wounds and heal broken hearts.

But I couldn’t have squirted out the super glue and held the head back into place if my daughter had hidden it away instead of bringing it to my feet.

And as long as we carry our pieces to God, not hide away in shame or frustration, or try to fix things on our own, or collapse in helpless self-pity…only then can He bring wholeness and healing to the broken. And aren’t we all at least a little broken?

Always He forgives.
Always He mends.
Always He shows compassion.

And always He redeems and uses us, not in spite of our brokenness, but because of the way we’ve yielded it to Him.

It’s a theme strung through verse after verse when I read through The Message last year, this promise of wholeness.

David prayed it after being delivered from Saul:

“God made my life complete
when I placed all the pieces before him...
I feel put back together“
2 Samuel 22:21-25, Psalm 18

I can’t say I always feel put back together. Sometimes closer inspection reveals those super-glued cracks. Sometimes a few trivial annoyances chip away at my soul, chip…chip….chip until I’m all in pieces of ugliness and impatience. At other times, it’s a crushing blow and I’m so delicate against the force of it.

Broken again, Lord. So sorry that I’m broken again.

But at Christmas I read anew who our Messiah, our Savior is:

His names will be: Amazing Counselor,
Strong God,
Eternal Father,
Prince of Wholeness.
His ruling authority will grow,
and there’ll be no limits to the wholeness he brings
(Isaiah 9:6-7).

I know those verses. “Prince of Peace.” That’s what it should say. (I talk aloud to my Bible, explaining it to the pages).

But Shalom, peace, that’s what it’s talking about here. The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament says: “The general meaning behind the root š-l-m is of completion and fulfillment—of entering into a state of wholeness and unity, a restored relationship.”

Ah and there it is. Jesus is our Peace, putting us back together, making us whole, restoring our relationship with God, fulfilling and completing us.

He is our Prince of Wholeness.

What a promise for the broken.

And there’s this lovely, overwhelmingly miraculous part of this wholeness, that it isn’t just for our own comfort or personal happiness. It’s not so life will be a bit easier and our shoulders a little less burdened by guilt or our self-esteem boosted so we can peek into the mirror with confidence.

In her study on Nehemiah, Kelly Minter wrote:

Essentially wholeness is not the end, but the very beginning, because wholeness allows us to give much more of our hearts, possessions, time, wisdom, money, friendship and love away (p. 7).

We seek this wholeness–in our finances, in our hearts, in our relationships, in our homes, in our ministries, in our marriages, in our minds….not as the ultimate end.

Lord, heal us so we may be more of a blessing to others.

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

Living in Between, Part I

January 21, 2013January 30, 20142 Comments

Originally posted on December 28, 2011

It’s a mess; that’s what it is.

It’s this awkward time when my daughter isn’t quite size 7, but not really still a 6x either. Triple that for all three of my girls and imagine the wardrobe fallout.

They’re just in between.

The dresses are too short, the sleeves on the shirts ride up on their arms, but the next size of pants fit like clown clothes.

So, there’s this season where their wardrobe is a hodgepodge of sizes, a paradise for Goldilocks. Some too small. Some too big. And hopefully enough that are “just right.”

And there are the disagreements about what fits and what doesn’t. They swim into bulky dresses and shirts that slip off their thin shoulders just so they can wear something new.

Then these same girls cram themselves into shirts that crawl up above their belly button and pants that now look like capris because they don’t want to give up their favorite outfit.

It’s all about transition. It’s a time of in-betweeness. It’s uncomfortable. Messy. Awkward. Ill-fitting.

It’s life.

So often we live in the in-between.
We’re preparing for a ministry we haven’t yet started.
We’re moving from job to job, home to home, ministry to ministry.
Our children somehow change from babies to toddlers to little kids to big kids to teens to adults and we can’t say when it happened.
We’re saying goodbye, but haven’t found a place to say hello.

Our transition pitfalls are the same as they are for my daughters and their fashion crises.

We want to leap ahead before we’re ready and end up tripping all over ourselves.

Or, we cram ourselves into comfortable situations that are now stretched to the max and busting the seams. We resist change. We linger in the past. We’re trapped by shame or even nostalgia and we’ll miss out on the new in order to remain in the known.

Scripture is strangely silent about many transition times.

Take Paul. After his dramatic conversion, he spent time learning how to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, putting aside his old life as a persecutor, but not yet leading the church or serving as a missionary to the Gentiles.

He was in between.

In Galatians, Paul tells us, “I did not go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went into Arabia. Later I returned to Damascus. Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days” (Galatians 1:17-18).

So often we forget this time in Paul’s life. We see him converted and then we see him as a radical missionary enduring shipwrecks and stonings and imprisonment. At least, that’s how it went on the flannel boards in our Sunday School classes all those years ago.

But his was no overnight commissioning. It took years of radical change for Saul to become Paul.

Surely Paul could have met Jesus on the road to Damascus, had his eyesight restored, and then high-tailed it to Jerusalem to present himself to James and the rest of the church leaders. He could have declared, “Send me in, Coach!”

Yet, he would have been immature: full of enthusiasm, but little spiritual maturity. He probably would have scared the Christians into hiding. They likely thought he was faking his conversion in order to infiltrate the church and kill them all.

Most of the time between Jesus’ birth and His public ministry is a blank also. We know He lived in Egypt as a child, but we know nothing about His time there.

Scripture only tells us about one event in Jesus’ childhood, when his parents left him during their pilgrimage to Jerusalem when he was 12 years old. Traveling as a large group, they just assumed he was with others in their entourage.

Jesus’ response to His parents when they found Him teaches us what to do when we’re in the in-between times of life.

He told his parents, “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” (Luke 2:49). We need to be where God is, not running ahead of Him or lagging behind His timing.
During his transition time, “Jesus grew in wisdom and stature” (Luke 2:52). Soak up everything you can learn while you wait. Dig deep in His Word. Learn from others. Wear your knees out in prayer.
Be sensitive to others: Transition times aren’t just hard for us; they are difficult for others, too. Some people will try to hold you back. Others will push and nudge you ahead of God’s timing. After His parents found Him in the temple, Jesus “went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them” (Luke 2:51). Obey God’s timing, but be gracious always and submissive to your leadership when possible.

In the in-between times, we look to God as our guide, we enjoy His presence and remain contented in His plan for us, just like the Psalmist wrote “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11, ESV)

Weekend Walk, 01/19/2013: A Prayer for Children

January 19, 2013January 29, 20145 Comments

Sure, sometimes I get frustrated by towels heaped on the floor and shoes strewn across the kitchen and living room. I sigh over coats stripped off and dropped on the linoleum. I whine over piles of paper and toys dragged from one room to another and then abandoned. I make speeches about obedience, right away, the first time I say it.

But there are days when your mom heart is shocked into tears and all the petty annoyances fade and the selfish bits of your heart are tamed back into unselfishness.

It’s when you hear of a school shooting and so many little ones dead. It’s waking up on a normal, totally average morning and slowly going about your normal, totally average routine, and then reading the news: three young children—babies really—and their grandmother dying in a house fire just 5 minutes from my home.

Suddenly average doesn’t seem so average anymore. Every moment seems specially blessed.

I was thinking and praying all week about the verse to share this morning. In my scripture memory project through Beth Moore’s SSMT, I needed to choose verse #2 of my 24 verses for the year.

I read through all of the beautiful verses other women had chosen. I went through my prayer journal for the week and thought first this one and then that one.

And I prayed. Of course, I prayed.

But when it came down to what was on my heart and mind, the verse that Beth Moore herself chose reflected what I was praying. How could I not? So soon after national tragedy and so soon after a tragedy in my very own community, my heart is heavy for my children.

We aren’t promised their safety or their salvation or their health. Yet, we are given this great joy, this weighty responsibility, this amazing calling to love them, train them, guide them, and more than all that, to pray for them.

Parents of adult children can pray this, too. Grandmothers and grandfathers, aunts and uncles, spiritual mentors, teachers and counselors can all lift up the little ones in our sphere of influence and in our hearts with this prayer of blessing:

All your children shall be taught by the Lord,
and great shall be the peace of your children.
Isaiah 54:13 ESV

Yes, teach these children Your own wisdom and the joy of Your presence, Lord. Help them to know You personally and be real, present and active in their lives. In the very moments of their need, reveal Yourself to them and be their ever-present help in times of trouble. Bring peace into their lives, into their hearts and minds, into their relationships. We place them in Your hands and trust them to Your care. Please help us to know when to speak and when to listen, what to say and how to love. We are imperfect and weak; forgive us when we mess all this up, give us grace for a new day, and guide our steps, actions and words. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Making Progress

January 18, 2013January 29, 201412 Comments

Writing doesn’t make you vulnerable until you let someone else read it.

And then, it opens you right up like a patient on the table, the critical eye of the surgeon evaluating the inner parts of you, what’s working and even what isn’t. Even your life blood is laid bare and open to inspection.

I admit it. I’m afraid sometimes.

Like the time I read a blog by Lysa TerKeurst, the president of Proverbs 31 Ministries. She had just gotten her nails done. It was such a simple thing.

And some of those lovely Christian women reading her sweet little blog post just about ripped her head off through the computer.

They called her all manner of horrid things, equating a nail file and some polish at a salon to being a harlot of Babylon.

Good gravy.

I’ve read about Beth Moore and the vicious, scathing letters she receives from Bible scholars and disgruntled readers. Mary DeMuth talks about the nasty emails in her book, Everything, and how they just about crumpled her to the floor.

I’ve even ended up on email lists of people who feel the need to criticize every word every Christian writer has ever written….ever.

Blogging this way, pushing that “publish” button on the side of my screen as I finish each post, never lacks a certain amount of fear for me. Fear I’ll offend. Fear I’ll get it wrong. Fear the words won’t be enough or they won’t be articulate enough, poetic enough, beautiful enough, inspirational enough, truthful enough.

I don’t sit here at the computer typing away several days a week because I’m bold or even slightly brave. I don’t do it because I think I’m qualified or more capable.

Mostly, after all, I’m afraid. I’m the people-pleasing girl daunted by failure, criticism and embarrassment, who’d rather sit on the sidelines and miss out on the fun than lay myself out there for everyone to see.

But if God says, “Go,” He means “go.” And if God says, “Sing for others to hear…Write for others to read….Speak so others can listen….Dance so others can see….,” He’s asking you to be brave in Him.

For Moses, this calling was so difficult. All he could see was his past—a murderer-turned-fugitive, who had spent 40 years in the desert tending sheep and trying to forget his life in Egypt.

He could see his inability, his sin, his insufficiency. He was crippled by fear.

In fact, Moses wanted God to choose somebody else, because he spoke “with faltering lips” (Exodus 6:30).

In the Message paraphrase, Moses says, “Look at me. I stutter.”

“Look at me.” Isn’t that what we’re doing when God calls us forward, but we remind Him of others who are more equipped and how incapable we really are? We’re fixing our eyes on ourselves or maybe on the fears that we’ve made bigger than God.

But God told Moses, “See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet.” (Exodus 7:1 NIV).

The Message says it this way: “God told Moses, ‘Look at me…'”

It’s a re-direction of our focus, a looking up instead of a looking in or looking down or even looking ahead.

The prophet Habakkuk described it this way:

The Lord God is my Strength, my personal bravery, and my invincible army; He makes my feet like hinds’ feet and will make me to walk [not to stand still in terror, but to walk] and make [spiritual] progress upon my high places [of trouble, suffering, or responsibility]! (Habakkuk 3:19 AMP).

God is our Strength. He is our personal bravery.

It is He who makes us walk forward rather than standing still in terror. Even more than that, He gives us progress when we’d rather give up or run away or fail to even begin the journey.

But only when we let go of fear (of failure, of criticism, of people, of abandonment, of getting it wrong…) can we move forward. Only when we stop looking at our own clumsy feet or squinting ahead trying to make out any dangers along the path can we trust Him to guide us along the rocky mountain climb, making us as nimble and sure-footed as the practiced mountain deer.

Do you have any fears that are holding you back from obeying God’s call?

Today’s post is part of the January topic, ‘Forward’ by the ChristianWriters.com Blog Chain. You can click on the links on the right side of this page to read more articles in this series.

When Numbers Lie

January 16, 2013January 30, 20142 Comments

Numbers. Too often, it all comes down to numbers.

I have no intrinsic attraction to math and statistics don’t send my heart aflutter. It’s just that I’m so frequently bound by whether it all adds up on paper.

Like when your husband rattles off all the expenses over the next few months: Car repairs from where a deer collided with the bumper, swim lessons, glasses, household repairs….

It’s no fun to scratch it all into your notebook paper and plan the budget that stretches and stretches until you just finally have to admit you just don’t know and you understand that the numbers need to add up, but they just don’t and that’s all there is to say about that.

And the trust and the confidence and the peace you had just yesterday disappears in that moment when column A is greater than column B.

Oh, it’s not just budgets truly. It’s squinting your eyes up tight and running the figures in your head to decide whether this ministry is effective in a cost-benefit ratio kind of way.

Is all that effort worth this result?

It’s glancing at another and evaluating her worth based on her Facebook fans, Twitter followers, blog subscribers, and the number of women in her Sunday School class. We calculate the math of comparison. She is > me.

It’s listening to the report from the doctor and letting the statistical probabilities define your faith and constrict your expectation of a Mighty God.

It’s math. It’s just math. They are numbers we use to try to structure our world, form our decisions and guide our lives, and we say, ‘The numbers don’t lie.’

But sometimes they do.

Or at least perhaps they just miss an important part of the equation. We too often leave out the God-factor.

God: Providing in ways we don’t expect at the time of our need.
God: Determining value not based on numbers and what we accomplish for Him, but simply because of obedience to His calling.
God: Doing more than all we could ask or imagine; yes, even doing the impossible.
God: Using the least of these and the smallest of all to perform His great work.
God: Multiplying loaves and fish—whatever is not enough—into more than enough to feed a crowd of thousands.

In 1 Chronicles 21, King David decided to take a census of all the fighting men of Israel. He wanted to do the math.

The counting wasn’t the sin. Census-taking wasn’t a sin. Running the numbers wasn’t a sin. At other times in Scripture, God himself calls for the occasional counting up of all the people.

When it’s God-initiated, sometimes math is what we need, if only to show off His glory. He asks us to take poll our resources so we can see what little we have and how it’s never enough on its own, but always enough with Him.

Or perhaps He asks us to do the math and realize how much we’ve been blessed and how much more we can give to others.

But God didn’t tell David to take a census in 1 Chronicles 21. David knew it. The commander of David’s army knew it.

Instead, Scripture says, “Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel” (1 Chronicles 21:1 NIV).

Isn’t that so true with us? It’s Satan accusing us of ineffectiveness, using the numbers as proof against us. It’s the Accuser keeping a tally of the times we fall and again we fall and again we fall. It’s the Prince of Lies telling us God can’t provide, the numbers don’t add up; this time it’s hopeless.

In The Daily Message, Eugene Peterson writes, “David substituted statistics for trust.”

Oh, how often this is me, scribbling figures on a pad of paper or the back of an envelope: If this plus this equals that then this…. Then I scratch it all out and start again.

Evaluating, comparing, adding up, subtracting….I do it all day after day, always trying to substitute statistics for trust.

But in one of those verses that I return to over and over again, God says:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding; think about Him in all your ways, and He will guide you on the right paths. Proverbs 3: 5,6 (HCSB)

Don’t rely on my own understanding.

Trust in God instead.

We may not know how God will provide, or why He calls us to do what seems so insignificant, or how He expects us to give out of our need, or whether we’ll beat the statistical odds. But that’s the God factor, the unknown value that we can’t ever fit onto paper, but that is always more than enough.

Resting is Just a Part of Moving

January 14, 2013January 30, 20142 Comments

It’s Monday and I already feel behind for the week.

The laundry is spinning, shushing it’s way through washing machine cycles and dryer loads.

The dishwasher is halfway empty. I’ve been grabbing clean plates and cups all morning as I walk by. Grab and stash in the cabinet, go about my business and return for more on the next pass.

My daughter’s arts and crafts-filled Sunday afternoon has left a Monday morning mess. Scraps of paper and felt dot the living room and dining room carpet. Popsicle sticks are scattered here and there on desks and tables in the playroom. There’s a pile of papers topped by markers and scissors, and glue sticks overflow onto the floor.

And the glitter. Oh, the glitter. Apparently, it fell. Not in one easy-to-clean location, mind you. It seems to have popped up in the air and thrown its contents across every surface in the playroom, which is now aglow.

I’ve been fielding phone calls and catching up on e-mail messages and social media all morning.

And I feel the crunch of time, the deadlines and the to-do list, and part of me feels frustrated and maybe a little breathless.

Deep down I want to blame the rest.

Why am I behind? I reason it out.

Because I didn’t do any laundry yesterday. Because I made origami cars instead of vacuuming. Because I read my book instead of writing. Because I take a break from social media (no Facebook browsing, no Twitter tweeting, no Pinterest pinning) one day a week.

I unplugged from busyness and plugged in to family and soul and beauty and joy and God…and rest.

Of course, I’ve thought it before. I probably will fight the lie for a long time: If I just didn’t take that break once a week, I wouldn’t be so busy.

This resting is counterintuitive. It isn’t what makes sense to me in my self-focused, rational way of looking at life.

And yet, it’s necessary. This walking away, this stepping back, this slowing down, this breathing in and out, this ceasing activity, this stopping the rush, this halting of busyness….it’s worship.

It’s obedience.

It’s humility.

It’s trusting God to take care of my little world and the whole wide world without me, and realizing just this: the world spins on and moves along even when I take a break. This is the shocking revelation that I need. It’s God, not me, that keeps it all going.

Without the rest, we wouldn’t really get very far anyway. Oh sure, it seems to make sense. Do laundry on Sunday so the basket isn’t so full on Monday. Write on Sunday so Monday morning there’s less pressure to rush to the computer and type away.

And yet, how far would we really make it before we crashed? How long could we go before our pride exploded and we forgot that God is really the one in control, so we ended up on our face in a forced and painful humbling?

The truth is that moving forward doesn’t require perpetual movement. It demands moving when God says, “Move” and resting when God says, “Stop.”

After all, how far would Elijah have managed to run without the food, drink and rest the angel brought him before his journey? (1 Kings 19). How long could the disciples have ministered, traveling on foot and mobbed by crowds, without time away with Jesus?

How could Israel have made it to the Promised Land without seasons of rest by the mountain of the Lord, beside clean water, and with peace from their enemies?

Even when they were pursued by the Egyptians, facing opposition and recapturing, still God didn’t tell the Israelites to grab their handmade weapons and armor and strive against the enemy.

Instead, “Moses told the people, ‘Don’t be afraid. Just stand still and watch the Lord rescue you today. The Egyptians you see today will never be seen again. The Lord himself will fight for you. Just stay calm.'” (Exodus 14:13-14, NLT).

Stand still. Just watch. Stay calm. Let the Lord fight for you.

Just rest in Him.

But they couldn’t stand there forever, looking at the Red Sea and never crossing over. They had trusted God in the waiting. Now they could trust Him in the moving:

^“Then the Lord said to Moses, “Why are you crying out to me? Tell the people to get moving!” (Exodus 14:15 NLT).

So it is for us. We trust Him in the waiting and in the resting. We trust Him in the moving and the battle …. and the laundry, the dishes, the to-do lists, the emails, the phone calls, the meetings, the appointments, and the deadlines.

Weekend Walk, 1/12/2013: Take My Picture

January 12, 2013January 29, 20143 Comments

“Take my picture, Mommy! Take my picture!”

In the middle of Sunday morning chaos, pulling on stockings, buttoning dresses, clipping on bows and tying on ribbons, my three-year-old twirled in her dress and posed for a Kodak moment.

And I clicked the camera.

I don’t ever remember being this way, so eager to say, “Cheese.” I’ve always been the one declining photos, offering to hold the camera, tossing into the trash any pictures of me I don’t like.

But when I’m out and about with my daughters (or even just running around the house frantically trying to get four females ready for Sunday morning church service)… they want to stop and take pictures. Lots and lots of pictures. Not of the scenery. Of them.

It takes us three times as long to walk down the Main Street of our town and probably twice as much time on location on our family “field trips.” But I don’t mind.

I love that they feel beautiful enough to want to pose.

There was a day I stepped into the bathroom to put away a stray toothbrush, and I caught one of my girls watching herself in the mirror. She smoothed her hair and glanced up at her reflection, pleased with what she saw.

How beautiful is the girl who feels beautiful in her own skin.

This rare gift, how do you teach it? How do you help them keep it for life?

Somehow, most of us grow out of it. We glance in the mirror and critique the image or sigh in frustration. We step on the scale and slander ourselves with our thoughts. We pose for that picture and know we won’t be happy with it later, not with the smile or the hair or the wrinkles or the chin or ….

Even my husband, in the early days of falling in love, would sit across me from the table and I could feel him watching. I didn’t know where to look. I was uncomfortable in his gaze. What imperfections would he see in me if he looked too closely or watched too long?

Later today, I’ll take my seat at a piano and offer up the music for a wedding ceremony. There will be a moment at that wedding when the soloist will sing, “How Beautiful the radiant bride who waits for her Groom with His light in her eyes” (How Beautiful, Twila Paris).

The beauty of the bride isn’t so much the hairdresser and the hair spray, the makeup, the gown.

It’s that she walks down that aisle feeling loved. In a moment, she knows she is wanted, precious, and she radiates the joy.

And it’s beautiful how she loves him. So we, thinking of another, run out of time to be so self-analyzing, so self-criticizing, so self-condemning—so “self.”

It’s a verse for meditating on all week, with a reminder of how beauty is looking to God–our Groom–thinking of Him and less of me. Beauty is caring for others. Beauty isn’t feeling shame, but feeling redeemed, feeling precious, feeling loved.

“Those who look to him are radiant;
their faces are never covered with shame” (Psalm 34:5).

Sorry!

January 9, 2013January 29, 2014Leave a comment

It just seems so cruel.

I’m playing the board game Sorry! with my kids, not grown ups, not enemies, not rivals. These are little tiny people with big sensitive feelings. But when I draw that one magic card from the stack, I have to stomp all over their progress and send their man back to the start zone.

Don’t pass Go. Don’t collect $200.

Or something like that.

And while I might be able to rig Candy Land, there’s not really much I can do about the game Sorry!, not without destroying the essence of the game by hiding all the Sorry! cards themselves.

Over time, my kids have grown a little hardier, but when we first started playing I had to apologize profusely for sending them back to “Start” just as they thought they were winning. There was crying and there were hurt feelings.

Now at least they understand it’s all part of the game.

While all of us want to race straight from “Start” to “Home,” the truth is Sorry! is all about patiently waiting for the right card before you can step out onto the game board. It’s about being sent back a few times and jumping ahead at opportune moments, sliding a little forward when things go your way and taking four steps back every once in a while.

It’s a little bit, or maybe a lot, like life. It certainly reminds me of Abraham’s life.

When God called Abram (later Abraham) to leave his home and head out to an unknown land of promise, Abram packed his bags in faith, bid a fond farewell to family and friends and set out on his journey.

I guess I’ve always imagined him rushing through the wilderness, riding as fast as his camels could carry him in the desert heat, stopping only for sleep and meals only when fruit snacks and peanut butter crackers no longer sufficed.

I could see his wife, Sarai, pulling her camel alongside his and assuring him softly that, “It’s all right to stop for a bathroom break. We don’t have to make it to the Promised Land in one day.”

I know I would be in a hurry to reach my destination! Given a promise or a hope, I’m eager to leave and rush breathlessly down the road.

I’d be pressing into God every day: Is this the land, God? Is this your promise? Or is it beyond this and, if so, what are you waiting for? Let’s get moving!

Yet, Genesis 12:9 says, “Abram continued traveling south by stages toward the Negev” (NLT).

He took the journey in stages. Travel a bit and then rest for a while in one place. Get to know the people. Linger along the desert road. Tend to the sheep. Wait on God to direct His next step.

Yes, Abram enjoyed the journey.

Even when he arrived at the land of promise, it must have been such a disappointment. Scripture says, “At that time a severe famine struck the land of Canaan, forcing Abram to go down to Egypt, where he lived as a foreigner” (Genesis 12:10 NLT).

The Promised Land wasn’t flowing with milk and honey at the time. It was dried up and destitute. He had to retreat to Egypt, taking a long detour where he lived as a foreigner, an outsider, one man worshiping One God among a nation of many gods.

Then he trekked back over land he’d already covered, but even then he didn’t hurry. He knew the way. He’d been there before. And yet still he traveled slow:

“From the Negev, they continued traveling by stages toward Bethel, and they pitched their tents between Bethel and Ai, where they had camped before. This was the same place where Abram had built the altar, and there he worshiped the Lord again” (Gen. 13:3-4).

Maybe that’s what kept him going all along, knowing he would see Bethel again, where he had worshiped the Lord before and where he hoped to meet God anew. Perhaps by then, Abram needed that reassurance that God was still with him and that though the journey was long and complicated, confusing even, there was a plan and a purpose, a hope and a future.

Surely we all need that reassurance at times, because our traveling isn’t much more straightforward than Abram’s was.

Sometimes we have to go back and sometimes we have to take the long way round. Sometimes we get knocked aside by others. Sometimes it seems like we’re absolutely standing still, just turning over card after card waiting for our chance to move.

But we remember to take it in stages, knowing that, unlike arbitrary cards on a board game, God has a plan. We can trust that “the Lord will continually guide you” (Isaiah 58:11 NASB), even when we’re not moving forward, we are always moving on with Him.

Heather C. King – Room to Breathe

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

Tag: Faith

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Recalibrating the Measure

Super Glue, Broken Things, and Wholeness

Living in Between, Part I

Weekend Walk, 01/19/2013: A Prayer for Children

Making Progress

When Numbers Lie

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding; think about Him in all your ways, and He will guide you on the right paths. Proverbs 3: 5,6 (HCSB)

Resting is Just a Part of Moving

Weekend Walk, 1/12/2013: Take My Picture

Sorry!

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Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding; think about Him in all your ways, and He will guide you on the right paths. Proverbs 3: 5,6 (HCSB)

My devotional for today:

My devotional for today:

My devotional for today:

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