Tag: forgiveness

When you’re tempted to react instead of respond

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psalm 103

I made a speech about it.

My oration covered the themes of procrastination, respect for others, taking things for granted, and gratitude.  I delivered my speech while I drove in my minivan, while I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror, and on the phone to my husband while he drove home from work.

It was a great speech and I delivered it really well.  My points were well-argued and well-reasoned.  By the time I finished, I had her accused, cross-examined and pronounced guilty on the stand.

This woman….

This woman had not only ignored my email messages, she had left the email group I was using to send out information about an upcoming event for her child.

So, how’s she going to know all the info that I’ll be sending out in the highly important emails she now had prevented me from sending her?

I mean, good gracious, what is wrong with people?

It wasn’t until the next day that I got hit in the face by the full impact of my foot flying into my mouth.

Turns out due to the odd spelling of her last name and some messy handwriting, I had mis-read her email address.

Turns out this woman had never gotten any of my messages I’d sent and I’d actually been blocked by some poor, random stranger who probably thought—this lady is out of her mind.

Oops.

Good thing all those speeches I made were to myself, my mirror, my one-year-old and my husband.

Serves me right for jumping to conclusions, for being easily offended and for judging without contemplation, without grace, without time for facts and truth and gentleness.

I was wrong.  So, so very wrong.  And I had to take a long humbling look at myself and see what was ugly, infected and festering in my heart.

The Psalmist says:

The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love (Psalm 103:8 ESV).

In fact, I read this song of worship all over my Bible.  It is the hymn of God’s character:

“The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Exodus 34:6 ESV).

 ‘The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and the fourth generation.’ Numbers 14:18 ESV

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

Return to the Lord your God,
    for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love;
    and he relents over disaster. Joel 2:13 ESV

I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster (Jonah 4:2 ESV)

I read it and I’m so thankful. I’m moved to worship, moved to humble gratitude.

Because if there’s one thing I need, it’s a God who is slow to anger, who is gracious and full of abundant mercy for a messy, sin-covered girl like me.

Yes, our God is Slow To Anger.

Are we?

We could chalk this up to divinity.  That’s just who God is.

But no.

James writes:

Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger (James 1:19 ESV).

Ouch.

God wants to do this work in me also.

He wants me to listen first and listen well before making speeches in my car or shooting off a nasty email or calling up a friend to gossip or jumping into conflict.

I am to be quick to hear, slow to speak.

And yes, slow to anger also.

More willing to bestow grace than to deliver an oration.

More apt to overlook an offense than leap into an argument.

More inclined to believe the best about another person’s intentions or motivations than assuming the worst and jumping to unfair conclusions.

More prone to listen and love even when someone else hurts us, because maybe they just had a bad day, maybe it’s not how things appear, maybe they just didn’t know or didn’t mean it that way.

This world doesn’t respond to situations.  It reacts.

We can learn how to stop reacting in anger and start responding with the same grace and mercy that Christ shows us.

It starts by slowing down.  

Wait before answering.

Listen before speaking.

Think before acting.

Pray before we do anything.

 

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.

Saying sorry while blaming the other person isn’t really apologizing

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psalm 32

There’s an art to apologizing.

We’re still learning that art here at my house.

There’s this one key ingredient I’m looking for: Honesty.  Genuine repentance.  True sorrow.

I tell my kids, “You have to mean it.”

The battles start young and they surely are battles.  It seems so simple.  I tell the raging toddler, “Say ‘sorry'”

There is screaming and stubborn refusal.  Jaw tightens.  Fists clench.

The truth is, it isn’t simple.  Even a two-year-old knows that it’s never easy to confess, “I was wrong.”

Never easy to fess up, own up, and step up to your own personal responsibility and admit weakness or error.

That’s pride.

It gets the best of us.

Sure, as the kids age, they learn the basics.  No more time outs and threats of punishment and discipline for a lack of apology.

They technically have learned to apologize.

But they’ve also learned how to twist that apology into a sharp-edged weapon.

It’s sneaky, but I’m on to their tactics.

“I’m sorry that you weren’t looking where you were going and tripped on me.”

“I’m sorry that you’re crying drove me so crazy I had to be mean to you.”

“I”m sorry that you never leave me alone when I tell you to.”

“I’m sorry that you always get what you want and that makes me so angry.”

I’m sorry……that this is all really your fault.  You made me do it.  You, you, you.

It breaks this momma’s heart.

Surely it must break God’s heart, too, not just to hear my kids apologize without really apologizing, but to hear me entangle myself in my own bit of guilt-shirking.  He hears how I can twist myself up in knots to justify my own sin.

We can make excuses.  We can point fingers at others.  We can blame circumstances.  We can drown out the Holy Spirit with the noise of our own protests.

But here’s what Paul said:

For the kind of sorrow God wants us to experience leads us away from sin and results in salvation. There’s no regret for that kind of sorrow. But worldly sorrow, which lacks repentance, results in spiritual death

Godly sorrow.  That’s what we should have.

Sin breaks the heart of God and it should be breaking our own heart, as well.

Truth is, as a mom, I pray that guilt and godly sorrow eats away at the heart of my kids so that they can’t stand it anymore; they just have to burst out a confession.

I want them to be able to say, “This is what I did wrong….”

I want them to know the freedom of true, genuine, honest, heart-felt repentance like David did:

When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away
Through my groaning all day long.

For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me;
My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer.
Selah.

I acknowledged my sin to You,
And my iniquity I did not hide;
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD”;
And You forgave the guilt of my sin (Psalm 32:3-5 NASB).

It sounds cruel, perhaps, but if my kids are clinging to sin, I hope it groans within them all day and night and they feel feverish with guilt and heavy-laden with conviction.

May it be so for me, too.

I’ve been thinking about Peter lately.

Other disciples mourned Jesus’s death.  It’s true.

But Peter grieved all the more, losing His Savior while coming face-to-face with his own sin of betrayal that nailed Christ to that cross.

The Gospels tell us all about it.  They tell how Peter stood at the fire in the courtyard of the High Priest.  They tell all about the three people who identified him as a Jesus-follower and how he blustered out a denial.  They describe the crowing of the rooster and Peter’s desperate tears of deep, deep sorrow for his sin.

How did the Gospel writers know?

How did Luke know?  How did John know all these details so he could write them all down?

How did anyone other than Peter and Jesus know that Peter had totally blown it?

Peter must have told them.  Not just a general confession either. “I sinned.”  He told the whole ugly truth.

He didn’t keep it to himself.  He didn’t cover it over and hide it away.  He didn’t pretend it didn’t happen or make excuses for himself.

Peter didn’t compare himself to the others who had run away that night and figure, “Hey, maybe I’m not so bad after all.”

He confessed.

He repented.

He humbled himself enough to say, “I’m sorry.  This is what I did wrong.”

And that moment of sincere, honest, lay-it-all-out-there confession allowed Jesus to make a new Peter, a leader-of-the-church, humble, teachable Peter.

We bring the mess to Him; He brings the mercy.

And He makes us new.

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

How to know what really matters

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1 timothy 1
Some days, you must choose grace.

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

Like when you shop at at the grocery story and you forgot your coupons.  And they don’t have the chicken you need, which messes up your meal plan for the week.

So you skip out on exercise because you had to trek to a second grocery story to find said elusive chicken.

And during the rush to put away the groceries, all you can see is the dirt in the corners of the kitchen floor, the apple juice splatters, the toothpaste splotches in the bathroom sink, and the laundry piled in the basket.

At the end of the day, what’s on your mind is mess and failure, what you didn’t accomplish….how your kids didn’t practice the piano, your toddler threw a tantrum every hour, and you didn’t finish the project you’re working on.

I collapsed onto the sofa after having that day and read to my daughters quickly.  When we finished the chapter, my daughter reached over and turned down the corner the page to hold our place.

And I felt the full rush of failure.

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

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

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

Watching my daughter turn down that page without hesitation, I heard that voice in my head: I’m passing along my bad habits to my children, handing them down like ill-fitting jeans and worn-out shoes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paul told Timothy:

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

Sometimes we have to stop and ask, “What’s the point?  What is it that really matters here?”

Is it a chicken? Missing coupons?  Apple juice splatter or the pages of a book turned down at the corner?

What matters is living “a life open to God.”

So, we choose to receive that grace and rest in it.  We silence that self-condemning prattle in our mind and heart and decide:  it’s okay if we didn’t get it all perfect today and if our life got a little bit messy.

Doesn’t God love us?

Didn’t we try our best to walk in that love?

That’s the point and that’s enough.

Now, it’s your turn: Do you have any bad habits?

Originally posted November 2, 2012

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

10 Bible Verses About Snow

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versessnow

  • Psalm 51:7 NASB
    Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
    Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
  • Psalm 147:16-18 NASB
    He gives snow like wool;
    He scatters the frost like ashes.
    He casts forth His ice as fragments;
    Who can stand before His cold?
    He sends forth His word and melts them;
    He causes His wind to blow and the waters to flow.
  • Psalm 148:7-8 NASB
    Praise the Lord from the earth,
    Sea monsters and all deeps;
    Fire and hail, snow and clouds;
    Stormy wind, fulfilling His word
  • Proverbs 25:13 NASB
    Like the cold of snow in the time of harvest
    Is a faithful messenger to those who send him,
    For he refreshes the soul of his masters.
  • Proverbs 31:21 NASB
    She is not afraid of the snow for her household,
    For all her household are clothed with scarlet.
  • Isaiah 1:18 NASB
    “Come now, and let us reason together,”
    Says the Lord,
    “Though your sins are as scarlet,
    They will be as white as snow;
    Though they are red like crimson,
    They will be like wool.
  • Isaiah 55:10-11 NASB
    For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
    And do not return there without watering the earth
    And making it bear and sprout,
    And furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater;
     So will My word be which goes forth from My mouth;
    It will not return to Me empty,
    Without accomplishing what I desire,
    And without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.
  • Lamentations 4:7 NASB
    Her consecrated ones were purer than snow,
    They were whiter than milk;
    They were more ruddy in body than corals,
    Their polishing was like lapis lazuli.
  • Daniel 7:9 NASB
    “I kept looking
    Until thrones were set up,
    And the Ancient of Days took His seat;
    His vesture was like white snow
    And the hair of His head like pure wool.
    His throne was ablaze with flames,
    Its wheels were a burning fire.
  • Revelation 1:14 NASB
    His head and His hair were white like white wool, like snow; and His eyes were like a flame of fire.isaiah1

What a Letdown

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

I say he needs a nap.   He thinks he needs unlimited playtime.matthew6-33

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.

Copyright © 2015 Heather King

What’s This Gonna Cost?

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I tell my daughters about the email.

Their teacher at church sent us information about an upcoming missions project.  They’ll be collecting money as a class for a ministry in our area, but she doesn’t want the parents to just give kids money to contribute.

Sure, I could stuff a few dollars and some coins into that empty container and send it in with my  kids.  And sure, they could hand it in and feel like they participated and did the good Christian thing that good Christians are supposed to do.

But giving should cost something.

In fact, giving should be costly.

It should require some effort or sacrifice.   We shouldn’t just give when we have more than enough.

True generosity and true love require giving out of need and giving out of not-enough.

My girls protest the fact that they have empty piggy banks, no allowance and no source of renewable income since birthdays only come once a year.

So we return to our tried-and-true method:  Extra chores allow them to earn money to give to missions or charities or ministries.1peter2

The King girls will be sweeping floors and scrubbing toilets to earn those coins to give away.

On Sunday morning, I hold the cup and bread in my hand and pray before Communion, thinking this is a lesson for me, too.

I think about the cost of giving, the cost of generosity.

Surely God has given generously to us.

Maybe it’s complacency from long-term faith, from hearing those same lessons taught in the same ways.  Maybe it’s selfishness.  Maybe it’s forgetfulness.

Whatever the cause, sometimes I cling selfishly to what I have and forget the abundant generosity of God’s gift to me.

Could anything be more generous than grace?

Yes, I mean the cross, but even before that.

Adam and Eve stood in the aftermath of forbidden fruit and witnessed the ugly truth for the first time:  Grace demands sacrifice.

They sinned.  They felt shame in their nakedness and they tried to fix things on their own, fitting leaves together to form a makeshift outfit.

Genesis 3:21 says it wasn’t enough:

The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them (Genesis 3:21 NIV).

I’ve read that verse so often and just ran over the words without thought, but here’s the truth of it.

They sinned.  So God slayed an animal at their feet.  He couldn’t just pick a few animal skins off of a store shelf or drop by the tailor’s so they could be custom-fitted with a faux-leather outfit.

God handcrafted the clothes for His wayward children.

Adam and Eve stood in the garden and watched another creature die for their own offense.  They witnessed the blood running red for the first time ever.

Max Lucado writes:

 “God slays an animal.  For the first time in the history of the earth, dirt is stained with blood.  Innocent blood.  The beast committed no sin.  The creature did not deserve to die……….” (A Love Worth Living).

Then they had to wear the result and remember the high cost of their God-designed outfit.

As Max Lucado puts it: “As a father would zip up the jacket of a preschooler.  God covers them.”  

It’s the act of a dad, helping a little one fit arms into arm-holes and socks onto feet.  It’s tenderness and gentleness and love when they deserved wrath.

And God did this for us, too:

For he has clothed me with garments of salvation
    and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness (Isaiah 61:10 NIV).

Right there in the garden it began: Outrageous, undeserved, generous, complete sacrifice of one life for another.isaiah1

I read Leviticus and wonder what it must have been like to watch the whole gory mess of atonement with its blood and guts and death.

It became routine to the Israelites.  How could that be routine?  How could the stench and the bleating of the lambs become routine?

Yet, has the cross become routine to us?

Sin should be shocking.

Grace should shock us all the more.

Maybe if I had to stand and watch God pay the price for my mess with my own two eyes, I’d be less complacent and more overcome.

Maybe if I had to let God silently drape my shoulders with a covering of His own making to hide my nakedness, maybe my heart would break with sorrow at my sin.

Maybe if I watched someone die in my place, knowing how little I deserved it, I’d learn what true generosity is: giving abundantly and without complaint even when it’s undeserved and even when it costs me dearly.

The truth is that Jesus did just that:  He died for us and then He dressed us in His righteousness.

May we be overcome by grace anew.

 

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

Eat Cereal and Go to Disney?

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My daughter announced at the breakfast table that if we wanted to go to Disney World we all needed to eat a particular cereal.

“You want to go to Disney, right?”

She asked her five-year-old sister. Such an unfair question.  Of course, the five-year-old nodded, ‘yes.’

“Then you need to eat this cereal, see?”

I peek over my shoulder to see what she found: a contest on the back of the cereal box.  One grand prize winner.  Yada yada yada.

Not exactly the reality she was trying to spin for her siblings: Eat this box of cereal = a free trip to Disney for the family.

But my children feel they have a deprived existence because:

(A) We do not own a dog.

(B) We have never been to Disney.

I promise her that I’ve entered plenty of Free Trip to Disney contests before yet I’ve still never been there.  It’s because I never win anything.

(Well, once I won a drawing at the public library for the adult summer reading program.  The nice librarian called and told me I had won and could come pick up my prize.  I was ecstatic with joy.  So much so that he felt the need to assure me that it was just a tiny little prize and not to expect anything big.  He didn’t want me to be disappointed.  It didn’t matter.  I had WON something.)

But as I try to protect my dear daughter from the inevitable disappointment of finding that eating this particular cereal did not by default mean we’d be standing outside Cinderella’s castle next summer, I remember my prize from last week.

We made our annual family trek to the pumpkin patch.  When I paid to get in, the nice lady at the farm handed me a jar of homemade pumpkin butter.

She said the first 25 families that visited the farm that day were receiving a gift.

We had won!

In fact, she didn’t have any more jars there on the shelf behind her, so I’m pretty sure we were number 25, making this all the more reason to celebrate.

And all I had to do was show up.

Oh, we love to complicate things don’t we?

I think how difficult I can make this sometimes, asking what I need to do to win God’s affection or attention and earn His favor.

I can know it in my head.  It’s grace.  It’s mercy.  He doesn’t need me to perform elaborate rituals or scream and shout for the prize of His divine attention.james4

Still I forget.

I think surely I must have let Him down and disappointed Him or missed a step and messed things up along the way.  Maybe He’d have blessed me, but I did something wrong and now He can’t.  Or I made a wrong decision somewhere and stumbled out of His perfect plan for me.

It makes it seem so fickle.  Like I’m playing some guessing game and the prize for guessing correctly is His favor and affection.  But one wrong answer and I’m out.

Yet, James 4:8a says:

Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.

Draw near.

I read about the resurrection appearance of Jesus, how He appeared first to Mary Magdaelene and then to the other women who had visited the tomb that morning.

In her devotional, Revealing Jesus, Darlene Zschech asks:

Why did Jesus appear first to two women? The answer is so simple. They were the ones who showed up first. 

We won’t always get it right.  Sometimes just ‘showing up’ begins with that first humble act of repentance, of praying in earnest that the Holy Spirit do His work, search our hearts, purify and refine.

But showing up also means just coming as we are.  Not trying to figure out some complicated formula in order to gain admittance to see Jesus. We don’t have to delay coming to Him because we’re not ready yet or worry that He’ll send us back because we’re so unworthy.

We come.

We just.  Come.

And we ask:  Lord, I long for Your presence and I’m drawing near to You today. I’m resting here at Your feet and I’m desperate to spend time with You.  Forgive me, cleanse me.  Please draw near to me.  ~Amen~

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 © 2014 Heather King

Where I Confess How Long It Has Been Since I Saw the Dentist…

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I skipped the first appointment because my baby was due and the C-section delivery meant no driving for me.  Plus, there was the normal craziness of schools, carpools, and activities piled on top of having a newborn.

I was justified.2chronicles 30

I skipped the next appointment because our schedule never slowed down.  Every time I thought we’d finally made it to the ‘easy’ part of the year, life got all unexpectedly hectic.

Imagine that.

At some point as a mom with four kids, you’d think I’d just learn to expect hectic.

So, now here it is….a year-and-a-half since I’ve been to the dentist and time for yet another 6-month check-up that I have not made yet.

Here’s the problem.

It is now easier to miss the appointments than it is to make them.  I know instead of just 6 months of cleaning, they’ll be doing extra scraping and polishing.

I hate going to the dentist on a good day.

My mouth never hurts until they clean my teeth.  They find a sore spot and then continually poke and prod and ask, “Does this bother you?”  Well, it really doesn’t bother me as long as I don’t stab at it with a sharp mental pointy instrument of torture.

I brush my teeth, use mouthwash, and reluctantly floss, but I know I need to go to the dentist….eventually…..when I have the time (which of course I never have).

“Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today.”

Wise advice.

Because the problem with delay is that it just makes it easier to keep delaying and harder to do what needs to be done.

Miss one Sunday of church, you can go back the following Sunday without a spiritual revolution.

Miss a month, and you’re out of the habit of going.

Miss a few months and even when you know you should go back, you don’t want anyone to ask you where you’ve been.

So it goes.

Take a day off exercising and you can make it up the next day.

Take two weeks off and why bother exercising today since you’ve missed the last 14 days?

Now it will hurt.

Now you have to start all over.

Now you might have to answer questions.

Now I might have cavities.  (Might?  Yeah, that’s pretty much a guarantee at this point. Hence, why I don’t want to go.)

Now it will take longer.

Now people might judge.

Now you feel hopeless, flawed, messed up.  You are the failure who stopped doing what you knew you were supposed to do and rather than call that dentist or head to the gym or slip into the pew on a Sunday morning, you just want to shrug it off and avoid going back.

Returning requires humility and repentance.  It requires bending that willful knee low and confessing that you strayed or stopped or missed or sinned or miscalculated or got it all terribly wrong.

That prodigal son could have run back to his dad at the first sign of disappointment with the free and wild life.

Yet, he stayed.  And the longer he stayed, the harder it probably seemed to head back home and face his dad.

Guilt, shame and regret heaped themselves like heavy burdens onto his back.

So, he kept marching in the direction of death because going forward was easier than changing direction.

Jonah, the wayward, runaway prophet, could have changed his mind at any point and taken the easier journey to Nineveh.

Instead, it took a violent storm and a hungry fish to convince him that obeying God was better than stubbornly heading in the opposite direction.

The thought of going back frightens me a little.  I know I’ll have to face the consequences of poor decisions and procrastination.

But the longer I wait to call that dentist, the worse that appointment is going to be.

And the longer we wait to obey Him, the more obedience might cost us.

Yet, even when it takes effort and repentance, even when pride has to crumble, even when we need to confess, God beckons us to return.

He gives us new mercies.

He gives us fresh starts.

He re-places our feet on the solid ground.

He journeys with us.

He beckons us home and celebrates the turning and returning it took to get us there.

That’s grace.

I have blotted out your transgressions like a cloud and your sins like mist; return to me, for I have redeemed you (Isaiah 44:22 ESV)

Therefore say to them, Thus declares the Lord of hosts: Return to me, says the Lord of hosts, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts (Zechariah 1:3 ESV).

For the Lord your God is gracious and merciful and will not turn away his face from you, if you return to him (2 Chronicles 30:9b ESV).

“Come, let us return to the Lord;
    for he has torn us, that he may heal us;
    he has struck us down, and he will bind us up (Hosea 6:1 ESV).

Let us test and examine our ways,
    and return to the Lord! (Lamentation 3:40 ESV).

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 © 2014 Heather King

Epic Failures; Epic Grace

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Mom Failures.

I’ve had them, had some doozies actually.

Anyone else?

There was the year my oldest daughter had been pestering me all week with her chattery excitement about an upcoming birthday party for a friend.  The day of the party, I told her it was time to go and double-checked the invitation on the way out the door.  That’s when I found out that the party actually ended at 2:00, not began at 2:00.  She had missed it completely.  We drove anyway just to bring our present and apologize, but everyone was already gone.psalm145

I had one tearful extrovert of a 5-year-old that day.

And it was my  fault.  My own failure that had ruined her super-exciting day.

I apologized a million times and it still didn’t feel like enough.  I took her to one of those play places with a million bouncy inflatables and she had the most fun jumping herself into exhaustion, but I still knew the truth—I had failed.

“Bad moments don’t make bad mamas!”  That’s what Lysa TerKeurst says.

She’s right, of course.  One missed birthday party doesn’t define me, doesn’t stuff me into a box of rejection or label me as a Failure-With-a-Capital-F.

But in that moment, it’s so hard to soak in any grace when your soul is rock-hard with shame.

And when you mess it all up, all those other mistakes come crashing right back down on your head from the places you’ve shelved them.  Pretty soon, you’re covered in the trash of remembered failure.

You always….You never…..

We hear the absolute declarations that we simply are not good enough, our own voice of condemnation echoing in our own head and heart.

You always make a mess of things.

You never get it right.

You’re always so stupid, so flaky, so forgetful, so short-tempered….

You’ll never be as good as she is…

God can’t use you.

Chris Tiegreen writes:

We are apt to think that failure disqualifies us from serving God well.  To the contrary, sometimes it is the only thing that does qualify us.  It removes any pretense of self-reliance.  Like a phoenix rising, we ascend from the ashes of our own undoing, testifying to the resurrecting power of God.  From failure to forgiveness, weakness to strength, death to life—it’s God’s way.  Remember that the next time you despair over your failures (365 Pocket Devotions).

We’re mess-ups, all of us.  Somehow, some way, at some time, we’re going to fail.

That’s why we need grace, after all.  That’s why we needed a Savior: because on our own, we’ll never be perfect, never good enough, never all right.

But there’s Jesus, not just ready to pour out forgiveness afterward; He prays for us in advance.

Jesus looked right at Simon Peter sitting at the Passover Meal, that Last Supper, and said:

“But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22:32  NIV).

What grace is this?

Before Peter ever denied Christ, Jesus had been praying for him.

Before Peter’s sin, Jesus already assured him of restoration, promising not just that he would “turn back,” but that Peter could be the one to “strengthen your brothers.”

Jesus promised Peter, “After you’ve failed and you’ve returned to me, I can still use you. More than that, that’s WHEN I can use you.”

Sometimes our own failure makes us most useful to God.

When we receive grace, we learn to give grace.

When we are at our weakest, we learn to rely on His strength and not our own (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Maybe we don’t see the hope right away, not with the mess lying fresh all around us.  It’s hard to see beauty in all those ashes.  Hard to see grace in the hard and mercy in the difficult.

But the Psalmist wrote:

The Lord helps the fallen
and lifts those bent beneath their loads
(Psalm 145:114 NLT).

Have you tripped up?  Have you fallen?  Have you crashed headlong into that dark pit?

Do you feel weighed down by the load of shame and guilt and condemnation?

The Lord is there to help you and to hold you up.

Give what’s broken to Him and let Him bring you to something new, something beautiful, and something for your good.

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 © 2014 Heather King

It Would Be Easier if We Didn’t Have to Love Our Enemy

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My daughter was about 3-1/2 years old when she made this enemy.

After a week of summer dance camp, she declared that she absolutely did not want to take ballet in the fall.

Did she enjoy dance?

Yes.

Did she have fun at the camp?

Absolutely.

Did she want to try the dance classes?

No.

End of story.  No explanation.  I plied her with Mom-questions.  She stuck to her decision without explanation.

In October, we sat together on one of the benches in the dance studio waiting room watching the tiny dancers file out after class.  We picked up my oldest daughter and headed out the door.1corinthians13, photo by Cora Miller

That’s when my girl said it: “I didn’t see Madelyn in the class.”

Madelyn?  Who are you talking about?

Then she exploded with the report that Madelyn always wanted to sit on the triangle at dance camp even when other kids wanted to sit on the triangle and she wouldn’t let anyone else sit there no matter what.

She sucked in one big breath, harumphed, and tossed her arms criss-cross around her chest while stomping her feet for effect..

Well, babe, Madelyn was in dance camp, but she isn’t in the regular dance class.

“Oh.”  Long pause while 3-1/2 year old process new information.

“Well, I want to take ballet then.”

All this time, territorial conflict with another preschool child had dominated her life choices.

Territorialism, jealousy, just plain old being annoyed with another person….it doesn’t get much easier handling all that mess as a grown-up.

We’ve all been there, forced into relationships with folks that drive us insane maybe with their negativity or pettiness or meanness, maybe insecurity, pride, constant bragging, insistence on arguing with everything you say, trying to compete with everything you do.

But I tell my girls this:

You don’t have to be best friends with mean kids, but you have to be kind and loving to everyone.

1 John 4:20 says it this way:

“If anyone says, ‘I love God’ yet hates his brother, is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother whom He has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.”

I quote it at my kids, but taking it to heart?  Practicing what I preach?  That’s a little harder.

Sometimes I want to edit the command, soften it a little, make it fit a little more comfortably instead of stepping on my toes.

Maybe:  “For anyone who does not love his brother….when his brother is a pretty nice person….cannot love God, but when his brother is annoying, a jerk, mean, or immature, then it’s fine not to love that guy.”

Of course, that’s not Jesus.

God is love, and Jesus showed that best by loving the unlovely, by loving the enemy.

So, I could pit myself against the ‘unlovable’ or I could choose Jesus and the discipline of kindness and sacrificial love.

It starts with prayer, but the temptation is there, too, to pray that God change them when what I need to pray is that God shows me His love for them.

Because maybe, just maybe, the person who needs changing is me.

Paul wrote this to the Thessalonian church:

 constantly bearing in mind your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of our God and Father (1 Thessalonians 1:3 NASB).

Love itself is part of the labor.

As Beth Moore says,

Sometimes loving comes easy.  Other times it nearly kills us (Children of the Day).

This is at work and it’s at church.  It’s with the annoying mom in the PTA and the gal who drives us crazy on the sidelines at soccer.

It’s in our own homes, too.

Sometimes love is hard.  It’s labor and toil and discipline to believe the best, to serve and feel like you’ve given all and then given some more.  It’s looking past imperfections and choosing to focus on the good and lovely and of good report (Philippians 4:8).

Love means choosing to give grace and forgive.  It means not keeping score and a list of wrongs.

Love

….is

….patient  (1 Corinthians 13).

I think of a favorite promise:

 And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns (Philippians 1:6 NLT).

God’s not finished with me yet and He won’t give up on me.  I cling to that.

Yet, here’s the challenge, too:  He hasn’t finished with others either.  He hasn’t given up on them.

So, maybe I need to give them the space and the grace to let God continue that work because, after all, He’s given that space and grace to me.

In June, I took time for friendship and learned that God uses others to bring me into His presence, sometimes in unexpected ways and sometimes through unexpected people.

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 ‘Invest in Friendship’?

 

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 © 2014 Heather King