Tag: God’s love for us

Bible Verses about Loyal Love

2 Comments

verses-loyal-love

LOYALTY TO OTHERS

  • Ruth 1:16-17 ESV
     But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. 17 Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.”
  • 1 Samuel 15:21
    But Ittai answered the king, “As the Lord lives, and as my lord the king lives, wherever my lord the king shall be, whether for death or for life, there also will your servant be.”
  • Proverbs 3:3-4 MSG
    Don’t lose your grip on Love and Loyalty. Tie them around your neck; carve their initials on your heart. Earn a reputation for living well in God’s eyes and the eyes of the people.
  • Proverbs 17:17 ESV
    A friend loves at all times,
        and a brother is born for adversity.
  • Proverbs 18:24 ESV
    A man of many companions may come to ruin,
        but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.
  • Proverbs 19:22 ESV
    What is desired in a man is steadfast love,
        and a poor man is better than a liar.
  • Proverbs 27:10 ESV
    Do not forsake your friend and your father’s friend,
        and do not go to your brother’s house in the day of your calamity.
    Better is a neighbor who is near
        than a brother who is far away.
  • Micah 6:8 MSG
    But he’s already made it plain how to live, what to do, what God is looking for in men and women. It’s quite simple: Do what is fair and just to your neighbor, be compassionate and loyal in your love, And don’t take yourself too seriously— take God seriously.
  • Matthew 26:33 ESV
    Peter answered him, “Though they all fall away because of you, I will never fall away.”
  • John 15:13 ESV
    Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
  • 1 Corinthians 13:7 ESV
    Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
  • James 1:12 MSG
    Anyone who meets a testing challenge head-on and manages to stick it out is mighty fortunate. For such persons loyally in love with God, the reward is life and more life.

GOD’S LOYAL LOVE

  • Exodus 20:4-6 MSG
    No carved gods of any size, shape, or form of anything whatever, whether of things that fly or walk or swim. Don’t bow down to them and don’t serve them because I am God, your God, and I’m a most jealous God, punishing the children for any sins their parents pass on to them to the third, and yes, even to the fourth generation of those who hate me. But I’m unswervingly loyal to the thousands who love me and keep my commandments.
  • Exodus 34:6 MSG
    God passed in front of him and called out, “God, God, a God of mercy and grace, endlessly patient—so much love, so deeply true—loyal in love for a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, rebellion, and sin.
  • Numbers 14:18a MSG
    God, slow to get angry and huge in loyal love,
            forgiving iniquity and rebellion and sin
  • Deuteronomy 5:10 MSG
    But I’m lovingly loyal to the thousands who love me and keep my commandments.
  • Deuteronomy 7:9 MSG
    Know this: God, your God, is God indeed, a God you can depend upon. He keeps his covenant of loyal love with those who love him and observe his commandments for a thousand generations.
  • Deuteronomy 7:12-13 MSG
    And this is what will happen: When you, on your part, will obey these directives, keeping and following them, God, on his part, will keep the covenant of loyal love that he made with your ancestors:
    He will love you,
    he will bless you,
    he will increase you.
  • 2 Samuel 22:26-28 MSG
    You stick by people who stick with you,
        you’re straight with people who’re straight with you,
    You’re good to good people,
        you shrewdly work around the bad ones.
    You take the side of the down-and-out,
        but the stuck-up you take down a peg.
  • 2 Chronicles 5:13 MSG
    The choir and trumpets made one voice of praise and thanks to God—orchestra and choir in perfect harmony singing and playing praise to God:
    Yes! God is good!
    His loyal love goes on forever!
  • Psalm 36:5-6 MSG
    God’s love is meteoric,
        his loyalty astronomic,
    His purpose titanic,
        his verdicts oceanic.
    Yet in his largeness
        nothing gets lost;
    Not a man, not a mouse,
        slips through the cracks.
  • Psalm 66:20 MSG
    But he most surely did listen,
        he came on the double when he heard my prayer.
    Blessed be God: he didn’t turn a deaf ear,
        he stayed with me, loyal in his love.
  • Psalm 100:5 MSG
    For God is sheer beauty,
        all-generous in love,
        loyal always and ever.
  • Lamentations 3:22-23 MSG
    God’s loyal love couldn’t have run out,
        his merciful love couldn’t have dried up.
    They’re created new every morning.
        How great your faithfulness!
    I’m sticking with God (I say it over and over).
        He’s all I’ve got left.
  • Lamentations 3:31-34 MSG
    Why? Because the Master won’t ever walk out and fail to return. If he works severely, he also works tenderly. His stockpiles of loyal love are immense. He takes no pleasure in making life hard, in throwing roadblocks in the way

Sometimes Love is a Missed School Bus and a Cup of Tea

Leave a comment

I woke her up at 8:05 a.m.

She had a rough night.  We all did.  With four kids sick with the Great Cold of 2014, I had spent most of my night slathering on Vicks, refilling water bottles, rocking a baby and fetching more tissues.

This daughter shone her flashlight on my face at 5 a.m. to announce tearfully that she hadn’t slept all night and now she’ll never get any sleep and she’ll fall asleep at school and she’ll never make it to ballet…..and the world was just absolutely going to blow up because of all of it.john15-12

I’m not the most compassionate nurse of a mom anyway.  Seeing as how that was about the bazillionth time a child had woken me up in that one night, I had to muster some grace for the night shift.

Walk the child back to bed.

Vicks—rub, rub, rub.

Hand tissues.

Hand plastic bag for placing used tissues inside instead of dumping them on the floor next to your bed (please and thank you). 

Refill water bottle.

Speak truth.  The world is not about to end.  Stop crying.  If you cry, you will feel worse.  You have not been awake all night; I have and I can assure you that you were asleep for some of it.

Place hand on child’s head, smooth back hair, reassure self that she does not have a fever, and pray for her to sleep.  Dear God, please let her sleep.

Make it back to the bed in time to fall asleep before the next child wakes up an hour later.

So, this morning, I wake her up late.  “Twenty minutes until you need to be outside waiting for the bus.”

Breakfast, here.

Clothes, here.

Tissues, here.

Lunchbox in backpack.  Book in backpack.  Zip it up!

Brush your teeth and I’ll brush your hair while you do that.  Saves time.

But I look at this child in the mirror.  She’s still crying and she’s a mess of red-faced blotchy miserableness.

She’s sick and she’s tired.

I could push her out that door to meet the bus.

I’m a workaholic.  I’ve said it to her already that morning, “No fever.  No throwing up.  This is just a cold. You’ll feel better in an hour.”

But something in me stops the stampede of my pushy, workaholic, drill sergeant self all over the tender heart of this beloved girl.

I hear it, this strong voice telling me to just stop right there and: Love her.

I had just read it the day before in Pathway to Purpose:

“It is a cure for an affliction may of us have, which my friend calls destination disease. That great phrase describes being more concerned about getting to our destination than in finding delight on the journey. Learning to love causes us to linger in the company of others and find enjoyment and companionship along the way” (Katie Brazelton).

Learning to love isn’t just a begrudging necessity of this Christian life, a small blip in the journey on to bigger and better purposes and plans.

Loving others is Christ’s command.

My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. (John 15:12 NIV).

Loving others is what we’re here to do.  It is the great purpose.  It is the great design.

Am I too busy pushing my agenda in this moment to show the truth of God’s love and grace?

Katie Brazelton writes this in Pathway to Purpose also:

“Love, then, is spending ourselves, investing ourselves, in the daily and eternal well-being of others” (pp. 64-65).

I could push that daughter out the door to the school bus and she’d make it okay.

But that wouldn’t be loving her.  Not this time and not in this way.  This child is not a hookie-playing, school-skipping, excuse-making kid.  She’s a good kid and a diligent student who is sick, got too little sleep and feels rotten.

I love her and I want her to know that I love her.

That’s the point.

So, I send two kids out to the bus instead of three.

I write a note to her teacher.  I make her a cup of tea.pathwaytopurpose

An hour later, she is feeling a bit better.  She still has a cold, but she says she’s ready to go to school.

I drive her in, and she says it to me twice on the way, “Thanks for taking care of me, mom.”

This month, I’m Learning When To Say “Yes” as part of my year-long pursuit of the presence of Christ.

And I pause here today because saying “yes” isn’t one choice or one destination.  It’s a lifestyle of listening in the moment.

I say “Yes” to the Spirit’s voice.

“Yes” to His direction even in the smallest of things, the every day, and the ordinary.

And today I say “yes” to loving others, starting with this precious girl.

How can you love others today?

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 ‘Learn When to Say, ‘Yes?’

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

 

The miracles that don’t look like miracles

1 Comment

I heard the sad news that the man in this story passed away this morning.  I’m remembering him today just as he shared a sweet memory of his own mom and I’m praying for his family….

********************************************

Years ago, the sweet man who led our church choir leaned back in his stool at the front of the music room.  He told us in a slow southern drawl what he remembered about his mother.

On the dark and stormy nights of his childhood, when the thunder raged and lightning struck close enough to illuminate his room, he would awaken to find his mom sitting in a chair at the foot of his bed.  She sat with him through the storms, praying over him, even while he continued to sleep.

That’s what he remembered about her: her presence in the stormy nights.

Last night, I supervised the brushing of teeth and the donning of pajamas, packing lunches and backpacks, and laying out clothes for the new day.  We read bedtime stories.  We prayed as a family.

This morning, I poured cereal and I buttered toast.  I placed ice packs in the lunches and zipped up the backpacks.

I helped with shoes and socks, combed hair, and reminded my daughters (too many times) to brush their teeth and to do it well because they don’t want cavities or bad breath and, by the way, we’re going to the dentist next week.

I checked the weather and then I held out jackets for each girl.  I broke up a fight and gave a crying daughter a hug, calmed her down, and then placed the two sisters on a school bus.Photo by Viktor Hanacek at PicJumbo

The day was like every day.

I don’t remember these childhood moments, not my mom tying my shoes or helping me put on my jacket, supervising bath time or pulling my hair into pigtails.

But she did them.  My life is filled with years and years of everyday acts of love I don’t remember.

Usually these acts of love remain unnoticed and undervalued . . . unless they’re missing.  Those children who aren’t fed well, bathed, read to, hugged, kept safe, and tucked into their own cozy beds at night feel the lack.

What will my kids remember about this time with me? It’s not likely they’ll remember the moments of jackets and breakfasts and backpacks.

But they might remember the special times, like waking on a stormy night to see mom by the bed.

And I wonder, what do I remember about God, my Father?  Usually, it’s the stormy times when I awaken in fear only to find His presence.  It’s the times He’s kept me safe and delivered me from danger.

Yet, we so often overlook the miracles of everyday grace, the simplest signs of His affection and the fact that He cares for our needs and yes, sometimes even our desires.

When we always look for the glorious miracle, the immediate and the extraordinary, we miss thanking God for the gradual, the expected, and the small.

C.S. Lewis wrote, “A slow miracle is no easier to perform than an instant one.”

We revel in the answers to prayer that come fast. The ones that don’t require interminable waiting and inconvenient patience.

We pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” and then miss the miracle of everyday provision.cslewismiracle

In the book of Nehemiah, the exiles who returned to Jerusalem skipped sleep, fended off enemies, prayed, and labored with a sword in one hand and a trowel in the other.  They hefted bricks until the walls of Jerusalem were complete, all in just 52 days.  It was a miracle.  Even their enemies knew that:

When all our enemies heard about this, all the surrounding nations were afraid and lost their self-confidence, because they realized that this work had been done with the help of our God (Nehemiah 6:16).

How easy it would be to overlook the miracle, though, because it didn’t look miraculous.

As Kelly Minter writes in Nehemiah: A Heart That Can Break:

“It’s worth noting that so far we’ve read nothing of angels, burning bushes, or talking donkeys.  Instead, we’ve seen God use what we might consider ordinary to bring about extraordinary transformation: prayer, repentance, willingness, hard work, sacrifice, humility, faith.  Though miraculous displays of God’s power are to be desired and cherished, I’m equally impressed with God speaking silently to Nehemiah’s heart in the most ‘normal’ of circumstances.  Be encouraged that the common, everyday realities are ideal environments for God to put something in our hearts to do” (Minter 116).

So we thank Him for the daily bread, for forgiveness, for mercies made new every morning, for unceasing faithfulness, and His goodness (Lamentations 3:23-26).  We thank Him for the quiet and the everyday and His presence.

It may not be showy and ostentatious.  Still, it’s love.  That’s worth remembering.

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

Even When I’m Disappointed, I’ll Love You Anyway

4 Comments

Suffice it to say, hiding the evidence didn’t work.

I found her hidden stockpile, proof of mistakes that she’d stuffed into a corner of her bedroom.  I suppose she thought somehow that it’d eventually disappear or I’d just never notice.

But she underestimates a mom’s ability to discover truth (she never did figure out those two eyes in the back of my head)….so we stand there in that corner confronting the reality.

She had done something wrong and I had proof.lamentations3

But instead of bringing all that trouble straight to my feet and asking for help, she’d hidden it away and hoped I wouldn’t notice.

I tell her I’m disappointed, tell her I expected better, tell her she needs to overcome.

But then, when she’s tearful and we’ve retreated to the sofa, we pray for God’s help.

I hope she’s really listening, deep-down-take-this-to-heart listening, because I don’t want the words to just shoot through her before pushing their impression down into the soft clay of her heart.

When you’re in trouble, when you mess up, when you’re hurt, when something is wrong….

come

to

me.

Yes, your first impulse will be to run and hide, no different than Adam and Eve crouching among the garden leaves.

Yes, I’ll be sad at first.  Yes, I’ll be disappointed.  Yes, we’ll have to deal with it and that might be messy and hard and it seems easier in the moment to just avoid that pain.

I understand this.  Haven’t I stashed sin before, as well, desperately hoping that no one would notice—that HE wouldn’t notice?  I’ve been Eve in that Garden before, too, and I know how it feels to hold my breath and hope that God walks on by.

But God picked me to be your mom and that means sticking with you and helping you learn and overcome  That means loving you right on through the tough times.

Mary Kassian tells me:

When we face trouble, we are to pour out our hearts to him.  Everybody trusts something; we must learn to trust the Lord, our eternal rock (In My Father’s House).

Trust.

Is that what this is about?

If she trusted me enough to love her through anything, wouldn’t she come to me even when she’s done something wrong because she knew I’d help her?

If I trust His love that much, wouldn’t I run breathlessly to His feet, just run, no looking back, no hesitation, because He is the only One who can handle the mess I’ve made?

Yes, He’ll be disappointed.

Yes, He’ll be sad.

But what hurts His Father-heart most of all is when we trust in ourselves, trust in others, trust in programs, trust in Google searches and advice columns and friends and substances and self-help books, but we don’t trust Him.

The Israelites in that wilderness fretted over destination, clothing, enemies, food, water.  They whined.  They strategized.  They rebelled.  They wheeled and dealed.

The Psalmist writes

…they did not believe God
    or trust him to care for them (Psalm 78:22 NLT).

Troubles rose up, maybe even just minor annoyances like dietary preferences, and they never did just learn to run to God right away.

He was angry.  The Psalm says, “When the Lord heard them, he was furious” (Psalm 78:21 NLT).

BUT

He still loved them.  And even when they abandoned Him time after relentless time, He always stayed faithful.

God’s love for them, His love for us, isn’t feeling love, temporary love, conditional love.  The Hebrew word that Scripture uses over and over is “Chesed”—it’s the loyal, steadfast, covenant mercy and love God has for His people.

They didn’t trust Him, didn’t bring their troubles to Him and they messed it up over and over and over, but He still went on caring for them abundantly, miraculously, faithfully.

He rained down manna for them to eat;
    he gave them bread from heaven.
They ate the food of angels!
    God gave them all they could hold. Psalm 78:24-25

He rained down meat as thick as dust—
    birds as plentiful as the sand on the seashore!  Psalm 78:27

So, I rest there with my daughter, my arms wrapped all the way around her and I say it one last time:

Come to me.  Do not hide away or lie or run.  Bring it all to me.

And I hear God rustling the leaves in my life, calling to me just as He did Adam and Eve, asking me to trust Him enough to bring everything, bring the sin, the mess, the worry, the fear, the troubles big and small, bring it all to 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 © 2014 Heather King

When I Fell in Love….

3 Comments

I can’t say exactly when I fell in love with this man.

He was on stage the first time I saw him, portraying Mr. Elton in a production of Jane Austen’s Emma (my favorite), and I was an audience member.   I laughed loud and long when he delivered the first line of the play while pretending to read from a book:

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

I heard my laugh hit the silence of the auditorium.  Apparently, I was the only one who got the joke (as a character from Emma read the first line from Pride and Prejudice).  And so I slumped into my chair wishing someone—anyone—shared my sense of humor.

I actually met him a week later after a college worship service.  Someone in the crowd pointed to the guy up front strumming the guitar.  “See that guy,” he said, “You just saw him on stage last week.”

Unbeknownst to me, this young guy who led worship and the drama ministry and acted in productions based on my favorite literature had just prayed a daring prayer two weeks before.

He told God he wasn’t looking for a relationship any more.  He was content to be single until God hit him over the head with a 2 x 4 and told him “Thou shalt marry this girl.”

I met him two weeks later.

And a week after that, I was the new pianist on his praise team (and he’s still my worship leader even now).

I fell in love with the way he used his gifts and talents for God’s glory.

There was his calmness, too.  I loved my dad, but life with him wasn’t calm; it was loud much of the time and sometimes downright volatile.  This man, though, measured his words with wisdom and careful thoughtfulness.

And the first time he dropped the word “obsequious” into a sentence effortlessly, I think I experienced whiplash. (I’m a sucker for SAT words).

Add to that his quick and witty humor that kept me giggling endlessly in the corner of the praise team section, and I realized that he was smarter than me and that was okay.

We’ve never been an opposites-attract kind of couple.  We’re probably two of the most alike people who God matched together.

Except for the fact that he only cares about doing what’s right and not whether it pleases anyone else while I’m a people-pleaser.

And the fact that he can rest and take time (perhaps . . . dare I say it . . .procrastinate) and I’m neurotically pushed to do and do and do relentlessly, first, fastest, and rest when you die.

I can’t say when it happened, but at some point I fell in love.112339-20130114

I can’t speak for him and say exactly why he fell in love with me.

Nor can I say exactly why God loves any of us either, surely not my awkward, nervous, uptight, worrying self.

Amazingly, though, this isn’t a “fall in love” kind of love at all.  God doesn’t grow to love any of us over time or awaken one morning and realize how much He cares.

He loves us.

It really is the beginning and the end of our story.

Like the first time I saw my daughters, I loved them in an instant.  I didn’t slowly grow to appreciate their character or develop feelings for them over time.

In Jeremiah, God declares:

“before I formed you in the womb I knew you”  and David similarly prayed, “you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb” (Jeremiah 1:5, Psalm 139:13).

God loved you before you squinted your eyes at the first burst of light, screamed out and got cleaned off, bundled up and handed to your mom.

He loves you when you feel loved and when you feel overlooked, when you received a blessing and when you endured a trial.  This love of his doesn’t wax or wane, change or alter or depend on us and what we do or say or feel or think.

We’ve never been good enough, pure enough, beautiful enough, or wise enough to earn it.

But even though we’re unworthy, even when we’ve strayed, even when we’ve felt that seemingly incurable distance from Him or poured out in painful honesty what’s troubling us…

Still He loves.

He says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness” (Jeremiah 31:3).

And what can we do with this everlasting and unfailing love, so amazing and confusing because it’s far more than we deserve?

“We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

Originally published September 24, 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 upcoming book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, will be released in the Fall of 2013!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2012 Heather King

What I’m Pondering

1 Comment

Maybe it begins in the hospital, that first moment you see this little life and she blinks her eyes in your direction because she’s heard your voice, un-muffled for the first time by the sound of your heart beat and the shushing of your womb.

Maybe, if we’re being truthful, it begins before that.  We moms analyze morning sickness, aerobic kicking routines versus squirmy tummy rolls, a baby sucking his thumb on the ultrasound or another one turning somersaults and having to be chased around by the technician to keep him on the screen.

We think about our children, consider their character, who God has made them and how He has gifted them.

We think about what they like to eat and why, whether they keep to the schedule willingly or fight it all the way.  We consider whether they are spontaneous, creative, artistic, apassionatemomnalytical, strong-willed, stubborn, articulate, shy, introverted or extroverted.

And then we ponder what to do about it.

Like how I still remember the first time my middle girl handed me a fistful of air and asked me to eat the “sandwich” she had made for me when her older sister had never yet cooked up a pretend meal for me to taste.

Or how I watched as one of my daughters played with her toys by lining them all up in one straight line, categorizing the farm animals into groups.  And my second daughter played with the same toys by creating elaborate story lines and interactions like, “Hi, what is your name?  I’m here to see the farm!”

And how two of my daughters can play for hours on their own without any need for outside conversation or stimulation and my oldest daughter can’t survive 15 minutes without someone to do things with her.

I ponder all this because God has given me these gifts, these children, and being a mom means engaging in the discipline of pondering, taking the time to listen without speaking, watch without intervening, evaluate, assess, and yes, even marvel.

Sometimes we miss it.  We’re busy; they’re busy.  They struggle and we don’t realize it.  They needed us and we failed to see.  They hurt and we were distracted.

But our desire, our goal as moms, is to mother like Mary, who

“was treasuring up all these things in her heart and meditating on them” (Luke 2:9 HCSB).

We do this because want to get this right.  We want to parent these blessings with wisdom, making the right choices for their benefit and for their future.  God teaches us who they are only when we take time to pay attention.

In her book, The Passionate Mom, Susan Merrill writes that a mom must

ponder everything she learns about her child so she can truly know her child.

This in turn becomes a spiritual discipline all its own, because pondering is the call of every mom.

More than this, it’s the call of every Christ-follower.

None of us can randomly and haphazardly scramble through this life maze and find wisdom without hunting for it or choose to turn here and there correctly without actively pursuing direction.

The Psalmist challenged us:

Let the one who is wise heed these things
and ponder the loving deeds of the Lord (Psalm 107:43 NIV).

Wisdom comes from heeding…from pondering.

And what do we meditate on?  What do we watch so carefully and take our time to consider, churning it over in our mind, thinking of the implications and action steps?

We ponder the “loving deeds of the Lord.”

Not just skip right over them in haste and busyness.  Not shout back a hurried “thanks, God” as we tumble on our way headfirst into another crisis.

No, here we pause and take the time to see and to say, “Look how God showed His love for me…what does this mean for me now and tomorrow and every day to come?”

Solomon assured us that attaining wisdom is an active pursuit:

Tune your ears to wisdom and concentrate on understanding.  Cry out for insight, and ask for understanding.  Search for them as you would for silver; seek them like hidden treasures (Prov. 2:2-4)

Tune in.

Concentrate.

Cry out for it.

Ask for it.

Search and seek like it’s the greatest treasure and you the Indiana Jones in this adventure.

Knowing our children doesn’t happen accidentally.  We don’t become the expert on our baby instantly at birth or know all we need to know to parent them into adulthood before the nurse rolls us out of the hospital in the wheelchair.

We learn through pondering.

And this God of ours…who He is and how He works, what He desires and plans for us…we can’t fathom without the wisdom that comes through pondering His loving deeds and pursuing wisdom actively, passionately, constantly, and even patiently.

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.

Copyright © 2013 Heather King

Weekend Rerun: When You’ve Become the Diaper

Leave a comment

Originally posted on March 5, 2012

I’d been a mom for just under two years when I got pooped on for the first time.

It turns out new babies can’t quite tell when the diaper is on and when Momma has removed it for bath time.

This is one of those things you just never anticipate happening to you.   You go to college, study hard, earn a degree.  Go back to school and earn a Master’s degree.  Teach a classroom of highly intelligent senior high students.

Then two years later you’re cleaning yourself up after being mistaken for a diaper.

Every mom has Kodak moments of familial perfection.  For a few minutes, it’s domestic tranquility.  Kids are healthy.  They used their manners at the dinner table.  The homework is done.  The laundry is put away.  You cooked a delicious and healthy dinner in your Crock Pot, made homemade bread, and no one complained about it at the dinner table.  Your chore chart and behavior reward system are working.

You are, in fact, Super Mom.  You are June Cleaver, Betty Crocker, and even maybe Mr. Clean in one grand super hero package.

Until noses start running and children start fighting when you have a headache.  A stomach virus shoots through your family.  You realize that “dressing up” now means wearing the jeans without the worn knees and Sharpie stains from your child’s experiments with permanent marker.

Are you less of a Super Mom now?

Partway through last week when the stomach virus hit my home, the cleaning up of bodily fluids was beginning to wear me down.  It was like being pooped on . . . all day . . . every day.

I needed a good cry, a scented bubble bath, a cup of hot tea, some rich chocolate—maybe hot fudge on an ice cream sundae, a hair cut, some time to myself, someone to tell me I looked beautiful even on a day it couldn’t possibly be true.

As it was, I prayed the only prayer I was feeling at the moment, “Can you help a girl out, God?  It’s pretty hard to feel like the yucky humiliation and selflessness of this job has any eternal significance.  Do you even know what it’s like to put other people first all the time?”

I forgot who I was talking to.

Oh, sure, Jesus was the Savior of mankind.  He had the power of divinity at His fingertips.  He could multiply the bread instead of having to knead it by hand and let it rise on the stove.  He could command the fish into the nets instead of pushing a cart around Wal-Mart with a shopping list, a budget, coupons, and a toddler.

And yet.

When we over-romanticize the life of our Savior, we forget the utter humility and selflessness of Jesus, who:

“though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” Philippians 2:5-8 (ESV).

Jesus emptied Himself for us.  He took the form of a servant for our sake.  Stepping down from a heavenly throne, for a little while He “was made lower than the angels” all because He loved us (Hebrews 2:9).

The writer of Hebrews emphasizes that Jesus’ sacrifice wasn’t just that He died on the cross, although that is more than enough.  The sacrifice began the moment He confined Himself to flesh and submitted Himself to a life of hunger, fatigue, and pain.

He suffered in this way so that He could understand our suffering:

“Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted”  (Hebrews 2:14-18, ESV).

and

“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15, ESV).

Jesus sympathizes with us on our hardest days.  He loves on us and showers mercy down on our lives when He sees how we struggle.  Christ bends Himself low to wash our feet and heal our hurts.

This is never more true than when we’re covered in mess because we’ve been serving someone else.

This means that the most beautiful moments of my motherhood to God aren’t the ones when the family is clean, happy, eating perfect food, at peace with one another and I look like a fashion model.

Instead, it’s when I’m serving even though I’m tired or sick myself.  It’s getting up early even when you were up in the middle of the night.  It’s cleaning up messes and assuring sick children that it’s all okay.

This isn’t just for moms either.  God has called us all to a ministry of self-emptying, of inconvenience and mess, so that we all can share His love with 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.

Copyright © 2013 Heather King

More Than a Spoonful of Sugar

6 Comments

I keep checking the tickets that I printed off weeks ago.  Do I have the day right?  The time?  Have I forgotten something?

Every time I unfold the creased sheets of paper and read over the details, I’m amazed by God.  Really and truly in awe.

It started with such a simple thing, the Broadway show, Mary Poppins, coming to good old Virginia twice in four months.

The first time I missed it.  Life was too crazy, too expensive, just too much.  But I dared to hope and even just pray a little around Christmas time this tentative request:

Lord, I know this isn’t something I need and I do need other things instead and this is crazy and extravagant.  I’m not even asking that my whole family gets to go.  If you could just maybe provide the money for two tickets for me and my husband, that’d be awesome.  Or even one ticket; that’d be okay.  Maybe I could go with a friend?  And I understand if you say, ‘no,’ because I know it’s a silly thing anyway.

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

I had sheepishly asked for one ticket.

God gave me five.

And I’m struck 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 just indulges us in the whims and 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, and ashamed to even ask.

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

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.

Copyright © 2013 Heather King

Fourteen Things I Love About You….

3 Comments
It started on February 1st at dinner.

We sat in our usual places with our usual place setting, but beside each plate was a construction paper heart.

Just a simple thing.  After all, I’m no Martha Stewart of crafts.  In fact, for weeks I had hunted for pre-cut paper hearts—to eliminate all use of scissors on my part, but when that failed I just piled up all the pink, red, and white construction paper we had and started making hearts myself.valentine

I kind of succeeded.

Fourteen days of hearts x 4 people = 56 hand-cut paper hearts.  Then, project complete, I laid the first heart out on the table and waited.

“What’s this?” my daughters asked and then turning it over they found the note: Fourteen things I love about you…

And there it was, the first of fourteen days’ worth of things I love about my husband and three daughters.

My middle girl figured it out first.  “You mean we will get 14 hearts with 14 things you love about us?”

Yes, baby girl.  One for each day of February until Valentine’s Day.

Soon, they were trading hearts, swapping them around the table to read what I wrote about others.  Sometimes what I said made them giggle:

How you love to laugh and tell jokes….

The way you collect fun and unique objects like your rock collection….

The way you an talk in accents and mimic characters’ voices and make funny voices of your own….

And others made them grin a little sheepishly, a little precious, a little sweet, a little blessed to know someone sees beauty in them.

You are such a good friend, kind and compassionate….023

You are so good at teaching others.  It is one of the amazing ways God has gifted you….

You are great at encouraging others and telling them that they are doing a great job….

Within a few days, I was swatting hands away from the kitchen counter before dinner.  They hovered around the kitchen, not to sneak a bite of food, but to sneak a peak at those love notes.

This joy, this privilege, this responsibility of loving these daughters of mine means I have a job, not to spoil them like unsatisfiable princesses, dooming their marriages by giving them unreasonable expectations of romance and fulfillment from their husbands.

Not that.

But this.  Telling them—you’re precious and totally loved.  I see Jesus in you and He made you beautiful and valuable.

So, don’t let your head be turned by any scruffy teenage boy who looks in your eyes for more than 2 seconds.  You’re not some cheap thrill, there for his amusement and enjoyment, available for use and abuse so he can get what he wants without giving you some basics like respect, compassion, service, self-sacrifice, commitment, honor, and the like.

You don’t need to throw away your own identity and bury your amazing self in order to get the slightest second of attention from some guy who can’t even be bothered to hold the door open for you, or call me “Yes, ma’am,” or listen to what you have to say, or put God first in his life, or make you a priority.

My girls may be so far away from middle school drama and the high school years of emotional pitfalls and relationship crises.

These lessons, though, start here and now.  Eight, six, three years old—you are a treasure.  Thirteen, eleven, eight—-you are worth God’s very best.  Sixteen, fourteen, eleven—-you deserve to be treated like a lady.

This is what you are: “God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved” (Colossians 3:12).

This is what we are.

So all that fulfillment we seek in habits and praise from people, from attention and temporary happiness, from worldly success and stuff—just stuff, it’s all nothing more than a pimply faced teenaged boy who doesn’t care about us at all.  It’s all just unsatisfying time-wasting and inevitable emotional vomit.

All of it.

But we’ve been given these love-notes from God:

The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.
Zephaniah 3:16

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God…
1 John 3:1

 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved—
Ephesians 2:4-5

Knowing how we are loved, knowing the price He paid and the extent of His sacrifice, reading these love notes and knowing He prizes us and treasures us,  surely then we can cease the worrying and striving and searching for fulfillment.  Surely we can trust Him.
After all, see how He loves 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 upcoming book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, will be released in the Fall of 2013!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2013 Heather King

And In the End

Leave a comment

Long ago and far away in my teen years, before the advent of all this newfangled technology, I spent the week or so before family road trips performing one of our favorite traditions: recording our own travel tapes.

Those were the days (am I so old already?) before MP3 players, iPods and all digital music.  We listened to music together in the car during the drives to my grandmother’s house in South Carolina: five kids and two parents all cramming our musical tastes onto a few homespun cassettes.

Every family member submitted song requests and then I sat on the living floor buried under towers of CDs and a handful of blank tapes to create the “mix.”

We reveled in the diversity of the playlist, placing songs from popular artists immediately after a selection from one of Wagner’s operas, which came after the Beatles, which followed Andrew Lloyd Weber, which followed Patsy Cline.  It was a curious weave of musical styles and statements and we loved it.

The ritual was never complete, though, without squeezing our traditional “Travel Tape Closing Song” onto the last 23 seconds of every single cassette.  Twenty-three seconds exactly.  That’s just enough time to fit in The Beatles’ song, “Her Majesty.”  No travel tape was complete without it.

It’s a quirky little tune thrown in as the final song on The Beatles’ final album, so it seemed a fitting end to our own musical creations.

Somehow the other day, in the same mysterious way that these things always happen, I thought of the song “Her Majesty” and sang it quietly to myself as I peeled potatoes in my kitchen.

Her Majesty’s a pretty nice girl, but she doesn’t have a lot to say.  Her Majesty’s a pretty nice girl, but she changes from day to day….

Then I thought of endings and the endings of travel tapes and childhood and the closing of a year before the beginning of something new.  Another Beatles’ song came to mind from the same album as I made the leap from one curious thought to another.

In that song, Paul McCartney sings, “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”

And I thought, “That’s just not true.  Is it?”

All this life we live, all these daily graces, all this lavish mercy from God in ways we see and ways we don’t….well, there’s no way we could ever repay that. We’re perpetual debtors and yet God erases the account books and sets us free, saying we’re redeemed, paid for, no longer owing or lacking.

I’m no math whiz, but even I can tell you there’s nothing “equal” about it.

That’s the beauty of this story, that God’s always pouring out undeserved mercy, always faithfully giving even when we stubbornly refuse to trust, or obey, or drop to those knees and lift those hands in praise.

It’s the beauty of Elizabeth’s story in Luke 1.  All those married years of longing for a baby and remaining childless, month after month of hope unfulfilled.  Then God came in His extravagant glory and gave the barren woman a son. Not just any baby boy.  The forerunner of the Messiah, cousin to the Savior of mankind.

So much blessing must have knocked her to the floor in tear-filled worship.

After nine months, she cradled that newborn “and when her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had been very merciful to her, everyone rejoiced with her” (Luke 1:58, NLT).

The Message reads:  “Her neighbors and relatives, seeing that God had overwhelmed her with mercy, celebrated with her.”

Yes, “the Lord had been very merciful to her.”  He had “overwhelmed her with mercy,” making her life whole, healing brokenness, fulfilling promises, giving far more than she had ever asked or imagined.

It’s overwhelming mercy that people can’t miss.  Everyone saw.  Everyone rejoiced with her.  No one could mistake God’s mercy for coincidence or fluke or fate.  They couldn’t even imagine someone righteous and faithful like Elizabeth and her husband deserving such a miraculous gift.  It was all God’s mercy and nothing of their merit.

The people say it themselves in Luke 1:66: “Clearly, God has his hands in this.”

And in the end of an old year and the beginning of something new, that’s what I hope for, a story so amazing I can’t steal any glory away from God.  It has to be Him.  It’s so clearly His hand, so overwhelmingly full of mercy that there’s no mistaking the imprint of His hand.

It’s not about maintaining some cosmic balance, giving and receiving love in an equilibrium.

It’s about humbly confessing that as much as we pour out in responsive praise, God out-gives us.  By that, we are amazed. For that, we are grateful.  Because of that, we are saved.

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

Copyright © 2012 Heather King