Tag: God’s will

Whatever You Do, Part II

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Don’t forget the giveaway going on to celebrate the one-year anniversary of this blog!  You can read all about it here and posting a comment anywhere on the blog this week will enter you to win!!

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Just over a year ago, I sat at the kitchen table with my husband.  I told him that I had this insane, totally crazy idea that I couldn’t shake.

And I was trying to shake it.

“I don’t want to blog,” I said.  “I’m not a blogger.  I don’t have time to blog.  I don’t want to talk about me.  What in the world could I say day after day?  I’d probably write for a month and then have to stop.”

I tried to convince him that it was a stupid idea.

He looked at me and said, “If God wants you to do this, you need to do it.  None of that really matters.”

I don’t know what’s next, how long it’ll take, what it will look like.  All I can do is obey here and now, writing these devotionals as God directs.

In Whatever You Do, Part I, I wrote that we need to be faithful in the everyday tasks God has given us, giving Him glory in the smallest, most basic areas of our lives.

Life rolls along in its repetitious way—commuting to work, picking up kids, going to church, supervising the brushing of hair and teeth, making lunches and cooking dinners.

Then one day God asks us to do something crazy—like write a blog that you don’t want to write when you don’t have time to write it.

Or:

Start a new ministry.  Visit the nursing home regularly.  Take a missions trip across the globe.  Feed the hungry.  Foster or adopt children in need.  Make blankets for children in the hospital.  Volunteer at the local school.  Send shoes overseas.

This is the way ordinary people like you and me can have impact in this massive world.  We move when and where God tells us to move and we serve faithfully where He has placed us to serve.

Paul lived this kind of radically obedient life.  He was a tentmaker by trade and he had no qualms about setting up shop in a city and sewing tents during the moments he wasn’t teaching in the synagogue, writing the bulk of the New Testament, or preaching Christ to the Gentiles.

This is what he did in Corinth when he stayed and worked with Aquila and Priscilla—tentmakers and teachers in their own New Testament house church (Acts 18:1-3).

Paul easily could have lived out a tentmaking life with a small-town ministry to the local synagogue.  He could have made himself comfortable, happy and content there.

God, however, told him to pack his bags and get going.  So he did.  In all things, he submitted to God’s direction and timing.

During his second missionary journey, Paul wanted to travel to the Asian church of Ephesus, but “they were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia” (Acts 16:6). Then, they “tried to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit did not permit them” (Acts 16:7).

After all those “no’s”, you’d think Paul would be discouraged.

Instead, God sent him to Macedonia, where Paul became the first Christian missionary in Europe.  He baptized Lydia there and she started the first European church in her home.

God reached a continent because Paul was willing to do the crazy and unexpected in obedience to God’s call.

Even then, Paul could have settled into life as a missionary to Europe.  But now that the time was right, God released him to preach in Asia and off Paul went to Ephesus (Acts 18).

This world needs us to live obedient lives, just as Paul did, yielding to God and going where and when He tells us to go.

The people in our homes, our neighborhoods, our churches, our jobs need us to engage fully in the ministry God has given us in those places.  When God tells us to settle in and care for our families, we do.  When he tells us to minister in our community, we roll up our sleeves and serve.

But we refuse to slip into complacency, snuggling down into our comfortable nests and spending all our time tending our own chicks and redecorating our own spaces with sticks and straw.

So, if he tells us to pack our bags for a journey in radical obedience, we yank out the suitcase.

How do we discern this?  How do we know what to do when there is so much need in the homes in our neighborhood and in the countries we can’t even locate on the globe?

How can a small-town mom minister to the poorest of the poor?  How can a working woman in a local school save orphans?  How can an average girl serve widows?

How can any of us reach the world with Christ?

Elisabeth Elliott’s advice is just to “do the next thing.”

We don’t need to have a map for our entire mission on this earth.  Paul didn’t even know from one moment to the next whether he was headed to Asia or Europe or just setting up a tent business in town for a while.

But he did the next thing.  And then God gave him the next thing.  Then there was the thing after that.

In every instance, he obeyed, whether it was simple or difficult, logical or totally insane.

Has God given you a next thing?  Have you sat at the kitchen table telling someone how insane it is and how you don’t want to do it?  Has God asked you to do something that sounds impossible?  Has He opened your eyes and heart to need that you never noticed before?

Do the next thing.  Don’t worry about meeting every need or making the project a success.  Just take this step of obedience.  That’s how we change the world, one submissive bowing of the head and bending of the knee at a time.

You can read more devotionals on this topic here:

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer for www.myfrienddebbie.com 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.  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2012 Heather King

Weekend Walk: 12/17/2011–Christmas devotional and memory verse

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Mary.

She’s been on my mind this week as I wrap presents, plan to see The Nutcracker, listen to Christmas tunes, bake cookies and prepare fruit trays for class Christmas parties. She’s all wrapped up in the middle of this Christmas story.

I’ve been thinking about her even more when I complain to God about what He’s doing in my life (or sometimes not doing), or when I prepare my end-of-the-year prayer list for God and realize how much it’s beginning to sound like a Dear Santa letter.

Mary received the greatest blessing from God without asking or seeking, just by walking in obedience and purity of heart in her everyday life.

Mary’s on my mind because the angel called her, “you who are highly favored!” and told her, “The Lord is with you” (Luke 1:28, NIV 1984).

So often, I feel thoroughly humbled and honored that God gave me the care of my three precious daughters. Imagine how Mary felt to be asked to mother the Messiah.

She had found favor with God.  Isn’t that what we desire?  Not the accolades or rewards.  Certainly God isn’t looking for another Savior’s mom.  We do, however, long to please God and to bring Him joy.  I want Him to peer into the deepest parts of my heart and rejoice in what He finds there, just as He did with a teenage girl named Mary long ago.

I love Mary’s sweet innocence as she stood amazed that she would miraculously be with child.  Yet, the angel assured her, “nothing is impossible with God” and that was enough for her to believe (Luke 1:37).

If God wanted to stir up miraculous and impossible events in my life, I’d question and wonder, doubt, try hard to believe, believe for a moment, then feel incredulous again.  It’d be a see-saw of faith and doubt.

But Mary believed the promise.  “Nothing is impossible with God.”  I want to believe that God can do the impossible this year.

Then there’s Mary’s submission to all that God wanted to do in her life.  What the angel was asking wasn’t easy.  We think of the honor of being mother to the Promised Messiah, and yet it was entangled with pregnancy, labor, loss of a girlish figure, potential conflict with her betrothed, and societal shame.

It was messy and hard and disruptive.

Sometimes that’s what God asks us to do, skip out on the easy and step up to the difficult.  Mary was willing .Am I?  Are you?

My memory verse for this week shows her heart:

“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May it be to me as you have said.” Then the angel left her (Luke 1:38)

I’ll be praying this week for a Mary heart in preparation for Christmas and for a new year.

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer for www.myfrienddebbie.com 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.  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2011 Heather King

Lessons from the Theater, Part Three

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This week, I’m sharing devotional thoughts based on my time working on a community theater production of Hello, Dolly! and today is the last post in the series.

You can read Lessons from the Theater: Part One here.
You can read Lessons from the Theater: Part Two here.

Lesson Three: This is All His Story

Looking at that stage, you would have thought that there were 40 stars in the show.

From the excitement as the town awaited the arrival of Dolly herself  . . .

to Red cross nurses, Prohibition protestors, and cutthroat politicians vying for every vote as they walked the parade route  . . .

to the chaotic melee of ladies knocking rabblerousers over the head with their tiny handbags . . .

to the scowling and crying in a courtroom scene . . .

you couldn’t tell at a glance who was telling the main story and who was telling an aside in the performance of Hello, Dolly!.

My husband says that everyone on the stage has the job of telling their story.  Some get to have a name and some dialogue.  Others don’t.  But no character thinks, “My story isn’t the focus here, so I can just fill in background space.”

Instead, the actors use every available tool to tell what they are doing there, what happened to bring them to this place and what they think about it.

Every actor acts as if his character’s story is the main story.

For us, though, one of the incredibly hard lessons in life is that we aren’t the main story.  In fact, this story isn’t our story at all; it’s God’s.

Chris Tiegreen wrote:

All of our life is a struggle between self-centeredness and God-centeredness.  We know our lives are supposed to revolve around Him and His will, yet we have so many personal dreams and goals.

It’s not that our story doesn’t matter to God or that He views us as just “one of the crowd,” a random human in a sea of human need.  To God, each person matters.  Each of us is a treasure.  Each of us is beloved and worthy of sacrifice.

Our personal story always matters to Him.

The difference, though, is that sometimes we think we know how this story of ours should play out and we don’t consider all the other people whose lives connect, overlap, and intertwine with our own.

So, how do we balance knowing that God desires intense involvement in our lives and also knowing that He desires the same for every other person on the world stage with us?

We check our prayers.

Self-centeredness for me almost always shows up in my prayer life.  I think I know.  I certainly know what my problems are.  Truth be told, mostly I think I know the perfect solutions, as well.

So, I tell God, “Here’s what’s happening to me and it’s yucky.  I’m hurting.  I need you to answer my prayer and provide and here’s how You can do that.”

The other day as I prayed, I actually found myself giving God a three-step strategy for helping me.  “Here are three ways that You can answer this request, God.  I don’t care which you pick or maybe You do all three, but I’m just laying out the options for You as I see them.”

Just in case our infinite, omnipotent, omniscient Creator God was out of ideas and needed a little help from me.

Are you horrified by my brazenness?  Astounded at my ridiculous posturing as a deity in my own right?

You should be!

How can I confine God to my limited understanding of reality?  By thinking that this is my story and not His!  By forgetting that He is always the main event, He is always the hero, and He always knows my true need and the best answer to my requests.

Sure, you can pray for that job, at the expense of someone else who really needs it and who God designed for it.  Or you can pray for the perfect job God has designed for you.

You can pray for that specific spouse who you just know God wants you to marry.  Or you can pray God brings you the perfect husband or wife at just the right time.

You can pray that God blesses your ministry efforts here.  Or you can pray that God directs your steps to the ministry He has designed for you.

We bring to Him our problem.  We leave the solutions up to Him.  That’s how we yield our story to His and allow Him full reign over our life’s direction.

This is why Paul doesn’t write Romans 8:28 as a stand-alone thought.  Sure, he told us that, “in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.”  It’s one of our favorite Scripture verses to quote to ourselves and to each other.

Yet, Paul had so much more to say about that in context.

The verses immediately before that say:

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness.  We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.  And He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God (Romans 8:26-27).

Then, yes, when we’ve allowed the Spirit to intercede for us according to God’s will, He works everything out for our good.

And not just for our good.  But for the good of the person to our left and the one to our right and even those so far off to the side of the stage we can’t even see them. He sees us all and knows the perfect plan that will work for our benefit and for His glory.  We just need to submit our story to His and allow Him to occupy center stage in our lives at all times and in every situation.

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer for www.myfrienddebbie.com 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.  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2011 Heather King

How Was Your Day?

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For those reading Lisa Harper’s book, Stumbling Into Grace, along with my small group, today’s devotional will match up with her tenth chapter, “Busyness Isn’t a Spiritual Gift.”

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“How was your day?”

My husband asks me that every evening as we chat on the phone while he commutes home from work.

It used to be easier to answer.  How was my day?  Well, it seemed mostly dependent on work.  What jobs I did that day, what doctors had I transcribed for, how difficult the task was, how productive I had managed to be, and how well I had juggled working from home with being a mom.

But now it’s more difficult to respond.  Do I share my excitement over the homemade bread recipe I discovered or the smell of the from-scratch spaghetti sauce bubbling away in the crock-pot?  Does vacuuming count as an accomplishment?  What about how much I saved at the grocery store with my coupons or how many socks I matched and folded?

And beyond that, relationally how was my day?  How many squabbles did I break up between my daughters?  How many lessons did I teach, conversations did I have, kisses did I bestow, Barbies did I undress and dress?

And beyond even that, without any way to measure my productivity at all, could my day still be a success?  How do you value listening on the phone to a hurting friend or spending  extra time at my kitchen table digging into God’s Word?

There’s a simple slide into a works-based life where measurable productivity is all that matters.  Where our success and value becomes dependent on the items crossed off our to-do list.

It’s the pitfall for working moms, the trap for single women in the workforce, and the snare of stay-at-home moms whose identity becomes tangled up with their children and the cleanliness of their home.

We all fall in the pit some time.

In her book, Stumbling Into Grace, Lisa Harper reminds us that God “cares far more about the posture of our hearts than our productivity.  Even “good” things can become the enemy of God’s best for us” (p. 114).

That doesn’t mean busyness is sin.  If you have a job, or a ministry, or a husband, or kids—any of those or all of the above—chances are you’re busy.  Chances are you get tired sometimes.

We have a way of judging that in the church.  “If you’re tired, it means you aren’t doing what God called you to do.”  “If you’re worn out, it’s because you’re not relying enough on God’s joy.”  “If you just lead the simple life, you’d be fine.”

Jesus didn’t throw those judgmental millstones around the neck of the disciples.  He commissioned them for activity, sending them out for weeks of uncomfortable, on-foot missionary traveling to towns where they weren’t always well-received (Luke 9).

Were they busy?  Yes, absolutely.  Every day they moved to another place to tell others about Jesus, sleeping in who knows what conditions and eating anything they were offered.

Were they doing God’s will?  Surely they were.  Jesus had sent them out with specific instructions about what to take with them and what to do on their journey.

Were they traveling alone?  No!  They went out in pairs so that they had the support and encouragement of a Christ-following companion.

They did everything right, and yet they were tired.  When they returned home from their journey, “Jesus took them away, off by themselves, near the town called Bethsaida” (Luke 9:10, MSG).

He knew they needed time away.  Alone time with Jesus.  That’s what we need to refresh our busy souls also.

But first we also ask ourselves—are we doing God’s will?  Here we pause.

The Lord promised, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28), but if we just keep throwing on the same burdensome loads, we’ll never feel truly rested.  That’s the weighed-down fatigue we choose when we do and do and do rather than obeying Him when He tells us to act and obeying when He asks us to rest.

Oswald Chambers wrote:

An active Christian worker too often lives to be seen by others, while it is the innermost, personal area that reveals the power of a person’s life.

We must get rid of the plague of the spirit of this religious age in which we live.  In our Lord’s life there was none of the pressure and the rushing of tremendous activity that we regard so highly today, and a disciple is to be like His Master.  The central point of the kingdom of Jesus Christ is a personal relationship with Him, not public usefulness to others

The bottom line question for us remains, “Are we doing God’s will?” God alone can determine the value of our day, the need for productivity at times versus the requirement of rest in other seasons.

If He has told you to rest, are you resting?  If He has asked you to work, are you working?  Are you serving in the ministries to which you are called and caring for your family in the way He has instructed?

Others might glance at your calendar and think, “She’s too busy” or “She’s such a slacker.”  The only One who really knows, though, is the One who commissions us and then offers us the rest we need exactly when we need it.

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer for www.myfrienddebbie.com 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.  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2011 Heather King

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Moms

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“Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.”
Luke 22:42

I’m a mom who likes to think she knows best for her kids.  I love them.  I want them to be successful, healthy, happy.  I want to shepherd their hearts and minds and invest in the development of their gifts and talents.  I want to “train them up in the way they should go.”

With all my “Mom-Knows-Best” skills, I signed up my middle girl for our church’s private kindergarten the week that registration opened.

For months I prayed the kindergarten class would reach the necessary enrollment.  I stressed and worried and spilled over all my freaked out mother concern to anyone with a listening ear about how her life would be destroyed at five years old if they cancelled the class.

Slowly, I transformed my prayers.  I whispered what started as an uncertain and half-hearted, “Not my will, but yours be done.”  Over time, I began to actually mean what I prayed.  It was a radical shift for me and not a holy place I often reach in this always-in-control life of mine.

And then I picked up the ringing phone and heard the official news. No kindergarten due to low enrollment.

Off I sped to the local public school and registered my little girl in a building and system that seemed too big and unknown.

And I prayed, “Not my will, but yours be done.”

Then began the stress over her teacher.

I prayed for that one special teacher who would connect with my daughter and make her first year of elementary school as exciting and engaging as possible and who would expertly work with her strengths and weaknesses.

We walked into the classroom on open house.  I didn’t love the teacher.  The room seemed busy and confusing.  My child did what I had feared all along—she fell back into herself and shut down in an instant.  Truly frozen in place, I couldn’t convince her to sit at her desk or walk across the room to meet her teacher.

In that moment, I was ready to do anything—unregister her, ask for a move to a different class.  Right away, I prepared to step in and assume control from a God who seemed to be messing this all up.

Then I asked myself–-Had I not prayed all along for the best possible teacher and environment for my daughter?  Could I trust my God to know what is best for my precious girl? Could I place her in His hands?

I whispered in my daughter’s ear as we sat in that kindergarten classroom, “Lauren, I have prayed for you, every day I have prayed, that God would give you the right school and the right teacher.  He has brought you here so we will trust it’s going to be perfect and wonderful.”

And I silently prayed, “Not my will, but yours be done.”

We so often model our prayers on The Lord’s Prayer, the “our Father who art in heaven” that Jesus taught to the disciples.  And so we should.

That prayer with its “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” echoes Jesus’ own words.  We can thus imitate the very prayer of our Savior Himself as He bowed low in Gethsemane, submitting His own desires to the perfect plan of the Father.  “Not my will, but yours be done,” He prayed that night.

It’s unlikely that you are struggling with the same issue as me.  Maybe your kids are grown and married.  Maybe you’re single.  Maybe you’re still rocking an infant at night.

Even so, perhaps you and I are in the same place.  We, with all our knowledge and expertise, think we have formed a perfect plan and then God intervenes.  He declines to give us what we want.

He tells us “no.”

Maybe you, like me, are less likely to react with the submission of Jesus and instead throw temper tantrums like Jonah.

The prophet Jonah had a plan, too.  He had a successful prophetic ministry to the Hebrew people.

In 2 Kings 14:25, we’re told:

He was the one who restored the boundaries of Israel from Lebo Hamath to the Dead Sea, in accordance with the word of the LORD, the God of Israel, spoken through his servant Jonah son of Amittai, the prophet from Gath Hepher.

Jonah had such a good thing going and his plans for his life probably included retiring after a fulfilling career as the voice of good news to his own nation.

Then God commissioned him to be an evangelist to a pagan nation that had long been the brutal enemy of the Hebrews.

You likely know the story.  He ran away from God, spent three days in a fish’s belly, and then after being vomited up on shore, finally obeyed God.

To a pagan nation, he preached coming judgment and they repented.  Even the king donned sackcloth and ashes.  It was one of the largest revivals in history—a whole nation turning to God in the course of one day.

Did Jonah rejoice?  Did he give praise?

Jonah 4:1 says, “but it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he became angry.”

We could get angry, you and I, when things don’t go our way.  We could stomp away from God’s plan and cross our arms in defiance.  We could run, fast and hard, jumping onto the first ship out of this place.  We could obey, but with an attitude.

Or we could pray, “Not my will, but yours be done,” and trust that our Heavenly Father knows best and remember His promise to work “for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).

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Live in my area and want to pray for your kids’ school year?  Moms and Grandmas are invited to Newington Baptist Church on Tuesday, September 6th at 9:30 a.m. for First Pray–a time of encouragement and prayer for our kids, their teachers, principals, and school staff.  Won’t you join us? 

For working moms, you can email me your child’s name, grade, school and homeroom teacher and we’ll pray for them, as well: heatherking@cox.net

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer for www.myfrienddebbie.com 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.  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2011 Heather King


Online Bible Study: Week Seven (Chapters 13 & 14)

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Welcome to week seven in the study of Priscilla Shirer’s Discerning the Voice of God.  I applaud you all for sticking with us this summer as we read through her book together.  I know you’re busy; I know you have a million other things vying for attention.  And yet, you have set aside time for this book and I am praying for God’s blessings for you as a result.

If I can give one piece of encouragement, it’s don’t give up!  Don’t leave the book half-read or this study partly done.  If you’ve fallen behind, please jump back in as you are able because I don’t want you to miss some of these great chapters at the end.  You can comment on any older post as you catch up on the reading.

My Thoughts:

“Hello. Thank you for calling heaven, where your eternal destiny is secure.  Our menu options have recently changed . Please listen closely to all of the options before making a selection.

Para Espanol, por favor pulse dos.

Please speak or press your 10-digit salvation account number.

Thank you!  Did you know that you can access God’s perspective on many things at any time from the comfort of your own home?  Your heavenly user guide or Bible is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

To check your good deeds account, please press one.
To request forgiveness, please press two.
For automated guidance about your account questions, please press three.
For doctrinal information, please press four.
For help with health, finances, and relationships, please press five.
For all other prayer requests, please press six.

If this is an emergency, please hang up and call your pastor.

To repeat this menu, please press zero.  If you would like to speak to a customer representative, please press nine now.

All of our customer representatives are currently busy.  Due to abnormally large call volume, your wait may be delayed.  Please hang on the line and we’ll be with you shortly.

Elevator music.  Cheerful ads.  More music to which you drum your fingers.  The doodles on your paper have now progressed from swirls and cubes to intricate designs and flowers.

We’re sorry.  All of our customer representatives are currently busy.  Please hang on the line and we’ll be with you shortly.”

I’ve been on hold with companies a lot lately and the routine is the same with each call.  Press buttons.  Answer questions.  Listen to annoying music and assurances that they will be with you as quickly as possible.

Priscilla Shirer writes this week that God’s “entire goal, since the beginning of time, is to have a personal, intimate, loving fellowship between the two of you.”  That means that He longs for us to commune with Him all the time about everything we’re facing and He responds to us both by listening and answering with love and grace.

He isn’t putting us on hold.  He isn’t creating go-betweens to filter out calls until we really prove we need to talk to the Supervisor on Duty.  He wants to spend time in relationship with us both in the times that we experience joy and the moments we feel pain and He’s always listening as we cry out to Him.

All that we experience is subject for prayer.  In her study on Daniel, Beth Moore notes that Paul encourages us to pray and give thanks “in every situation” (Philippians 4:6).  We’re compartmentalizers some times.  We think, this I can handle, but this I can’t so I’ll pray about it  This I can think through, but this I’m lost on so I’ll pray about it.  This is too small to pray about, but this is big enough to mention in the Sunday School prayer time. This the doctor will answer, but this I’m going to have to leave to God.

There’s not some stuff that fits into a God category and other stuff that doesn’t.  In the sorting bins of our needs, emotions, and thoughts, there’s just one basket and it’s got a big fat label on it marked “God’s.”  Praise God that He is responsive, loving, gracious, and accessible.

Chapter Outlines:

Chapter 13: A Fatherly Voice

  • God has a personal message for us and we cannot assume that He has the same plan for others that He has for us.  Obviously, on basic doctrinal issues, on the matters of sin that His Word clearly addresses, the standard is consistent.  But, on questions of personal choices–who to marry, where to work, whether to work or stay home, and more, we must remember that we “run the risk of becoming legalistic and placing other believers in bondage” if we believe what God has told us applies to everyone (p. 153).
  • God’s voice may be convicting, but it is not condemning.  He doesn’t harp on your sins of the past.  “He desires to bring healing and restoration by forgiving my sin and throwing it into the sea of forgetfulness” (p. 155).

Chapter 14: A Challenging Voice

  • God isn’t always talking about how to make us feel comfortable.  In fact, He’s pretty frequently asking us to step out of comfort and into faith.
  • The quote from Oswald Chambers on p. 163 is pretty challenging: “Have you ever heard the Master say something very difficult for you? If you haven’t, I question whether you have ever heard Him say anything at all.”
  • We may feel ill-equipped for the task God has called us to, but “it is through your inability that He reveals His power” (p. 164).

Your Thoughts:

  • What were your favorite, quotes, passages or Scriptures from these two chapters?
  • Have you ever made a choice that you knew was God’s will for you, but also knew it wasn’t God’s will for everyone?
  • Do you ever struggle with feelings of condemnation versus conviction?  Is it easy for you to accept Christ’s forgiveness and move on or are you sometimes trapped by guilt?
  • When has God called you out of comfortable and into faith?  What has God taught you in those situations where He asked you to do something that was beyond your natural ability, experience, training, gifting, etc.?

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer for www.myfrienddebbie.com 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.  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Online Bible Study: Week Six, Chapters 11 & 12

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Welcome to Week six in this eight-week study on Priscilla Shirer’s Discerning the Voice of God.  Ladies, we are just about to enter the home stretch and these two chapters this week are well-underlined in my book, so let’s get to the good stuff!

My Thoughts:

The enemy has a voice, too.

We talk, study, meditate, read and brainstorm about discerning God’s voice, but the enemy isn’t silent. He’s busy spewing lies and stirring up storms of cacophonous noise to block out what our Shepherd is saying to us. Knowing the sound of Satan’s slimy lies is just as necessary in this walk of faith as recognizing the Holy Spirit’s tug on our soul.

Sometimes Satan’s voice can sound so reasonable compared to the faith God asks us to have. This I know personally. Earlier this year, I began writing in my journal the verses and prayers that clearly directed me to quit my job. With confirmation after confirmation, I obeyed and moved in the direction I saw God working.

And then came this summer.  Our air conditioner broke in our home.  Our car experienced catastrophic demise.  The keys on my piano were sticking and then the pedals broke. The air conditioner in my minivan stopped working and my tire collected a nail.

Those are just some of the battle highlights.

For some reason, most of my emotional breakdowns occur while vacuuming and this time was no different.  While sucking up dirt from my carpet, I was spraying dirt back God’s way:  “I’m done.  I’m done, done, done.  I’m over the attacks and to be honest I’m looking for the easy way out now.”

So, I started planning out a workable schedule and plotting out job options.  I took my eyes off what God told me to do and contemplated the Enemy’s offer for a while.

God’s voice cut through the roar of the vacuum and my sobbing, “Is that what I told you to do?”

In the book of Nehemiah, the returning exiles faced great opposition from enemies of their own as they worked on rebuilding the Jerusalem walls.  Sanballat and his cronies ridiculed the Jews and launched attacks on the work crews.  This enemy was consistent in his attacks and crafty in his distractions.

Finally, Sanballat sent a message to Nehemiah, “Come, let us meet together in one of the villages on the plain of Ono.”

It sounded so reasonable, maybe even hinting at peace.

But Nehemiah immediately identified the voice of the enemy. He sent a messenger to say, “I am carrying on a great project and cannot go down.  Why should the work stop while I leave it and go down to you?” (Nehemiah 6:3). Despite repeated messages from the enemy, Nehemiah didn’t even alter the rhythm of his hammer to answer the enemy’s barbs.

Undaunted, Sanballat charged Nehemiah with false reports.  It’s something that would have kept me up nights in a row, worrying about my reputation and lies and how it wasn’t fair.  Nehemiah didn’t react in the slightest: “I sent him this reply: ‘Nothing like what you are saying is happening; you are just making it up out of your head.'”  (Nehemiah 6:8).

Satan’s a liar.  He’s making stuff up and throwing obstacles in our path.  He’s launching attacks and spreading doubt.  He’s laying traps and giving us “reasonable solutions” to our problems that don’t include God’s will.

We need to be like Nehemiah, so certain of and focused on what God wants us to do that we don’t waste hours or days or life seasons defeated and confused.  Instead, we tell Satan, “I can’t waste time in order to step down to your level and worry about what you’re doing.  I’m busy and you’re just making up stuff in your head anyway.”

Nehemiah’s focus and unwavering obedience to God didn’t just mean the walls were built successfully.  It meant they were built in record time.

In just 52 days, his work crews closed the last gap and laid down their hammers.  “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).

When we overcome the attacks of the enemy, ignore his lies, shut down his schemes and avoid his traps, we will receive the blessing that comes with obedience.  More than that, our lives will give testimony to God’s mighty strength.  No one could look our way and see our own accomplishments; it’s clear that the work will have “been done with the help of our God.”

Chapter Outlines:

Chapter 11, An Invitational Voice

On pages 132-133, she notes that “the beauty of Jesus’ life on earth is not that He did His Father’s will but that He did His Father’s will and nothing else.”  I conjure up lots of seemingly great ideas, but in essence I’m doing what God told me to do PLUS some other good stuff.  Do we really want to see what God is doing and only that?

On page 135, she begins a discussion on why God’s plan for us includes the church.  I love how she described living life as a solo Christian with Christian media as our only food is a problem because “it allows you to act like an only child.”

The church needs all of us with the spiritual gifts Christ has given us in order to function.  But, that doesn’t mean every need we see means we need to fill it (p. 137).  Sometimes it means we’re to pray and wait on God for the answer.

And if God calls us to something in the church, “believe that He has already equipped you to do it” (p. 138).  Our weaknesses will just give Him more opportunity to show off His strengths.

Chapter 12, A Timely Voice

Waiting.  Who likes waiting?  What Christian in history has ever found waiting easy?  And yet God asks us to do it and most of us hate it and often rush ahead of God’s will.

On page 143, she notes that John 16:13 “paints the picture of the Holy Spirit as our ‘guide.’  The term used actually means to guide while one is on one’s way.” So, God gives us “continuous direction on a need-to-know basis.”  Now, God and I don’t always agree on when I “need to know,” but the bottom line is His timing is perfect and I’m simply impatient.

My other favorites from this chapter (oh so many to choose from!!):

  • “”Don’t try to make your time constraints God’s” (p. 144)
  • “Until you know plainly what to do next, keep obediently doing what you are sure of” (p. 144)
  • “Habakkuk had to climb above the ground level of his life in order to focus his eyes on God and tune his ears to hear His voice” (p. 147).
  • “Is God only God when we hear Him speaking or see Him moving?  Or will we still trust that He is still our Father, even if we hear no voice from heaven and see nothing happening?”  . . . We must believe that He is working on our behalf even when He chooses not to say a single word.  In His silence, He speaks volumes to us.  He commands us to wait on Him and focus our attention on His holiness” (p. 148-149).

Your Thoughts:

  • What passages, verses and quotes in these chapters were your favorites?
  • How good are you at doing the Father’s will and nothing else?
  • How have you seen God equip you for ministry when you, in your own strength, were not up to the task?
  • How would you answer her question: “Is God only God when we hear Him speaking or see Him moving?  Or will we still trust that He is still our Father, even if we hear no voice from heaven and see nothing happening?”

  • Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer for www.myfrienddebbie.com 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.  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.
    Copyright © 2011 Heather King

VBS Lessons, Day Three: God watches over you

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This week I’m going through the lessons of Group’s PandaMania VBS and considering how they apply to more than just kids!

God Watches Over You
“Even in darkness I cannot hide from You”
Psalm 139:12

“God is watching, watching over you.  Twenty-four-seven, watching over you.  My life is in your hands, whoa!  He’s got great big plans ’cause He’s watching over you.”

We’ll be singing that tonight at Vacation Bible School and I know it’ll be a favorite of the kids.  Not my favorite perhaps, but theirs, so we’ll likely sing it often during these last few days of VBS.

They may like the song because it’s catchy or the video that goes with it is in a roller skating rink (flashback to the 80’s).  Some of them like the motions that accompany the words.

But there’s something here that I do love—“My life is in your hands . . He’s got great big plans.”

God has a plan for you and He desires that you respond in obedience to His call.  We can even prepare our hearts in advance for His directives.  Oswald Chambers wrote that we should “make the determination to abide in Jesus wherever you are now or wherever you may be placed in the future.”

Before we even know what He will ask of us, we say in radical faith, “No matter what, God, I want to obey you.  I’m willing to follow where you lead.  I want the plans that You have prepared for me.”

Then, when God directs our steps and asks us to follow Him, we should leap up like Matthew the tax-collecting disciple, who abandoned his paper and pen to follow after Jesus in instantaneous obedience.  There’s power when we abandon our plans and instead follow after God.  Oswald Chambers also wrote: “I must realize that my obedience even in the smallest detail of life has all the omnipotent power of the grace of God behind it.”

That’s the amazing thing about obedience.  It’s all God requires of us.  He doesn’t expect that we come up with the results.  His “great big plans” don’t depend on our ability or know-how.  The success of God’s plans rely solely on our submission and His omnipotent power.

Have you obeyed God?  Don’t worry if you are in darkness right now or if the results haven’t been the glorious success you envisioned.  Your responsibility is to obey.  God can handle everything else.

But how do we obey?  Sometimes we envision God’s will for our lives as a hit or miss discovery.  We occasionally stumble into God’s will and then other times trip right out of it.

When we worry and fret over God’s will in that way, we are saying that God is fickle and demanding, that He removes His love and favor at whim if we fail to choose the right answer in the multiple choice test of life.

As long as our hearts are set on obedience and the desire of our heart is to be in God’s will, we can trust the God who created communication to communicate His desires to us. It is then our choice whether to obey or disobey those “great big plans” that the VBS song talks about.

Even if we choose disobedience, though, and go our own way, God doesn’t turn His back and shut His eyes to what we endure. Jonah knowingly boarded a boat headed in the opposite direction of God’s command.  It may not have looked like it at the time, but even then God was with him.

It was God that shook the ship Jonah was on with a storm that made even experienced sailors panic and look for a supernatural cause for the tempest.

It was God that set him on a ship of pagan sailors whose hearts were prepared to respond in faith to God.  God even used Jonah, the runaway, disobedient prophet to evangelize them: “At this the men greatly feared the LORD, and they offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made vows to him” Jonah 1:16.

It was God that sent a giant fish up from the depths of the ocean to swallow Jonah whole and carry him safely to land.

Jonah could indeed echo the words of Psalm 139:7-12″

Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
Even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.

Sometimes the darkness and the storm and the big fish are grace in disguise.  They are God’s way of guiding us and holding us fast when we have traveled away from His side.

Even when we’ve remained in His will, though, and responded in obedience at every call, even then we sometimes face darkness.

But, God is watching over you, every moment of every day.  His back was not turned when you faced tragedy.  His eyes were not shut tight when you were hurt.  Sometimes in this evil world full of sin we face the ugliest circumstances possible, but “even the darkness will not be dark to (God); the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to (Him)” (Psalm 139:12).

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer for www.myfrienddebbie.com 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.  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.