Broken for you

July 24, 2013January 23, 20142 Comments

I always break the cracker myself.

Always.

I can’t even quite remember when I started. As a kid, I think, maybe even still in elementary school.

The deacons silently handed out the plate of crackers or bread or wafers or whatever they used for communion that day.

No matter how small it already was, when the pastor read the verse, “This is my body, broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me…” I folded that tiny white sliver in half and then slipped it into my mouth with my eyes squeezed tight.

The King James says this, “Broken for you….”

My Bible now reads “Given for you….”

Scripture translation doesn’t impact how personal this is, how personally I should take it sitting there in my comfortably cushioned chair in a carpeted sanctuary.

Because Jesus’ brokenness wasn’t just for someone, for all of us, for mankind, for her, for him, for them, for those in the past…..

It was:

for you.

It was:

for me.

That’s why I smash that wafer into two with my own fingers and cradle the pieces in my own palm before we eat the bread together: because this was Christ’s sacrifice for me and it was because of me, because of my own sin in a world of sinners.

It’s too easy to feel rising self-righteousness, thinking that my redeemed self isn’t so bad, my sin not so ugly, my life not so messy.

And then that creeping lie of merit demolishes the truth of grace. Even when I sing the words, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me,” I’m not meaning it. Not truly. I’m singing about other wretches maybe, but surely not me, surely not my own good-girl self.

Holding two slivers of a broken symbol of Christ’s sacrificial body, though, reminds me that He chose the brokenness.

And why?

Because I was hopelessly broken.

It’s not a romanticized brokenness, this need of mine for a Savior. It’s not that I’m just slightly messy or flaky or flighty, scatter-brained, forgetful, overwhelmed, rushed, busy, or humorously real in a world that tends to pretend perfection.

Sure, we’re all human. We don’t always keep our houses clean. Sometimes we lose our temper with our kids. There are bad days and mistakes.

But I’m not talking the kind of brokenness we laugh about in blog posts, where we confess not so much sin as just life in all its crazy reality.

I’m talking about the kind of brokenness where we drop to our knees in repentance, true repentance, where we face the fact that we’re sinners and that there is ugliness in us.

And we don’t just accept that with apathetic shrugs of our shoulders.

That’s just how I am. That’s how everyone is. That’s what is realistic. That’s how God made me. That’s just how people will have to accept me. Nobody’s perfect.

Sometimes that’s what we say. We commiserate with lost tempers and jealousy in small group conversations and we act as if it doesn’t matter.

But just because that’s normal, doesn’t mean it’s right. Doesn’t mean it’s acceptable to God or holy or pure or righteous.

I never really choose brokenness myself. It’s not something I seek out or glorify or want. Yet, God reveals the broken places not so I can connect with others with a funny story, but so I don’t forget that:

He is perfect; I am not.

He deserves glory; I don’t.

He paid the price for my salvation; I didn’t earn it.

He doesn’t use me because of my skills, abilities, training; He can use me in my weakness so that others see His strength.

The humbling makes us usable, makes us dependent on Him, makes us desire His work in us, the kind that doesn’t leave us broken and sin-invaded forever, but inspires us to intimacy with Him that brings life-revolutionary change.

And while I don’t usually choose this brokenness—more like I run away from it, hide from it, try to escape it and pretend it doesn’t exist–it’s beautiful the way He uses it, beautiful the way it’s transformed in His hands.

Beautiful the way I remember that while I avoid brokenness, Jesus chose it for me.

Here the King James version falls short. Yes, his body was “broken for you”–but not because others were more powerful or Satan overcame Him or He wasn’t able to save Himself. This wasn’t passive.

Instead, I read today in my Bible:

And He took bread, gave thanks, broke it, gave it to them, and said, “This is My body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of Me (Luke 22:19 HCSB).

Jesus gave His body over to us.

This I remember. This I bow my head and give humble thanks for. This is why I break the bread with my own hands, because He chose the brokenness and He chose it for me.

Heather King is a busy-but-blessed wife and mom, a 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.

Unreasonable requests, unreasonable grace

July 17, 2013January 23, 20146 Comments

I looked at the sign on the door and asked my daughter if she wanted to change her mind.

That is to say, I asked her again.

I’d been asking her for a month after receiving the pamphlet about two historical day-camps in our area, visiting living history sites and creating projects like Indian pottery and a windmill.

My oldest daughter asked me to sign her up right away.

My middle daughter declined just as quickly with a brief “no thanks” and a determined shrug.

But we stood there and looked at the sign on the door on day one of the first camp: Spots still open for future sessions in the other location.

So I asked again and once again she shook her head with an emphatic and decisive “no.”

Until the next day at 11:00 a.m., just two hours before camp started for the day, when she inched over to me and whispered: “Mom, I’ve changed my mind.”

She needed help overcoming foolishness, stubbornness and fear, help with redirection and what to do next, help figuring all this out and making right what was wrong.

And she was willing to ask me for it, to trust me with her problem because it was just too big for her after all.

My mom’s heart broke for her because I love her, that’s why. Even if it was her own choice and the mess of her own making, still I felt that stirring of grace.

I knew what it took for her to stand at my feet and confess truth.

I knew because haven’t I stumbled to the feet of Jesus with mistakes and failures covered in a right-awful mess time and time and too many times again?

Hadn’t I hung my head so low and cried because I knew it was my own foolish fault and how could I expect grace so undeserved?

But that’s what grace is: Unearned, unmerited, undeserved, poured out all over us never because we’ve racked up enough good behavior points to cash in for a blessing. Given because He loves us, simply because He chooses to give.

So, I told my daughter I couldn’t promise anything, but I’d ask about her joining in the next camp.

She was so bold. She asked, couldn’t she after all just join in the camp that was taking place that day AND the next one in a few weeks?

I was too embarrassed to even ask for anything so unreasonable when I called the official number on the phone and left a voicemail message. I inquired about open spaces in the next session and left it at that.

Then we packed into the car and drove almost an hour for day two of the first camp session and walked in with my oldest daughter. The lady manning the sign-in table saw me and realized I had left the voicemail message about the girl who changed her mind.

And she asked: Would my daughter like to just join the class today so she didn’t miss out and then do the one in a month, too?

My daughter nodded, I signed the form and she was in.

Just like that.

But I paused a moment with this girl of mine before sending her into that classroom for the day. I looked into two bright blue eyes and said—“Look what God did for you” and then I cried my way right out of there.

Because God had showed her this abundance of grace, more than I had even dared to ask for.

It was unreasonable grace.

But then, isn’t all grace really “unreasonable?”

The prophet Isaiah wrote:

I will comfort you there in Jerusalem as a mother comforts her child (Isaiah 66:13 NLT).

and he says:

I will answer them before they even call to me. While they are still talking about their needs, I will go ahead and answer their prayers (Isaiah 65:24 NLT).

I consider this today when I’m thinking of need and not God’s promises, thinking of trouble and not His strength, thinking of what’s wrong and not how He loves me.

Hadn’t God loved my daughter enough to surprise her with this grace? Hadn’t it been a shocking gift, so generous, so much more than I was even bold enough to request?

And God loves us like that. He comforts us like a mother comforts her child, not just with a hug and a tissue for the tears. No, with intervention and provision, without remonstration or annoyance, but with so much compassion.

He doesn’t just answer the prayers we pray…but those we can’t even groan out, those we aren’t brave enough to put into words, those we’re sure are too much to ask and the ones we don’t deserve answered.

Reasonable? No, not at all.

But grace, yes, grace the way God gives.

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.

Orange Makeup/White Shirt and Forgiveness

July 15, 2013January 23, 2014Leave a comment

“I’m so grateful we never have to stand at a distance from Christ. Not only is He incapable of catching our ‘disease,’ but also He is never reluctant to embrace us”
(Beth Moore, Jesus: the One and Only, p. 242)

I love my kids. Normally, I’m eager to accept their hugs and I’ll wrap them up in my arms at the slightest whim.

The other night, though, my daughter was fully decked out in her costume as an Oompa Loompa in a production of Willy Wonka, Jr, complete with thick, bright orange makeup all the way to her hairline and down to her neck.

…And she wanted to hug me.

…While I was wearing a white shirt.

…A really, really white shirt.

Did I mention she was orange? Really, really orange. In fact, I think Crayola should consider naming a new color “Oompa Loompa Orange” in her honor.

So, I hugged her at first with an intricately choreographed dance, making sure her orange head never made contact with my clothing. She bobbed; I weaved.

Then, I stood still for a moment and tilted her face to the side so that only the top of her head touched me. (Her hair, thankfully, wasn’t orange!) I gave her what I’ve decided to call “the sideways head hug.”

My goal here was a kind of sterile affection: Showing love without staining my clothes.

I’ve learned this dance over years of practice as a mom. Kids, after all, come at me every day with Oreos on their hands and spaghetti sauce oozing from their fingers. More paint makes it onto them than every makes it onto paper and then they reach out and touch me to get my attention.

In fact, most of my clothes bear the marks of their hands on my thighs (where they could reach when standing up as toddlers) and on my shoulders (from the times I picked those little ones up).

When I read through the Gospels, I’m amazed at how Jesus essentially wore a white shirt and yet never failed to hug, squeeze, lift up, and cherish all those who came to him—even when they were covered in stains of sin, death, and all that was unclean.

He never dodged them in attempts to escape the messiness of their lives.

When the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years braved the disapproving crowd in order to reach Jesus, she was unclean. Continual bleeding meant continually being cut-off from public worship and physical contact with others.

One brush of her skin against your arm and you’d be unclean, as well.

Yet, she touched Jesus and He didn’t flinch or condemn her. He didn’t sidestep her presence. He healed her and set her free.

When Jesus saw the coffin of a widow’s only son pass by surrounded by wailing mourners and his mother in despair, Jesus could have slipped away and ignored it all. Touching a dead body was a guaranteed mess, making you unclean by the law’s religious standards.

Jesus did it anyway, though, telling the dead boy to arise and then watching this only son embrace his mother again.

Jesus ate with the rabble, touched the eyes of the blind, and laid hands on the demon-possessed. His was a physical affection, the real and true fingerprints of God placed on undeserving lives and unclean situations.

Yet, instead of being tainted or stained Himself, He brought purity to others.

Paul put it this way:

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Too often we miss the significance of this fact: Jesus did what was unclean and yet nothing could penetrate the purity of the Son of God.

He was sinless, blameless, totally righteous before God, but He didn’t use that as an excuse to separate Himself from others. Instead, it was His joy to absorb their stains of sin, now bleached white when laid at the feet of the Messiah.

It’s what He did on the streets of Galilee and Judea and Samaria.

It’s what He did on the cross.

It’s what He does even now when we let Him get involved in the dirtiest, muckiest, and most sin-plagued aspects of our lives.

That’s what John assures us when he writes: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

This means we don’t need to hide away or shun his society. We don’t need to pretend the unclean blots on our lives don’t exist.

It also means that we can follow his example by no longer worrying about our clean white shirts and start doling out affection without restraint, not avoiding the mess of others when it makes us uncomfortable. Like Jesus, we “walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us” (Ephesians 5:2).

Sometimes real love means getting messy, maybe even orange.

Originally published as Orange Makeup/White Shirt on August 15 2012

Invisible Grace That Now I See

June 24, 2013January 23, 20144 Comments

My oldest daughters were still preschoolers when our library hosted a dance party for kids. We decided to see what a dance party for tiny tots looked like.

There was some Hokey Pokey and something like Sweatin’ to the Oldies. My kids jumped into the middle of the room and boogied down with the best of them while I sat criss-cross applesauce on the edge of the circle and smiled.

And I marveled at one of my mom friends, who hokey-pokied with the best of them, dancing with her only son.

How does she do it? I wondered.

People asked me the same question for years as I worked from home with young kids, balancing work production with Candy Land breaks, juice cup refills, baby doll changes, and searches for Barbie’s perpetually missing shoe.

But I told them that it wasn’t so amazing for me as a momma to three. My kids played with each other (with periodic fights, of course). How much more amazing was the mom with one child!

Besides, somehow we made it through despite the hard days. The kids ripped the house to shreds and pieces while I worked and I couldn’t come behind them and clean up or cajole them all day to pick up their own blocks, Barbies, babies, Little People, dollhouse, movies, crayons, and dress-up.

Some days I felt like capital-F Failure mom for too much TV time and too little creative play. There were times I rocked a tiny screaming baby while crying from fatigue myself and I thought: I….can’t….do…..it….all. That’s a realization that hurts.

Some nights I coached myself in preparation for my husband’s call on his way home from work: Good wives don’t explode about their day to a weary husband stressed with his own stuff. Good wives don’t complain about fighting children and the two-year-old who dumped a bar of soap in the fish tank. Good wives don’t cry on the phone while they are making dinner in the kitchen, hiding out from the living room that is covered in princess dresses and tiaras, with a screaming baby on her hip and two preschoolers in the play room battling out who had the doll first.

But of course, my husband would ask the question: How was your day? And what do you do then but explode into an unintelligible mess of tears while you stir the spaghetti?

We worked through those tough days, and it took discipline, a schedule, planning, a dose of humor, reasonable expectations and grace, such incredible grace.

So often, we miss this grace, this invisible presence of God and the way He helps us through. We think grace is only the obvious, only the easy, only the deliverance from and not the deliverance through.

Yet, sometimes there’s nothing simple about it. Sometimes even grace is messy and difficult.

Occasionally, grace is God stretching our miniscule faith. We feel the aches and pains of growth, the throbbing in our souls and we think, “I can’t do it, not one minute more, not one single day.” But there we are, rising with the sun again, giving it another try, and leaning hard on Jesus, somehow making it through.

This past week, I paused for thanks, amazed that somehow God helped me have a productive day even with three daughters home on summer vacation.

That’s when God shone light on the invisible grace from all those past years. In the blindness of the moment, I’d missed it.

He used almost seven years of me typing medical reports at my computer with kids at my feet to prepare us for the here and now of me writing with young children.

God doesn’t waste the tough days, difficult seasons, dry spells, or training times for any of us. He’s a Redeemer of each season, a recycler of past refuse, a Creator of all things beautiful in their own time, and He is surely working in you today in preparation for tomorrow.

That’s how God worked in David:

He chose David His servant
and took him from the sheepfolds;
He brought him from tending ewes
to be shepherd over His people Jacob—
over Israel, His inheritance.
He shepherded them with a pure heart
and guided them with his skillful hands (Psalm 78:70-72 HCSB).

God didn’t need a palace-trained king. He needed a shepherd for His people, so He taught David out in the fields, long before this shepherd donned the crown and the robe and ruled as King of Israel.

God had a plan all along.

We may only see the now-invisible grace in the looking back.

For now, we have to grip on with white-knuckled determination, knowing that He’ll use this for His glory, knowing it won’t be wasted, knowing somehow He’ll prepare us for the future with Him.

…Knowing grace is here even when it’s invisible.

Summer Grace

June 12, 2013January 23, 2014Leave a comment

My daughter asks, “Why is it so much easier to get along with friends than with sisters some times?”

Four days into summer vacation and she’s already pleading for more time with friends and less time with siblings.

But here’s the truth I tell her….time with others destroys masks, facades, and fake perfection. It has a way of dragging all of those sins and faults, all of that selfishness and the bad attitudes from where they stay safely hidden during play dates and public outings.

Anyone can behave for a few hours on a play date.

That’s what I tell her.

Then I remind myself: Any mom can respond sweetly to her child who is having a meltdown in the Wal-Mart aisle five minutes into your shopping trip when there are people around who might overhear you.

And those TV moms—sure, any of us could be super creative, fun, and even-tempered enough to fill 40 minutes of film footage once a week.

God isn’t satisfied with superficial sweetness, though. He wants genuine transformation. He wants the world to look deep and long at us and see the reflection of Christ, not some plastic Jesus or some temporary super-Christian persona.

It’s part of His design with family and others to wield us as tools, chipping away at one another, breaking off the pieces that simply need to go, and masterfully forming us little by little into tried-and-true, walking and talking, in-season and out-of-season examples of Christ in the world.

Proverbs tells us:

Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another (Proverbs 27:17).

So He places us in families and in community with one another.

And then He gives us summer seasons…when we’re up close and personal and with each other all day instead of scattering away to schools, activities, and our own busy lives.

It’s so much time so close together that causes the explosions….when she won’t share the game, and she says something unkind, and she makes annoying noises, and her piano playing is too loud, and she’s hungry and impatient, and she wants to go to the library when she wants to stay home in her pajamas all day…when all this “self” collides with the “self” in everyone else, that’s when He reminds us of grace.

Maybe that’s the lesson in summer, after all.

Grace to rest.

Grace to stop the frantic running from school pick-ups to evening activities, tossing back granola bars to your kids from the front of the mini-van while you rush to ballet where you yank hair back into buns and push in bobby pins before class begins.

Grace to linger over the cup of tea in the morning instead of putting on the drill sergeant hat and barking out commands to children to get dressed, brush teeth, comb hair, find shoes, pack lunches and then kiss them on the cheek and send them out the door just in time to rush onto the school bus.

Grace to skip the chores and pack the car for the beach.

Grace even that I need to extend to myself—to not adhere completely to the writing schedule, to post late to the blog or even miss a day—because we’re out enjoying the summer and I’m taking this time I’ve been given with my kids for these few short weeks and I don’t want to miss it.

And grace for each other.

This is the mom speech I make for my daughter after a sibling melt-down.

In this family, we give grace because we need grace. When someone makes a mistake, we don’t mock, or point fingers, or jump up eagerly to show off how they were wrong.

After all, we need grace. We receive grace, so we show grace to others.

We need grace.

We receive grace.

We show grace.

Paul wrote this:

And be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ (Ephesians 4:32 HCSB).

And that’s how we breathe in and breathe out when daily annoyances and mistakes, sins, and forgetfulness, bad days, troubles, and trials threaten to consume us.That’s what we do when others step on our toes and bruise our feelings. We forgive because we’ve been forgiven.

This summer, we lean back full into this grace and rest. Choosing not to be stressed over the schedule, but to relax in relationship. Choosing to forgive the hurts and cease the fault-finding as Christ uses this season together to transform us.

That’s the grace that is summer.

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.

Putting Your Face in the Water

May 29, 2013January 23, 2014Leave a comment

I told her it could be the perfect birthday present for me. I cajoled and plead.

Please won’t you put your face in the water at swim lessons? Won’t you blow bubbles in the water when the teacher asks?

She nodded her head yes, but it was that uncertain kind of assent that just means, “I want to please you Mom, but that’s asking so much.”

I sat on the sidelines of the pool, breathing in the humid air and watching her.

She laughed as she bounced in the water, shivered a bit as she waited for her turn, obeyed the teacher’s every command.

Until the teacher said, “Okay, time to blow bubbles in the water.”

I waited, hoping for success this time. She’d been at this for six weeks, willing, compliant, cheerful even. But this one request she just wouldn’t do.

Not that she cried or screamed, threw tantrums or caused problems. No, she just kind of giggled it off, maybe shaking her head with a smile or looking away as if she didn’t hear what the teacher asked.

The results this week were the same as all the other classes.

She kicked her feet and moved her arms and did all the good swimmer things. But she arched her back as far as it could go and stretched her neck out long like a turtle so that not one bit of her face would touch the water.

Class ended and my little girl inched her way over to me, teeth chattering from the cold. I snuggled her into the towel and held her close and the teacher walked over and just shook her head “no” with a smile.

Not this week.

I know it as I watch her in the pool and see her so sweetly confident and strong. She could be a great little swimmer, but this fear or determination or whatever it is stunts her progress.

What we need is for her to dip her face right in that water and stop avoiding it. Go full in, unafraid and unhindered.

Don’t we all need to do that? To stop avoiding the fullness of God’s call or the way God asks us to dunk down and be buried over by the Holy Spirit. To stop holding out or straining our backs and necks in order to avoid the total obedience that comes with letting go.

All disciples have to make that choice.

Jesus said, “Follow me….” and men had to decide. Drop the nets? Abandon the family business? And just go? Not the controlled kind of obedience, the kind that says, “I’ll do this, but no more. I’ll go here, but no farther. I’ll get in the pool, but I don’t want my face wet. I don’t want to feel out of control.”

There’s Matthew, the ostracized tax collector, known and scorned by religious Jews. Maybe it even shocked some of the other disciples when Jesus didn’t rush past the tax collector’s booth, but approached it and offered that calling to the man sitting there.

Jesus “said to him, ‘Follow Me.’ So he left all, rose up, and followed Him” (Luke 5:27-28 NKJV).

In One Perfect Life: The Complete Story of the Lord Jesus, John MacArthur notes, “LEFT ALL: This implies an irreversible action” (p. 117).

Matthew didn’t jump into the pool and yet keep his face out of the water just in case. No he splashed down so deep that he was hopeless without Jesus.

And he got it, right away, what Jesus was after and who Jesus was. Others might have dipped in a toe and then waded up to the waist in the message and the Gospel before they really understood salvation and grace.

But this tax collector, remarkably and unexpectedly called out by the Messiah, knew it immediately. This redemption gift wasn’t about who earned it and it wasn’t about being good enough to deserve it or to warrant Jesus’ attention or invitation.

It was for sinners and outcasts.

So, Matthew didn’t hesitate to share the news. He threw a party and there Jesus sat with: “a large crowd of tax collectors and others who were guests with them” And Jesus declared it right there at the dinner table: “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” (Luke 5:29-32).

That unhindered Gospel truth couldn’t be missed because Matthew left a tax collector’s booth to follow Jesus and then brought the Messiah to a dinner party full of sinners who needed a Savior.

Jesus isn’t pleading perhaps, not bribing or threatening or asking for “the best birthday present ever.” But He’ll ask this—-Put your face in the water. Trust me. Don’t hold back.

And the message He wants to share through us depends on our answer.

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.

How Was Your Day?

May 8, 2013January 23, 20146 Comments

“How was your day?”

It’s my husband’s first question to me at the end of his work day every single evening.

This answer used to be easier. How was my day? Mostly that depended on work. How much I accomplished, how difficult the tasks were, how successful I was, how many goals I’d met, and how well I juggled Mom-life with the job.

But now he asks, and I stumble and stutter. How to answer a question that’s always been objective and quantifiable?

What makes a day good now? Do I share my excitement over a new homemade bread recipe or the smell of the from-scratch spaghetti sauce bubbling away in the crock-pot? Does vacuuming count as an accomplishment (it is, after all, on my to-do list)? Do grocery store savings and coupon clipping validate me as a home manager? Should I count the number of socks I matched and folded?

And beyond that, beyond all the tasks and tedium, how was my day relationally? 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 even beyond that, if I close my day without any measurable way to evaluate my productivity at all, could the day still be “good?”

If I’ve listened to a hurting friend spill out all the ugly and the pain on the phone or if I’ve collapsed at the kitchen table with tea and my Bible and lingered there out of desperate dehydration and an aching hunger for His presence….does this mean today I have failed?

This slide into a works-based life tricks and deceives. I don’t feel the gradual move from grace to law, don’t sense that I’ve shifted from relational priorities to measurable productivity.

But then someone asks about me, about my day, and I hear my own words and I know it for what it is: My value has become dependent on the items crossed off my 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).

It’s not that busyness itself is sin. Sometimes busyness is just life with a job, a ministry, a husband, or kids. Chances are you’re busy. Chances are you get tired sometimes.

When Jesus commissioned the disciples for activity, they traveled for weeks of uncomfortable, on-foot missionary service to towns where they weren’t always well-received (Luke 9). They weren’t overloading themselves with busyness; they were serving in obedience, following Jesus’ specific instructions about the journey.

Yet, they were tired.

When they returned home, “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.

Our need is the same.

But it begins here. Not what did I accomplish, do, or achieve? My good day begins with simply this: Did I do what God wanted me to do today?

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 whether He’s sending us out or asking 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

God alone can determine the value of our day, the need for productivity at times or 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?

Others might glance at your calendar and think, “She’s too busy” or “She’s such a slacker.” But it’s not up to them.

It’s up to Him.

Complicating Grace

April 29, 2013January 23, 20141 Comment

We had given them instructions.

While I was away all day at a conference in Richmond, Dad was on duty for swim lessons and a friend’s birthday party and everything in between.

So, I prepped my daughters in advance with specific instructions because you have to go through the bathrooms at the gym in order to reach the pool. One dad…three daughters….suddenly this whole job becomes more complicated.

“Now, you can’t change at the pool after swim lessons,” I told them. “You just need to slip your cover-up on over your swimsuits and quickly move through the bathroom to the other side where Dad will be waiting for you. He’ll take you home where you can change.”

He told them the same thing.

So, 20 minutes after he sent them through the bathroom after swim lessons, they finally emerged.

Fully dressed.

Mostly.

Because we had planned this all out, I hadn’t packed them underwear to change into after swim class. They were, after all, supposed to wear their swim suits home.

I can only imagine what every other woman in the gym bathroom witnessed as these three girls tried to change into clothes and discovered a lack of undergarments.

Oh my.

Fortunately, a mom we know had pity on my youngest and at least gave her a plastic bag for her wet swimsuit. This is what my daughter told me as soon as I arrived home that night.

“How were swim lessons?” I asked.

“Good. Natalie’s mom gave me a plastic bag.”

Okay….

They must have struggled through wet clothes and changing in a public bathroom and searching frantically through the clothes for the things they needed and then had to makeshift a solution when they found their resources were lacking.

But if they had listened to us, yes, if they had just listened and obeyed the simple instructions we’d given, they would have had everything they needed. It would have been so simple.

And I take this to heart.

Yes, if I just listen to my God—all-knowing, all-powerful, so gracious and loving—then perhaps I wouldn’t struggle with so much insufficiency and lack, perhaps the situations that threaten to drown me in frantic worry and desperate searching would be simplified and peace-filled.

Yet, sometimes I’m just not listening.

And sometimes I’m listening; I’m just not obeying.

Either way, I create havoc.

I’m not alone in this, I know. God granted Solomon supernatural wisdom, and yet the vast kingdom he inherited from his father, King David, disintegrated when Solomon died.

All because he didn’t listen.

God gave such clear instructions for the kings of Israel:

However, he (the king) must not acquire many horses for himself or send the people back to Egypt to acquire many horses, for the Lord has told you, ‘You are never to go back that way again.’ He must not acquire many wives for himself so that his heart won’t go astray. He must not acquire very large amounts of silver and gold for himself (Deuteronomy 17:16-17).

Three simple commands:

1. Don’t have too many horses (especially ones you get from Egypt, where you were once enslaved).

2. Don’t have many wives (especially those who will lead your heart astray).

3. Don’t build up extreme personal wealth.

Perhaps the rules seemed so arbitrary, even unfair, and certainly not fun. All the other kings, I’m sure, married for political alliances, acquired wealth and then showed it off, and maintained stables with pride.

Why not Solomon and the kings of Israel?

The Bible Knowledge Commentary notes that “All three prohibitions, then, were designed to reduce the king to the status of a servant totally dependent on His Master, the Lord.”

God planned for his king’s heart to be humbled, for him to remember Who would deliver him in battle and Who would provide for his needs.

Sadly, Solomon doesn’t have a reputation for wisdom alone. No, he’s known for opulence, and his 700 wives (plus 300 concubines), who led him to worship foreign gods and stone idols.

And his horses.

We’re told: “Solomon had 4,000 stalls for his chariot horses, and he had 12,000 horses” (1 Kings 4:26). Not only that, but Solomon’s horses came from Egypt (2 Chronicles 1:16).

Lisa Harper writes:

“grace can masquerade as difficulty and discipline”(Malachi).

So it was for Solomon. This was grace in disguise and he missed it, missed seeing through the mask of rules and restrictions to know that God was at work here.

And me, when I’m rushing and not listening, or listening and not heeding, how can I see grace for the grace it is?

Instead, I’m begging, “Mercy,” and this mercy He’s already given.

I still my heart to listen.

I steel my heart to obey.

And grace is what I see.

Her Own Pizza: With Jesus, It’s Personal

April 24, 2013January 23, 2014Leave a comment

My youngest waltzed out of the pizza place carrying her own personal-sized cheese pizza like a treasure.

It started last fall when we mapped out the activity schedule for the year. One night a week we rush from school, to ballet, to church, leaving exactly 30 minutes to scarf dinner in the car.

I searched for a solution that didn’t break our budget feeding a family of 5 dinner out and discovered the power of pizza. One large pizza for about $9 feeds all of us.

Problem solved.

But systems like this take some trial and error before they are perfected. At first, I ordered a pizza with half pepperoni and half cheese, trying to please everyone’s pizza palate.

The trouble was that we then ended up with too many slices of cheese and not enough pepperoni.

Sigh. Middle class problems.

(Actually, I’d prefer mushroom pizza, but I choose not to push it.)

So, one week I dared to change things up a bit. I asked for a whole pizza of pepperoni and decided my cheesy daughters would simply have to pick off the meat.

Not long after I ordered the pizza, though, the phone rang. It was the manager from the pizza place.

“I’m looking at your order here, hon, and I noticed it’s for a whole pepperoni pizza this time. I just wanted to make sure I made your pizza right and that this wasn’t a mistake.”

Whoa. She had been paying attention to me. More than just a cheerful greeting when I walked in each week, she’d actually cared enough to know what I typically order and to notice when it changed.

So, I casually mentioned my predicament. I only need two slices of cheese pizza. A whole pepperoni pizza is too much pepperoni. A half and half pizza is too much cheese.

What’s a mom to do?

“No problem,” she says, “I’ll make a pizza with just two slices without pepperoni.”

And she did. Every single week from September to April she made us a custom-order pizza without being asked.

Last week, though, I walked in to pick up our pizza and our amazing pizza lady wasn’t there. People we didn’t recognize were making pizzas and slipping them into cardboard boxes, so I knew we were probably not getting our two special cheese slices that week.

The next day, my phone rang. It was the pizza manager again. She was apologizing to me…profusely…that she had been away at a meeting and no one else had remembered about our special pizza order.

Really, I assured her, it’s fine. I’m amazed by you, truly.

When I picked up the next week’s pizza order, she had it waiting for me on the counter, fresh and hot. And on top of the large pizza was a small box with a personal cheese pizza just for my daughter as an apology for the lack of cheese slices the week before.

In a world with so many people, so much selfishness, so much demand to fit into labels and boxes, so much pressure to conform, so much mass-marketing and crowd appeal, one personal touch stopped me during my weekly rush from place to place.

I put the pizzas in the minivan and halted at the door, shaking my head. One incredible pizza manager was digging deep in my soul.

Because ministry and Christianity and Jesus aren’t about statistics, labels, boxes, conformity, arena crowds, generalizations or stereotypes.

With Jesus, it’s always personal.

How often do we forget this?

…Treating ministry like it’s successful only when it’s big ministry, only when the numbers measure up.

…Expecting God to work the same old way for every single person, judging others for making different choices than we do, acting like our way is the only right way.

…Pulling out textbooks instead of listening to people.

…Shoving others into the confines of expectations and labels and never allowing a bit of room for grace or for growth or redemption….

In Deep & Wide, Andy Stanley reminds me that Jesus:

chose twelve apostles from among hundreds of disciples. He gave preferential treatment to three of the twelve. He didn’t heal everyone. He didn’t feed every hungry crowd. He stopped in the middle of a virtual parade and invited himself over to Zacchaeus’ house. Why him? He ensured that strangers would live and allowed Lazarus to die.

Why didn’t Jesus treat everyone the same?

Because we’re not the same. We’re uniquely created by Him and He loves us, knows us, cares about us…

…you.

…me.

We can say it, recite it, sing it–echoing Jesus’ words: “Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you must also love one another.” (John 13:34 HCSB).

But we need to mean it.

Love others just as Jesus loved us: sacrificially, humbly, with grace, and yes—personally.

Unsweetened Iced Tea

April 19, 2013January 23, 20144 Comments

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!
2 Corinthians 5:17

Unsweetened iced tea.

That’s what the quiz said my personality resembled. Not sweet tea or peach tea or even a little wild raspberry tea or health-conscious green tea.

Unsweetened iced tea, as in bitter, plain, strong, and unfriendly.

During our family trip to Pennsylvania, we spent a morning at the Turkey Hill Experience where my kids learned how to make ice cream, created their own flavors, starred in their own ice cram commercials, sampled some of the delicious treats, and more. It was a great family day.

Before we left, though, my oldest daughter discovered a touch screen display with a little personality quiz.

What flavor of tea are you?

So, I gave it a little try, just for fun. After a few questions about what I liked to do in my free time, how I handled conflict and what I was like around my friends, it made its deep psychological assessment of my character:

Unsweetened iced tea.

Underneath that was a paragraph about how I’m blunt and can hurt people’s feelings, but I get the job done no matter what the cost. I sounded a little like Donald Trump.

I turned to my husband with a questioning look and he shrugged it off. “Nah, that’s not you.”

Silly machine, I thought. It’s just a foolish test that probably isn’t ever right about anybody.

So, of course I made my daughter take it just to prove my point.

She read through the questions and gave her own answers, and then it popped up with her flavor personality.

Peach Tea.

The read-out said she is smart, creative and a kind and compassionate friend. They even recommended she pursue a career in making greeting cards.

That is so her.

If I had to write up my own assessment of this child, that is exactly what I would say about her, and this machine figured her out with only about five questions.

Silly machine?

It seems like it should be so much easier to ignore the accusations and judgments of just-for-fun personality games or even those of other people.

So what if they think we’re unsweetened iced tea? Does it really matter what they think? Should I care about what a machine says based on my answers to a few multiple choice questions?

It’s not rational or logical, but it did matter to me a little. Unsweetened iced tea….that’s who I used to be.

Sixteen years ago, I was bitter and hurtful, strong, unrelenting, and essentially unconcerned about who got knocked over or bruised when I focused on accomplishing tasks and reaching goals.

Maybe I was a miniature Donald Trump without the hair-do or bank account.

But God.

God took that teenage mess of a girl, who seemed so in control and together, and broke her in ways she needed to be broken. He shattered pride and the hardness I had built in my relationships with people. He reached in and kneaded my heart until it became soft and pliable in His hands.

He taught me how to receive grace…and then how to give it.

Yes, He re-formed me.

Maybe in seasons of pressure or stress, I still have that capacity to revert to who I used to be. Maybe my tongue can still slash through people like the sharpest of weapons.

But today I am thinking as I cut through the butter with the tines of the fork and smash it to the bottom of the bowl, crack open the eggs, and watch the sugar pour in grain upon grain. I mix with the spoon at first and then finally reach in with my hands to do the work needed.

And as the dough pulls together, I realize—hadn’t God done this to me?

Paul wrote:

For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you (Romans 12:3 NIV).

That means seeing the truth about me—not who I was, not who others say I am, or how I measure up on personality quizzes. It means looking deep and seeing “this is how God has made me and this is who I am in Christ”—no better or worse than that.

If God’s grace did this, smashing and breaking me until I could be pulled together again into something He could use, then why still think of myself in that old way? Why hold myself to labels from the past and an identity formed oh-so-long-ago before grace bruised me and healed me in the way that grace does?

Some machine still saw me as unsweetened iced tea.

But God’s sweet grace had poured into my soul and I’m not the same.

Heather C. King – Room to Breathe

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

Tag: grace

Broken for you

Unreasonable requests, unreasonable grace

Orange Makeup/White Shirt and Forgiveness

Invisible Grace That Now I See

Summer Grace

We need grace.

We receive grace.

We show grace.

Putting Your Face in the Water

How Was Your Day?

Complicating Grace

Her Own Pizza: With Jesus, It’s Personal

Unsweetened Iced Tea

My devotional for today:

My devotional for today:

My devotional for today:

My devotional for today:

We need grace.

We receive grace.

We show grace.

My devotional for today:

My devotional for today:

My devotional for today:

My devotional for today:

My devotional for today:

My devotional for today: