Tag: Hannah

Please Beware of the Authenticity

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2 timothy 1

She extended her hand, pointed down the street and said, “be sure to avoid our authenticity.”

The kids on our fourth grade field trip to Colonial Williamsburg paused a moment in confusion.

Authenticity?

Then this wave of understanding passed over our group.

The horse-drawn carriages.

The dusty road.

The piles of smelly “authenticity” left behind by these horses as they pulled those carriages down that dusty road.

Oooooohhhh.

Day later, I shuffled my crew of four kids into Wal-Mart for a prescription, and I recalled the tour guide’s warning.

My two-year-old was having a two-year-old day.

He had an outburst of anger when we pulled into the Wal-Mart because we didn’t stop at the Chick-fil-A or the frozen yogurt place instead.

He then had a meltdown in the parking lot because I didn’t let him dance around in the middle of the road.  No, I was the mean mom who insisted he hold her hand in the parking lot!

He hadn’t even finished blinking away those tears before he threw himself into a full-fledged tantrum because I did not get a cart for our quick jaunt in and out of the store.

As he wailed in the pharmacy pick-up line, slowly calming down, I saw someone nearby throw a look my way.

What kind of mother was I?

That’s when I had this flashback moment to that field trip to Colonial Williamsburg the week before.

A tour guide could have waved her hand in my direction and warned people to “Beware of the Authenticity.”

Because that’s what others were seeing, a little moment of Real in the middle of my day.

Maybe they were judging me.  After all, what kind of mother was I who didn’t buy her son ice cream before dinner and then dared to hold his hand in the parking lot?  How dare I tell my tiny tyrant “No?!”

And that’s the funniest thing about it, because even while they were judging me in this moment of authenticity, I was actually being a good mom—not giving into the dangerous whims of a toddler, never once losing my cool or my temper but quietly asserting my will over his, and allowing him to calm down as he realized (once again) that maybe mom really was the boss.

But authenticity is uncomfortable.  It’s smelly and embarrassing.

It’s the kind of thing we wish we could sweep away and pretend doesn’t exist at all.

Authenticity?  In my life?

Never!

I always have it together.

My kids always behave.

I’m never forgetful or short-tempered or indecisive or insecure.

Yet, the very thing we usually avoid is the very thing that God honors and delights in:  The truest parts of ourselves laid out before Him, without masks, without facades, without excuses or pretension.

When Hannah prayed desperately in the temple for a child, she brought her authentic self to God.

She was mocked for being childless.  Her husband didn’t understand her pain.

“She was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly” (1 Samuel 1:10 ESV).

Eli the priest judged her prayer.  Surely she was drunk in the middle of the day.  Only that could explain her despair.

Hannah heard his caustic mockery, the judgment and denunciation.

But here’s the thing:  The very moment Eli condemned her, Hannah was doing the most true and honest thing she could do:  “pouring out my soul before the Lord” (1 Samuel 1:15 ESV).

And God saw her.  He had compassion on her.  He granted her request.

Maybe we’re tempted today to judge those around us: The bad mom, the forgetful coworker, the short-tempered friend.

Or maybe others are judging us as we pour out our soul before the Lord and bring the Real and the Genuine to Him, embarrassing as it is, vulnerable as it makes us.

That’s hard for me.  I want people to think I’m a good mom, but there in the Wal-Mart they probably thought I was a right awful mess!

I trust this, though: God sees the truth.

He desires the real.  The genuine.  The sincere.

God loves the authentic.

He doesn’t, of course, excuse sin and allow us to do whatever we want whenever we want because “that’s just who we are.”

No, authenticity means bringing our brokenness and our bad days and our honest struggles to Him.

It means He applauds us when we’re doing what’s right, even if the world judges us unfairly.

It means having “genuine faith,” the tried-and-true kind (2 Timothy 1:5).  The kind of faith that withstands trials and difficulties.

It means loving those around us even when we see their own Authenticity and maybe offering them prayer, an understanding ear, and a hug instead of a judging word or condemning look.

This is how we live the authentic life and invite others to do the same.

Weekend Rerun: How to Handle a Mean Girl

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Originally posted on September 26, 2011

Mean girls strike fear into the hearts of moms everywhere.  They certainly make this momma drop to her knees.

So when my daughter announced that she was choosing not to play with a girl at her school table, I pounced with mom questions.

“Well,” my daughter said, “when other people don’t do things the way she wants, she always says, ‘You can’t be my friend anymore.’  So, I told her that’s okay if she doesn’t want to be friends with me.”

Wow!  I was afraid of permanent devastation wrought at the hands of other children, and yet my daughter handled herself with quiet confidence.  It was the kind of answer I’ve been praying my daughter is able to give.

Praise God that He answers our prayers for our children.

But, it’s not just our kids who need to make decisions about friends, nay-sayers, judgers, and mockers.

In her book, Stumbling Into Grace, Lisa Harper writes:

“I want to recognize the dangerous, potentially biting characters in my story; the people who create constant emotional debris with their destructive personalities or who refuse to shed the skin of deception, the ones who threaten the God-with-me peace in my life.  I’m learning to keep my distance and to  pray for snakes, but not make a habit of getting down in the dirt to play with them” (p. 47).

In our lives, we’ll face some biting personalities and snakes in the grass ourselves–even when we are simply pursuing righteousness, just like Hannah in 1 Samuel.

Hannah was a Godly woman.  Religious law dictated that men must travel to the tabernacle three times a year to worship and sacrifice, but we see in 1 Samuel 1:7 that “year by year, she went up to the house of the Lord.”  She committed to going above and beyond the minimum requirements in order to worship God with her whole heart.

But his Godly woman had a personal pain that cut deep: She was childless while her husband’s second wife, Peninnah, was a bunny rabbit of a breeder.  Scripture doesn’t even count all her kids; it just says, “Peninnah . . and  . . . all her sons and daughters” (1 Samuel 1:4).  Sounds like quite a brood.

The worst part of it is that Peninnah gloated.  She boasted and preened.  She set herself up as Hannah’s rival and “provoked her severely, to make her miserable”  (1 Samuel 1:6).

Peninnah was a mean girl.

Sure, Hannah’s husband, Elkanah, loved her and was sad about her distress.  Still, there’s something kind of clueless about his compassion.

He said, “Hannah, why do you weep?  Why do you not eat?  And why is your heart grieved?  Am I not better to you than ten sons?” (1 Samuel 1:8).

Seriously?  He didn’t tell Peninnah to knock off the nastiness.  Instead, he told Hannah just to get over it. Be happy with the fact that she shared a home and husband with a woman who had annual baby showers.  Just shrug off Peninnah’s provoking ways and be content with her husband’s love.

Elkanah was an unhelpful friend.  He didn’t stand up for Hannah, didn’t have her back, and didn’t understand her pain.

Then there was Eli, the priest who watched Hannah’s impassioned prayer at the altar.  He pounced on her in a second, saying, “How long will you be drunk? Put your wine away from you!” (1 Samuel 1:14).

Eli was the judgmental onlooker.  The one with all the opinions who doesn’t even take time to fully understand the situation, just makes accusations and spews forth a diatribe of assumptions and personal attacks.

Beset on every side by those close to her and those in spiritual authority over her, Hannah nevertheless responded with grace.

She spoke “the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15). She didn’t rebel against Eli, speak badly about him behind his back, or cause a ruckus in the spiritual community, despite the fact that he hurt her.  Instead, she answered calmly, “No, my lord.  I am a woman of sorrowful spirit.  I have drunk neither wine nor intoxicating drink, but have poured out my soul before the Lord” (1 Samuel 1:15).

She trusted God to take care of her.  Hannah “was in bitterness of soul, and prayed to the Lord and wept in anguish” (1 Samuel 1:10).  She took all of her pain to the altar and poured her soul out before God and left it in His hands.

After she held the baby boy God gave her, after she nursed him and weaned him and presented him to the tabernacle, she declared, “For the Lord is the God of knowledge; And by Him actions are weighed” (1 Samuel 1:3).

By Him actions are weighed.  God saw the mocking cruelty of Peninnah, the cluelessness of Elkanah, and the pompousness of Eli.  And he saw Hannah’s brokenness and blessed her.

We likewise can trust God to help us when we face mean girls, unhelpful friends, and those who judge us.  He will show us how to love our enemies and pray for those who hurt us and He will tell us how to avoid the venomous bites of the snakes in the grass.

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

Much More Than We Deserve

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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 fifth chapter: “Cat Appreciation Day”

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“My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant.”
Luke 1:46

The Christmas lists have begun in our house.  My kids spot fairy costumes and toys, games, and crafts at Wal-Mart and suddenly they’re pleading and begging.  My response is nearly automated, “Maybe that’s a good thing to request for Christmas!”

My kids know they’ll have presents under the Christmas tree this year because we love them and we enjoy giving them good gifts. Unlike Santa’s treats, our gift-giving doesn’t depend on whether they accumulated enough nice points and avoided the naughty list.  The gifts we give them are gifts of grace.

Just like God does for us.

It’s so easy for us to blur the lines between grace and works.  It’s easy to slowly forget just how incredible this unreasonable and abundant grace of God’s really is and to start drifting ever so slowly into working, doing, serving, and earning God’s affection and blessing.

Not that there aren’t consequences for behavior.  Sometimes we lose out on God’s best for us simply because we didn’t follow His commands in the first place.

But sometimes blessing is more than just avoiding the pitfalls of bad choices. Sometimes God chooses to rain down good gifts on His children simply because He loves them.

There are times, though, when we’re searching, searching, searching the sky for any sign of showers of blessing.  Maybe we’re even toting an umbrella around in hopes for a drop of grace or two.  But we feel overlooked instead.

Worse yet, sometimes it looks like others are receiving so much.  And then the jealousy kicks in because we’re too busy watching the weather patterns in other people’s yards.

Jeremiah felt the same way when he asked, “Why does the way of the wicked prosper?” (Jeremiah 12:1).  Job asked, “Why do the wicked live on, growing old and increasing in power?” (Job 21:7).  The Psalmist wrote, “How long, LORD, will the wicked, how long will the wicked be jubilant? (Psalm 94:3).

This was probably Hannah’s struggle on a daily basis.  Her husband loved her, but it was his second wife, Peninnah, who had all the babies.  While Hannah prayed continually for a son, she remained childless.

It just didn’t make sense.  Hannah was a righteous woman.  She prayed faithfully and worshiped God.  All this while Peninnah purposely “provoked her severely, to make her miserable” (1 Samuel 1:6).

Well, that just doesn’t seem right and certainly doesn’t seem fair—does it?

And it’s true.  We don’t always understand the whys and wherefores of when God blesses, who God blesses, how He blesses and why.

In Psalm 37, though, David tells us, “Do not fret because of those who are evil or be envious of those who do wrong; for like the grass they will soon wither away, like green plants they will soon die away. Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture” (Psalm 37:1-2).

In other words, don’t spend time worrying about others. You just worry about you.  Trust in God.  Obey what He tells you.  He’ll take care of what you need.

God did finally give Hannah the desire of her heart.  Maybe it was because of her persistent prayer or the pain that she poured out on the altar before Him.  Maybe it was because she vowed not to keep the blessing for herself, but instead to turn over the promised son to the service of the Lord.

Or maybe, as she says herself, it was because “by strength no man shall prevail” (1 Samuel 2:9).

You see, Hannah was humble.  She knew that any blessing she received from God was just that—a blessing, a gift, not something she deserved because she prayed hard and long enough or went to church often enough. 

“For by strength no man shall prevail,” she said.  That means it’s never because of our strength, effort, or ability that we get anything.

It’s always because of His grace.

In her prayer, she reminds us of the same principle expressed in 1 Peter 5:5-6: “All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, ‘God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.’ Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.”

Hannah says, “The Lord kills and makes alive; He brings down to the grave and brings up.  The Lord makes poor and makes rich; He brings low and lifts up.  He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the beggar from the ash heap, to set them among princes and make them inherit the throne of glory” (1 Samuel 2:6-8).

Mary had this exact reaction when Gabriel told her that she was chosen by God to be the mother of the long-awaited Messiah!  It was the greatest honor any woman could receive, but she knew it wasn’t about her.  It was about Him.

She sang:

“My soul glorifies the Lord
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has been mindful
   of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed,
for the Mighty One has done great things for me—
holy is his name.
His mercy extends to those who fear him,
   from generation to generation.
He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
 he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones
   but has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things
   but has sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
remembering to be merciful
to Abraham and his descendants forever,
just as he promised our ancestors” (Luke 1:46-55).

Sometimes we begin to feel that we deserve God’s grace, that we’ve earned good gifts from Him or have merited His favor. It’s the sneaking influence of spiritual pride and deep down we begin to think God owes us something.

But Hannah and Mary remind us that God loves a humble heart.  He enjoys blessing those who receive His gifts with true gratitude and who respond with praise, thanking Him for His mercy, for His grace, and for giving us much more than we deserve.

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 to Handle a Mean Girl

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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 fourth chapter: “No Fangs Allowed.”

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Mean girls strike fear into the hearts of moms everywhere.  They certainly make this momma drop to her knees.

I’ve begun praying once a week with some other moms for our kids and their school.  As we’ve prayed together, I’ve discovered that we moms share the same concerns for our kids.  We pray for their academics, sure, but mostly we pray for their hearts.

We pray they will be a light in dark places and that they will choose good friends.  We ask that our kids will not be too sensitive and will know how to respond in tough situations.

So when my daughter announced this weekend that there was a girl at her school table that she chose not to play with, I pounced with my mom questions.

“Well,” my daughter said, “when other people don’t do things the way she wants, she always says, ‘You can’t be my friend anymore.’  So, I told her that’s okay if she doesn’t want to be friends with me.”

Wow!  Here I was afraid of permanent devastation wrought at the hands of other children and my daughter handled this with calm grace and confidence. She knew that friendship is too valuable to use as manipulative weaponry in the social arsenal.

It was the kind of answer I’ve been praying my daughter is able to give.  Praise God that He answers our prayers for our children.

But, it’s not just our kids who need to make decisions about whom to befriend or how to answer detractors, nay-sayers, judgers, and mockers.

In her book, Stumbling Into Grace, Lisa Harper writes:

“I want to recognize the dangerous, potentially biting characters in my story; the people who create constant emotional debris with their destructive personalities or who refuse to shed the skin of deception, the ones who threaten the God-with-me peace in my life.  I’m learning to keep my distance and to  pray for snakes, but not make a habit of getting down in the dirt to play with them” (p. 47).

In our lives, we’ll face some biting personalities and snakes in the grass ourselves–even when we are simply pursuing righteousness, just like Hannah did in 1 Samuel.

Hannah was a Godly woman.  Religious law dictated that men must travel to the tabernacle three times a year to worship and sacrifice, but we see in 1 Samuel 1:7 that “year by year, she went up to the house of the Lord.”  She committed to going above and beyond the minimum requirements in order to worship God with her whole heart.

But, this Godly woman had a struggle, a personal pain that cut deep.  She was childless while her husband’s second wife, Peninnah, was a bunny rabbit of a breeder.  Scripture doesn’t even count all her kids; it just says, “Peninnah . . and  . . . all her sons and daughters” (1 Samuel 1:4).  Sounds like quite a brood.

The worst part of it is, that Peninnah gloated.  She boasted and preened.  She set herself up as Hannah’s rival and “provoked her severely, to make her miserable”  (1 Samuel 1:6).

Peninnah was a mean girl.

But it wasn’t just Peninnah who was the problem.  There was also Hannah’s husband, Elkanah.  He truly loved Hannah and he was sad about her distress.

Still, there’s something kind of clueless about Elkanah’s compassion.  He said to her, “Hannah, why do you weep?  Why do you not eat?  And why is your heart grieved?  Am I not better to you than ten sons?” (1 Samuel 1:8).

Seriously?  He didn’t tell Peninnah to knock off the nastiness.  Instead, he told Hannah, the innocent one, to just get over it. Just be happy with the fact that she shared a home and husband with a woman who had annual baby showers when she herself could not get pregnant.  Just shrug off Peninnah’s provoking ways and be happy with her husband’s love.

Elkanah was an unhelpful friend.  He didn’t stand up for Hannah, didn’t have her back, and wasn’t concerned with the true depth of her pain.

Then there was Eli, the priest who watched Hannah’s impassioned prayer at the altar.  He pounced on her in a second, saying, “How long will you be drunk? Put your wine away from you!” (1 Samuel 1:14).

Eli was the judgmental onlooker.  The one with all the opinions who doesn’t even take time to fully understand the situation, just makes accusations and spews forth a diatribe of assumptions and personal attacks.

Beset on every side by those close to her and those in spiritual authority over her, Hannah nevertheless responded with grace.

She spoke “the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15). She didn’t rebel against Eli, speak badly about him behind his back, or cause a ruckus in the spiritual community, despite the fact that he hurt her.  Instead, she answered and said, “No, my lord.  I am a woman of sorrowful spirit.  I have drunk neither wine nor intoxicating drink, but have poured out my soul before the Lord” (1 Samuel 1:15).

She trusted God to take care of her.  Hannah “was in bitterness of soul, and prayed to the Lord and wept in anguish” (1 Samuel 1:10).  She took all of her pain to the altar and poured her soul out before God.

And after she held the baby boy God gave her, after she nursed him and weaned him and presented him to the tabernacle, she declared, “Talk no more so very proudly; Let no arrogance come from your mouth, For the Lord is the God of knowledge; And by Him actions are weighed” (1 Samuel 1:3).

By Him actions are weighed.  God saw Peninnah in her meanness, Elkanah in his cluelessness, Eli in his pompousness and Hannah in her brokenness.  Hannah placed the entire situation in God’s hands and trusted in His ability to judge and to bless.

We likewise can trust God to help us when we face mean girls, unhelpful friends, and those who judge us.  He will help us know how to love our enemies, pray for those who hurt us, and turn the other cheek, and yet all the while protect us from the venomous bite that comes from stepping too close to the snakes in the grass.

Want to learn more about praying for your kids and their school?  Check out Moms In Touch International.  There are groups of moms, grandmas, and school staff internationally who meet once a week for one hour to pray for our children. You can find a group in your area by searching their website.

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