Tag: humility

Weekend Rerun: When You’ve Become the Diaper

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Originally posted on March 5, 2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are you less of a Super Mom now?

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

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

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

I forgot who I was talking to.

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

And yet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

and

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright © 2013 Heather King

Sick Days, Coveting and a Case of Leprosy

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My three-year-old had been sleeping for hours curled up on the sofa.  We all tiptoed and whispered around her “sick bed,” trying not to wake or disturb her.

Then my six-year-old asked, “Mom, if she’s still sick on Tuesday, will she have to go to school?”thermometer

“No, babe, kids can’t go to school when they have a fever like this.”

“Oh man, she’s lucky.  I wish I didn’t have to go to school.”

“Lucky?”

I instantly pointed out the drawback.  It doesn’t do much good to stay home from school when you’re too sick to enjoy it.  It’s not like she’s playing. She’s sleeping the day away on the sofa, feeling miserable and uncomfortable.

“Oh.”

It’s not surprising, really, how she saw the benefit so clearly and didn’t see the cost.  We have the same blinders on often enough.

We think our friend is “lucky” or maybe it seems a bit unfair, how easy she’s got it, how blessed she is, how much she has, how happy….

And the wishing starts so simply, “I wish….I had her house, her marriage, her job, her ministry, successful kids, healthy kids, luxury vacations, that wardrobe, those spiritual gifts.”

They seem, after all, like benefits without cost, clearly good things without downsides or drawbacks.

Yet, no matter how clearly we think we see the situation or how well we know what another person’s life is truly like, we’re really just peering in through the public-access windows, seeing what they choose to let us see.

We don’t know what happens behind the closed doors of their homes.  We don’t know what struggles they endured in order to build a marriage so strong.  We don’t know how much effort it took to parent her children.  We don’t know about the criticism she endures as the consequence of her ministry or the battles she’s fought or the self-discipline it took.

We don’t often see the bad days, the hard times, the sacrifices, the mistakes, the overcoming.  We see the Facebook posts and Pinterest pictures of success stories and not so much the moments when it isn’t so perfect.

The truth is that we don’t know, not really, what anyone else’s life entails, but God does.  He’s specifically designed her for that life and you for yours, and the moment we start glamorizing or over-romanticizing another’s lot is when jealousy is at work.

It sure is hard to be grateful for God’s gifts to us when we’re drooling over His gifts to another.

This coveting of others conveniently fails to consider that the things we want are a package deal.  We can’t just want good and not the bad, the day off of school without the sickness, the power without the responsibility, the success without the sacrifice.

Miriam and Aaron didn’t understand this.  They looked over Moses’s life as leader of the Jewish people and envied his position as the Lord’s anointed.  They criticized him and started questioning him publicly: “Has the Lord spoken only through Moses? Hasn’t he spoken through us, too?”  (Numbers 12:2).

Oh sure, they wanted to feel set apart by God like Moses was.  They wanted to be in charge, receive recognition, have power and the anointing of God.

What could be so wrong with that?

But did they consider that Moses had to handle the daily (yes, daily!) complaints and whining of a rebellious people, who so quickly forgot the miracles God had done for them?  Did they think about what it felt like to bear the brunt of criticism and rebellions?  Were they really willing to get down on their knees and put their own lives on the line in order to intercede for the unworthy nation?

Moses hardly had a cushy desk job.

Still, Aaron and Miriam, eyes closed tight to the difficulties, decided they should have the same position as Moses.

And Moses, who was “very humble—more humble than any other person on earth” (Numbers 12:3), didn’t argue with them.

But God did.  He called Miriam and Aaron out, told the whole community why Moses was specially anointed, and then afflicted Miriam with leprosy as punishment.  If only they had been content with the ministry God had given them instead of coveting that of another.

If only we could be so content.

Thank You, God, for allowing us the blessing and responsibility of this life and not the life of anyone else; not their marriage, friendships, children, money, home, car, jobs, ministry, looks, spiritual gifts, popularity, not any of it.

That blessing you’ve been given, that life you have, that’s what we cherish and thank God for because it’s the one He specifically designed for you—both the good things and the hard things.  The weight of anyone else’s life would crush you, but this load is the one He’s prepared you to carry and the one He’s carrying with you.

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

Copyright © 2013 Heather King

Help!

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They say knowledge is power, but language has its own particular potency.

After all, when you can finally cram all of your emotion, thoughts, and need into one or two perfect words, it helps relieve the pressure.

It was true for my oldest daughter when she was still wobbling between baby and toddler.  My job as a mom was to help harness some of her passion, help her direct some of that God-given strength—all by showing her how to put into words what she needed and how she was feeling.

But at little more than one years old, what is there to say?

So I taught her one powerful word to capture my attention instead of tantrums, screaming  514885-R1-24-24fits, and bouts with hysteria that turned her face red and plain wore mommy out.

“Help!”

When you can’t figure out the puzzle, when the toy isn’t working, when you can’t reach, when your buttons won’t fasten….. when life is difficult and you just can’t do it on your own and you’re collapsing into rage and tears of frustration and failure….”Help!” is all you need say.

It quickly became the favorite, most oft-used word in her vocabulary.  “Help, Mommy” I’d hear all through the day.

What I failed to teach her, though, was how to gauge the seriousness of the situation and adjust the volume and tone of her “help” accordingly.

Thus, friends on the phone would hear my little one screaming “Help! Help!” at the top of her lungs when all she needed was the top yanked off a marker or a new outfit buttoned on her baby doll.

I can’t say I’ve figured it out any more than she did, when to scream out “help” in desperation and when to quietly lift my hands high for assistance, when to whisper hushed pleas for intervention and when to just sob and let the Holy Spirit intercede for me.

But I know that sometimes, maybe lots of the time, what I need is help.  It’s not any more complicated than that.  I can pray at God (or nag at Him) for hours; I can explain and complain, whine and appeal.

Really, though, “Help” would do just fine.

The Psalmist knew this.  He asked, “I lift up my eyes to the mountains—where does my help come from?” (Psalm 121).

It’s a traveler’s Psalm, a song of ascension sung by the Israelite pilgrims on their journey to Jerusalem to worship.  The Psalmist literally lifts his eyes higher and higher along the skyline, a reminder of just how small he really is—just a regular guy on a valley trail beside the vastness of a mountain’s peak.

So, where to look for help?  To nature, to fellow travelers, to the material goods he’s packed neatly into his bags for the journey?  To false gods who weren’t even mighty enough to create the very mountains in his view?

No, he declares, “my help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth” (Psalm 121:2).

God formed these very mountains.  He’s so grand, so magnificent, so creative, so capable. All of these other idols I’ve been looking to are weak, helpless, disappointing, and distracting. 

And if I’m screaming out for “help” or dropping to my knees in a confession of weakness, it’s a God that mighty I need to answer.

And He does answer.  That one word, “help,” always gets His attention.

The pilgrims explain it in metaphors from their journey.  How does God help?

He will not let your foot slip—
he who watches over you will not slumber;
  indeed, he who watches over Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord watches over you—
the Lord is your shade at your right hand;
  the sun will not harm you by day,
nor the moon by night.

Protection from scorching heat and the coolness of night, the rocks along the path and the obstacles in the road; this is what God gives them.  This is what He gives us.

In the original Hebrew, the Psalmist pushes His point in verses 7 and 8, saying essentially: “The Lord is your protector! The Lord will protect you from all harm! The Lord will protect your life! The Lord will protect your coming and going now and always!” (Beth Moore, Stepping Up).

Our translations soften the repetition, saying instead

The Lord will protect you from all evil;
He will keep your soul.
The Lord will guard your going out and your coming in
From this time forth and forever.

But the intent  of the repetition is to say it so clearly and so often, to repeat it so much that even a forgetful, wayward, worrier of a soul like me can’t miss this promise:

The Lord Will Protect You.

We only need lift our eyes to His face and ask for His help.

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

Copyright © 2012 Heather King

Weekend Walk–It’s not about you or me or them

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We were in the minivan, of course.  It seems like all of our most life-changing, character-chiseling, valuable-lesson, Mom-wisdom moments happen while driving.  What is it about being strapped in by seatbelts and in motion that promotes deep conversation?

So, there we were, mom and daughters, when I praised my preschooler on how well she does in class and how I’m so proud to hear from her teachers how she obeys and shares and listens and is always so happy and eager to learn.

The other girls chimed in immediately with their chorus of eager responses.

“Well, I…..”

“When I was in preschool….”

“But I’m good at this, too….”

And I had to deliver an astonishingly hard lesson right then and there, one that I confess I’m still learning.

It’s not about you.  When I’m praising her, it doesn’t reflect on you at all.  If I say she’s good at this, it doesn’t mean you’re awful or that she’s better than you.  It just means I’m proud of her.  I need to be able to encourage and praise others without it hurting your heart.  Trust that I’m not trying to compare you with each other.

And it grew even more difficult.

Not everything is about you. 

That lesson gulps down like castor oil, bitter to taste and hard to handle, but ultimately the medicine we need at times.  Better to learn it gently from me, in a whisper from someone who deep down loves you, than learning it from the harsh hand of an unsympathetic and unbending world.

Because, truth be told, we’re prideful creatures with a human way of viewing all the world through the filter of “Me” and everything people say as a reflection on “Me” and always comparing her and him with “Me.”

And sometimes it is about us for a moment.  People stop and offer the encouragement we need and the praise we long to hear.  Maybe it’s our “fifteen minutes of fame” or a time of celebration.

Sometimes, however, it’s about others.  It’s their moment to shine or their time of desperate need and it’s best for us to stop trying to steal the spotlight and instead put on the black clothes of a stagehand and serve others.

No matter what, though, it’s really never about you or me or them.  Not ultimately.  It’s always about Him. 

John the Baptist knew this, despite his touchy disciples who didn’t appreciate the attention the upstart Jesus was stealing away from John’s long-term ministry.

John wasn’t bothered at all, saying, “He must become greater; I must become less” (John 3:30).

And it’s as simple and as hard as that.  We must always be willing to become less so that Christ can be greater in our lives.

We must remember that all of this, every one of us, the entire creation, is made by Him and for Him, never for our own personal glory or satisfaction and always to bring Him praise.  That’s the lesson I’ll be reflecting on all week with this verse:

For everything comes from him and exists by his power and is intended for his glory. All glory to him forever! Amen. (Romans 11:36 NLT)

You can also join me in worshiping to Jesus, Lover of My Soul (It’s All About You), recorded at the Passion Conference.

“It’s all about You, Jesus.  And all this is for You, for Your glory and Your fame.
It’s not about me as if You should do things my way.
You alone are God, and I surrender to Your will”

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

Copyright © 2012 Heather King

Devotions from My Garden: Guest Post!

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Today, I have a special treat for you!  Bill Jones over at I Was Thinking the Other Day About is guest-posting here and sharing a devotional from his garden!  I hope you enjoy and take the time to check out his blog of devotional thoughts and encouragement.

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I marveled at our backyard’s beauty. The white phlox beamed beside the weathered picket fence. The hibiscus was nearly eight feet tall and had smothered itself in pink blooms. Long tendrils of the guara held out their flowers and danced as the bumblebees did touch and go landings. Cardinals and bluebirds were bright spots of color at the feeders.

Several years earlier the yard was just an expanse of pasture. Over time I built the garden’s structure and established the flower beds. The fence came first and defined the back of the yard. I think I actually applauded in satisfaction when the gate’s latch clicked in place and fit perfectly.

A working gate deserved more than a dirt path, so a walkway of red concrete pavers came next. The addition of a pump house with a barn style roof and weathervane on top added a rustic touch to the scene.

The bahia grass in the old pasture was so thick that my tiller just dragged me along as it bounced over the top. I’m sure it was comical to watch, but to me it was frustrating. With that obstacle, it became a struggle to transform sections into flower beds. Many exhausting sessions of hand work were required but the transformation did occur.

The histories of many of the plants also came to mind. The oak leaf hydrangea was 12 inches tall when planted. Now it covered an area twenty five feet across and has been the mother plant of several more now spaced around the yard.

I bought the pagoda plant sight-unseen. What a surprise we had when it produced spectacular orange blooms over a foot tall that did look like a Chinese pagoda – with multiple stems and flowers in layers that decreased in circumference from the bottom to the top. And they were like butterfly magnets.

Standing there, remembering the years of work that had been involved, I could have shouted “Look at this great garden I have built!” Thankfully, I thought better of it and didn’t.

I thought of King Nebuchadnezzar who gazed at his city and said: “Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty? (Daniel 4:30 KJV) At that moment, God showed him who had the power and majesty. The King spent the next seven years eating grass like an ox.

I didn’t mimic his words. Not from fear of having to eat grass, but from the realization that without God I could have done nothing. I praised the Lord for the beautiful flowers and birds He created. I thanked Him for the strength to build the fence. I thanked Him for the time, resources and opportunities He had provided.

That day I knew what the Apostle Paul meant when he wrote that he had planted and Apollos had watered but God gave the increase (1 Corinthians 3:6). Paul was writing of spiritual growth, but in my physical garden I understood that while I may have built and planted and watered, it was God alone Who, in His power and majesty, had completed it and made it beautiful!

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

Copyright © 2012 Heather King

Weekend Walk: The Competitive Edge

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Several of my college professors sauntered into class on the first day of the semester, dropped their oversized literature textbooks onto their desks and announced, “If you expect to get an ‘A’ in this class, you can forget it.  I don’t give ‘A’s.’  At best, most of you will get a ‘C’ out of me.”

I took that as a personal challenge.

In fact, my irrationally competitive spirit can sometimes be a good thing.  Sometimes we accomplish more because of the adrenaline of the challenge, the race, and the competition.  That usually works for me.

And yet sometimes it’s a terrible addiction.  Like when you’re compelled to do the best, be the best, be the fastest, the first, the most impressive, and the most accomplished—even when it really doesn’t matter.

Or maybe one day you “fail” or come in second or make a mistake.

Or when you’re so focused on lifting yourself up, that you fail to come alongside others and give them a boost when they need it.

Or like when you’re a mom and you’re telling your child all the time, “You don’t have to be the first, the smartest or the best.  You just need to try your hardest and use the gifts God gave you to be who He called you to be. And I love you always.”

But deep down you want them to totally leave other kids in the dust.  Then your children start suspecting that when you tell them you love them and you’re proud of them, really there are some conditions attached.  Maybe they know that the deep-down hidden message in all this is to “Achieve.”

Or like when it’s time to throw a birthday party or be the classroom mom and an ordinary cupcake isn’t good enough.  You have to personally bake and decorate the kind of product that could land you on Cupcake Wars.  Your personal life goal is for all the other kids to say, “I wish my mom were as cool, fun, creative, and wonderful as you are.” (Throw in “beautiful” for good measure.)

Yes, that competition trap is a doozy.

All week long, I’ve been praying about killing the competition between my kids, encouraging them to be each others greatest cheerleaders instead of ultimate rivals.

Then I started thinking maybe my own drive for competition could use some killing.

In fact, maybe we all need the reminder in the body of Christ to unite for one purpose—the glory of God and the truth of the Gospel—rather than competing for attention, success, praise, Twitter followers, Facebook fans, and number of people in the seats.

Here’s a verse I’m meditating on all this week, to remind me that ultimately all this striving matters very little and while it might spur you on to earn good grades or throw the best birthday parties, Christ would rather see us cheerleading than competing.

Do nothing out of rivalry or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves. Everyone should look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others (Philippians 2:3-4 HCSB).

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

Copyright © 2012 Heather King

God in Muddy Boots

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 Who is like the Lord our God, the One who sits enthroned on high,
  who stoops down to look on the heavens and the earth?
He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap;
  he seats them with princes, with the princes of his people (Psalm 113:5-8).

“Mom, can you tie my shoe?”

I kneel down, slightly off balance, and whip the laces into loops and knots.

“Mom, can you wash my hair?”

Bending over a daughter with her eyes pinched tightly shut, I scrub with shampoo and rinse the suds away carefully.

“Mom, can you show me how to play this on the piano?”

I stoop to press the keys, one hand pointing to the music, the other playing notes, showing melody, showing tempo, showing dynamics.

“Mom, can you hold my hand?”

Tilted to one side, I lean over to entwine our fingers and we swing our arms together to the rhythm of our pace.

“Mom, I’m hurt!”

Dropping to the ground, I clean the wound and press on the miraculous Band-Aid that instantly heals all hurts whether or not blood is involved.

Life with children is a life bent low.  It’s the ministry of kneeling down, stooping over, leaning, and bending to wipe, scrub, heal, hold, read, listen–to love.  So often, it’s the movement down to hug a child and lift her up.

God bends low to reach His children, too.

He could have sat, poised on His righteous throne, holy and unresponsive to our need, drumming His fingers while waiting for us to reach up to Him.

But He didn’t.  Seeing that we could never be righteous enough, He came to us instead, abandoning glory to take up the humble life in human flesh.  Jesus Christ, our Savior, our Sacrifice, is the great Love of God as He bent low in order to raise us up.

And He continued that ministry as He healed and forgave.  Finding Peter’s mother-in-law sick in bed with a fever, Jesus “bent over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her” (Luke 4:39).  Petitioned by a leper for healing, Jesus “reached out his hand and touched the man” (Luke 5:13).  Confronted by an angry mob prepared to stone a woman caught in adultery, Jesus “stooped down and wrote on the ground” (John 8:8).

Jesus could have simply spoken words of healing and forgiveness over anyone.  He had the power to heal with words alone, and sometimes He did.

But other times He chose to make it physical, and it so often required Him to bend low, to stoop, to reach out.  How else can a perfect and holy God touch us who are broken, sick, or dirty from sin?

Jesus didn’t mind the mess.  He touched people even when they were religiously “unclean,” when it was against the rules for them to have contact with other humans because they were so tainted that they’d stain the holiness of others.

This week, at an end-year celebration of a Bible Study group, a woman shared what she learned by studying David’s life.  She described putting on her muddy boots, the sweat pants she doesn’t care about and the raggedy t-shirt that means nothing to her and thinking nothing of getting down into the dirt.

Jesus got down in the dirt with people.  In the same way, this woman said, God didn’t mind getting down into the dirt with King David and He’s willing to do this for us, as well. 

God is not waiting for us to get cleaned up, to overcome, to fix it all up, to climb and clamber to success.   He isn’t put off by our faces smudged with dirt, our hands caked with mud, our fingernails lined with soil from trying to claw our way out of the pit we’re in.

Instead, David tells us:

“He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire;
he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand (Psalm 40:2).

In order to lift David up, God had to reach down low, stretching a hand deep into the darkness to pull the shepherd-king on out to safety and firm ground and light and life.

For those who find themselves in the pit now, remember that God will reach low to you and He will lift you up.  You cannot be so deep in the darkness to be beyond His ability to save you. You cannot be so covered in dirt that He’s scared away or disgusted.

God puts on His muddy boots at times to wade in and rescue us.

Then He calls us to engage in this same ministry of bending low to reach others.  We don’t walk by friends in caverns and potholes and chasms, pretending that everything is all right or hoping for another bystander to reach down and rescue them.

We don’t turn up our noses at the dirt on another’s face,  refusing to stoop down to hold their hand and pull them up.

God wants us to be willing to kneel, stoop, bend, lean, and drop to the ground in all of the humility and love that naturally flows out of people who have been saved themselves.

It’s the ministry of a mom.  It’s the ministry of a child to an aging parent.  It’s the ministry of teachers and a ministry to the wayward and the lonely, the lost and the hurting.  It’s the ministry to the broken and a ministry to the least of these.

It’s the ministry of bending low to love another just as God has done for us.

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

That Would Have Been Stupid

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I could have done it by myself.

But that would have just been stupid.

Not that I didn’t think about it . . . a lot.

I awoke this morning to the sound of my two-year-old slamming open my bedroom door. Then my oldest daughter emerged from her room wrapped in her fleece blanket and looking for breakfast.

That’s when I heard it: my middle daughter scratching out the first words of her day.  She sounded like a desert travel who has gone too long without drink or shade.  “Mom,” she whispered, grasping at her throat, “water.  I need water.  Can’t . . . talk . . . . can’t . . . swallow.  Water.”

And so it began.  It’s the moment you look at your massive to-do list and the calendar showing all the places you need to be and then you glance at your child’s thermometer and you realize it ain’t happening the way you planned.  And that’s okay because she’s more important than checking off tasks on a piece of paper.

I started mentally moving activities around on my week-long chart of things to do and considering creative menu planning to help me stretch the food we had for four days, my next chance for grocery shopping.  Except we didn’t have bread.  And only a day’s supply of milk.  This could be a problem.

I called the doctor’s office and they kindly gave me the only appointment open that day, which sadly was right in the middle of nap time  Still, I was grateful they squeezed us in at all.

After I called the school, I glanced back at my calendar and remembered that I had to lead worship for a women’s Bible Study group the next day, a commitment I had made over two months ago.

Then I came up with a masterful plan.

I’d just make my two-year-old skip her nap today and drag her to the doctor’s office for my other daughter’s Strep test.  Then I’d cart them both, sick child and no-nap child, through the grocery story because without bread I couldn’t even feed my family sandwiches for dinner.  After that, I’d take them both by the church and clean up and prepare the Bible Study room for my small group.

Then the next day, I’d bring my toddler and my sick daughter, along with a cup of water and a throw-up bucket, to the ladies’ group where she could sit next to the piano while I led worship.

Why not?  I’ve done crazy stuff like that before.  It could work.

Maybe.  But it would be stupid.

So, I emailed a friend and asked her to lead Bible Study for me that night and she even offered to clean up the room after our project from the week before.

Then I called my mother-in-law and asked her to watch my girls while I led worship the next day.  She asked if I needed help with the two-year-old during the doctor’s visit in the afternoon during nap time.  No, of course I don’t need help, no way, I can do it . . . Well, actually, to be honest, help would be really nice.

I can’t be the only one who does this, practically killing myself at times all to avoid asking others for help.  Somehow, requesting help from others is always more difficult than asking God for a hand.

Because I am Woman, hear me roar!
Because I hate to inconvenience others who are also busy.
Because it feels really good when you’ve practically killed yourself doing things on your own to survey the results of the stress and realize “I Did That Myself.”

Stupid pride.

Yet today when I made my calls and emails to ask for help, guess what?  People were happy to help.  Not only that, they even heaped on all kinds of blessing and grace, helping me in ways I hadn’t even thought to ask.

This is what we are supposed to do for each other, loving one another with self-sacrificing, abundant-blessing love. In fact, Paul told us this was part of fulfilling Jesus’ instructions:  “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2, ESV).

Sometimes that means we’re the ones stooping down to lift the load of another to carry it a while on our own backs.  Sometimes we’re the one others lean on, the person others call in times of need and distress.

And that’s a joy to do.

But then there are those days when our own load is pushing our shoulders low to the ground or we realize that short of cloning ourselves, we just can’t get it all done.

When someone notices our burdened limping and asks to help us, we too often reject them.  We deprive them of the blessing God would give them for pouring themselves out for another.

Instead, we stress ourselves and our families out when we pridefully insist on doing it all ourselves.

This isn’t about taking advantage of friends and family out of laziness or selfishness.  It’s about the mutual bearing the burdens of “one another.”  I’m part of the “one another,” and so are you.  God didn’t design anyone to be the burden-bearer for others all the time.  He designed us to have times to carry and times to rest, times to give help and times to receive it.

After all, even Simon of Cyrene carried the cross for Jesus during the walk to Golgotha (Mark 15:21).

Today, I just needed a little help with my load.  Instead of pretending I didn’t, I needed simply to receive that help and be thankful.

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

When You’ve Become the Diaper

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

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

This is one of those things you just never anticipate happening to you.   You go to college, study hard, earn a degree in British Literature.  Go back to school and earn a Master’s degree in Educational Administration.  Teach highly intelligent senior high students Advanced Placement English classes.

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

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

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

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

Are you less of a Super Mom now?

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

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

Without any of those indulgences readily at my disposal, I prayed the only prayer I was feeling at the moment, “Can you help a girl out, God?  It’s pretty hard to feel like the yucky humiliation and selflessness of this job has any eternal significance.  Do you even know what it’s like to put other people first all the time?”

I forgot who I was talking to.

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

And yet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

and

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

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

This is never more true than when we’re covered in mess because we’ve been serving someone else.  Before Paul writes in Philippians 2 about Jesus’ humility even to the point of death, he first challenges us to “have this mind among yourself which is yours in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5).

We are supposed to humble ourselves in the same way Christ did.

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

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

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

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

You Want Me To Pray What?

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It was my baby’s first articulate prayer request for someone else.

During our nightly family prayer time, she usually doesn’t wait her turn. Whenever the Spirit moves, she just jumps in and starts talking to God, even if someone else is still pouring her heart out.

But that night, she waited for others to finish.  My daughters and I were snuggled up on the couch with our eyes closed while my husband was out for the night at rehearsal.  When my older daughters and I finished praying, we hopped up and headed to their bedroom.

She stopped us.

Holding up her little hands with two Band-Aids on her fingers, my baby girl prayed, “My fingers hurt.  Daddy come home.  Amen.”

Amen.

That night, my two-year-old took the first powerful step in an effective prayer life.  Yes, she prayed for her own little need, her two little scraped fingers that had been on her mind all afternoon.

Maybe she also wanted to show off her Mickey Mouse Band-Aids so God could see them.

But then she prayed on behalf of another—could her Daddy please come home safely and soon?

I’ve written in this space so many times that there is power in the time we spend on our knees for each other.

Yet, I’m still not sure if we truly realize the impact, the great spiritual weaponry that is ours when we intercede for those around us.

It is humbling.  We say, “God, I’m overwhelmed here, but I’m not the only one.  She’s hurting also, so I choose to petition You on her behalf.”

It is faith.  We say, “God, I’m going to trust my problems into Your care.  I’ve made my request.  I believe You’re going to take care of me, so I don’t need to focus only on myself.  Instead, I’m going to turn my gaze outward and lift others up.”

It is forgiving.

Wait, forgiving?  What does that have to do with anything?

Prayer for others is forgiving when we actually do what Jesus said—pray for our enemies, “pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44).

I urge you to pause and consider this for more than the half second it took you to read that verse.  I never in my life realized the power of Jesus’ revolutionary call to intercession for our enemies until this year.

And it’s life-changing, I tell you.

In the past, when I was struggling with conflict, I would “pray for my enemy” with something that sounded like this:

Lord, why is he so blind?  Can’t he see that he’s in sin?  Please open his eyes and let Him know that You are God and You don’t tolerate disobedience.  Change his heart, God, and let Your Holy Spirit be heavy on him until he repents.

That seemed to qualify as praying for those who persecuted me.  Let me just check that super-spiritual box.

But Jesus’ prayer on behalf of his enemies didn’t sound anything like mine.  He asked, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).

I prayed for condemnation and Holy Spirit judgement on people who annoyed me.

Christ prayed for the blessing of forgiveness for those standing at the foot of his cross, jeering at him and waiting for him to die.

In the same way, Stephen, the first Christian martyr, prayed, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them” just as the final stones pelted his body and killed him (Acts 7:59).

Have you considered who Stephen was praying for in that moment?  One of the men standing by the coat rack cheering on the crowd was Saul—later the apostle Paul.

Stephen asked for God to forgive his persecutors and shortly afterward this same Saul sat on a roadside blinded by Jesus Christ himself, experiencing repentance and conversion.

Satan fully intends to tangle us up in bitterness and jealousy.  He wants to defeat our ministry and make us thoroughly unusable because we’re so riled up and distracted by dissension and arguments.

He just doesn’t know what to do when we pray shockingly humble prayers on behalf of others, particularly our enemies.  There’s power there.

There’s also blessing.

After Job’s long ordeal ended . . .his children dead  . . . his servants killed . . . his animals gone and his property destroyed . . . his own body covered in painful disease . . . .after all that, God spoke to Job and hushed the mouths of the “friends” who had spewed religious rhetoric and condemnation while Job sat next to them in pain.

In Sunday School class, you probably learned that God blessed Job even more than before.  Yet, the blessing wasn’t immediate.  Something had to happen first.

Scripture tells us, “After Job had prayed for his friends, the LORD restored his fortunes and gave him twice as much as he had before” (Job 42:10).

Job prayed for his so-called friends and then God blessed Job.

I’ve taken this to heart and I won’t lie to you: it is difficult, downright hard, and sometimes truly agonizing.

There are times when my blessings don’t sound like blessings.  The words I’m saying are right, but I’m forcing them out between clenched teeth.

Sometimes I need to start simple.

When I am jealous and full of envy . . .
When someone steps on my toes and hurts my feelings . . .
When someone does something I think is sinful and hurtful . . .
When a driver in the Wal-Mart parking lot drives me totally insane . . .

Then I pray for them—for blessing, for forgiveness, for their future.

I may never see the impact on their lives, but I see it in mine instantly.  God changes my heart as I humble myself, trust Him, and forgive.

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