Tag: one minute devotional

One Minute Devotional – Devotions From My Garden: Invasion

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It’s an invasion and I knew it was coming.

About three weeks ago, one lone pioneer ant bravely marched across my kitchen counter.  I squashed him, even though I knew it wouldn’t do any good.  He was a scout, a forerunner of things to come.  His presence there meant many more ants were on their way . . . soon.

Slowly, they’ve arrived.  An ant on the windowsill.  Another on the computer desk.  My baby giggled and waved at an ant adventuring across the bathroom floor.  Then several more trekked across the kitchen counters.

Last night, the official invasion party arrived.  Now there is a steady stream of ants climbing on, of all things, my beloved books.  They’ve created their own ant superhighway, running up and down my bookshelf in regular battle formation.

As I weeded and turned over rocks in my garden last week, I discovered their mega-city.  It’s located in the entirety of the garden beds around the perimeter of my home and its capital is the dead tree stump in my front yard.  They’ve taken over my gardens completely.

These ants are the pesky annoyances of my every spring and summer.  They make my skin creep and crawl and they are my obsession as I battle over dominion with them year after year.

But, what if my life were invaded in this same way not by a pest or bother, but by God Himself?  What if every rock you overturned in my life revealed God?  What if every room you entered in my heart showed His presence?

When the angel announced to Mary that she would conceive a son, the Savior of the world, he promised: “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” (Luke 1:35).

In her study Jesus: The One and Only, Beth Moore notes that the translation for “come upon you” is “arrive, invade, rest upon, and operate in a person.”

Oh, if only God would do this in us—arrive in us, invade us, rest upon us and operate in our lives!

The group Watermark sang a song called “Invade” that said:

Come, come in
Invade all You see of us
Any man, who’d walk Your road is welcomed here
And You’re the only one

Jesus, come and walk the halls of this house
Tread this place and turn it inside out
With Your mercy…
Jesus, teach us the prayers that open these doors
Until Your light floods in and illuminates these floors
And let Your truth be on our steps and in these rooms
Jesus invade…

Reach, reach in
With the hand that heals all our suffering
Conquer all that is not of You
Bring Your spirit through
As we fill these walls with Your praise

It’s time to pray for an invasion, asking that the Holy Spirit take over our lives.  Let Him conquer everything that is not of God and fill us completely with God’s presence and all that brings Him praise.

More Devotions From My Garden:

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

One Minute Devotional – Devotions from My Garden: Season of Prayer

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Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working (James 5:16)

We’re captivated by butterflies at my house.  The elegance and beauty of them, the colors and patterns, the transformation they go through—it all enlivens our imaginations.

We’re big fans.

So, last year my daughters begged me, real, true, actual begging, for the five caterpillars you order through the mail and then watch transform into butterflies.  Thank you, TV commercials.

Our cup of painted lady caterpillars arrived and we enjoyed watching them transform and releasing them into our garden in the spring.

This year, the begging commenced again, although my daughters mentioned how nice it would be to grow monarch butterflies because they were, in fact, my oldest daughter’s favorite.

It turns out, however, that they won’t send you monarch butterfly caterpillars unless you have milkweed growing in your garden to feed them.  Seems fair that you feed the butterflies after you grow them.

Here’s the thing, milkweed seeds have to lie dormant in the ground all through the cold of winter before they’ll grow in the spring.  Just like many spring bulbs, they require a season of germination.  So, I can’t –say–magically grow milkweed in two weeks to feed baby monarch butterflies.

Thus, our cup of painted lady caterpillars arrived last week.
And I’ll be planting milkweed seeds in November.

Now, during those winter months, those milkweed seeds will seem utterly useless and far from life.  Yet, water is penetrating the outer shell and ultimately the new life will crack the dead casing and push through into the soil.

When God has given us a season of waiting, perhaps even what looks like death and cold, it doesn’t mean we do nothing.  Instead, we can fill ourselves with God.  We can immerse ourselves in prayer, until life breaks through.

In his book, Nehemiah tells us that when he heard about the ruin of the Jerusalem walls, he “sat down and wept and mourned for days, and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven” (Nehemiah 1:4).  Ultimately, he invested three to four months in what Kelly Minter terms the “pre-work of prayer,” before ever acting on his passion.

My husband probably cringes every time he hears me say these few words: “I’ve been thinking . . . ” or “I have an idea.”  For all my ideas, though, I find that God isn’t often in a rush.  He gives me the time I need to pray, sometimes for months, sometimes even longer.  He gives me the assurance that this is right.

It’s not doing nothing; it’s doing the most important thing needed to make any ministry or project successful.  It’s the season of prayer that precedes the season of growth.

More Devotions From My Garden:

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.

One Minute Devotional – Devotions From My Garden: Underneath the Dirt

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I cleaned out my garden last week, clawing at the dirt to extricate the weeds, moving plants around, and spreading mulch.

It turns out that the miniature roses that I thought would stay, well, miniature, grew far larger than I ever expected.  They are dwarfing all of the plants behind them.  After years of watching these rose bushes grow exponentially each season, I’ve finally realized that “miniature” just means the size of the bud—not the size of the bush.

So, I finally broke down and moved one of the rose bushes to the back of the garden where it didn’t look like anything was growing.  But it’s March and many of my perennials and summer bulbs haven’t poked their heads above ground yet.

Sure enough, I pushed my trowel into the dirt only to overturn a bulb.

I guess something was growing there after all.

In the garden and in life, it’s so often the hidden things we can’t see that produce the life we do see.

In his devotional book A Year With Jesus, Eugene Peterson wrote: “Jesus’ work was not always public, out where people could see it.  There were also quiet interludes of retirement and rest.  The quiet asides are as characteristic of his ministry as the glorious signs.”

Jesus not only valued the moments of solitude and quiet, but He also called His disciples away when they were weary from service:

Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest
(Mark 6:31 NIV).

What is “characteristic” of God’s work in you?  Is it just the visible that matters?  Is it the Sunday masquerade or the busyness of church life?  Is it committee meetings, ministry sign-ups, the quantifiable and the identifiable?

Don’t mistake this.  We are to serve God where He has called us to serve.  We shouldn’t linger on the pew when He’s asked us to step out and get busy.  Be assured that He will equip you and strengthen you when you act in obedience.

But don’t scorn the quiet, hidden work of God, either.  Don’t get so wrapped up in doing that you fail at being at the feet of God.  The Master Gardener may be growing something great in you just beneath the soil, something beautiful that you haven’t yet seen.  And it begins with you sitting before an open Bible, with your prayers laid down at His feet, with your songs of praise during the morning commute.  It begins in the hidden places alone with Him.

More Devotions From My Garden:

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

One Minute Devotional – Devotions From My Garden: Growing

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“He has made everything beautiful in its time”
(Ecclesiastes 3:11a ESV)

I’m a gardener who loves color, soil, blooms, and fullness, all without spending much money.  So, I’m an anti-annual gardener mostly, although I break down and buy some Gerbera daisies every year.  I can’t help myself!!

My modus operandi is usually to buy small, inexpensive perennials or bulbs that barely show up in my garden the first year.  Two years later, though, my $3 plant has now spread across the ground, covering every available space.  The coneflower I first planted several years ago grew over my head last summer.  The Black-Eyed Susans with the original circumference of my hand now span about 3 feet.

But it takes time.

Unfortunately, time is the one thing we don’t often give life—give God.  We want Him to renew us, restore us, change us, perfect us, and use us immediately, when we’re still tiny little plants who haven’t grown into maturity.

In her lessons in James: Mercy Triumphs, Beth Moore said, “We demand a holy SPRINT; He gives us the Holy Spirit.”

When the Israelites finally stepped foot into the promised land after 40 years of wandering, God told them from the beginning that conquering would take time.  He said, “The Lord your God will clear away these nations before you little by little. You may not make an end of them at once, lest the wild beasts grow too numerous for you” (Deuteronomy 7:22).

If they had rushed God, they would have been destroyed and overrun.

In the same way, James writes:

Be patient, therefore, brothers,until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains.  You also, be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand. Do not grumble against one another, brothers, so that you may not be judged; behold, the Judge is standing at the door. As an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Behold, we consider those blessed who remained steadfast. You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful (James 5:7-11).

Don’t rush the journey.  Don’t run ahead of God.  Be patient.  Establish your heart.  Remain steadfast.  We don’t always see the reason for the slow pace or the delays, but God is working for our protection and benefit because He is a “compassionate and merciful” Master Gardener.

More Devotions From My Garden:

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