Praying with a Penny Cup

February 11, 2015February 10, 20152 Comments

penny cup The penny plinked into the cup and I walked away.

It was such a simple thing. The penny pressed into the palm of my hand and then a quick release, a letting go, and I was done.

Before my penny cup, I thought that I was just persevering in prayer like Jesus told His disciples to do in Luke 18.

There was the widow who came before the unfair judge day after day to demand justice, and finally he gave in because he was annoyed and tired of hearing her complain about it.

There was the neighbor awakened in the middle of the night by obnoxious and persistent knocking at his front door. He finally opened up the door and stood there in his pajamas listening to his neighbor’s plight—an unexpected guest, no bread in the house, could he share? Yes! Take it! Take anything as long as you stop that knocking, knocking, knocking so I can get some sleep already.

So, Jesus tells us, if an unrighteous judge and a sleep-deprived neighbor gave into requests just because of tenacity, wouldn’t God who loves us respond when we pray and pray and pray and don’t give up praying?

Don’t stop praying. Even when you’re weary and exhausted and hopeless and think it doesn’t do a bit of good, keep pushing and pushing on in prayer.

But my idea of persevering in prayer wasn’t really prayer any more. It was more like fretting in front of God’s throne and worrying about a problem before a divine audience.

All night long, I mentally paced in prayer: Lord, here’s my problem and here’s what I need You to do to fix it.

I plead and argued and orated and then when I’d run out of things to say, I started all over again.

Hour after hour ticked by on my bedside clock and still I continued.

God loves when we pray. We can bring anything and everything to Him in prayer and He never tires of hearing us and never turns us away.

But I never released my need to Him. I was talking at Him without ever letting go or pausing for even a second to listen or be still.

I was wallowing in anxiety and putting a holy ‘stamp of approval’ on it by calling it prayer.

John wrote:

Now this is the confidence we have before Him: Whenever we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. ¹⁵And if we know that He hears whatever we ask, we know that we have what we have asked Him for (1 JOhn 5:14-15 HCSB).

I was praying as if He couldn’t hear me.

….as if my will mattered more than His will.

….as if only my solution to the problem was acceptable.

….as if He wasn’t sovereign or compassionate—wasn’t able or didn’t care to rescue me.

… as if He was against me instead of for me. 1 john 5

It was a prayer of unbelief.

Then, I read the idea in a discipleship magazine: a penny cup.

It’s not the cup that mattered or even the penny. Writing a prayer on a slip of paper and slipping it into a prayer box would do just as well.

What matters is a physical reminder to release my white-knuckled grip on my problem and give it over to the God who loves me so.

Every time I found a wayward penny on a dresser or on the floor, I picked it up and prayed with a quick whisper, “Lord, please take care of this need. I trust You to deliver me.” Then I released the prayer to Him as I dropped the coin into my penny cup.

I didn’t tell Him how to fix the problem. I didn’t wrestle with Him for hours every night over the need.

I prayed day in and day out (you’d be surprised how many pennies you find when they become part of your prayer life), but always I gave the problem to Him instead of holding onto it myself.

When the penny cup filled to the brim, I poured out the coins and started again. For years, I prayed about this one issue, giving it over to God one…..penny….. at….. a….. time.

For the first time, I really prayed. I didn’t fret and argue and run endless circles of desperate pleading around God.

I persisted in prayer by expressing my need while leaving the solution in His hands.

And God rescued me. Not in the way I expected. Not in the timing I expected. Not without hardship and hurting or obedience or faith in the hard places. But the deliverance was miraculous and beautiful and perfect in the way only God’s deliverance can be.

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 book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, is available now! To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

What a Letdown

February 6, 2015Leave a comment

My toddler and I have daily disagreements about what he needs.

I say he needs a nap. He thinks he needs unlimited playtime.

I say he needs healthy food, like the banana I sliced up on his highchair tray. He thinks he needs the cookie hidden at the top of the snack cabinet.

I say he needs a diaper change. He feels the need to scream at the top of his lungs, contort his body, writhe and wriggle to avoid being cleaned up.

After I win that battle and clean his little bottom, I say he needs a new diaper on. He runs away giggling because he thinks he needs to hang out in the nude.

I say he needs to come out of the bath when the water is cold and his fingers are wrinkling like prunes. He says he needs to stay in the bath. Period. Like, forever.

Momma says he needs to play with his books, his blocks, and his toy trucks. He thinks he needs to play with my smartphone.

I say he needs to color with the crayons on paper. He disagrees, believing he needs to color with the crayons on our books and then eat the crayon.

I tell him he needs to pet the cat gently or not at all. He thinks he needs to jump on the cat, pull the cat’s tail, sit on the cat and then stretch out with his whole body covering the cat and ignore the hissing and growling.

I know what he needs in order for him to be healthy, well-fed, well-rested, clean, and safe.

Yet, if I gave him what he thought that he needed, he’d be naked and starving, covered in his own feces, utterly exhausted and mauled to pieces by an irritated feline.

Perhaps part of growing up is learning what we really need.

Or perhaps we never truly learn.

After all, don’t I sometimes pray for what I need and discover through temporary disappointment and ultimate awe that God knew better? His “no,” though painful in the moment, becomes my salvation.

God loves us enough to give us what we really need rather than what we’ve mistakenly asked for.

Four men carried their paralyzed friend on a cot to see Jesus. They tried to shove through the mob that was packed into the house, but they failed.

So, they climbed onto the roof, hauled the stretcher up there, broke down the thatch, and lowered their friend into the middle of the room.

They pushed and pushed and pushed through every obstacle so their friend could have what he ‘needed.’

Mark writes:

And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven” (Mark 2:5 ESV).

Forgiveness?

Is this what they wanted?

In his book, The One-Year Experiencing God’s Presence Devotional, Chris Tiegreen writes:

Clearly they came for one thing: healing. They wanted their friend to walk. He wanted to walk. A miracle was all they had on their minds. So a declaration of forgiveness, while a nice spiritual touch, might have been a letdown.

Let down.

Is that how we feel when we come looking for the miracle, and He heals our heart instead?

So often we come to God with the practical need and the specific requests, telling Him our problems and sometimes even telling Him how to fix them.

His desire, though, isn’t just for our best; it’s for our spiritual best. It’s to break down every obstacle to His presence and cut through every barrier to intimacy with Him.

We ask to walk.

He grants forgiveness first.

That man stood up off that mat and walked out of the house with his friends. His physical need was met. But more importantly, Jesus answered his true spiritual need first.

And, what do any of us really need?

A better job? A healed marriage? An end to conflict? A bigger house? A good doctor’s report?

Yes. Maybe.

But more than that…..we need mercy. We need grace. We need His Presence. We need hope. We need forgiveness.

When we seek Him, truly seek Him, searching for His face, listening for His voice, longing to know Him and to talk with Him, He gives us what we really need.

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you (Matthew 6:33 ESV).

Lord, what I really need is 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, is available now! To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Come Messy

February 4, 2015February 4, 20151 Comment

My son slipped the yogurt out of the fridge while I was packing school lunches for my daughters.

He carried it delicately over to the living room coffee table. Then he shoved his hand down through the foil lid and started eating it.

With his fingers.

When I caught him with his snack, he popped his hands up to the top of his head, covering his light fuzz of hair in vanilla yogurt.

Bath time!

He eats with his hands. He plays with his food. He dumps out any drinking cups we leave lying around and then splashes in the mess.

He has a magnet for the cat food and would love to lay down in the litter box and act like it’s a day at the beach.

In the morning, he makes a mess of breakfast and makes a mess of playing.

Then he hears that first hint of sound from behind the closed door of our bedroom. It’s his clue—Dad is awake and getting ready for work!

My baby boy runs to the door and stands crying until we open it up so he can throw himself against Daddy’s legs. For the rest of the morning routine, Daddy has to brush his teeth one-handed and eat his breakfast with a toddler on his lap, and shift the toddler from hip to hip while he puts on his coat.

Daddy is here. My son will not let him go, not until we pry his hands and body away and Mom holds him tight as he cries and watches Daddy head out the door.

Usually, we’re in a mad scramble to wash my little one’s hands before he snags onto Dad’s pants leg in the morning and refuses to let go. After all, Dad hardly wants to head to work with vanilla yogurt and banana all over himself.

But I read through this verse again this week:

but Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:14 ESV).

We’ve heard it a million times and I’ve heard the sermon illustrations before.

Come to Jesus like a little child:

Come trusting.

Come simple.

Come excited.

Come small and insignificant.

Come unhindered.

And it’s true. All of it.

Jesus welcomes us just as we are. He invites us! He’s pleased to see us and pleased to spend time with us.

photo courtesy of Viktor Janacek, picjumbo

But there’s something more, I realize, as I wipe my son’s face and hands yet again this morning.

Come messy.

Too often we’re frantically scrubbing ourselves up before we let Jesus see us.

We think our prayers have to be ‘just right.’ We think our Bible time has to be ‘just so.’

We put off spending time with Him because we haven’t gotten it all together.

But the easiest way for Satan to defeat our prayer lives is to tell us prayer has to be hard and that we’re not good enough, so why bother even trying?

Maybe we think that’s in Scripture somewhere: “Come to Me when you have it all together and know how to pray for 30 minutes and haven’t lost your temper in a week and have had a 20-minute quiet time at 5 a.m.”

But that’s not what Jesus says at all.

He says to come as a child.

He also says:

“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28 NASB).

In A Praying Life, Paul Miller writes:

“The criteria for coming to Jesus is weariness. Come overwhelmed with Life. Come with your wandering mind. Come messy.“

We don’t have to pretend in His presence. We don’t have to be something we aren’t. We don’t have to be perfect.

When we’re a mess and when we’ve messed up, just come. Come without guile. Be real and honest. No need to clean up and make ourselves sound “holy.”

Just. Come.

How peeling potatoes makes me feel like a domestic diva

October 29, 2014October 29, 20142 Comments

When precise circumstances align just right, I feel like a domestic diva.

The windows are open.

The house smells like it’s filled with flowers or pies—-maybe it’s because I baked; maybe it’s artificially provided by a candle or scented wax in my burner—it doesn’t matter, as long as the house doesn’t smell like diapers and the litter box.

The children are not fighting.

The washing machine and dryer are humming away.

Bread is in the bread machine.

Soup is in the Crock Pot.

I am peeling potatoes.

It’s the peeling potatoes part that really counts. That’s what makes ordinary household chores feel less like mundane drudgery and more like prize-worthy expertise. Like the angels are singing and the children should be rising up and calling you blessed and your husband sings your praises.

I’m telling you…..peeling potatoes can do that for me.

Which is funny, because they’re just ordinary potatoes and I’m just an ordinary gal and I’ve sure nicked myself enough times with the potato peeler.

The truth is there are plenty of days, when I feel less than capable, less than expert, less than extraordinary.

I collapse next to my husband in the evening after four little ones finally fall asleep and survey the mess left behind by the tornado of activity. I confess what’s on my heart—-“I hope you don’t think I just do nothing all day.”

He calms me down. After all, I don’t really need to say it to him. I’m really saying it to me.

Because it’s me wondering, “What exactly did I do all day?”

Photo by just2shutter; 123rf.com

I have a one-year-old:

Enough said?

Maybe I don’t always feel accomplished, but for some mysterious reason, peeling potatoes makes me find value in the most mundane act. I feel this wind of inspiration and encouragement. It’s like breath for my very suffocated soul.

What I really feel in that moment is that God finds value in me. He finds joy in the home I’m making for my family. He showers me with favor. He teaches me to sing praise over the ordinary.

In his book, Sacred Marriage, Gary Thomas tells me that Brother Lawrence “felt equally close to God peeling potatoes in the kitchen as kneeling at the altar in prayer…”

Maybe that’s because potato peeling became the sacrifice on his altar.

Maybe it’s because he prayed while he peeled.

Maybe I can do both.

I remember one of the Scriptures I’ve been clinging to all year:

“Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his presence continually” (1 Chronicles 16:11 ESV)

And I read in Romans:

Clothe yourselves with the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 13:14 NLT).

Put on the presence of Christ with each new day. Rise in the morning, take a shower, put on jeans and a t-shirt and put on the presence of Christ at the same time.

So, I’m trying my best to invite Christ’s presence into my routine and the ordinary of my every day. Invite Him in as I cook dinner. Invite Him in as I throw open windows and light the candle. Invite Him in as I get dressed in the morning.

Because His presence is constant. He’s always there. It’s my awareness of His presence that varies from day to day.

Just like I always have the same amount of domestic capabilities, but somehow peeling potatoes makes me feel particularly accomplished. Nothing changes except my perspective.

As I finish up this month of Finding the Sacred in the Ordinary, I’m choosing prayer prompts to help me connect with God throughout the day.

These aren’t hour-long prayer sessions spent on my knees. These are whispered prayers I share with God while I go about my day.

Like:

“Give me wisdom for this day” before I get out of bed.

“Clothe me with Your presence today” as I get dressed.

“Show me how to love my family best” as I pack lunches.

“Thank You for Your provision” as I fold clothes.

“Feed me with Your Word” as I cook dinner.

“Forgive me of my sins” as I wash those dishes clean.

“Thank you for your many good gifts to me.” And when can I pray this? Well, anytime perhaps, but maybe especially when I peel potatoes.

What prompts you to pray throughout the day?

To read more about this 12-month journey of pursuing the presence of Christ, you can follow the links below! Won’t you join me this month as I ‘Find the Sacred in the Ordinary’?

7 Ways to have a quiet time when you don’t have quiet or time

October 27, 2014July 12, 20174 Comments

“You dropped your head.”

That’s what he tells me as we leave church. He points to a spot on the floor with this twinkle in his eye, just waiting for me to fall for the joke he’s played on me many times before.

He gets us all the time. “Your shoe is untied,” when you’re wearing ballet flats without laces. “You dropped your head” and people look to see if their head actually is rolling around on the floor, abandoned.

But I don’t even move my eyes. I just lean right over to him, pat him on the arm, and say, “You know what, I probably did. I probably did drop my head.”

Some days, you know?

Some days maybe you feel like you’ve been running around without any command center on top of your shoulders to help you hold it all together.

You feel a little famished, starving for time in the Word.

You feel a little parched, desperate for the Living Water of His presence.

You feel maybe like you really are missing that head of yours.

One missed quiet time turns into a week and then a month and more if we’re not careful. Sometimes we think if we can’t pray for a solid hour on our knees in a prayer closet, or if we can’t finish a whole Beth Moore lesson in one uninterrupted sitting, or we miss a day or two in our devotional or our Bible reading plan, then maybe we just need to wait until we can get it perfect.

If you can’t do it right, why do it at all?

Why? Because we’ll drop our heads, that’s why. We have to be women of the Word and women of prayer even if it means we need to adapt and adjust for the busiest seasons of life.

Maybe it means we just hold on for dear life to the hem of Jesus’ robe until life finally brings us to a place where we can sit uninterrupted at His feet again.

Sometimes faith has to be on-the-go…..and the good news is that God’s presence can invade the minivan.

Here are 7 ways to have a quiet time when you don’t have quiet or time:

1. Make a Bible To-Go Bag: Keep a bag in your car with anything you might need for an impromptu quiet time while you wait in the minivan to pick up your kids: a devotional you only use for those times, paper, pens, and an extra Bible or maybe just a Bible app on your smartphone.

2. Find Great Bible Apps: Load your phone with apps that will let you read the Bible, listen to the audio Bible, tune into podcasts, read devotionals, memorize Scripture, and keep a prayer log. I’ve listed my favorites below. Here are some of my favorites:

Bible (by LifeChurch.tv)
BibleGateway
BibleMinded
PrayerNotes
Scripture Typer

3. Use Prayer Prompts: Pray while cooking dinner, doing dishes, folding laundry, driving home from work. Pick specific places or activities that will remind you to pray every time you do them.

4. Break it up: I don’t have time to read a devotional, read the Bible, do a Bible study, write in my journal and pray all at once. I need to do these things all day long, a little here, a little there, grabbing time when I can. Try breaking up your quiet time into 10-minute activities you can spread throughout your day.

5. Do it with your kids: If your kids have memory verses for their church activities, memorize the verses with them. Read the book of Matthew together and choose a devotional to read as a family.

6. Exercise your faith: People often jog to their favorite work-out music or hop on the exercise bike and watch TV. Try replacing that with God-time. If you’re on the exercise bike, you can read your Bible or devotionals or listen to podcasts of sermons. If you’re walking or jogging, you can be listening to worship music, sermon podcasts, an audio Bible, or just praying.

7. Study online: I help to lead online Bible studies at The Womens Bible Cafe. I love that I can spend one hour in accountability, fellowship and encouragement and I can do it while my baby is napping in the next room. You can also check out online studies with Proverbs31 Ministries and Love God Greatly.

Most importantly, give yourself grace: If you expect the perfect quiet time to happen, then you’ll likely give up completely and never take time for God. And you’ll probably drop your head. Take every opportunity to spend time with Jesus even if it’s short, messy, interrupted, and on-the-go. If you fall behind, don’t get overwhelmed. Just start fresh where you are supposed to be and keep going. And when the day is done, rest well and start fresh with new mercies for a new day.

How do you make time for God when you don’t have quiet or time?

To read more about this 12-month journey of pursuing the presence of Christ, you can follow the links below! Won’t you join me this month as I ‘Find the Sacred in the Ordinary’?

Morning Prayers to Whisper in Between the Snooze Button (AKA Kids)

October 17, 2014January 9, 20163 Comments

I do not understand the snooze button on an alarm clock. I never have.

To me, sleep only works when you’re actually sleeping.

The first beep of an alarm wakes me up. From that moment on, my mind is racing on into the day. I’m not sleeping; I’m thinking.

Worse yet, I’m thinking without actually doing anything about the million-and-one things I’m thinking about, which is a pretty stressful way to start the day: feeling like I’m already behind.

Snooze buttons only work for people who can fall asleep in two seconds and don’t mind sleeping in batches of 5 minutes at a time.

Since that isn’t me, it’s just a way for me to procrastinate my way into the morning and procrastination super-stresses me out.

But moms don’t get to dictate their sleep habits, sleep cycle, sleep hours, sleep anything. We’re just thankful for whatever sleep we get.

I’ve only needed an actual alarm clock a handful of times since I gave birth to my oldest child nearly 10 years ago. I have a new alarm clock called “Kids.”

Unfortunately, this new wake-up system has come fully equipped with nothing less than a human snooze button.

Baby wakes up.

Mom soothes baby and climbs back into bed.

Early bird child runs through the house to mom’s bed just minutes later to announce she’s awake, then returns to announce she is hungry, then returns to announce she cannot find the clothes she wants.

Mom looks at the clock and realizes no one else in the whole house is awake and yet this one tiny person is relentless in her pursuit of the day.

Mom tries so hard to go back to sleep but is quickly awakened by the older daughter’s alarm clock with its shrill, rhythmic beeping that does….not…..stop……for…….five…..whole ……minutes…… because the daughter who is actually in the actual room with the actual alarm clock is sleeping right through the noise.

This is the human snooze button system that started my day.

I’ve heard so many women say that all we need to do to bring God into the middle of our day is to start with prayer, right from the beginning. Before you get out of bed, just lie there for a minutes longer and pray for God’s hand to be on the day and for Him to help them be the best mom and wife that she can be and could He direct her steps and … and.. and….

Awesome.

But my life is louder than that. Crazier than that. Messier than that.

And yet, I still need His presence. Maybe because of all the noise and rush, I need His presence even more desperately than someone who can lie in the quiet and calm of a morning and spend a few extra minutes in uninterrupted prayer.

I sure need Jesus to be right here in the middle of my mess.

My days tend to take turns for the unexpected. The long, extended quiet time that I’ve been planning for three days hasn’t happened yet, because the phone rang, and I got a message, and the baby was teething, and…and…and….

But I read what a missionary wrote in his journal long ago:

“Poor and weak though we are, our abode is a very Bethel to our souls, and God we feel and know is here” (Richard Williams).

Bethel. That means “House of God.”

It’s the place where God’s presence dwells. That’s where Jacob saw the vision of the stairway connecting heaven and earth and the angels ascending and descending.

I’m reminded, then, that God’s presence right here in the middle of my life makes any situation, any morning, any messy day, any short quiet time in the parked minivan while waiting for my daughters outside of school… a Bethel for my soul.

Because God is here.

I’m still fighting for that extended quiet time. I know it will happen.

But even on days it doesn’t, I’m learning this month to “Do Messy Faith….” to pursue His presence on-the-go instead of waiting until all the circumstances are perfect to meet with Him. Because if I wait for perfect, then it won’t happen.

So I don’t have an hour to spend in quiet with the Bible. I have the Bible on my phone and my Kindle.

So I don’t have the luxury of a quiet morning wake-up. I have a human snooze alarm and I can whisper those prayers in between morning visits from my children.

Dear God, thank You for this day.

Dear God, guide me today.

Dear God, Your will be done, not mine.

Dear God, Please use me today.

Dear God, Please help me. I can’t do it alone.

My voice You shall hear in the morning, O Lord;
In the morning I will direct it to You,
And I will look up.
Psalm 5:3 NKJV

What prayers do you whisper as you start your day?

To read more about this 12-month journey of pursuing the presence of Christ, you can follow the links below! Won’t you join me this month as I ‘Find the Sacred in the Ordinary’?

Am I Asking Jesus to Leave?

August 25, 2014August 18, 2014Leave a comment

She said he was afraid.

A small team from our church took VBS on the go this year, sharing the lessons, songs and games with kids in the community.

One of the ladies shared with us this past Sunday what that mission to area children was like.

She tells how on the last day, those little ones gathered around the teacher for the Bible story about Paul.

He was such a Bad Guy, she told them.

She told all about his past, all those mean things he did to Christians.

But then she told how he met Jesus and she read from the start of his letters to the churches, how he said the same thing over and over and over again:

“I, Paul, a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ…..”

This little boy, cuddled next to another leader, winced and sucked in his breath every single time she said it.

The Lord Jesus Christ

He’d only ever heard those words as cursing in anger and bursts of outrage in his home.

My husband puts the hurt into words, how this little boy has a “Pavlovian fear response to the name of the only One who could ever save him.”

Peter shared the truth:

Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12 NIV).

We sit in that comfy sanctuary in the middle of a tiny town in rural Virginia and our hearts break because missions starts right here.

There are children who don’t even know what a Bible is or who God is or that the name of Jesus isn’t a cuss word…and they live right here.

But there’s something else….

I read in the Gospels:

Then all the people of the region of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them, because they were overcome with fear. So he got into the boat and left (Luke 8:37 NIV).

The people were afraid of Jesus at work.

They weren’t embracing the healing he offered and not the salvation either. They sent Him away and with it they refused all hope of rescue.

All because they were afraid.

Maybe they didn’t wince at the sound of His name, but they feared Jesus’ presence.

Were they afraid of His power?

Were they afraid of shaking things up? Afraid of what salvation might cost? Fearful of what they might lose if they followed Him?

I remember the Israelites crowded around the base of Mt. Sinai, watching the pyrotechnical display of God’s glory, the thunder and lighting, the cloud of smoke, the trumpet blast:

When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.”…The people remained at a distance, while Moses approached the thick darkness where God was (Exodus 20:18-19, 21 NIV).

They trembled there at the mountain, slinking back in fear, remaining at a distance even when God invited them to come close.

This holy fear of God has its place, the reminder of His greatness and mighty power and how small we are indeed.

He is God. I am not.

He is holy. I am not.

We need the reawakening of awe.

But I wonder if we ever push God away in fear, or hide away in the shadows, remaining at a distance even when He whispers to us, ”Come…..closer….nearer….”

Are we too afraid that He’ll disrupt our lives? Or that drawing close will cost us and it will just be too much to pay?

Do we stand right there at the base of His presence and choose the safety of distance instead?

And maybe we don’t say it as bluntly as the crowd that sent Jesus away, maybe we don’t tell Him, “Can you just go off in your boat and do your work somewhere else?”

Maybe we know just enough…certainly more than a scared little boy listening to a lesson at Vacation at Bible School: yes, God loves us….yes, Jesus is our Savior. Maybe it’s just ‘blah, blah, blah’…just so many words.

Yet, maybe we shut Him out. Maybe we avoid the conviction of Scripture or the passion of all-in of worship. Maybe we want to sing “safe” songs on Sunday morning, hear “safe” messages, leave the Bible reading up to someone else, avoid the accountability of church or the nudge of the Holy Spirit to lay it all down in surrender.

Because we’re afraid.

Lord, help me stop being afraid and start drawing close to You. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be than in Your presence.

To read more about this 12-month journey of pursuing the presence of Christ, you can follow the links below! Won’t you join me this month as I ‘Learn to Say, ‘No?’

5 Prayers for our Schools

August 18, 2014August 18, 20171 Comment

prayers for our schools

It was one of those statements in a sermon that sticks with you forever.

About nine years ago, one of our pastors said, “If when you pray for me all you ask is, ‘God, please bless my pastor,’ then don’t worry about praying for me.”

Not pray for him? Who, after all, would reject a blessing prayer?

But really, he didn’t mean to reject prayers, just to emphasize the importance of specific prayers for others.

It’s true for husbands, for children, for pastors and other ministry leaders, and for our schools. If my idea of praying for them is, “God please bless these people today,” then I’m really not requesting much, not petitioning God much on their behalf.

I want to be specific, be particular, praying in faith that God knows best, but laying my requests all out there before His throne. Not just a “pray-and-run” kind of petition, shooting out a list of people or places to bless in one minute and then rushing on with my day.

I want to get knee-deep involved in intercession like the Levites who prayed for the refugees returning home to Israel to rebuild the Jerusalem walls in the book of Nehemiah (Nehemiah 9).

How to pray then? What to ask God for? You might have ideas, too, but here’s a prayer tool to get us started as we begin this school year:

5 Prayers for our Schools

Mondays: Safety and presence of God: God, we pray for Your presence in our schools, public, private and home-school settings. We ask for peace to reign in the hallways, the classrooms, and playgrounds. Please protect our children and school staff and prevent evil from infiltrating the school grounds.

Tuesday: School administrators and office staff: Lord, we thank You for the administrators and office staff who keep our schools running smoothly and who are responsible for making decisions both about our children’s education and their safety. We ask that You give them strength and wisdom and help them establish a positive learning environment. Help them balance the pressures of standardized testing with the goal of encouraging a love of learning. We pray that they can foster an atmosphere of creativity, passion, and joy among all the educational staff.

Wednesday: Teachers and assistants: Lord, we pray for the teachers and assistants who are putting long hours in during the early days in the school year. There is so much to get set up, students to assess, routines to establish. Please give them the energy they need and strength for each new day. Help them to know You are with them. Give them wisdom as they get to know each student—reveal strengths and needs, highlight situations that need intervention, show teachers where students deserve encouragement and praise!

Thursday: School nurses and counselors: Lord, we ask that you bless the school nurses as they run their clinics and the counselors working with our kids. Our nurses not only manage the intricate schedule of medications for our students, but they are also a source of compassion and love every day. Our counselors need to rightly discern students who need help and intervention and fight against bullying and other problems in our schools. Give them wisdom, gentleness, and compassion. Fill them up daily with Your love as they pour so much of themselves out for others.

Friday: Staff (Cafeteria, janitorial, bus drivers and more): God, there are so many men and women who work in our schools, providing food, transportation and more for our kids. They are often the ones responsible for keeping our schools healthy and our children safe. Please give them joy in their work, bless their hands as they serve each day. Help them know how much we appreciate their efforts on behalf of our kids.

How do you pray for our schools and their staff?

Keep Praying, Keep Hoping, Keep Looking

June 20, 2014June 25, 20142 Comments

Lunches packed for the last time. Desks cleared, backpacks cleaned out and stowed away. Field day over. Class parties celebrated. Awards ceremony concluded and certificates photographed. End-of-the-year pictures taken of each daughter and compared to the photos from the first day of the school year.

And now we collapse. We did it. Somehow it feels like a joint accomplishment, not just theirs. Sure, my kids worked hard. So did I. And somehow, by God’s grace, we made it here to summer vacation.

It’s only taken 15 months of prayer. I started praying for this school year last March, praying for this teacher, this classroom, these friends, this school, these character issues, and these lessons.

And here as the school year ends, I give thanks:

Thank You, Lord, for answering my pleas for my children. Thank You for helping them learn, being with them in all of the struggles that have sent this loving (and worried) mama to her knees. Thank You for helping them with difficult concepts and friendship drama, bullies and mistakes on tests, report cards and forgetfulness. Thank You for these teachers You chose specially for my kids.

And I began again, just that quickly, one sentence to another, thank God for this year and then praying for next year: for classroom placements and teacher assignments, for the responsibilities of a new grade and for the friendships they’d make.

So it continues.

“Pray without ceasing….” that’s what Paul wrote (1 Thessalonians 5:17).

He meant that living prayer, that breathing in and breathing out of living life alongside God, taking in crises and handing them right on over to the Lord, receiving blessing and offering up spontaneous praise.

It means no more arbitrary separations between the sacred and the secular, between the holy parts of my life where God is welcome and invited and the dusty living rooms of our hearts where we try to hide away the clutter in corners.

Having kids, though, reminds me of this, too:

Prayer is perpetual; it’s insistent and consistent.

And sometimes I’m not. I’m driven to the throne by need and I’m pouring out pleas of desperation until the need eases a bit. Or perhaps I just grow weary or fall back into the coziness of complacency and apathy.

I’m not praying so fervently any more. It’s more like unemotional have-to prayers, perhaps performed out of duty, perhaps totally forgotten and not prayed at all.

We pray for that intervention, that salvation, that redemption, that rescue…for us or for another….and then slowly we cease the praying. We need the reminder to keep on keeping on, to not give up asking God for that healing and to refuse to stop praying for a loved one’s salvation.

With kids, you can’t really forget, not for long. Time just pushes you right through from prayer need to prayer need. I’m not even done praying over one school year before I’m on my knees for the next.

I read the Psalms and here is the reminder anew:

“But I keep praying to you, Lord, hoping this time you will show me favor. In your unfailing love, O God, answer my prayer with your sure salvation” (Psalm 69:13 NLT).

“But I will keep on hoping for your help; I will praise you more and more” (Psalm 71:14 NLT).

“We keep looking to the Lord our God for his mercy, just as servants keep their eyes on their master, as a slave girl watches her mistress for the slightest signal” (Psalm 123:2 NLT).

Keep praying….keep hoping….keep looking.

Keep at it and when He answers, press on in more prayer.

With this fresh resolve, I flip through the pages of the neglected prayer journal. What did I pray then….and what do I still need to pray now?

What have you neglected in prayer? What have you given up on and long since stopped asking God for? Who used to be on your prayer list but somehow slipped off?

It’s discipline to begin again. And when we cease praying, which feels like the inevitable failing of us forgetful ones, we return again and resolve again to be insistent and consistent in seeking God and hoping in His deliverance.

What have you stopped praying about that you need to pray for again? What prayers are you already praying for your children’s next school year?

Originally posted June 7, 2013

When You Have to Squint Your Eyes to See the Beauty–a devotion from my garden

April 9, 2014April 9, 2014Leave a comment

Sometimes you have to fight for the glory and squint your eyes tight to find the wonder.

Like today.

My daughter woke me up early. She was ready for the day; I wanted to enjoy a little more night, and so the morning began with a headache, fatigue and maybe a not-so-cheerful attitude.

Then, just as I began to settle into the day, I glanced up at the calendar at 7:58 and realized the heating and air conditioning repairman was coming between 8 and 8:30 a.m. Oops, forgot that one.

He came at 8:20 and normally that time for me is for morning tea and long devotions, starting the week with God and then writing.

But how to be inspired and still with God, how to type out these words on the computer when he’s banging parts and dismantling pieces? Then he calls out, “Ma’am?” and I flinch because I know it’s not to tell me good news.

My to-do list was long. The laundry piled high. The sink stacked with morning dishes.

But I’m fighting for this, so I open to Wonderstruck by Margaret Feinberg:

“God desires to captivate us not just with his handiwork but with Himself–displaying facets of His character, igniting us with His fiery love, awakening us to the intensity of His holiness” (11).

Captivate me, Lord. Right here, this tiny person in this moment when all the mundane is pressing heavy on my heart and I’m just about suffocated from the stifling weight of it all.

Feinberg tells me that this is what God desires and I wonder: If I’m not feeling it, is it because I’ve shut Him down and crowded Him out? Is He willing to reignite me and I’m unwilling to notice?

I flip through my Bible to Hebrews 12:28-29:

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.

It starts with thanks, gratitude that anything that shakes apart the foundation of my day can’t touch the foundation of His kingdom, my faith, or eternity with Him–Not early mornings, interrupted routines, home repairs, not even the incessant grinding of the daily.

It requires worship grounded in reverence and awe because my God, Savior, Friend, and Lover of my Soul, is a Consuming Fire, and even on days when I’m just seeing the tiniest ember and flicker of that holy flame, He remains the same.

In Scripture, Elisha stood with his prophet-mentor, Elijah, and asked so boldly for a double portion of Elijah’s spirit (2 Kings 2:9). So, when I read Elisha’s story, I expect the miracles all to be earth-shattering, all fire from heaven with awe and wonder.

It was Elijah, after all, who staged the showdown with the prophets of Baal, who predicted a long and devastating drought over the land and then foretold the rain that started as one tiny cloud as big as a man’s fist. He went head-to-toe with Ahab and Jezebel until he was whisked away to heaven in a flaming chariot.

The double-portion of that Spirit must be pretty spectacular.

But when I read Elisha’s story, he made foul water fit to drink. He cursed a group of taunting boys who called him “baldy.” He gave oil to a poor widow, made some poisonous stew safe for consumption. And when an ordinary worker dropped his ax in the lake, Elisha made the ax head float on the water.

It was everyday stuff, most of it. He had a few moments, like raising a boy from the dead. Overall, though, it seems so mundane. So everyday. He helped people eat and drink. Helped them work and not have to trek to Home Depot for some new tools.

And maybe that’s the reminder here. Maybe it takes even more faith to look for the power and spirit of God at work in the smallest of needs and the most everyday of circumstances.

I look out of the window over my kitchen sink while I wash the last cereal bowl and see the plants we bought the day before, still waiting to be planted in the dirt of our garden. We went on a hunt for milkweed to attract monarch butterflies and came home with these two green pots.

They look like the smallest and plainest of dead sticks. My daughter was skeptical. Could this brown spindly stalk grow anything beautiful? Is it even alive?

But today I’ve fought for the wonder and the glory.

Today, I’ve determined to plant and nurture the pitiful, the brown, the spindly, the weak, the seeming lifeless–and wait for God to cultivate and grow the glory and the beauty.

Yes, in my garden. Yes, in my life and heart.

Captivate me, Lord, today.

To read more about this 12-month journey of pursuing the presence of Christ, you can follow the links below! Won’t you join me this month as I ‘Enjoy Beauty’?

To read more Devotions from my Garden, you can click here!

Originally posted April 22, 2013

Heather C. King – Room to Breathe

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

Tag: Prayer

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What a Letdown

Come Messy

How peeling potatoes makes me feel like a domestic diva

7 Ways to have a quiet time when you don’t have quiet or time

Morning Prayers to Whisper in Between the Snooze Button (AKA Kids)

Am I Asking Jesus to Leave?

5 Prayers for our Schools

Keep Praying, Keep Hoping, Keep Looking

When You Have to Squint Your Eyes to See the Beauty–a devotion from my garden

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