Scripture Memory – Page 8 – Heather C. King

Hiding the Word:

Last week, I started the first half of a set of verses from Psalm 145 and they were a blessing to me. There were days when it was hard to trust that God would truly keep His promises, and yet Psalm 145:13 says :”The LORD is trustworthy in all he promises
and faithful in all he does.^“

On days that I felt as if I had tripped and fallen or that the weight of stressors and annoyances and my own faults had pushed me hard to the ground, I recalled Psalm 145:14: “The LORD upholds all who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down.”

And in those moments when I calculated bank balance versus upcoming expenses, I remembered Psalm 145:15-16: “The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food at the proper time. You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing.”

This was a powerful set of verses for me. So, on to the second half for this week:

The LORD is righteous in all his ways and faithful in all he does.
The LORD is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.
He fulfills the desires of those who fear him; he hears their cry and saves them.
Psalm 145:17-19

Those are the verses that will be posted up on my stove and bathroom and in my journal for me to meditate on and memorize throughout the week ahead.

What verse(s) will you be learning? Please share!

Weekend Rerun:
How He Loves Us, originally published 02/17/2011

If you ever see me driving down the road in my minivan and I’m clearly singing my heart out and maybe even have one hand up in the air (the other hand obviously on the wheel), I’m going to tell you right now what I’m doing because it could only be one thing. I’m singing How He Loves with David Crowder, probably for the fifth time in a row off my iPod. (I know this song was originally by John Mark McMillan, but I’m a huge David Crowder fan, so I’m biased to his version.)

Anyway, if you haven’t heard this song, feel free to stop reading for a moment and give it a listen here. Go ahead, give it a listen. I am going to stop writing and listen to it again, too.

Now, don’t you love that song? It’s just not possible for me to write about God’s love without the song How He Loves playing through my thoughts.

I love the reminder in this song of the powerful simplicity in this truth: He loves us. Sometimes I need to hear that over and over and be reminded of the magnitude and weight of His love. It’s especially true when my circumstances are difficult and I feel like I’m sinking. As the song reminds me, “If His grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking”—-not drowning in our circumstances, but enveloped by His grace.

When I take the time to truly meditate on God’s amazing love for me, I am changed. My focus is shifted off of my failures or fears or what-ifs and fixed instead on His love. Again, as the song says, “I don’t have time to maintain these regrets, when I think about the way that He loves us.” It’s pretty difficult to meditate on God’s great love and be afraid or paralyzed by our past mistakes at the same time.

I wonder how my everyday life would change if I walked around fully aware of God’s love all the time. All my self-condemnation would cease. My worries would end because I’d know God loves me enough to care for me and not to abandon me. I would love others more unconditionally because of the grace I myself have received. I wouldn’t question God’s plans for me because I’d trust His love.

My life would be transformed.

Paul reminds us that our life changes when we live in the knowledge of God’s love for us:

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:17-19

The Message translates verse 19 this way: “Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.”

Amazingly, we’ve done nothing to earn this love and we can do nothing to end it. Paul writes in Romans 5:8 ^“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” He loved us in our sin, with all of our mistakes and failures, with our lack of trust and our self-focused lives. He loved us when we didn’t have anything to offer in return.

Life is sometimes exhilarating and sometimes frightening. I cannot explain why we go through difficult times and why life is so hard. But I do know that:

God sees you. He hasn’t lost you in the midst of your circumstances. He knows your hurt and pain, as well as your joy and excitement, and He wants to walk with you at all times.

God is big enough to save you. He is mighty and powerful and has your world in His hands.

God loves you with a lavish, unconditional, and unchanging love. The Psalmist tells us God isn’t just a powerful being who doesn’t care about us. In Psalm 62:11-12, it says, “One thing God has spoken, two things have I heard: that you, O God, are strong, and that you, O Lord, are loving.”

Rest in this today—He loves you. Oh, how He loves you.

Book Review:

And a bonus for you this weekend! If you click on the Bookshelf tab on this blog, you’ll see some of the books and studies I’ve been reading this year with some brief comments about each one and a link to more information about them. There are some great reads on that list! But, every once in a while I’m going to pop in a quick book review for you to enjoy here on the weekend page.

This past week, I picked up Lisa Harper’s book, Stumbling Into Grace, with no idea what to expect. She’s one of the new speakers to the Women of Faith team and in just a few weeks, I’ll get to hear her speak. After reading this book, I’m even more excited about that opportunity.

First off, she’s a riot. We might type LOL in Facebook all the time, but how often do we actually read something that makes us laugh out loud? Lisa Harper’s book did that for me. She’s genuine and authentic with a knack for storytelling and an engaging wit. Each chapter moved so quickly, I read the book in about a day.

That doesn’t mean what she said had no weight to it. Lisa adeptly moves from funny to thought-provoking. It’s a book I’d like to read again more slowly as a daily devotional or as a small group to really consider each of her points. And she touches on so many big-deal issues for women in this book—things like handling disappointment, feeling loved, loving others, showing grace and receiving grace, and developing a heart of gratitude. Her small group/personal reflection questions at the end of the chapter are what really could push this book from a basic overview of grace to a deeper consideration of each topic.

The bottom line is that we’re not perfect and we’re all stumbling a little into God’s grace, tripping over one untied shoelace after another.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze®.com <http://BookSneeze®.com> book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 <http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/16cfr255_03.html> : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

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.

Hiding the Word:

I did so great with my index cards and my verse meditation for the first two weeks and last week I struggled. How is it going for you? I realized on Thursday that I hadn’t really thought about my verse for the week much at all, so I made it my mission on Friday to pray it throughout the day.

Here’s the fresh verse for a new week. You can choose your own, but I’d love to see what verse you chose! Please share it with us!

I’m going to take two weeks and memorize a block of verses from Psalm 145. This is the first half:

“The Lord is trustworthy in all He promises and faithful in all He does.
The Lord upholds all who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down.
The eyes of all look to You, and You give them their food at the proper time.
You open Your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing.”
Psalm 145:13b-16

Weekend Rerun

The Lord is My Portion, originally published 03/10/2011

“My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”
Psalm 73:26 (NIV)

This morning, I was a woman with a plan. I envisioned reaching new heights of productivity and speed, accomplishing my work goals for the day, getting in a quiet time, cleaning, exercising, checking off all of the phone calls and appointments on my to-do list—all with joy and energy.

And then.

Then, I used the last slices of bread for toast and lunches. I used one of the last diapers to change my baby girl. I pulled out the ingredients for my crockpot dinner and realized it’s pretty hard to make salsa chicken with tortillas when you actually don’t have any tortillas or cheese.

Change of plans. I rushed around the house throwing into the diaper bag the supplies needed for a grocery store trip with children—goldfish crackers, notebook and crayons, books, juice.

Normally, I like to plan out my shopping trips the night before, pulling out all the coupons I think I’ll use and discarding ones that are 3 months out-of-date. Then, I like to prepare my list while going about my day, making sure I’m not forgetting anything.

Not this time. I grabbed my unorganized coupons, my car keys, my children, my bag of things to entertain them and off we went. Shopping. In the rain. With sleepy children. Without a list.

The worst part of this whole story is that I was just at the store yesterday. I ran in just to get a gift and the milk that would help “tide me over” until my real shopping in two or three days. And now I had to go back again the very next day. I quietly prayed that none of the cashiers recognized me from yesterday as the crazy woman who can’t stay out of the Wal-Mart.

It’s one of my life dreams to shop just one time a week and that’s it. Clearly, I’m not there yet.

But this impromptu shopping trip reminded me that time with God should never just be a once-a-week affair where we stock the shelves of our heart and live off the supplies for a while.

Instead, in the Lord’s Prayer, we ask Him to “give us today our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11, NIV).

Today. Not tomorrow or the next week. Just for today, Lord, provide what I need. In this moment, fill me up and sustain me. Give me the encouragement and provision I need for the here and now in my life.

This daily dependence is something the Israelites had to learn in the wilderness between Egypt and The Promised Land. In Numbers 11:5, they complained to Moses, “We remember the fish which we ate freely in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic, but now our whole being is dried up; there is nothing at all except this manna before our eyes.”

In Egypt, it was no big deal to swing by the farmer’s market for some fresh veggies and then pick up some fresh fish from the docks.

In the wilderness, however, they ate manna. Lots and lots of manna. It was bread from heaven, sweet, and miraculous. God sent it every night, not so they could store it for the future, but so they could eat just enough for that day. Exodus 16:21 says, ” Each morning everyone gathered as much as they needed, and when the sun grew hot, it melted away” (NIV).

At first, not all the Israelites obeyed God’s commands. They tried to store some of the manna so they wouldn’t have to gather it every day. Their goal was to make one shopping trip for the week, not daily excursions to the Wal-Mart. But, the food they stored overnight rotted and was infested with worms.

Daily dependence on God. It’s the overarching message of Scripture.

David wrote in Psalm 73:26: “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (NIV).

Jeremiah wrote in Lamentations 3:24: “I say to myself, ‘The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him'” (NIV)

God is our portion. He is more than enough for us in every situation, but we need to depend on Him for His presence, His encouragement, His strength, His provision, and His guidance daily, and even more than that–second by second.

Sometimes I think that my planning or my productivity can be enough, that in my own strength and ability I can make it. But, that’s just when I have a day like today, when all of my well-laid plans and my confidence in my self are destroyed.

All I can do is place my to-do list, my perfect plans, my work schedule, my bank account and bills, my kids all at His feet and ask Him to “be enough. Lord, I am not enough for any of this, but You are my portion and the strength of my heart. So, I depend on You today and You alone.”

Then tomorrow, I’ll go to Him again . . . and the next day . . . and the day after that. Because this Christian walk of ours is a daily journey of dependence on God.