Tag: Sin

Weekend Walk: Is this for me?

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She trailed along after me as I dragged out the Rubbermaid containers of Christmas decorations and must have asked 20 times if she could help hang lights, hang garland, hang stockings, hang ornaments.

She oohed and aahed over every decked hall and still periodically runs over to the Christmas tree to turn on every musical ornament—foot-tapping Snoopy who dances to Linus and Lucy, singing Muppets, a cow that moos Deck the Halls and a Pig that oinks O Christmas Tree.

Peeking into the bag of Christmas bows, ribbons and gift tags, my little one asked me an important question:

Is this my Christmas?

As we decorated, she asked the question over and over again.  I knew what she was wondering.  Birthdays are for just one person at a time.  What if all of these decorations and the joy and excitement and the hidden presents weren’t for her at all?  What if only one person celebrated the day and she was just an onlooker?

Dare she get excited or was she setting herself up for disappointment?

It was the question of a three-year-old trying to protect her own little heart.

We explained about Jesus’ birthday and my older girls walked her through the Christmas story as they played with the plastic Nativity scene (after a fight over who got to be Mary).

And then I reassured her all day long that Christmas was for the family; for every one of us there would be presents and treats and joy because we aren’t celebrating one of us at all.  We are celebrating Him, the birth of a Savior who came so we could live.

We might take the inclusiveness of salvation for granted at times.  Salvation is for everyone.  Sure, we know.

And yet there are some asking, “Is this my salvation?  Is this for me?   Is it only for those who grew up in the church, only for those who are generally good people, only for those who know all the Christian lingo?”

Even in the early days of the church, people asked that question.  I’m a woman, I’m a Samaritan, I’m a murderer, I’m a persecuter, I’m a betrayer, I’m a Gentile.

Surely this salvation is for others, for the good and the holy and the accepted, but not for me.

This, however, was part of the glory of the cross, that no one comes to the feet of Christ justified or worthy.  We all come in need of grace.  And He extends that grace to all who believe.

The first verse of the week to kick off our Christmas season is one we all know and have likely recited hundreds of times.  But I invite you to look at it anew and marvel afresh that salvation through Christ is for “whoever believes.”  Yes, this Christmas is for you.  That’s not just a message to cherish ourselves, but to share with others, excitedly and joyously.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him (John 3:16-17).

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

Veggie Tales, a Rubber Duck, and a lesson on Grace

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We have a Veggie Tales system at our house.

My girls tumble all over themselves, hooting with laughter and interrupting one another, to explain to me the very funniest parts of a Veggie Tales video.

And then I tell them how very funny that really is and then how it’s kind of like the Bible account, but here’s “the rest of the story.” This, of course, isn’t nearly as funny as the way singing vegetables without hands have told it, but I give it my best shot.

So, when my daughters finished telling me yesterday how King George, the cucumber who collects rubber duckies, had stolen the only rubber ducky owned by his neighbor, a tiny asparagus…I told them (a slightly modified) Biblical version of King David and Bathsheba.

Skipping the more explicit issues of adultery, I emphasized that King David (err…George) didn’t have Uriah smacked in the face with cream pies. David essentially murdered him.

Why?

Because David wanted Uriah’s wife for himself.

My oldest, my everything-is-black-and-white-without-any-gray kind of girl, wrinkled up her nose in confusion.  “But mom, I thought David was a good guy!  I thought he loved God.”

Oh, and there is the heart of the matter.  That, my sweet girl, is the whole point.

How desperately we try to categorize and define people, sorting them perpetually into good and bad, and ultimately we’re trying to decide who is the hero and who is the villain…who is worthy and who isn’t.

But grace demolishes all these overly simplified judgments, these definitions and categories we shove people into.

That we cram ourselves into.

After all, don’t we even do this for ourselves?  We—I— begin to feel worthy of God’s affection and deserving of His pardon and His sacrifice.  Like I’m one of the “good guys” in this epic story of salvation.

I’m a church girl, not a murderer, after all.

Nothing like David, lusting after a beautiful woman and killing her husband.  Even his failure to take control of his sons and defend the rape of his daughter raises my eyebrows.

Oh yes, there’s ugly sin there, and if we just focused on those portions of his story, we’d easily define him as one of those ungodly kings, too self-focused and pleasure-motivated to be of any use to God.

And yet, he’s the hero of the Sunday School lessons week after week.  The brave lad who conquered Goliath.  The true and loyal friend of Jonathan.  The God-anointed king of Israel.  The poet and musician who penned the words we still sing in worship on Sunday mornings.

He’s a bad guy?  He’s a good guy?

He’s a crazy messed up human, who chose right and chose wrong, but who repented before God.  His testimony can’t be anything other than grace, grace, marvelous grace of a God who always calls the unworthy.

It is because of that realization that David wrote the song of repentance:

Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
blot out my transgressions.
  Wash away all my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin.

 For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is always before me.
(Psalm 51:1-3)

It’s the sobbing out of a man who remembered, oh yes, I am unworthy.

In Luke 14, Jesus tells of a master hosting a banquet.  Those wealthy and important enough to receive an invitation declined to come, too busy making excuses to consider the loss.

So the master invited “the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.”

‘Sir,’ the servant said, ‘what you ordered has been done, but there is still room.’

“Then the master told his servant, ‘Go out to the roads and country lanes and compel them to come in, so that my house will be full.” (Luke 14:21-23).

Joni Eareckson Tada writes, “in this parable, the master’s grace is not lavished on the deserving but on the undeserving.  The unacceptable.  Those who shouldn’t be invited…God’s grace is not a response to what men do.  God’s grace is a divine initiative which is totally unconnected to a person’s merit.  And not only is the grace of God an initiative but a radical one that most would consider outlandish if not mad” (Diamonds in the Dust, p. 355)

This is why Paul reminds us:

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God (Ephesians 2:8)

and

He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy (Titus 3:5).

We too easily slip into complacency, overlooking the glory of the gift He’s given, assuming that we deserve it or somehow our “goodness” merits the affection He bestows.

But we’re the unworthy ones feasting at the banquet table.

And it’s all because of His mercy.  It’s all a matter of grace.  I’m determined to remember that today and to give thanks.

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

More Than Snapshot Faith

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Originally published 10/21/2012

“Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight”
(1 Peter 3:4)

Today is picture day at school and I may need a vacation to recover.

The aftermath of this morning’s preparation is like an explosion in a boutique.  I returned to the house after waving goodbye to my daughters on the school bus and surveyed the damage.

Headbands, combs, clips and ribbon left a trail from the bedroom to the kitchen and the living room.

Pajama bottoms and tops and rejected dresses were strewn across every piece of furniture in sight.

A pile of not-good-enough shoes sat beside one dresser and a stack of pink and white stockings next to the other.

The morning’s activities had tired me out.  Even though we had planned their outfits for a week and carefully laid out their chosen wardrobe the night before, the morning had still been crazy with changed minds, fresh inspiration, and forgotten items.

And then there was the meltdown over the headband.  It involved many tears, angst, stubbornness, threats of punishment and varying opinions about the definition of “matching.”

I imagine my house this morning looks a little like King Xerxes’ court appeared as he searched for a second wife.  It was the biggest beauty pageant of all time and after 12 months of preparation (“six months with oil of myrrh, and six months with perfumes and preparations for beautifying women”), it all came down to one night (Esther 2:12).  One chance to knock the socks off the king and be chosen as his bride.

Yet, Esther was not dependent on beauty treatments, over-the-top jewelry, and exotic perfumes.  Hers was the beauty of consistent character and long-term loveliness of the heart and so she found favor with the king and became queen of the Persian empire.

Like the other women in this great Persian beauty pageant, we Christians sometimes focus too much on dressing up and dousing ourselves with perfume.  Our emphasis is often on the “picture days” of the Christian walk, on the posing, the practiced smile, the activity, the special occasions.

But our faith isn’t about snapshots.

We don’t prep ourselves for five minutes in front of a camera.  Did we greet everyone with joy on Sunday morning?  Did we say the right things in Sunday school?  Did we wear the right clothes?  Did we know the words to the songs and nod our heads at appropriate points in the sermon?

Our heavenly king isn’t making judgments about our beauty based on one night’s impression. That means mistakes don’t determine the rest of our lives.  If you’ve blown it this morning with your kids, made some bad choices, or messed up how you handled that situation, God’s grace provides you with restoration, renewed mercy and the fresh start of a new day. 

That’s why Moses is about more than his disobedience when bringing water from a rock (Numbers 20).  It’s why David’s ministry didn’t end with adultery and murder or why Peter wasn’t cast off forever after denying Christ.

It also means the moments of triumph don’t set us up on permanent religious pedestals.  God isn’t deceived by the external beauty treatments we apply.  Peter wrote, “Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight” (1 Peter 3:4).

The beauty of our faith isn’t determined by those extraordinary seasons of spiritual victory, crisis or sin.  God is far more interested in the daily wardrobe of our soul and what happens when the cameras aren’t turned in our direction.

Oswald Chambers wrote:

“it does require the supernatural grace of God to live twenty-four house of every day as a saint, going through drudgery, and living an ordinary, unnoticed, and ignored existence as a disciple of Jesus.  It is ingrained in us that we have to do exceptional things for God—but we do not.  We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things of life, and holy on the ordinary streets, among ordinary people.”

My oldest daughter’s goal for picture day was to look just like a real princess.  My middle girl wanted to be “as cute as can be.”  And they succeeded. This one picture, though, won’t make them beautiful or ugly, cute or goofy.  They are always lovely and always loved.

It’s the same with us.  What’s far more important than how we look in a posed portrait is the ordinary, unnoticed, unexceptional holiness that we live out day after daily day. 

It’s the praying in the prayer closet, the doing dishes and washing clothes for your family.  It’s the ministry to a friend and your faithful, hard work at your job.  It’s responding with kindness and having patience with your spouse.  It’s putting the mistakes of the past behind you and it’s obeying God today with a cheerful heart.

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

I Want More

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I wanted to walk.

I needed to do other things.

In the 40 minutes between the “Amen” at the end of prayer group and the moment I had to pick up my little one from preschool, I should have been reading, prepping, writing, practicing, answering and completing.

I did, after all, have a to-do list to follow!  Things to check off!  Tasks to accomplish!

Still, I wanted to walk.

It was a warm day, the kind of slightly humid warm of a morning before an afternoon storm.  The clouds hadn’t yet blocked the sun and the cooling wind cut through the sticky heat, carrying scents of fall.

It was lovely.

So, down the Main Street of our town I strolled, wearing ballet flats instead of walking shoes—a reminder of the whimsicality of the moment.

I passed houses with mums dotting the gardens and azaleas in final bloom along the path and business with window displays of colored leaves and pumpkins.

At first, I thought about that dreaded list, the tasks I was leaving undone.  I was problem-solving and planning and mentally re-arranging my day.

But then I noticed the sound of the breeze, how the wind tossing about the leaves in the trees sang a constant hum.

And I saw the acorns scattered along the path and piled into the grass, the wind’s gift to squirrels looking for easy pickings.

And I watched as the clouds didn’t just mosey almost imperceptibly across the sky.  No, they were running and dancing past my eyes, pushed along by the breeze.

My walk was about finding more.

But those times never last forever.  I too quickly returned to the schedule and the to-do list, still wishing for more of something undefinable, indescribable, and impossible to cram into a word from a dictionary.

We talk a lot about what it means to desire more in life.

We say we’ve all been designed with a God-shaped hole.  While we try to fill that void with stuff and with sin, relationships and success, it’s only God who can ever satisfy.  Everything else results in a bottomless pit of emptiness.

That’s true.

And we talk about what it means as Christians to long for more.

How we need to put aside the busyness of religion and pursue relationship with Jesus.  How we must shun the sin that prevents intimacy with God.  And until He’s fully Lord of our lives and we’re walking with Him closely, not just day by day, but moment by moment, we’ll always feel poured out and never filled.

That’s true, too.

We sang it in worship this Sunday morning, “All of You is more than enough for all of me, for every thirst and every need.  You satisfy me with Your love.”

So, what’s wrong with me?  Why, after all of that, can I still feel the longing?

Not for more money or possessions, fame or success, love or attention.

For more Jesus.

So often our typical lessons on this issue follow the same trite pattern.

You want more.
You get rid of sin.
You draw closer to God.
You feel better.
Amen.

Like that’s as far as it goes.

Is God enough for us, enough to fully satisfy the deepest, most cavernous longing of our heart and souls?

Yes, He absolutely is.

Do sin and busyness choke us and keep us from being satisfied in Christ?

Yes, they absolutely do.

But even then, don’t you feel it–the insatiable groaning in your soul for something more than we can ever find in the here and now of life on earth?

C.S. Lewis wrote:

“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world” (Mere Christianity)

This incessant longing, even in the moments of greatest intimacy with Christ, even on quiet walks with Jesus on lovely fall days, doesn’t mean God isn’t enough.

It just means that we were:

“made for eternity, for glory, and as long as your feet are here on this earth, you will experience a glory ache that only heaven can fully satisfy”  (Sharon Jaynes, A Sudden Glory: God’s Lavish Response to Your Ache for Something More, p. 192).

God designed us not for this life, but for the ever after life with Him.  Ecclesiastes tells us: “He has also set eternity in the human heart” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

When we see Jesus face to face and the physical realities of this world, the death and sin about us, the crushing grind of the daily, when all that is gone and it’s just our Savior and us and it’s forever . . . then we will be satisfied, fully drenched and totally filled.

Until then, we bring our longing for more to Jesus and let Him whisper to us about heaven and of what awaits us there.

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

Weekend Walk: A Wayward Cat

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We have a wayward cat.

He started dashing out the door for periodic jaunts around the neighborhood long ago.  Whenever we found him crouched in the woods with his bright eyes shining back at us, he’d run into the house and hide for an hour or two under the bed.

Those experiences in the wild scared him to pieces.

Still, he ran away again.  And again.  Today’s adventure is the longest he’s had.  Escaping this afternoon, he’s still not home and it’s long past his bedtime as I write this.

We can never understand why he leaves.  He’s clearly terrified of whatever is out there in the wild.  He’s clearly spoiled here in our home.

And yet he runs.

A man once told me that once a cat experiences the smallest bit of life in the wild, you can never successfully keep him indoors again.

It made me wonder if the prodigal ever thought about running away again after he’d returned to life on the farm and celebrated his homecoming.

When Jesus told the woman, “Go and sin no more,” I wonder if it was as simple as that (John 8:11).  Did her memory of extravagant grace sustain her?  Was it as simple as walking away or did she have to fight for change, falter, repent, and run to Christ again and again?

Paul described exactly this struggle in Romans 7.  He did what he didn’t want to do.  He didn’t do what he knew he should do.  This is the continual battle with our flesh.

Like the hymn writer said, we’re “prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.”

Why do we wander?  Why do we dash out the door at the slightest opportunity and leave the safety and provision of God’s care?  Why risk treacherous territory rather than rest in His love?

After all, as soon as our cat did return home (at 4:00 a.m.) he ran in from the rain to our dry house and was greeted with a can of tuna fish.  You’d think he would understand that home is a better place to be than gallivanting around the woods in the rain sans tuna.

Paul made our choice clear in this same way and that’s my verse to meditate on this week:

“The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace” (Romans 8:6).

You’d think given the choice between death on the one hand and life and peace on the other, this decision would be a no-brainer.  Unfortunately, though, we slip into flesh-thinking so easily—-choosing to dwell on worry and anxiety, jealousy, fear, anger, bitterness, selfishness, greed, and more—everything that leads to death.

This week, let’s focus on having a Spirit-governed mind.  We must choose not to let our thoughts run wild into flesh territory.  We must choose if we want life and peace.

How do you take control of your thought-life?

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.

Weekend Walk, 08/04/2012: Under the Olympic Lens

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I know many of you probably complained about Olympics spoilers this year.  You already know by early afternoon who won the gold medal, but the official television coverage doesn’t begin until after dinner.  It’s pretty hard to be surprised by the results and maybe you hate that.

Not me.  I purposely look up the competitions to find out who won before I dare sit down to watch the actual sport.  It helps me mentally and emotionally prepare to relax and enjoy or fret and face disappointment.

Thus, I knew in advance for the women’s team gymnastics competition who would win.  And I knew which of the girls bounced on their landings or wobbled on the balance beam.

With all of that tension and stress out of the way, I started to enjoy the show, until I noticed the cameramen.

After flipping and twisting and flying into the air, every gymnastics competitor hopped down off the mats and hugged each of her teammates and her coach, trying to act reasonably normal despite the fact that massive cameras with lenses the size of my head were no more than a foot or two from her face.

The photographers were so intrusive.  None of the girls had even one second post-competition to themselves to recover or hide or be herself.

When she’s smiling and high-fiving after a job well done, that’s not so bad.

But when you’ve made a massive mistake that could cost you and your team the medal you’ve trained for most of your life, well, that’s horrifying to me.  Instead of cheering on the gymnasts, I found myself mentally screaming at the cameramen.

“Go away.  Give her some space, will ya?  Good grief, she’s a 16-year-old child who just needs a few minutes to get over a huge life disappointment.  Would it hurt you to take pictures somewhere else for a while and give her some privacy?”

Then the commentators would drone on and on about what she did wrong, how she angled this incorrectly or spun too far or fell off balance here.  They had diagrams and replays and slow-motion analysis.

People have a way of never forgetting our mistakes or perpetually defining us by our errors.

Yet, God always offers forgiveness to a truly repentant heart.

It’s beyond our understanding, then, that our omniscient God, who knows every darkest secret of our mind and heart, can push our mistakes and sins out of His memory.  This week, I’m meditating on passage all about this absolutely amazing grace:

The Lord is compassionate and gracious,
    slow to anger, abounding in love.
He will not always accuse,
    nor will he harbor his anger forever;
 he does not treat us as our sins deserve
    or repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
    so great is his love for those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
    so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
(Psalm 103:8-12).

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.

Don’t Leave Me

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She doesn’t want to be left behind.

My older daughters and I have rehearsals almost every night now for their upcoming big performance in a community theater show.

My youngest little one, though, could stay at home with Daddy, playing games, watching her favorite cartoons, reading books, and being tickled.  She could even snuggle into bed on time, a definite plus in my book.

She, however, is ever-watchful of signs that her sisters and I would leave without her.  Because I’m slightly neurotic, I start slowly packing bags and laying out clothes hours before we need to leave.

She sees me put their shoes by the door and shouts, “I wanna come wif you” and frantically hunts for her own sandals.

I assure her that our departure is still hours away.  But then she sees me pack the bag for the night and declares again, “I wanna come wif you!”  Then she clambers into my arms, snuggles down into my chest and whimpers, “Don’t leave me, Mommy.”

No way am I shutting the door on her now.  She’s absolutely coming with us.

We have a way, don’t we, of pleading with God just like that?  “Don’t leave me.  Don’t abandon me here.  Don’t forsake me.”

We needn’t worry.  He is, after all, Emmanuel, God With Us.  His desire for relationship with us motivated His journey to a Bethlehem stable and His trek to the cross.  Our God will never leave us nor forsake us (Hebrews 13:5).

Instead, we are the ones who leave.  We wander, we run away, we linger too long after He’s called us to move on.

We’re the one wayward sheep leaving the fold or the prodigal sprinting from home with a wad full of blessing.

Yet, not only does God neither leave us nor forsake us, Scripture tells us that Our Shepherd will “leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off” (Matthew 18:12).

So for those of you who are lost and afraid, far from the Shepherd, alone and missing the companionship of your flock, know that God is actively searching for you and will carry you home on His shoulders.

For the prodigals who eventually landed in a life of pig-slop and shame, know that your Heavenly Father is running toward you with joy when you choose to return.

Maybe you’re like me, though, who shamefacedly admits that parables of lost sheep and prodigals are sometimes more mysterious than comforting.

I’ve always pictured the 99 obedient sheep left behind so the Shepherd can traipse across the countryside hunting down the one disobedient sheep and I’ve thought, “that’s not fair.”  After all, He will “leave the ninety-nine on the hills” so He can look for the lost sheep.  Now we’re the ones left behind, missing out on the Shepherd’s affection and guidance.

And I’m more the grumpy brother than the prodigal, frustrated that while I’ve been responsibly laboring in the fields my brother’s been squandering on pleasure and extravagance.  That’s just not fair.

And I’m right. It’s not “fair,” of course, but that’s the beautiful thing about it.  The Gospel isn’t meant to be fair in the sense that we get what we deserve.

For all of us, prodigals and older brothers, runaway sheep and obedient followers, our story is that God heaped grace on us that we could never merit or earn.

In her book, God Loves Broken People: And Those Who Pretend They’re Not, Sheila Walsh reminds us that our God is an ever-present, omniscient shepherd, not one with earthly limitations on time and space.  While He’s passionately pursuing the runaway, He’s also actively caring for the 99 who still need his guidance and protection.

That’s our God, the Shepherd who cares attentively for all of us.

And maybe Tim Keller is right when he says that the story of the prodigal son isn’t really targeted at “‘wayward sinners’ but religious people who do everything the Bible requires.”

It’s the reminder that even when we don’t feel like we’ve run away, we can still be steeped in bad attitudes, misplaced motivations, judgment, and religious pride.  We’re so convinced of our own “merit,” we’ve forgotten how extravagant God’s grace is for us—and how others have need of such grace.

After all, if we truly remembered that, we’d be helping to hang the streamers for the prodigal’s Welcome Home party.  And we’d be overjoyed to see the wayward sheep carried home again.  That’s because at some point, God has pursued, carried and rejoiced over all of us.

That’s His passion and heart—to be with all of us without fail or interruption.  If that’s our God’s heart, it should be what pushes blood through our veins, as well: the desire that every seeker is found, every wanderer recovered, and every child brought home.

Caedmon’s Call sang these lyrics in Long Line of Leavers.  They are on my mind today.

I come from a long line of leavers
Out of the garden gate with an apple in their hands
I expect and I believe
You’re gonna run out of love
You’re gonna give me the shove
‘Cause that’s the thing that lovers do
Then there’s you

You’re the only one
Who knows my secrets
You’re the only one
Still you’re the only one
Who never leaves
And I wake up to this mystery

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

The Big Clean

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Originally posted as Quiet Time With a Mop and a Bucket, Lesson 1
on June 6, 2011

Today, I did the “Big Clean.”  Some of you may wash behind your refrigerator and stove every time you sweep the kitchen floor, but since that doesn’t happen here at my house, I occasionally have to do this super scrub-down.  

Normally, I would sit down at this computer to write and share with you from my time spent studying the Bible.

But, today, I have primarily spent my quiet time with a scrub brush in hand, squeezing into corners on my hands and knees and sponging up the bucket of water that my baby girl has spilled onto the floor while “helping.”

I’ve cleaned and prayed, cleaned and thought, cleaned and worshiped, and this is what I have brought to our time together today—-lessons from a quiet time with a bucket and mop.

Lesson 1: You Are Not the Only One

I walked into my daughters’ room and spotted a tiny blob of jelly on one of her dresser drawers (was that jelly or some other mystery purple substance?).

I washed all the walls down in my home with a wet rag and felt mystified by the unidentifiable splatters.  It could be a game show—Name That Mess!  Is it cat hair, dust, marker, crayon, pencil, food, or drink?

I rescued a dozen stuffed animals from the prison under my daughters’ bed, collected up about 20 missing hair clips and ponytail holders and returned five books to their appropriate shelves.

And I thought, “I’m the only one.”

That’s right—the only woman whose kids leave behind remnants of food and sticky fingerprints as they move from room to room in the house.  I’m the only one who has a bag of socks to be matched and paired.  I’m the only one who has dirty baseboards and mystery marks on the walls.

I’m the only one.  And if every other woman keeps her home spotless and I do not, that makes me a failure.

But then the epiphany moment—what if I think I’m the only one because I only see the homes of others after they’ve just cleaned and not while they are still covered in the messyness of family life?

After all, if someone visited my home right this second (before my children have a chance to make more mess), they’d think, “She has it all together.  She does all of these things and keeps her home spotless.  I’m a failure for not being like her.”

Yet, if someone visited me this morning before I had washed the jelly off the dresser (yes, I definitely think  it must have been jelly), they would be thinking, “She’s a mess.  I’m a mess.  That means I’m normal.  I’m not the only one.  Other people don’t have it all together while I struggle with the daily juggling of life.  We’re all imperfect together.”

And they’d be right.

In life, we have a tendency only to share with people the areas of our heart, mind, experience and attitudes that have been through the “Big Clean.”  So, it’s easy for us all to look outwardly perfect and yet inside be feeling like a disastrous mess.

This is one of the things I love about the apostle Paul, though: his willingness to share from his struggles as much as from his strengths.  He wrote:

Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.  Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.  But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.   That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.  (2 Corinthians 12:7-10).

Paul told others that he had problems, that he wasn’t perfect, that he had been the chief of sinners and that it was only God’s grace that saved him and now allowed him to preach the gospel to those who had never heard it.

More than that, he boasted in his weakness because it allowed God to shine through. 

He let people see his life in the messy places so that they could marvel at God’s grace and rejoice in the fellowship of journeying to Christ together.  That’s one of the greatest encouragements we can give one another, the message that we’re not alone, but that we all are in need of Christ’s redemptive and purifying work.

Other lessons from Quiet Time with a Mop and a Bucket:

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

Have Mess, Need Mercy

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“But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:
 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness”
Lamentations 3:21, 22

We all have mess.  I surely do.

When I was a young girl, my mom handed me the book, Old Yeller, and told me, “you’re going to cry when you read this.”

I didn’t.  It was a spiteful hardness, the determination that no matter how intensely sad the story became, I wouldn’t cry simply because she said I would.

This hasn’t changed much over time.  I can generally keep an open mind until someone tells me, “You WILL, you WON’T you CAN’T, you MUST, you HAVE to . . . ”  Anything that pushes me into a corner receives a (sometimes unwarranted) push back.

I have other stuff, too.  Like the fact that I ALWAYS get lost and the directions that make so much sense to everyone else on the planet become a jumbled mass of confusion to me.

I have an organized mind that sees the world in a perpetual outline with points I, II and II and subpoints A, B, and C, but I desperately need a personal secretary to keep me from losing papers and to clean through my desk and help me remember where I put my keys, the library book, the document, the super important thing that I absolutely cannot lose but have managed to misplace.

It doesn’t end there.  I’m a people-pleaser in daily need of encouragement and too easily crushed by constructive criticism.  I’m not always patient with failure, especially in myself, and even sometimes with my kids.  I have a problem with jealousy, not so much for “stuff,” but maybe for success or impact.

There’s more.  The longer I sit here typing away, the more mess I’ll probably discover.

And while in any and all of these areas God has been at work, digging out junk, sometimes with a gentle gloved hand and sometimes with a pick-axe, still there is mess.  There are days where it’s a little overwhelming. Or maybe a lot.

When my house is too disorderly, I can’t think, I can’t concentrate, my stress level rises.  It’s the same with my heart when I see the junk drawers overflowing or discover trash hiding in corners that I hadn’t noticed before.

How is there any room left for what is good and pure and lovely? 
How is there any possibility of inviting God in amongst junk? 
How can anyone feel welcomed and loved into this place of distracting trash?

Once when she was out driving, Ruth Graham noticed that a stretch of highway that had undergone road work for far too long was finally finished and reopened.  They had even posted a sign: “End of Construction.  Thanks for Your Patience.”

She wanted that message to be on her tombstone, a reminder that it’s only in heaven, at the feet of God and clothed in the forgiveness of Christ, that construction on our hearts and minds will be complete.

Until then, we need people–and God–to be patient with us.  Yes, we even need to be a little patient with ourselves.

God is able to transform us and make us new as long as we give over sin, faults, idols, foibles, weakness and failures to Him.  This is part of our salvation story, not a one-time dip in the cleansing blood of Christ’s sacrifice.  It’s the journey of our faith, the sanctification or making holy over time.

And it does take time.

This is what Paul promises, “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6 ESV).

In the meantime, we have grace, precious grace, and the reminder that our mess is never too heavy to bring to God.

My own efforts are little more than attempts at self-control, self-direction, self-justification, self-perfection, self-reliance and self-confidence.

Then, SELF just becomes part of the mess that we lug to the feet of Jesus.

Ultimately, our own efforts fail.  Giving up completely hinders our relationship with God.  Wallowing in self-loathing means we reject His grace as insufficient to cover our sin.

All that’s left is to bring our mess to God and rejoice in His mercy.  Like the woman who poured out her tears and expensive perfume on Jesus’ feet, we find ourselves moved to passionate worship of and service for a God who has forgiven our many sins (Luke 7:47).

Paul wrote, “I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God” ( Romans 12:1).

We aren’t holy and pleasing sacrifices to God because we’re finished, perfected, construction complete.

Instead, we offer ourselves up, mess and all,  “in view of God’s mercy.”

His grace covers us, cleanses us and, in His compassion, He transforms us.  He’s big enough and gracious enough to tackle our mess until the day He decides that construction is complete and He takes us home.

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.

Catching Fireflies on a Summer’s Night

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“For one who has died has been set free from sin.”
Romans 6:7

It’s what summer looks like to me.

Stepping out into the slightest hint of coolness in the final minutes of a hot summer’s day, we carry an empty Mason jar with a foil lid folded down over the edges of the glass.  The sun drifts down and the light dims so that we can see the fireflies at play.

Last night, I called them “lightning bugs” like we did as kids, and my daughter scrunched up her nose in confusion.

Lightning bugs.  Fireflies.  It’s the freedom of summer.  We stay up past bedtime and run around the yard swinging our arms and cupping our hands trying to catch one.  Unfortunately, I think we’ve scared off the fireflies in our particular area.  They hear us coming and taunt us by flying just a little too high and just a little too far into the woods.

Still, we manage to catch a few.  For those daughters who don’t succeed in the hunt, we gently ease a bug into their hand and they giggle because it tickles, of course.  Then we drop the firefly softly into the Mason jar and deftly replace the foil lid so none escape.

On TV, whenever you see a jar of fireflies, it’s lit up, a natural lantern for the evening jaunt.

But I haven’t seen this.  Last night as I watched the few captives in our jar, they remained dark.  They didn’t expend any energy for light.  Instead, their every effort remained focused on escape.  Most of them immediately scaled the jar and sat at the top, right up against the foil, just waiting for me to open the lid again so they could fly to freedom.

Usually, we manage to defeat their various tactics and keep them in the jar until the end of the night when one daughter whines because she didn’t catch one and another daughter begs to catch just one more.  Then they all ask if we can just keep them overnight or for an hour or just a few minutes.

Pleeeeease?   Pretty please?

But I’m sympathetic to the plight of our captives.  So, before we trudge inside we lift up the foil lid and let loose the fireflies.  They jump into the air and without hesitation light up—probably sending out a warning that predators are on the move.

Whatever their message, freedom helps them shine.

Their freedom comes at little cost to them really.  They’ve made attempts at escape, but most have failed.  Ultimately, their freedom flight simply requires me to lift the foil beneath my fingers.

Our freedom, however, is costly.  Physically, most of us receive the gift of freedom because of the sacrifice of others.  I read this week that Thornton Wilder, the famed American playwright and novelist, fought in both WWI and WWII.  People like him paid the price for people like us.

In the same way, our spiritual freedom carries a high price tag, one we could never pay.  Instead, we are the recipient of freedom because of another’s sacrifice.

Paul tells us:

“For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1).

Freedom is God’s design for us.  It has always been His intention and plan and Christ willingly paid the costly price on our behalf.

A girl in my online Bible study group reminded me of this verse:  “…God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him” (Acts 10:38 ESV).

Jesus is a freedom-giver, a defeater of oppression and freer of captives.

But Paul charges us with a task, as well. Christ offered us freedom and now it is our job to “stand firm” and refuse to submit to slavery again.

It seems silly, but we often choose prison over the freedom Christ offers.  We sit in the bottom of our Mason jar, unwilling to fly and light up the night.  Perhaps we want to do it on our own, scale the glass, escape the lid.  Perhaps the night air is too frightening and the jar too comfortable because it’s what we know.

Do you do this?

If anxiety is your jail, do you rebuild the prison walls by wallowing in fear, allowing your mind to travel where it shouldn’t, looking up information that you know will disturb you, inciting emotions and then letting them run wild?

When the rigors of legalism and the chains of people-pleasing threaten to oppress you, do you submit–check the boxes, follow the crowd, follow expectations, try not to rock the boat, don’t do anything crazy or radical?

If shame holds you captive, do you allow Satan to throw your past in your face, to call you names, to cover your eyes so you can’t see the totally loved, totally forgiven person Christ has made you?

God never meant for you to live oppressed. 
So, now that He’s offered you freedom . . . live free by living in truth (John 8:32).

Combat lies with the Word.
Feed on a diet of Scripture so that doubts and Satan’s schemes starve.
Be alert to the first sign of shackles and chains as Satan, the world, and even your old habits try to sneak them onto your wrists and feet.

Freedom is Christ’s gift to you, so refuse to accept captivity any longer.  He’s called you to shine and to fly and to share the message of sweet, sweet freedom with other prisoners.

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.