Tag: Scripture

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Rest and Retreat

I just love a good retreat. Give me a clear schedule and nature to explore, and I’m there. But it hasn’t always been easy to experience real, restorative rest, whether on retreat or otherwise. Over the past three years, God has been undoing a lifetime of beliefs that kept me bound to achievement, productivity, and performance at all costs, rest included. For years, I would chase after rest, catching a glimpse here or there, but ultimately feeling more tired than before.

I would work, focus on work, work some more, and sacrifice sleep, day after day. Then, I’d go on a retreat to try to rest. Needless to say, that set me up for repeated disappointment. I had unknowingly trained myself not to rest. I knew enough to go on a retreat, but with no idea how to really rest. I learned the spiritual practices. Meditation, centering prayer, mindfulness practices, I mastered them all, but nothing I did could override my training. My thoughts would often be racing as if I was handling an imminent work project. I nodded along to discussions about winding down, unplugging, and relaxing, but none of those things seemed to “work” long term. I thought this was fairly normal.

2024 is the year things came to a head for me. I went on a weekend-long retreat, but even though the people, the setting, and everything about it couldn’t have been more idyllic, I spent the entire weekend in absolute misery. I walked in with a racing mind and pounding heart, and they would not slow down. Watching the fire in the fireplace, hearing calming music, even sleeping felt restless. For just a few precious seconds on the first full day, I was miraculously able to focus on nature during a walk instead of the storm inside, only to have my attention shift back again. Psalm 23 tells us that the Lord is the One thing that restores our souls, “He restores my soul. . . .” (Psalm 23:3a). When we can’t rest as we were intended to from the Beginning, no practices or tools have the healing power to restore us; we need God Himself for that.

As I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, we are all made in God’s image. God Himself rested after He worked, “And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done” (Genesis 2:2). We too are intended to rest from our work. God, in His loving care, even made the Sabbath, a holy day of rest, for us; “but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy” (Genesis 20:10-11). Our rest is to be modeled after God’s own rest, and not only that, God blesses our rest! When we fail to rest, we can sorely miss out.

Rest is always just on the other side of surrender to Christ. It took months of re-training my thoughts, questioning beliefs, learning to let go, learning to really trust God, and learning not to let assumptions about others’ perceptions dictate my decisions. Slowly, I started to experience real rest again. My soul was being restored as much as I allowed God access to my heart, and that took time. Once surrender to Jesus became a regular practice in my life, rest finally didn’t seem so difficult anymore.

Now I can confidently say that God provides what we need, because I’ve experienced it for myself. There were no answers for me except for God’s ability and power to intervene on my behalf. He provides for us to rest, “so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God” (1 Corinthians 2:5). We don’t have to be afraid to let go of control; God is for us! Whether you struggle to rest like I did or not, we can all trust in God that by His power He is faithful to take care of us. We just need to let Him into our hearts; He is the Restorer of souls. Amen.

“So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his” (Hebrews 4:9-10).

For further reading, see Hebrews 3-4.

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Strength for Work

It seems that the understanding of work is in a paradigm-shifting transition. Jobs are being cut by the thousands, and human “usefulness” in light of technological advances (or mutations) is somehow being questioned. Despite work being misused through history and its ties to human exploitation, Scripture tells us that doing good work (of many kinds) is an important part of our calling on earth as human beings (eg: Genesis 2:15; 3:23, Matthew 28:19, Ephesians 2:10). Work was intended to be a good thing, a God-given mantle of purpose that contributes to our health and the health of the earth.

Work is not meant to be done just for the sake of working, however; our work is meant to be done with a reliance on God’s Presence. Psalm 105 says, “Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his presence continually!” (Psalm 105:4). The Lord’s Presence provides us with strength to do the work we are called to do. His Presence makes work, and the moment-by-moment experience of our lives, more enjoyably worship-filled and more likely to be a blessing to others.

There was a point in my life when my desire to work seemed to have been stolen. I spent a long time doing the wrong type of work; work that didn’t align with my purpose. Work isn’t bad or evil in and of itself, but it can be used by the enemy to kill, steal, and destroy us and our lives if we aren’t aligned with the work God has for us or open to receive the strength He wants to give us for accomplishing that work. Lacking a desire to work is a sure sign that something is wrong; Proverbs says, “A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich” (Proverbs 10:4). As an aside, being “rich” or wealthy in the context of Proverbs 10:4 means that there was enough to eat, and a place to live securely; not to be misunderstood with a modern Western world reading of the word “rich.” All rooted in the fear of God, and honoring relationship with Him, God gives us vitality and energy (“diligence”) to provide for our material needs. Fearing God gives us the capacity to work. When we fear God, we no longer have any need to fear that our livelihoods will be killed, stolen, or destroyed.

All believers are called to do eternal work. Good, eternal work comes out of genuine faith and earnest obedience to Jesus. It is often work that has glorious implications for the eternal human soul. This work can be in many forms, including speaking Truth in love, showing kindness, worshipping God, and preaching and teaching Scripture. We are promised in Scripture that good, eternal work is rewarded by God (eg: Job 34:11, Psalm 28:4, Jeremiah 31:16).

We are not to rely on our own capacity to accomplish eternal work; we must seek God’s help. “Oh grant us help against the foe, for vain is the salvation of man! With God we shall do valiantly; it is he who will tread down our foes” (Psalm 60:11-12; Psalm 108:12-13). It is truly amazing how God makes the privilege of eternal work possible and available to us human beings, as we look to Him for help through it all.

Paul is a great example of someone who dedicated himself to doing eternal work. He wrote, “I urge you, then, be imitators of me” (1 Corinthians 4:16). Paul was a tentmaker, and worked an honest trade to support himself and his ministry (Acts 18:3). God empowered Paul to work for his living even during his travels in ministry. Pauls’ faithfulness and humility are to be imitated by us, as characteristics empowered by the Holy Spirit in him, “For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power” (1 Corinthians 4:20). God’s kingdom is eternal. Paul was given amazing power from the Holy Spirit to minister and preach the Gospel in conditions many of us can’t even begin to understand. As we too are given power from the same Holy Spirit, may we have confidence that God will give us the industriousness and vitality to do the good, eternal work God has for us too!

In a discussion of work I feel it is important to state that we are far more valuable than the work that we do, and our core identity is not found in our work; our True identity is in Jesus alone. Work may indeed be part of how we identify ourselves to others in this life, but who we are as living souls has nothing to do with us; it has everything to do with what Jesus did for us. Scripture tells us that we are holy and precious because God’s Spirit dwells in us: “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16).

Work and life seem to have a mysteriously close connection. To stop working often means to stop living. God made us to enjoy relationship and life, and for doing good work. God empowers us to accomplish purposed work that lasts throughout all of eternity in close partnership with Him and His Presence. God Himself is always working, and He longs to work with us! When we do good work, we fulfill our Father’s purpose for us, and it brings more life and blessing.

May we all find the good work God has called us to, worshiping, witnessing, and pointing others to Jesus, and may the work of our hands bless the Lord! Amen.

“Thus says the Lord: ‘Keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears, for there is a reward for your work, declares the Lord, and they shall come back from the land of the enemy‘” (Jeremiah 31:16).

“I will sing to the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have being” (Psalm 104:33).

“each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done” (1 Corinthians 3:13).

“Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58).

Thank you for spending some of your time journeying with me. If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to Life with the King, and follow the Facebook page; it truly helps me continue writing this blog. Grace and peace.

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Made in God’s Image

After God created earth and sky, plants and animals, He did something incredibly loving; He created human beings. “Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:26-27). We have the very image of God in our DNA, designed to be uniquely different from and to shepherd (rule) all the other creatures on earth. We were meant to rule according to His standard of morality for the good of all living things (Psalm 112). We were designed to walk in His image.

Walking in God’s image was the only way of life human beings were meant for. But today, and since sin entered the world and the human heart, there has been a struggle for us to reflect His characteristics, and our hearts became prone to wandering away from God and His Ways. In light of this, what does it look like for us to genuinely reflect God’s image in our character?

God’s characteristics (for more see the Characteristics of God series) include being just and generous, righteous, and moral (Psalm 112). He generously gave us Jesus, His Son, and brilliantly, with justice through Jesus’ blood sacrifice, gave us redemption from sin and eternal life with Him. He also gave us the Holy Spirit when we believe in Jesus (1 Corinthians 12:13). In so doing, He restored our ability to walk in His image!

This doesn’t mean walking in His image is easy, even for those who have been saved by believing in Jesus. It takes choosing to take up our cross daily to follow Him, and losing our life (refusing to follow the sinful desires of the flesh) to follow the Way of Jesus (Luke 9:23-24), who is our perfect example of living according to God’s character and will. He is faithfully walking with us and empowering us to be faithful through the Holy Spirit (John 14:26). In Galatians 5, Paul writes, “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit (Galatians 5:24-25). We reflect God’s image by denying our flesh, choosing to live by the Spirit, as we believe and rely on the redemption and hope we have in Jesus. God longs for us and our character to genuinely reflect His image (Psalm 112). When we pray according to God’s will, we can be assured that He will answer our prayer (John 14:14).

An important caveat is that it is a privilege to be made in God’s image,  and something to treat with the utmost humility. It is not our right to play God. To do so is to walk in the flesh, which only prolongs suffering apart from the will of God. It is important to remember when talking about God’s image in us that we are not God; God is God, and we are not. 

The image of God is renewed in us by redemption through Jesus Christ. When we abide in Jesus, we have healing, restoration, and life, even in the midst of sin. When Jesus returns to earth, sin will be no more, and we will live in the beautiful way God intended at the Beginning. But, we will understand God’s love on a much deeper level, because we will know and have experienced the bondage to sin that He saved us from. We will understand the lengths He went to rescue and redeem us from it. This just increases our intimacy with God, which sin tried to prevent, but which God desires. Thankfully for us, God’s will always will be done.

Children are often thought of as looking like, or having the image of, their parents. The greatest privilege anyone can have is to be a child of God, to bear His image. And the amazing things is that He offers it to everyone freely, through Jesus Christ. Everyone bears His image, because He created all people, including you! Sin tragically separated us from God our Father. But Jesus, the Son of God, sacrificed Himself on our behalf, making a Way for us to be adopted back into the family of God (Ephesians 1:4-6). Jesus died to save us from the sin in our own hearts and from the sin of the world. He loves all those who were born to bear the image of His Father.  

May we joyously thank God for allowing us the Way to partake of His great love in the family of families, which we were made for, and where we will always belong. Amen.  

“Even in darkness light dawns for the upright, for those who are gracious and compassionate and righteous. Good will come to those who are generous and lend freely, who conduct their affairs with justice. Surely the righteous will never be shaken; they will be remembered forever. They will have no fear of bad news; their hearts are steadfast, trusting in the Lord” (Psalm 112:4-7).

Thank you for spending some of your time journeying with me. If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to Life with the King, and follow the Facebook page; it truly helps me continue writing this blog. Grace and peace.

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Unwavering Faith

I’m in the thick of reading the Psalms. There are 150 Psalms in the Bible, and at a surface-level reading, they could seem rather repetitive. Many of the same words, phrases, and sentiments show up, psalm after psalm. The more I study them, however, the more unique I find them to be. Psalm 88 recently caught my particular attention with a stunning display of encouraging faith I want to share today.

Psalm 88 is categorized as a lament, an earnest and urgent petition to God, from an individual’s point of view. In this mighty Psalm, the faith of choosing to continually cry out to God, pray to God, and call upon God, even in the depths of trouble—weakness, feeling distant from God, overwhelmed, being shunned, sorrow, affliction, suffering, and destruction—stood out to me. This distinct Psalm has no statement of confidence that God will bring deliverance or relief, as all the other Psalms have. Psalm 88 expresses the unwavering faith of the individual, as they simply come before the Lord in prayer, “Every day I call upon you, O Lord; I spread out my hands to you” (Psalm 88:9b). They pray faithfully, even as they are experiencing absolute misery, darkness, and sorrow day after day, to the point of feeling abandoned by God Himself; “O Lord, why do you cast my soul away? Why do you hide your face from me?” (Psalm 88:14). This psalm has a unique display of love for and trust of God, without confidence that He will change the singer’s circumstances.

When I realized the level of desperation the singer of this Psalm was in, the fact that they still expressed faith by seeking God in prayer using such connected and passionate language gave me pause. It is a beautiful example and reminder. There are occasions or seasons when we too may not feel or sense any sort of reply from God. We may feel abandoned by God, as expressed in Psalm 88; yet that doesn’t give us an excuse to stop acting on and praying in faith, even when we don’t see hope in sight. Continuously bringing our situation to God no matter how we may be feeling, as in this Psalm, shows incredible faith. God desires for us to have faith in Him and what He did for us (John 3:16, John 12:46, John 14:1, Acts 16:31). By including Psalms such as this one in Scripture, He has told us we won’t always feel connected, hope-filled, or happy. Feelings don’t surprise Him. They don’t change the reality: God set the foundation of steadfast love and faithfulness for us (Psalm 89); He paid the penalty for sin through Jesus; He has authority over all the things that seek to discourage us or steal our joy or destroy us. We are asked to believe and trust Him by faith, and not to give up believing, no matter how we feel or how dark things may become.

The depth of the faith shown in Psalm 88 goes deeper still, “You have put me in the depths of the pit, in the regions dark and deep. Your wrath lies heavy upon me, and you overwhelm me with all your waves” (Psalm 88:6-7). The singer attributes their difficult situation to God Himself. They don’t shy away from telling God how they feel as a result. They acknowledge that God has authority over the situation they are in, that He Himself allowed it, if not caused it, and that He also has the ability to get them out of it. Again, the Psalm makes it clear that the singer feels distant, shunned, and in increasing internal pain. Yet, they still express faith that God has control and that relief is in His hands.

Hearing God’s Word—the Truth—strengthens our faith. “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17); this is what Psalm 88 did for me. It was such an encouragement to see such gritty, unrelenting faith in the middle of the Psalms this week. Faith is fundamental to following Jesus. In the Word, we are commanded to believe in Jesus, “And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us” (1 John 3:23-24). Faith in God is so important to pleasing God and doing His will. I’m realizing that maybe faith is not as mysterious as it’s sometimes made out to be; faith comes by hearing the Truth, and it is a gift that God gives to all those who ask Him for it.

In Romans, Paul writes about the importance of believers doing what they do in faith, “For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin” (Romans 14:23b). Faith is foundational to walking in step with God, to walking in love, and abiding in Him.

May we continue to seek out and hear the Word and to pray for strong, unwavering faith as we endure until the very end. Amen.

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation” (Hebrews 1:1-2). 

“And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:6).

Thank you for spending some of your time journeying with me. If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to Life with the King, and follow the Facebook page; it truly helps me continue writing this blog. Grace and peace.

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Doing Good

In my last post, I wrote about the sea—water that God brought from disorder to order. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:1-2). After creating the light and the sky, God brought order to these waters: “And God said, ‘Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.’ And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good (Genesis 1:9-10). Bringing order from disorder was something that at the very Beginning, God Himself did and called good. Our God is God of order: “For God is not a God of disorder but of peace, as in all the meetings of God’s holy people” (1 Corinthians 14:33, NLT).

I’ve had the privilege of helping to bring more order to other people’s lives in the form of their writing, their homes, and their offices. Every time, I get the satisfaction of knowing that bringing order is doing some real good, because God called order good! There are many other things that God calls doing good: “Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause” (Isaiah 1:17). There have been times when helping to bring order in people’s spaces also became an act of fighting spiritual oppression in their lives. I do not take those moments lightly. It pleases God when we choose to lend the good gifts God has given us out of His great kindness to us, without expecting a return for ourselves. “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God” (Hebrews 13:16). When we do good, it points people to Him.

One thing that I have learned from studying the Bible that keeps coming back to me is that God is interested in the good of everyone. Good for the whole world, that’s what He wants and worked through Jesus to accomplish on the cross. He wants to see everyone benefit, not just a few. He’s in the business of mercy and salvation for the whole world, and that hasn’t changed. And He calls His followers to do the same: “See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone” (1 Thessalonians 5:15). Do good to everyone. What a convicting and powerful command!

May we all find the ways that God has gifted each one of us, and take heart to do the good that we were made to do for the benefit of everyone, according to His will. Amen.

“Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness” (Psalm 37:3).

“Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it” (Psalm 34:14).

“And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same” (Luke 6:33).

Thank you for spending some of your time journeying with me. If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to Life with the King, and follow the Facebook page; it truly helps me continue writing this blog. Grace and peace.

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Water, Waves, and Sea

There is just something special about the sea. Being by the seaside, or as we Marylanders call it, being “down the ocean,” can be a spiritual experience. The ocean I’m dreaming of stretches past the horizon line. It’s vast and holds both danger and beauty. It’s both wild and peaceful. Water has been associated with the Spirit of God since before the beginning, “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:2). The sea, or the ocean, is water which God Himself gathered together, “God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:10). I’ve been blessed to experience many contemplative and prayerful moments of wonder by the ocean. It has the ability to make a person feel very small and powerless, and yet very alive, and at the same time still, very connected to God. Being near something God has created, whether people or lakes or oceans has the capacity to help us understand or witness the Creator a little better.

We are in many ways powerless to fight or overpower the ocean. It is simply too powerful for us. There are many levels to the ocean, but today I’ll just reference the waves on the surface. Waves have been used as an analogy for the volatility of our own human emotions, even in the Bible. Jesus was the only one able to calm the waves of the sea: “And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’ And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. He said to them, ‘Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?’ And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?‘” (Mark 4:37-41).

Jesus stayed calm despite the seeming danger of the boat filling with water and the waves crashing in on them. With a simple command, Jesus had authority over the sea. In this example, I would argue that He also had authority over the fear that the others felt. Their emotions became heightened to a level matching the height of the crashing waves in fear of perishing. Yet Jesus said, “Why are you so afraid?”

Jesus asks us for faith in Him and His authority in the midst of the “waves” of emotions in our lives. He promises to be with us: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you” (Isaiah 43:2). No wave can overwhelm us when we have faith in Jesus.

Waves are also an analogy in Scripture for that which diverts us away from Truth. Paul wrote that it takes a mature faith in Christ to avoid being subject to these kinds of waves, “so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes” (Ephesians 4:14). If the well of our faith isn’t deep and grounded on solid foundation (perhaps, if you will, like that of the ocean floor), waves can knock us off course and readily expose our hearts to lies that try to kill, steal, and destroy us (John 10:10).

There is not much better to me than being by the ocean and feeling connected to the depth of meaning, the beauty of Creation, and the wonder of experiencing something so ancient yet so dynamic. God has revealed His character to us through so many ways, but one of my favorites is the ocean. Whether we have the opportunity to experience the ocean in this way or not, may we all find the refreshment, rest, and peace of God’s unfathomable love. May God strengthen our faith in Him as we discover the unique and personal ways He speaks directly to our hearts. Amen.

“Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” (Romans 11:33).

“Was it not you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep, who made the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to pass over?” (Isaiah 51:10).

Thank you for spending some of your time journeying with me. If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to Life with the King, and like & follow the Facebook page; it truly helps me continue writing this blog. Grace and peace.

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God’s Perfect Timing

“How long, O Lord?” (Psalm 13:1, Psalm 79:5, Psalm 89:46).

I’ve seen people close to me wait on the Lord. Have you? It’s an amazing thing to witness. When you know their hearts are longing and desiring something that just hasn’t come about, and instead of complaining or dwelling on it, they release it to God. Over and over again, every day. Instead of choosing to strategize, tap every earthly resource, forge connections that weren’t there before, they surrender to the Lord’s timing. Stories like this preach to my heart. Patience, one of the fruits of the Spirit, is something many of us need to rely on God for. Waiting indefinitely doesn’t come naturally to many people. Seeing the patience that comes from trusting the Lord’s timing is a sure sign of His work in their hearts.

I’ve also seen people rush ahead, making things happen for themselves. You can see this when you sense striving, strain, and difficulty to find opportunity. God’s Word repeatedly instructs us to wait on the Lord (Psalm 27:14, Psalm 37:7, 34). We choose for ourselves what we do with our limited time here; we can choose to wait on God’s timing, or we can choose to build the Babel of our own desires.

When we’re talking about ourselves, it’s very easy to miss the difference. We tend to be convinced that our own desires are good, that our desires are God’s will for us, our desires are there simply because they are supposed to be satisfied. So we push. We try to make things happen. I’ve done this myself and seen it over and over again with many others. It’s what the world and the culture is convinced is best for us to do. In a world that worships being self-made, we need to make it happen, right? Well, if you look at the history of God’s people, actually, not so much.

Abram and Sarai, for example. They wanted to have a child, and God promised them children. But Sarai was desperate to make it happen, and had her servant Hagar bear Abram’s child in her place when he was 86 years old. Instead of waiting on the Lord or trusting in the Lord’s timing to fulfill her God-given desire for a child, this was an act of striving that reached outside of God’s will. God’s will was always to give Abram and Sarai a child. Striving for that apart from God led to a very costly sin. God gave them new names, Abraham and Sarah, when, 14 years later, His perfect timing came to give them their son, Isaac. Isaac became a forefather to Jesus, through whom God desired to provide salvation for all nations, by His grace, including those descended from Hagar.

Saul, who later became Paul, provides another example in the Bible of pushing ahead, instead of earnestly listening and waiting on the Lord’s direction. Saul was a Jewish Pharisee, pushing to kill people based on what they believed, convinced he was doing the right thing in God’s eyes (Acts 7:58, 8:1&3). My guess is that he hadn’t asked God about whether it was right or not. Jesus Himself got Saul’s attention by blinding him and speaking audibly to him, saying that he would be told what to do (Acts 9:3-6). Saul didn’t know God’s will at all, even though he was convinced that he did, enough to approve of another soul’s murder! It is a risk to act based on anything but God’s direction.

God’s timing is often not what we would like or expect it to be. King David, the man after God’s own heart himself, wrote, “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” (Psalm 13:1). No matter how close we are to God, we are all bound by time. We all struggle to wait patiently for God. We all eventually become aware of the fact that our time on this earth quickly runs out. We expect God to operate in this way in our lives too.

But God operates very differently. He tells us nothing is impossible with Him (Luke 1:37). He tells us in His Word that there is abundantly more than we could ever ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20) in His plans for us. He tells us to trust Him and wait on Him. Who will we trust, our experience in the world, or God?

“And Elijah came near to all the people and said, “How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.” And the people did not answer him a word” (1 Kings 18:21). It all comes down to what we choose to believe about God (see Characteristics of God series).

Paul sums up the tension between following our own desires and following the Spirit, “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (Romans 7:15). Paul describes the struggle every person has of falling into sin even when actively trying not to sin. “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me” (Romans 7:18-20). Only Jesus Christ can provide deliverance from the sin that derails our actions (Romans 7:24-25).

It isn’t just failing to wait on the Lord that can cause us to stumble in our walk of obedience. Another kind of waiting can trip us up; when God tells us the time has come to take action, but we wait instead. We procrastinate, ignore responsibility, or simply run away. Waiting isn’t the right thing to do when God is calling us to act.

A famous example of that is the story of Jonah. God tells him to go to Nineveh, but he runs in the opposite direction instead (Jonah 1:2-3). It was another costly sin of disobedience, and yet in God’s grace, after three days in the belly of a whale, Jonah had another opportunity. He eventually went to Nineveh in obedience to God’s will (Jonah 3:2-3). Has God nudged you to move forward with something in your life, but instead of immediately carrying it out, you waited? Maybe you’re in that situation right now. He asks us to trust that His timing is perfect. But when we miss it, God in His grace can make a way, even when we’ve waited past His timing.

I have spent weeks, months, and years trying to make things happen on my own strength (for more on this, check out All About Trust). But there have been many things in my own life that God’s timing (not mine) was perfect for. The things I couldn’t control like getting jobs, finding churches, meeting friends—all had a divine timing that only required surrendering and receiving the gift. There was no striving or making-it-happen involved; these moments were pivotal to where my life went in that season, by God’s mercy. We may not be patient with God, but thankfully God is always, always patient with us. Halleluiah!

The more I learn to trust that God is in control, the easier it is to surrender the fear of missing something. The more we trust God, the more patient we can become, as we grow in our knowledge that God’s timing is always perfect. Amen.


“Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God” (Psalm 20:7).

“In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can flesh do to me?” (Psalm 56:4).

Thank you for spending some of your time journeying with me. If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to Life with the King, and like & follow the Facebook page; it truly helps me continue writing this blog. Grace and peace.

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God’s Presence in Prayer

Last week, I wrote about the Presence of God; today I want to share a bit about my first-hand experience of His Presence. Those of you who have been reading for a while know there was a time when I could not feel God’s Presence, and when I didn’t believe God was there at all.

I pray that what He’s brought me and been with me through is an encouragement to you in your own life with the King.

Desperate Prayer

Until something wakes us up to the reality that every day we are in desperate need of God, we may remain unaware of His constant Presence with us. Psalm 42 begins with a fervent desperation, “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?” (Psalm 42:1-2). In the throes of sleep deprivation, I recently came to that desperate place. I realized once again that I had no where else to turn to for help but God.

Are you desperate for God today? Scripture says, “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13). When I got to that desperate state, I knew that God was my only hope and was ready to seek Him in prayer once again, with all of my heart. I’ve been there many times in my life, yet every time, God surprises me with something new. This last time, as I prayed about my struggles surrounding sleep, He answered my prayer with an awareness of His power.

God’s Power

There is great power in God’s Presence. God’s power is bigger than, and can overcome any obstacle that, we may be facing. In His Presence in prayer, I was able to let God’s power into a situation that felt too complicated for me to work out, “For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power” (1 Corinthians 4:20). With my sleep issue, there was nothing more I could reason out, I simply needed to be delivered by God’s power to move forward instead of staying stuck. When we are desperate for change in our lives, we can allow God’s Kingdom to come through His power working in and through us.

I talked to God about the ways I felt stuck. I prayed and I prayed, pouring out my heart to God. I told Him everything I was thinking about, frustrated with, thankful to Him for, and still hoping for. I prayed of my desperation. Sometimes, years ago when I would pray, I didn’t feel heard or seen by God at all. That empty void feeling is part of why I turned away from faith back then. I wasn’t desperate because I didn’t understand who God is, and that we depend on Him for everything. Thankfully, I have come to trust and believe now that He never leaves or forsakes us (Deuteronomy 31:6 & 8, Joshua 1:5, Hebrews 13:5).

This time recently in prayer, His Presence was tangible to me in a way that is hard to describe. I had an alertness, and a sense that I wasn’t simply alone, talking to myself, but to God, and that He heard and fully understood me. I had an unusual clarity of thought about what my spirit was experiencing. God’s Presence brought a beautiful order, not only in the spirit, but also in language so that I could articulate it for myself, to where my heart needed alignment with God’s. Scripture encourages us to be “praying in the Holy Spirit” (Ephesians 6:18, Jude 1:20). In this fervent prayer, I was given the power from God to be aware of and express my heart to God. I was given peace, and also power to affect change according to His good plans and will. That power has continued. Praying in this way was an incredible experience, and one that we all can have when we turn our hearts to seek Him.

What became clear during this time of prayer was that God cared about what I was saying, even though He already knew it. He wanted to hear from me, just like He wants to hear from you. We will never be as understood by anyone as fully as we are by God. He already knows our whole story, and knows exactly what we mean, no matter what we say or how we say it. He has been present with us through it all, whether we’ve been aware of it or not. Being seen and heard by God is a gift He wants to give to us, and one that comes uniquely in intentional, fervent prayer. If you are desperate today, don’t miss out on His gifts for you! Cry out to Him and He will answer with His power and Presence. He has for me, over and over again. The Truth is that we all desperately need Him every day.

He is available always, listening and caring for us through it all. May heaven open as we open our hearts to God. Amen.

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope” (Romans 15:13).

Thank you for spending some of your time journeying with me. If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to Life with the King, and like & follow the Facebook page; it truly helps me continue writing this blog. Grace and peace.

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Grace for Sleep

How much does sleep impact your day-to-day life? Do you have to be intentional to get healthy sleep? For the majority of people living in Western culture, sleep is often talked about like a luxury, a commodity, or something to be envied. Sleep is a gift God gives (Psalm 127:2). It’s also been a huge struggle for me, as I wrote in Falling Awake. But today, I want to write a bit more about physical, literal sleep.

Have you ever experienced your eyes becoming heavy? All of a sudden, you can lose track of the conversation or tv show or song or task at hand, and just feel powerless to keep from falling asleep. As someone who has experienced insomnia for much of my life, this level of being tired is usually a welcomed state of being. However, there are times when being asleep is more than a little embarrassing, like with Peter, James, and John in the Garden of Gethsemane.

In both the Gospel of Matthew and Mark, we find the story of Jesus’ disciplines falling asleep in Gethsemane, after Jesus had told them to watch while He prayed: “And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping. And he said to Peter, ‘So, could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.’ Again, for the second time, he went away and prayed, ‘My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.’ And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. So, leaving them again, he went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words again. Then he came to the disciples and said to them, ‘Sleep and take your rest later on. See, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners‘” (Matthew 26:40-45). Jesus, even on the night He was being chased down for arrest, showed compassionate, loving grace toward the weakness of the flesh in his best friends.

He knew their spirits were willing to keep watch and pray, and their hearts were in the right place. However, their physical bodies could not keep up with their hearts and they, seemingly beyond their control, in weakness, “took their rest.” Paul wrote, “For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10). When we are weak and we surrender our weakness to Christ Jesus, in His great mystery He somehow becomes our strength.

In our weakness, we can surrender to be led by God, as a sheep to our Good Shepherd. The prophet Ezekiel used this analogy, “I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them in justice” (Ezekiel 34:16). Everything provided for the sheep is from their Shepherd.

It follows that rest and sleep are the gifts of God for us. Rest is built into the very Creation, darkness of night being a daily time for rest, and the slower seasons of plant productivity being a longer time for rest taken by the earth. In a culture of overwork and little sleep, it’s important to remember that the grace of God can be demonstrated to us by rest and sleep. If we aren’t paying attention, we may miss this facet of His grace for us.

I am not saying that trying to stay awake is always disobedience; it also can imply a great God-fearing desire or effort on the part of a person. King David said, “I will not enter my house or get into my bed, I will not give sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids, until I find a place for the Lord, a dwelling place for the Mighty One of Jacob” (Psalm 132:3-5). When our work is for the Lord and we’re within His will and purpose for us, He will give us the strength we need to stay awake to accomplish it if necessary. But those periods require discernment. Those periods are often only for a season. Rest is a need, and a gift God wants to give us as our trustworthy Shepherd; resting in Him, we experience His peace.

God the Father doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t need to! It is because of His work that we can rest: “He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade on your right hand.” (Psalm 121:3-5). That God is our keeper is such Good News! God shows us grace in every way, and one of them is to give us the assurance and rest of His strong Presence in our weakness.

I had a minor Peter, James, and John moment just this week. I fell asleep when I really needed to stay awake, and a domino effect of consequences followed. At first, I was upset with myself, but I soon realized God knew my heart, just like He knew that of His disciples’ that night in the Garden. He had already forgiven my weakness. I just needed to thank God for His understanding and let go to take the next step with Him.

While God made us all fearfully and wonderfully (Psalm 139:14), Jesus knew our weakness firsthand. Not only was He fully human, He saw how his best (human) friends couldn’t stay awake with Him. He knew then and knows now, we are jars of clay (2 Corinthians 4:17), not steel. “As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust” (Psalm 103:13-14). Even in Jesus’ most difficult moment of anguish in His life to that moment in the Garden of Gethsemane, He showed incredible grace for the fragility of our human flesh, and continues to show us His amazing grace for our weaknesses. Can I get an amen?

If you ever feel reluctant to give yourself grace like me, remember in Jesus’ grace, you are already forgiven. He knows you are human, and He knows your heart. Leave unforgiveness at the cross, and find rest in His presence and peace today.

“The Lord bless you and keep you;  the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace” (Numbers 6:24-26).

Thank you for spending some of your time journeying with me. If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to Life with the King, and like & follow the Facebook page; it truly helps me continue writing this blog. Grace and peace.

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Obedience to God’s Voice

I’ve been trying to hone in on hearing from God. I’m asking Him questions like, “What do You want me to do in the moment? Should I take a walk or should I read? Should I work or rest? Should I keep quiet or speak up?” After a lifetime of doing what I wanted on my own strength, and regretting most of those decisions, asking God before acting is both a necessity and big challenge. Doing things differently than I’ve always done them is never easy, but it’s worth the struggle, even though I mess up all the time. Just today, I realized I’d done the opposite of what I was supposed to, after making the wrong choice. It ended up causing consequences that set my day back. I realized in hindsight that my decision was disobedient to God’s will for me in that moment. He had told me what to do, I knew in my spirit what it was, but I didn’t act on it. Instead, I thought about it more, and waited, and slipped right into disobedience.

Obedience has a bad reputation in Western culture. We hear constant messages implying that we must listen, not to God or anyone else, but to ourselves; messages like: be a leader not a follower, be yourself, march to the beat of your own drum, do your own thing, live by your own truth. Not all of the sentiment is wrong or bad. But what the culture in this world fails to realize is that listening to our own hearts without the authority of Jesus (who also holds our True identity) is dangerous, because our hearts are prone to be sinful. Our hearts often simply want what they want, and rarely actually align with Jesus without being submitted to His authority. Our hearts, when unchecked, will eventually lead us into sin, every time. Sin leads to death and destruction (Romans 6:16). The obedience of our hearts to God’s will for us through Jesus is the only way to life and fruitfulness (John 3:16, John 10:9, Acts 4:11-12). Living in obedience to God is by far the best life possible for us.

Human beings were designed to obey God, but in the sinfulness of the heart, that obedience can be replaced by idolatry so that we obey, or are subject to the authority of, a myriad of other things. However, it is God’s authority that we are made to live and thrive under. When God told Moses to appoint Joshua as his successor to lead the people into the Promised Land, He spoke of the role of authority in the people’s obedience: “You shall invest him with some of your authority, that all the congregation of the people of Israel may obey” (Numbers 27:20). Moses had authority to command the people only because it was specifically given to him by God to lead them. The very first thing recorded in Scripture that God said to man was in the form of a command, “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die’” (Genesis 2:16-17). God’s authority over man is clear from Scripture, as the proper order. Messaging from the world has tried to twist this order, and nudge us all into playing God in our own hearts and lives, to do what we want to do, to live solely under our own authority.

Obeying God simply out of love and respect for Him and His loving, gracious character is where I want to be, and I have faith that we all can reach that place in our relationship with God at any time. But in my fallenness, I recognize that things can and do go wrong. When they do, it points us to Jesus, who is the solution to every single wrong thing in our lives.

In some seasons of following Jesus, it can be hard to hear God’s Voice. In my experience, I can hear His Voice clearest when I am living in obedience to what He is telling me to do. When we hear His Voice directly in our spirits, it can seem easy to obey. As I learned again just today, it’s not always as easy as it sounds. But He always gives grace. Jesus spoke about his followers listening to His Voice, “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd” (John 10:14-16). Sheep know and listen to their shepherd. To live in obedience to Jesus, our Shepherd’s, Voice, we must lay down our lives daily (Luke 9:23), including our hearts’ self-centered desires. He graciously laid His life down for us first; His Voice is trustworthy!

It is in obedience to God that we may enjoy peace; “He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake” (Psalm 23:1-3). When we allow God to determine our actions, we are able to represent Him well, and be available to minister to others. He has given us His name, as we talked about last week in Called By Your Name, and He longs to guide us in the Way, living in obedience to Him.

May we all seek God and know His Voice, to guide us in all obedience, every day, every moment, all for His glory.

Amen.

“For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19).

“Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart,” (1 Peter 1:22).

“Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine;” (Exodus 19:5).

Thank you for spending some of your time journeying with me. If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to Life with the King, and like & follow the Facebook page; it truly helps me continue writing this blog. Grace and peace.

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