Category Archives: Prayer

Giving Thanks For You

Devotional Musings, Prayer

Giving Thanks

Giving Thanks…

Along with my other American friends, I’ve been inviting waves of gratitude to roll over me during this week of giving thanks. The truth that God loves me, apart from any efforts I could make to earn or bribe or manipulate that love, floods me with wonder. The dear people that inhabit my life–family friends–send tides of joy splashing inside my heart.

…For You

But today I want to take a moment to thank YOU….whether we have been close in “real life” or never met. I thank each person who reads my blog, who comments, or emails, or reassures me that the effort to create these occasional posts DOES matter.

I thank every person who has read one of my books, who entered that precious conversation between author and reader. Extra thanks to those who purchased the book (even though they could borrow it from a friend or find it in the library) because that investment helped the publishing house continue its efforts to bring stories into the world.

I thank each reader who took the time to post a review, tell a friend, or invite me to a book club to speak. You made a huge difference–not just in my morale, but in preventing the stories from fading into invisibility.

I’m hugely grateful to those of you who are Book Buddies – those who get my rare newsletter and often join in to contests, promotion events, or other activities to support my books.

And I’m giving thanks for your prayers. When I type another page, alone, exhausted, often feeling inadequate and fearful in the work, I’m bolstered by your prayer support.

Please feel free to share some of the things you are thankful for this week. I’d love to read your comments!

Blessings from a grateful heart,

Sharon Hinck

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Can We Trust God’s Timing?

Devotional Musings, Prayer,

TimingI’ve been reading Joshua this week – stories that many of us are familiar with. Rahab helping the spies escape, the walls of Jericho falling down. I love the drama and the tangible victories, especially when in my life progress feels much harder to see.

But today I focused on a very heartbreaking story. God told the Israelites to destroy everything from Jericho, but Achan admitted he, “saw a beautiful robe…silver coins, and a bar of gold…I wanted them so much that I took them.”

I identify with so much of his sad moral failing there. Seeing things I want and being tempted to grab for them. Not a robe or a bar of gold, but success, approval, popularity.

Achan’s choice led to not only his own destruction, but to the deaths of many soldiers who attacked Ai and failed. A sobering lesson indeed.

However, the new insight I found in the story comes in chapter 8. After Achan is dealt with, God tells Joshua to attack Ai again, and says, “This time you may keep the plunder.”

Wow. If Achan had only trusted God’s timing, treasures would have come his way anyway.

Can we trust God’s timing?

When our prayers seem to always be answered with “wait,” it’s tempting to forge ahead and decide to “make it happen” in our own power. Yet perhaps God has blessings for us in the waiting time. Perhaps He plans treasures around the next bend – if we can trust Him a little longer.

Will you pray with me?

Lord, there are things we long for. Some are dreams You’ve planted in us. Help us discern when its time to forge ahead, and when it’s time to wait. Help us trust You when Your calling for the moment seems to hold us back from treasures. Amen.

How about you? Have you ever spotted a blessing from God’s timing – even if it felt like a delay?

Please share in the comments below – and feel free to share this post using one of the handy buttons. 🙂

Blessings,

Sharon Hinck

 

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God’s Reason for Making Us His Treasure

Devotional Musings, Prayer

reasonThe reason God chooses to love us and invite us into a relationship has sometimes bewildered me. I’m like a forget-me-not: so tiny and unimportant compared to lush irises or sweet-scented roses.

Yet even though their blooms are tiny, I love delicate forget-me-nots. And they remind me that God loves me–not for how much I accomplish, not for how loudly my voice proclaims Him, and not for the size of my worth. He gives a glimpse into His reason for saving us in this scripture:

An Amazing Reason

“For you are a holy people, who belong to the Lord your God. Of all the people on earth, the Lord your God has chosen you to be His own special treasure. The Lord did not set His heart on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other nations, for you were the smallest of all nations! Rather, it was simply that the Lord loves you.” (Deuteronomy 7:6-8a NLT)

We are simply loved! As I let that reminder seep into my soul this morning, it stirs new hope and purpose in me.

Lord, thank you for loving us. Thank you that the tiny nation You chose to cherish carried the promise through generations. Thank you for coming as our Messiah. When we recognize our smallness, please help us not to despair, but instead to trust Your great love. Please show us ways to carry your love into our day and share it with others. Amen.

How about you? Do you ever feel “too small” “too unimportant” “too unworthy”? Is there a verse that has reassured you lately of God’s love? Please share in the comments!

Blessings,

Sharon Hinck

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Lilac Day – Beautiful and Brief

Devotional Musings, Prayer

Lilac“The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever.” Isaiah 40:8

Spring is always a remarkable surprise after a Minnesota winter, a time to celebrate surviving a harsh winter, but my favorite day in the spring is lilac day.

When we bought our home years ago, a woody, bedraggled lilac bush in the backyard gave only stingy blooms. Each year, we thinned a third of the oldest branches from the ground. The beleaguered lilac has survived our ham-handed pruning, blizzards, hail, and ice-storms, and scorched leaves from the nearby barbecue. When we built a patio, we uprooted it and replanted it under our bedroom window.

Now it explodes with flowers each May. Every year I wait for the day that the blossoms unfold, and I gather armfuls to fill vases in every room.

The scent is liquid confection, and on any other day might be too cloying. But in spring’s rain-scrubbed, earthy air, it’s a perfect note of sweetness. Each year I also try every trick to make the blooms last. Yet they’re fragile. Almost overnight, small lavender petals crumble and fall like a lace hanky; and the lilac’s glory passes, leaving me a familiar melancholy.

We wait, we pray. We endure branch-snapping storms. And as God’s sun coaxes, we bloom into a fragile, short-lived wonder. Lilac day is short. Life is short. A fistful of decades that compared to eternity only amounts to a swiftly wilting lilac day. Yet this short lifetime can bring beauty and joy to our Maker–and to those around us–if we rest our lives in His hands.

Lord, let me bring sweetness and beauty in every bud and stem and twig of my life until that day you change my fleeting life into eternal bloom. Amen.

Blessings!
Sharon Hinck

(Originally published in May of 2009)

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Do You Recognize Your Traits in a Relative?

Devotional Musings, Prayer

Relative WellToday I read Genesis 29, and loved the parallels I spotted. Just as Abraham’s servant found a wife for Isaac by a well, Isaac’s son Jacob finds his wife at a well.

I was also struck by Uncle Laban’s words to Jacob. “When Jacob had told him his story, Laban exclaimed, ‘You really are my own flesh and blood!'” (NLT)

We know that Laban will pull some devious tricks on Jacob in the coming pages. Did Laban recognize that trait of conniving and trickery in both Jacob and himself? Is that why he affirmed their connection?

Have you ever noticed elements of your personality that are similar to a relative–either strengths or weaknesses?

Thinking about how we can reflect characteristics of our family made me extra grateful that Christ has claimed us as siblings.

Lord, I want to be recognizable as Your flesh and blood. Please plant Your heart in me. Amen.

If you could pick one personality trait you’d like Jesus to keep changing into His likeness, which one it is? For me, I’d like Him to transform my selfishness into love. Feel free to comment!

Blessings,

Sharon

 

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What Can I Learn from the Tower of Babel?

Devotional Musings, Prayer

Tower of BabelThe morning I was reading about the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. I grappled with the portrayal of God as one who obstructs. It’s easy for me to become angry when it seems God is getting in the way of whatever new tower I’m trying to build. Yet He knows my motives, He knows the dangers to me. Finally, I wrote this prayer in the margin of my Bible:

Lord, because I trust Your love, when I read about You confounding the plans of people, I believe it was to protect them from new dangers and self-destruction. Help me have that faith in my life when my personal plans are confounded.

But there was a second lesson for me from this brief account. My heart has been aching at the conflict in our culture, between nations, between individuals, within families. Truly we are confused and “won’t be able to understand each other” (verse 7) apart from God’s grace. So I added this prayer:

Heavenly Father, help people “speak the same language” and relate in love. Send your Spirit to help us all understand each other in each place there is conflict.

How about you? Have you ever seen God obstruct your path, and later realized it was a good thing that He did? Or have you see Him heal a conflict?

Sharon

 

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Maundy Thursday – A Day to Follow Our Savior’s Steps

Devotional Musings, Prayer

Maundy

For my Christian brothers and sisters who follow the traditional church calendar, today is a special day with a strange name. As a child, I misheard “Maundy” and always thought we were going to church for “Monday Thursday.”

“Maundy” comes from the word “command” or “mandate” – and reminds us to follow Jesus’ command to love one another, and serve others as He demonstrated by washing the disciples feet at His last supper with them before He went to the cross.

Churches celebrate with worship, the Lord’s Supper, and some do a foot-washing ceremony. But we can also honor the day with acts of humble service and love for others. We could empty garbage even when it’s not our usual chore, or fold laundry for another family member, or fill the car with gas, or wash the kitchen floor. Any task that coaxes us to put others above ourselves can be a reminder of how the King of Kings became a servant to save us, and how He gives us a new command to love one another.

Lord Jesus, thank you for walking the dusty roads of this world, for drawing close to us in all our human experiences, and for showing us how to serve by washing the disciples’ feet. Thank you even more for washing away our sins. Give us hearts to follow in your steps today. Amen.

Blessed Maundy Thursday!

Sharon Hinck

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Holy Week

Devotional Musings, Prayer

Holy WeekThe Last Week of the Lenten Journey

Holy Week has arrived! I’ve always loved the Lenten season of the church year. Even the part about giving something up. In past years I’ve given up chocolate or sugar or pop or social media. I’ve tried ceasing from complaining or criticizing (that was harder to give up than chocolate!) Other years, instead of subtracting something, I’ve added a daily habit to help me focus on Jesus.

This year, my Lenten journey was enriched by a small new task. Each day, I pondered a verse and then found a photo that captured how the verse spoke to me. If you follow my Facebook author page, you may have noticed that I’ve been posting these little “posters” throughout Lent.

Holy Week is full of tender days. We throw our palms at Jesus feet, we break bread with Him in the upper room, we pray with Him in the garden, we weep at the foot of the cross, and we leap for joy at His resurrection. Blessed Holy Week, dear friends!

Sharon Hinck

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God is God Alone

Devotional Musings, Prayer

You alone are GodGod is great–even when I forget that.

Sometimes I look for wondrous things in the wrong places.

When I seek greatness in world systems, I’m left disappointed and cynical. When I search for wonderful things in my own soul, I quickly despair.

Other people carry glimmers of greatness, of beauty, of purpose and answers.

But all the best in the created world, in myself, and in others is best because it most clearly reflects our Creator.

This week I’m trusting God to be doing wondrous things. Not because I deserve it, but because it is His very nature. I hope that as I look away from all the other “gods” that consume me, I’ll be more likely to notice the great things He is doing.

Would you pray with me?

Lord, You alone are God. Forgive us for sometimes being the center of our own little universes, or for obsessing over (and making a god of) relationships, work, or our own plans. Thank You for all the wondrous things You’ve done in the lives of Your children. Open our eyes to see You at work this week. Amen.

Have You noticed some of His wonders lately? Any evidence of His greatness? Please share it with me in the comments. I’d love to hear!

Sharon Hinck

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How to Welcome Each Day’s Seashells

Devotional Musings, Prayer

seashellSeashell Searches:

Years ago, I had the privilege of walking on a long, sunny beach in February. For this Minnesota girl, feeling sand between my toes in the winter was nothing short of miraculous. The sand was covered with thousands of seashells and I couldn’t wait to start collecting—hunting for treasures and dodging foaming waves.

As I watched an endless progression of waves sweep in to deposit scallops and conchs, I realized that every day I walked on this beach there would be new possibilities. New colors or shapes or designs to discover. If I trudged with my head down determined to find one particular kind of seashell, I could spend a wasted day and return feeling I’d failed. But if I waited to see what new blessings scattered onto the shore, something new and special would find me.

Lord, each day you bring me new treasures in all shapes and sizes. Give me patience to let the waves carry those blessings in. Give me openness to see the variety before me. Give me gratitude for your creativity and abounding goodness. Each day, let me collect your gifts of unexpected encounters, precious relationships, challenges to face, beauty to enjoy. And on those days where the beach of my life looks empty, let me enjoy the feeling of sand between my toes while I wait for the next wave. Amen.

What are some treasures God has sent your way recently? A phone call? A hug? A new insight? I’d love to hear about some of the blessings you’ve discovered recently!

Sharon Hinck

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