Disclaimer: This is another book recommendation. What can I say? I love to read and enjoy passing on recommendations of good books that encourage me in my walk with Jesus!
We are two weeks into the 2023-2024 schoolyear and there have been many opportunities to practice choosing gratitude...and just as many opportunities for sanctification. Two things stick out to me: 1) everything in life is a choice, especially our attitudes. While I cannot control everything that happens to me, I certainly can choose my response to it. I often remind my children (and thus myself!) that 10% of my day is what will go down and 90% is how I will choose to react to whatever went down! 2) we truly have got to be the most incredibly blessed family on the face of the earth.
I am sure you have went through seasons of your life that you just feel like it is very hard to choose gratitude. To face each day with JOY. To keep smiling when your heart is breaking inside. To get out of bed when your broken, earthly body longs to stay under the covers all day and your heart and spirit can't bear the thought of facing one more day full of the mundane, the pain, the grief, the despair, the violence, the rebellious child, the unfaithful spouse. The list looks different for each of us. We all carry burdens, we all have our own cross to bear. What I am going through is HUGE to me, no surprise to my Father and may look very SMALL indeed to my neighbor.
One of my favorite Old Testament scriptures is from Exodus 3:7, 8a: "And the Lord said; 'I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their tastmasters, for I know their sorrows. So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians...'" He sees our slavery, our oppression, our pain. I find that so very comforting.
I have mentioned that last year was a long year of many financial challenges for my husband and I. To bring a little humor to the situation I started calling 2022 our year of "A Series of Unfortunate Events" (also borrowed from a book series my daughter has enjoyed!). We had worked so hard all through the covid drama, saved so carefully and had in spite of many challenges saved a nice little nest egg in hopes that someday we would be able to purchase a home. By October, that "nest egg" was gone and for the first time ever in our marriage, we had absolutely no savings to fall back on in the case of an emergency. In October I got my hands on the book pictured above and to save my life, I cannot even remember how I came into the possession of it. Definitely a God thing. God timing. God lessons for Jama to learn in the middle of immense financial disappointment, not to mention other life events taking place.
I read the entire book in a matter of a few hours, weeping my way through its pages. I love practical advice and this book was exactly what I needed at that time of my life. My list of things I wished were different was by that time, much longer than my gratitude list. And I really thought of myself as a grateful person. Oh, the conviction that started working deeply on my soul as I read. God has empowered this author and I do highly suggest reading this little book if you would like practical help in learning to be grateful for EVERYTHING in your life. The 30 day devotional at the end was for me a game changer as Nancy took me to the Word to see how an ungrateful heart and mind is indeed sin.
Day One: It is one thing to thank God IN the hard times. Are you able to thank God FOR the hard thing you face today? I journaled, "I usually can thank You, Lord, for being with me through the valleys and working in me through the trials. I have a much harder time thanking You FOR the situation."
I have intentionally started a journey of thanking God for everything, not just the strength to get through something but actually thank Him for the hard thing, whatever it is. It the hard thing that keeps me on my knees, that proves again I am incapable of living life outside of Him and His grace. It is the hard thing that shows me again what a tendency I have to revert to sin in the pressure instead of pressing into Him. It is the hard thing that proves me in the fire. Truly, it is in the pain that I grow.
I am also so very grateful for my friend, Carol, who became my accountability through this study and lesson. We exchanged almost daily texts as God led me so gently on this journey and used my dear "older woman" to help towards right thinking. I recommend getting someone to read this book with you and be that partner in learning with you. If nothing else to pray for you as you seek living everyday with a grateful heart.
Little could I have known many of the challenges of last year would pale to the challenges of this year but thank God for His sovereignty and His goodness in not showing us the future! How grateful I am for the lessons of this little book as we have had many, many opportunities to choose gratitude the last months. How grateful I am for the reminder to choose gratitude and that anything else would be sin. How sweet to see the results of a truly grateful heart and the grace that follows to go through some tough stuff with peace and joy in my heart because truly, "My Father knows best!"
Our pastor shared a very helpful illustration for me the other day in his sermon on John 6. He had heard that a Christian is like a tube of toothpaste. When we are squeezed, what is oozing out as "pressures" are applied? Is it faith, peace, joy, acceptance, grace? Or am I oozing despair, depression, anger, frustration, resentment, fear?
What are you facing today? How are you choosing to respond? My prayer for myself and for you is that we will truly, sincerely be able to thank God for that HARD THING because in it He will prove Himself in us and through us. He sees your pain. He will respond. Wait on Him and be grateful!
If you need someone to pray you through a particularly hard thing or partner with you in prayer for a hard situation that just doesn't seem to ever go away, please reach out to me privately. I would be honored to pray with you as you walk through your wilderness. God knows I have had quite a bit of practice recently and still am practicing in many ways. Reach out, not because I have it all together but because I need people to walk with me as well!
Choosing Gratitude Today,
Jama
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