Dear Readers and Podcast Listeners,
I have started, deleted and restarted this post to you several times already - it felt too negative and complaining ... and then the words 'In everything give thanks' came to my mind.
This month (April) I had hoped to have the second part of 'Does God have a plan for the world?' ready for you. (You can read part one here). But I have been extra busy and extra tired this month, and as my own personally set deadline for end April has started looming I have found myself procrastinating, feeling too overwhelmed to continue with what seemed too large a task.
'Just write a short post this month', my kind husband advised, but I didn't want to rush and condense the precious thoughts for part 2. However, as I sat down today I thought I would just write frankly, and then the deleting and restarting cycle began!
But then, 'In everything give thanks'.
How different we naturally are from God's ways. He instructs us to give thanks at all times, and when you do - if you try it, it automatically lifts your mood and your heart to Him. It lifts you out of yourself and your eyes look to Him. Such behaviour glorifies Him as it expresses a sense of gratitude for all He does and has done for us.
But we seem to so often look inward and listen to ourselves - or at least I do. Do you know what I mean when you feel that you have let yourself or let others down - perhaps even that you have 'let God down'?. You have not done what He has given you to do. You feel a failure for not meeting expectations, even if self-imposed.
But is this how God expects us to speak to ourselves? In condemning critical self-talk? Is this how He views us? Is this how He speaks to His children, His chosen and loved people?
I am sure I have shared with you before of a time when my husband and I tried to take a journey (which felt a little bit like running away). Very early into the journey we got a puncture and then found our puncture repair kit wouldn't work. Much to our dismay we ended up calling out the AA and being taken back home.
As I sat in our living room full of sad self-recriminations for why we had been prevented from taking our journey, very aware that I had wasted far too much time on my phone that week and thinking this was all my fault, I suddenly felt the Lord's presence in the room. It was almost as if He was standing over by the door across the room from me, and what I felt completely broke me down.
It wasn't anger. It wasn't criticism. It wasn't condemnation.
It was LOVE.
Dear friend, are you a believer - a child of God, a follower of Jesus?
Are you berating yourself because you feel like the Apostle Paul that 'in me (that is in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do' (Romans 7: 18,19)
May we be comforted that when God looks at us He sees us spotless and pure in the imputed righteousness of His beloved Son, Jesus. As Paul writes a little further on, 'There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit' (Romans 8:1).
Let us come again to our kind and merciful and loving Heavenly Father in the name of Jesus.
Let us tell Him how disappointed we are. Disappointed in ourselves, perhaps frustrated by circumstances, perhaps feeling at a distance from Him.
Let us ask Him to forgive us again, to help us to live for Him and in Him, to seek to glorify Him with our lives for His honour and praise.
Let us ask Him to help us to do those things which He has prepared for us to do to, willingly and diligently in His strength.
And having told Him all, having poured out our heart into His dear, kind loving heart, let us give thanks.
Whilst we don't thank Him for our sin, how we can thank Him for the lessons He shows us through our sin. He shows us what our nature is, and how He has conquered sin and death. He reminds us to lean on Him and what He has done. He shows us that we need Him for everything. He calls us to Him to rest and be taught by Him.
This morning I was reading in Lamentations and I realised that the prophet Jeremiah was giving thanks in the midst of his grief and suffering.
Jeremiah was looking away from the sad burnt ruins of Jerusalem, away from the memories of the killings of God's people and the cannibalism of starving desperate mothers eating their own babies; he was looking away from the brutal facts of thousands taken into captivity by their enemies, away from his lament of their foolish rejection of God which brought all this upon themselves.
Instead Jeremiah remembered and had hope because,
'It is of the LORD's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning, great is thy faithfulness...' (Lamentations 3:22, 23).
God understands the limitations of our humanness. He understands that we get tired and overwhelmed. He knows how temptations can be too much for us. He knows how we can be worn down from emotional worries and fears. He knows how Satan will try to exacerbate these and perhaps initiate them, trying to harm and hurt us.
So, when we think about in everything giving thanks, what can we thank the Lord for as we think back over this month of April?
I could very quickly list all my complaints and it is telling that I have to pause for a minute before listing all my thanks!
May the Lord help you and help me to lift our hearts up to Him in gratitude and praise for all He has done for us this month. For all that He is and for all His love to us. May He open our eyes to see more clearly when our sight is dim or when we struggle to thank Him. And let us trust that He goes with us as we continue on.
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