Growing In Thankfulness
What are you thankful for? That’s a tough question for some. Others find it easy to slip in basic and simplistic responses. Me? I am thankful for a myriad of things, so much that I get lost trying to recount them all.
Is that because I’m getting older that I worry less about things? Or is it that I have seen God be faithful in things I could barely comprehend from the perspective of a younger mind?
Perhaps it’s a mixture of both.
As I get older, I discover it’s easy to rest in the thought that God will do exactly as He has promised. It’s not because I’ve gotten better at knowing God’s will. It’s easier not because God has gotten better at showing me what He wants from me or what He wants for me.
Instead, thanksgiving grows in me every time I see His gifts, and His mercies, and I taste His grace. Thankfulness is the cornerstone of His will for us, by the way.
There are days that it’s tough to be thankful. Some days it seems that the will of God is simply unknowable. In my devotion booklets and social media groups it’s easy to find little ‘Bible bites’ that seem to describe God’s will, little single-verse blurbs like the one in the image above.
Yet even though each is the word of God, they can feel vague – even disconnected – from the trouble at hand. It’s difficult to be thankful when confusion arrives. Don’t despair. There’s an answer.
You see, Paul restated a thought that was tucked away in a small book of prophecy when he wrote this line to Ephesus. It applies to us as well. “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Micah 6:8
It takes three terms in English to convey the Hebrew insight found here. We read three actions to discern what the Father expects of us, but in Hebrew, these three actions are tied together into a word-picture of what we might call a ‘spirit of thanksgiving’. That is to say, ‘this is how you know you trust God and are thankful to Him – when your life displays these three things’.
That’s the thought written to the church at Ephesus. A few years earlier, Paul spelled this out in his letter to the church at Thessalonica. “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” 1st Thessalonians 5:16-18
“This is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you…” Knowing His will really isn’t very difficult at all. But it does hinge upon shifting from our normal, natural human mindset and that begins by becoming thankful.
