Hey, Church!
This week I have been thinking a lot about gratitude. I need more of it in my life. Anxieties about the future? Yep, I’ve got plenty of those. Frustrations with present life circumstances? Check! A list of blessings a mile long? Well, I don’t think about that list quite as often. But the Spirit reminded me this week that that list is immeasurably longer and, in the end, far more useful and significant than my list of complaints.
Scripture talks a lot about giving thanks. It is an antidote for temptation (Eph. 5:3-4), the fruit of a righteous life (Col. 2:6-7), a vital key to our worship (Heb. 12:28), our response of praise for God’s goodness (Ps. 103:1-4; 1 Chr. 16:34), the healing balm for depression (Ps. 43:3-5), the cure for anxiety (Ps. 95:1-5; Col. 3:15-17), and the will of God for us in Christ Jesus (1 Thess. 5:16-18).
I also came across this (secular) quote recently, and it really stuck with me:
Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for. – Epicurus
(Note: Epicurus was an ancient philosopher who was not approaching the subject from a biblical worldview. In fact, his teaching came into conflict with later Christianity. Nonetheless, even he seems to have recognized the merits of gratitude over and against the spoiling effects of a wanton desire for more.)
In that spirit, then, I want to call us all to a weekend of thanksgiving. If you are like me and you have a long list of complaints that so effortlessly dominate your prayer life, then I want to challenge you to consciously put those things aside for a time (I promise, they will still be there on Monday). Instead, devote yourself to prayers of thanksgiving. After you have cycled through the list of things that are your top-of-mind, go-to “praises,” you may discover that a spring of blessings awaits your attention, beneath that surface: gratitude for your pains as well as your joys; thankfulness for seasons of drought as well as plenty; a sense of wonder that you do not have to tell your heart to beat or your lungs to breathe, and so forth.
Our complaints will come and go from season to season. But the list of things to be grateful for is compounding and virtually endless. I don’t have to tell you this, but I will anyway: that’s because the God who made you also cares for you, provides for you, and has a storehouse of blessings He delights to share with you, His beloved.
Let’s commit together that we will not spoil what He has already given us by wishing for more.
Your brother in the good fight,
Ryan