Rejoicing in Blessings

Holidays, especially Thanksgiving, are wonderful times for considering where you are in your life. And convenient excuses to write blog posts! So this Thanksgiving I am doing both.

One thought has really impressed me: I am blessed.

I would fall into the cliche, "I don't know about you, but I am blessed," except I do know. You are blessed as well.

While writing, I said once that I must be content with God's love. Then I had to laugh. Content with God's love? As if someone dying of thirst must be content with oceans of water! Here we sit on the beach of a fresh-water Atlantic, picking at the grains of sand and considering attempting to quench our thirst from this muddy puddle beside us, totally unaware of the OCEAN at our feet!

What has this to do with thanksgiving?

If you realize what God has done for you, how can you not only not be displeased, and not only be satisfied, but further REJOICE in where He has you? And not only what He has done, but what He plans to do.

I have been struggling to wrap my prideful mind around such amazing promises:

"Because you have made the LORD, who is my refuge,
Even the Most High, your dwelling place,
No evil shall befall you,
Nor any plague come near your dwelling...
Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore I will deliver him;
I will set him on high, because he has known My name."
                - Psalm 91:9-10, 14

"I am the LORD your God,
Who brought you out of the land of Egypt;
Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it."
                - Psalm 81:10

"If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask Him!"
                 -Matthew 7:11

These are only a few verses this idea has struck me in. (I recommend reading all of Psalm 91. And there's a link for those too lazy to look it up, so you have no excuse not to!)

Let me explain what I mean by prideful. Ought we not to accept all that the Lord tells us? And yet, seeing our sin, we do not accept His love. How can He do this, when we are so unworthy? Of course, as good Christians, we would never say this. (I wonder how many times that sentence has been written...) But we believe it.

I could say that I am speaking for myself here, and I don't know about you. But I think that is overused. Yes, I am speaking for myself, and yes, not everyone has the same thoughts. But "no temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man," and pride and resisting God's Word is a struggle we all encounter.

Now what does this have to do with being thankful?

It is good to see our sin and unworthiness. This realization is something that is essential for thankfulness. If you think that you deserve what God gives you, why should you be grateful? But if you do not deserve any good, how can you not be grateful for everything? 

(Because you're sinful and prideful...but you get my point. That's another phrase that I wonder how often it's been used.) 

And if your sin does not grieve your heart, pray that the Lord would open your eyes to it. He is faithful to answer. "You do not have, because you do not ask." The Lord did this for me. It is hard and not fun, and you may be surprised by the trials that come, but it will give you joy.

Realizing our sin does give us thankfulness. See on the one side your sin, and on the other God's blessings to you and His desire to bless you, and your thankfulness will be great. It puts everything into perspective.

God has been teaching me to rejoice in my own life. He knows each person, and He works in each life differently. Sometimes this is hard, because we cannot read hearts as God can. Thus, the grass is always greener on the other side. We see others' blessings that we do not have, and we are envious, forgetting their trials and the blessings we have that they do not.

And if we do see our blessings, we forget that's what they are and are prideful.

Recently after I had shared some things that God had been teaching me, a lady told me that she appreciated it. "You should be a teacher," she said. "Kids need to hear what you have to say."

It made me think of a time when Abraham had been brought up, and a girl asked if he was the one who had to sacrifice his son. It boggled my mind that a Christian could not know that story. Since then, I have been aware of how much I have been given. Indeed, what do I have that I have not been given? What separates me from a young believer who knows little more than Jesus and Noah's Ark?

Just this: where God has chosen to place me. 

I have not been more faithful, nor do I have a better memory or understanding. I have simply been situated in places where knowing God's Word was expected, and so I reaped the benefits.

At one of these places, the teacher asked, "What is your geneology?" He asked us to consider our spiritual genealogies. Who prayed for you? Who taught you? And don't stop there. Who prayed for them? Who mentored them?

What an incredible thought. You begin to see yourself as a small mechanism in a huge, interconnecting plan. I think of things such as the debt I owe to a lady I never knew who many years ago did a Kid's Club that was instrumental in bringing God's word to a woman who has been an inestimable blessing to my mother, and to me. Of people, some of whom I may have never met, whose influence led people to come to my church and thus became a blessing to me. Of the great men and women throughout history who wrote down so powerfully what God taught them so that lives were transformed to become my examples.

You have your own blessings. That Christ died is blessing enough. But God has freely with Him given us all things!

On second thought, there is another thing that separates me from some believers. I love God's Word and I long for holiness. My struggle to overcome sin grieves me. This is one of the greatest blessings God can give.

I knew that Scripture says that work in the heart is from God, but I didn't quite understand how that could be. I mean, it's my heart, my desires and thoughts. Yes, God has to bring to life someone dead in sin, but the sanctifying work seems like it must be ours. Once again, as a good Christian, I knew such thinking was wrong and never would have thought I believed it.

Remember how I mentioned that God had opened my eyes to my sin? One year, I realized my walk with God wasn't very good. I wanted it to be better-sort of. I tried and tried to be good, but I couldn't. Really, I wanted to want it. I read in the Psalms how David thirsted after God's Word, how he hated his sin and God's enemies, how he delighted in righteousness. "Lord," I said, "I want a love for You like that. I don't even want Your Word. I don't even hate my sin." And I realized I couldn't work it up and asked Him to give it to me.

About a year later I was struggling and frustrated. Why, I wondered, could I not defeat sin? Why were things difficult? A friend encouraged me at that time, not really knowing what I was thinking, saying how she rejoiced seeing God's work in my life, in my love for Him and His people. Suddenly I realized: this frustration with sin-that was because I hated it. It wasn't because I was any more sinful than I used to be, but that I could now see my sin as the offense it was against God.

I had tried and tried to become more holy, and I had failed. Yet suddenly I realized I had changed-without doing anything. What glory! I rejoiced in verses like, "He who began a good work in you is faithful to complete it," and "He has given you all things needed for life and godliness through the knowledge of Him." I could see how it was completely God's work, changing my heart. I really had done nothing. God had just given me a receptive heart.

Don't diminish God's glory by not acknowledging what He has given you. It is the humble person who is thankful, because they realize that no matter how "good" in the eyes of others they may be, every good gift comes from God. Do not fail to rejoice in His promises of blessing to you. If we trust His character, we must believe them. It is precisely because we are unworthy that we can be so grateful.

I do speak to myself, and as usual, write for my own benefit. But I do pray that as you read how I have been impressed by God's mercy, it will also cause you to rejoice in thankfulness.