Return to Thanksgiving

I originally started blogging to cultivate a thankful heart; to blog the highs and lows, adventures and mundane, challenges and blessings all as snapshots of God’s goodness to—“all the time”. I recently have been convicted of my growing lack of thankfulness. The disillusionment and realities of this life have resulted in a cynicism I can hardly believe is coming out of me. My submission to God’s will has hardly been joy-filled.

I recently heard a message on prayer. The speaker made the comment that he had over time found that worry was one of his spiritual gifts. Because his natural tendency to worry about all the details, situations and people in his life and through his study of prayer, he found opportunity to constantly go before His Father in heaven with the concerns and desires of his heart. Every moment of worry was causing him to be “constant in prayer.” I believe those moments are also an opportunity for thankfulness. Every anxious moment, concern or disillusionment are opportunities to give thanks to God, rejoice always and pray without ceasing.

And so I am driven back to Schaeffer’s book True Spirituality where it says: “The beginning of man’s rebellion against God was, and is the lack of a thankful heart. They did not have proper, thankful hearts—seeing themselves as creatures before the Creator and being bowed not only in their knees, but in their stubborn hearts. The rebellion is a deliberate refusal to be the creature before the Creator, to the extent of being thankful. When I lack proper contentment, either I have forgotten that God is God, or I have ceased to be submissive to him. A heart giving thanks at any moment is the real test of the extent to which we love God at that moment.”

And I return to meditating on this verse: “Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.” Colossians 2:6-7