all circumstances

This holiday, as I float through a limbo of life decisions and confusion, God is teaching me what thanksgiving looks like. I think many times it consists of those Sunday school answers of "I am thankful for my family" or "I am thankful for a refrigerator to put all the food in." And sure, it is great to count your blessings. In fact, it is encouraged. But what happens if you don't have that refrigerator, or food to stuff inside of it, or even your family. Are you to be thankful then?

You may say it is then important to change our perspective, to see everything in a good light. However, true Christ-like thankfulness is not based on optimism. It's not about seeing the 'bright side of life." It's about seeing the "Christ side of life."

"..give thanks in ALL circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you." 
- 1 Thessalonians 5:18 

•I will be thankful in all circumstances because if we are in Christ- He is there throughout all those circumstances (AND THAT IS ENOUGH). 

"I will give thanks to the LORD with my WHOLE HEART; I will recount all of your wonderful deeds." 
- Psalm 9:1 

• I will give thanks with my WHOLE being and recount all of HIS wonderful deeds. (IT'S NOT ABOUT ME)


True thanksgiving is not something that we can do out of our own strength. Even the Pharisees were "thankful" that they were not like the tax collectors (Luke 18:9-14). Ultimately, it comes back to the truth that we cannot bear fruit without our vine. 

So, I am learning to be thankful, not for circumstances, but for the God who has been sovereign through it all. 



Here is the sermon that inspired these thoughts
(I would encourage you to check it out)
http://sovereigngracenh.com/wordpress/?p=3287

seventy times seven

I failed. I failed one time. They gave me a second chance and I failed. There’s no getting around it. I tell the story differently every time someone asks, but it always ends the same way: I failed. I cried. I still do sometimes. But I cried more that day than I had in months before then. “What am I doing?” “Why is this happening?” “Is this a sign that I’m not supposed to be a nurse?” Questions pelted my aching, tired head like a round of bullets. It sounds dramatic, but for the first time it seemed that the maize and blue floor I was so firmly planted on was crumbling beneath my feet. It didn’t feel real. I went to a meeting with a coffee the size of a small bucket in my hand just to sit there and be told I had to take all these classes a year from now. There was no getting around it. This is going on your permanent record. It felt like she was tattooing it into my skin. Failure, in big bold letters in a font I hated, plastered across my forehead. I could almost see it in the reflection of the Nursing School doors as I left the building that day.

“Now what?”

It began to rain as I left the building. Perfect, right? It was like the end of a romantic movie except there was no love interest or dramatic kiss or old car or a guy singing with an umbrella. There was just me in a damp yellow raincoat with an empty coffee cup and hot tears running down my face.

“Now what?”

Some voice somewhere was screaming it at me. I wanted to get in my obnoxiously bright yellow car and drive and drive and never come back. I actually, in all honesty, considered buying a plane ticket to Scotland, but a friend of mine informed me that the crime rates were really high there and for some reason that worked in controlling my irresponsible impulse.

I didn’t pray that day or the day after or the week after for the matter. I didn’t want to talk to God. Somehow, I felt it necessary to be mad at an infinitely big God who defeated death and sin for me just because my picture perfect college career wasn’t so perfect anymore. Sounds foolish right? But I did it. I ignored Him or any sign of him in hopes that He’d see me in the corner with my bottom lip sticking out and my arms crossed and take some type of unwarranted pity on me.  

A day later I sat on the couch as big life questions were still hitting my head in bullet form. My mouse hovered over the list of nursing classes I was supposed to take that semester. I clicked each one, unenrolling myself from the class. “You had better do it soon,” the hispanic lady with the metaphorical tattoo gun said to me, “or I will have to do it for you.” I could hear it ringing in my head as I signed up for two random other classes. “At least you will be able to finish your elective credits this semester,” she said trying to comfort me as the tattoo gun buzzed loudly inside my skull. Was she really trying to encourage me? I gulped down a few tears as I signed up for a couple random religion classes that totaled seven credits. Failure on my forehead reflected in my dirty laptop screen and I shut it wildly.

“Why.”

Why? I didn't know the answer then and honestly, I don't know the full answer now- maybe I never will. But the unanswerable is beautiful because I have found joy in the answerer. That "failure" that was tattooed into my scrunched up, tired forehead now tells an entirely different story. It tells a story of grace that unlike the nursing school, God has given me chances to run back to him time and time again. I wanted to be angry at God, and honestly I spent quite a bit of time doing that. But now- looking back on the mess of the beginning of the semester, with God's help, I see nothing but a beautiful reminder of gospel truths. 

Romans 5

2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

• God has given me grace that I don't deserve and for that, I rejoice.

3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

• God works through our sufferings to give us hope, fill us with love, and ultimately bring glory onto Himself.

6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since, therefore,we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. 11 More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

• That label of "failure" has turned to "loved" because of what Christ did for me. 

I even am starting to see God in the gray of the sky.

always

"I just got this new job and a new kitten and three pairs of shoes and a haircut! Praise God!"

Okay, so this might be a bit of an exaggeration, but way too often I see a Facebook status or a tweet about how something is going so great in a person's life and thus- they must praise God. Now, it is not even close to being unbiblical to praise God for blessings, but basing your praise for God solely on these things can quickly become a slippery slope. Our relationship with God slowly turns into a relationship of self-entitlement in which we only love God when we see material blessing placed in our laps. This then results in seasons of life in which we resent God for not being a vending machine of blessings and spitting out precisely the ones we want. Rather: our love, our hope, our VERY BEING, in fact, should be based on Christ and Christ alone.

Those seasons of resentment should turn into seasons of praise because no longer are we waiting for the thing that we want to show up because we now realize that the thing our souls truly desire has been there all along.

"Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice." Philippians 4:4 

We can rejoice ALWAYS because we are not rejoicing in fleeting, perishable things of this world, but rather in the permanent, infinite creator behind it all. A creator, who even though we deserve death, has given us life. 



"God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing." - C.S. Lewis 

the blue of the sky

Do you think God had fun when he picked out the colors for the sky or the shade for the foliage or the sparkle for the stars? 

I thank God today for showing me himself in the mundane. Sometimes, I don’t see it. I’m buried in a game of candy crush or picking just the right Instagram filter to highlight the intricacy of my latest meal. But today there were no filters. I picked my head up from my overused piece of technology and looked up. Suddenly, I saw God in the blue of the sky. I saw Him in the way the fall leaves danced when a cool breeze rushed by. I saw Him in the way the sun peaked out from behind an old church. They were all things I had seen before, but instead of seeing ordinary I saw nothing but extraordinary.

God knew, even before I was an idea in my mother’s mind that I would walk past this tree blushed with color on my way to class. God knew, even before the Earth was in existence that I would witness people interacting and laughing as they walk through a path riddled with colorful leaves and traces of snow. God knew, that the most incredible tree (my absolute favorite on campus) would sprout up right in front of my apartment building so I could be in awe of the complexity of it’s character and ultimately of it's creator. 

 “The heavens declare the glory of God;

the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.” 

~ Psalm 19:1-4

Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.. 

Are you listening? 

unfair

I think I sometimes think if I had flowers or a teddy bear or a boyfriend to tell me I am beautiful, then I would be happy. I don’t say that outright, of course not, because that would imply that I am trying to find satisfaction in things apart from Christ. So, I might not say it with words. I say it with the way I act.

I say it when I scowl at the Facebook picture of the couple getting engaged. I say it when I give dirty looks to the girl who brings home flowers from the boy who loves her. I say it when I spend all too often wallowing in self-pity because “what if I never get married?” or “how is this fair?”

It’s not fair, in fact. But not in the whiney “that’s not fair” that I squeak out when I scroll through another Facebook proposal album. It’s unfair because no one deserves those things. To be frank, we all deserve hell. The bible says, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23) and that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). But yet, here we are. Eyes that see and ears that hear and arms that move and hearts that love and feel and pump blood through our whole bodies. How dare I, selfishly, think I deserve anything more than the greatness of grace that God has already lavished upon me. God may give me a husband or he may not, but God has already blessed me far beyond what I deserve. He gave me the gift of his son! We say it all the time like some type of Sunday school robot, but it does not make it any less true or any less potent! God gave me a gift far beyond flowers or a teddy bear, and for that I am blessed beyond all belief.


Here's a post that inspired the above. I'd encourage you to check it out:

http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/ask-pastor-john/what-has-been-your-biggest-spiritual-struggle-and-how-did-you-get-victory