Tag: gratitude

A Week of Thanks: Forget Not

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Forget Not
Originally Published 04/08/2011

“I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago.  I will consider all Your works and meditate on all Your mighty deeds.”
Psalm 77:11-12

Today, a dear friend of mine is celebrating with her husband, a job after a period of unemployment.  She is rejoicing in God’s faithful provision, His heart so full to pour out blessings and to meet needs as we look to Him for help.

Today, I remember that same celebration happening in this home.  God brought water forth from rock, something out of nothing, during months of unemployment.  Then, the phone rang on a busy spring day and I stood motionless in the kitchen, keeping all children quiet, as my husband accepted a job—provision so perfect, timing just right.  In that moment, a spotlight shone on God’s activity in our lives and we saw with unmistakable and rare clarity God at work.

Now, years later, I sometimes still remember to thank God for this job wrapped up in paper decorated with God’s handprints and topped with a bow showing off God’s grace.

I remember wanting so desperately to see God in the midst of our need, waking up in the still-dark hours of a frigid morning, leaving children and husband asleep, and driving to church in silence on Resurrection Day, when God forever declared His ability to bring life from death.  Then, with fellow Christ-seekers, crowding around a rough wooden cross stuck into ground, singing a hymn, reading Scripture, watching the sun rise over the river.  Hearing the pastor: “God knows why you have come here and what it is you are looking for. ” I caught my breath.  God met me in the sunrise at a cross.

I remember.

I flip through the pages of my journal from that time, each covered margin-to-margin with God’s promises, encouragements, and challenges—to trust Him, to stop whining and complaining, to be grateful, to know He is in control.  It’s a record of my spiritual growth, tracked on paper like marks on a wall showing how tall I was then, and then, and then—a growth spurt caused by required dependence on a God so dependable.

I remember.

I pull out my favorite pair of shoes, white and covered in colorful flowers, shoes I bought after my husband’s first paycheck at his new job.  Bought on clearance at Target, they were inexpensive and yet totally precious to me.  My “James-got-a-job shoes.”  Every time I wear them . . . I remember.

Jennifer Rothschild wrote, “Remembering is a discipline that takes effort and focus.”

After all, I’m a forgetful creature.  I walk into a room with an agenda, quickly get distracted by toys and books.  Mess, mess–always mess.  How do we make so much mess?  So, I tidy and busy myself (while whining and complaining) and then leave the room empty handed.  My original purpose long forgotten. What did I come in here for again?

I trek to the grocery store with one item I really and truly need and walk back out with ten items in my cart, none of them the one vital ingredient for tonight’s dinner.

I start sentences and then somewhere in the middle lose track of thoughts and words and trail off into silence.

Worrying at night over bills and forgetting past provision.  Fretting over children and forgetting His past activity.  Stressing over a decision and forgetting how He led me through dark and shadowy places before.

It’s an enigma really.  Words spoken and things seen that I long to forget replay in my mind with troubling regularity.  Life necessities and God’s promises that I simply must remember, I forget with ease and . . . troubling regularity.

I’m not alone.  Over and over, in broken record style, God told the Israelites to remember what He had done, to recollect the miracles of their past, and over and over they forgot.   He tells them, “You have forgotten God your Savior.  You have not remembered the Rock, your fortress” (Isaiah 17:10, NIV).

They tried, really tried.  Joshua commanded 12 men from 12 tribes to hoist 12 stones from the dry bed of the Jordan River onto their shoulders, carrying reminders of a miracle as the nation crossed through.   Stone memorials to

“be a sign among you when your children ask in time to come, saying, ‘What do these stones mean to you?’  Then you shall answer them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord; when it crossed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off.  And these stones shall be for a memorial to the children of Israel forever” (Joshua 4:5-7, NIV).

My special shoes are the same (I prefer my shoes to large river rocks!).  Physical reminders of a God-intervention.  A sign on my life-road saying, “God at Work!”

Ann Voskamp wrote this week about this world breaking us apart.  Chips, broken pieces and cracks in our soul made by the daily and the difficult.  Kids fighting.  Bills due.  Sick husband.  Dying mother.  Lost mail.  No job.  Shattered relationship.  Wandering child.  Missed appointment.   Trust destroyed.  Marriage dead.  Dinner ruined.

The world chips and chips away at us.  “It never stops dis-membering” (Voskamp).

In the Psalms, David sometimes talked to himself.  He bossed his emotions around a bit and told his mind and soul what to do.  He said, “Bless the LORD, O my soul; And all that is within me, bless His holy name!  Bless the LORD, O my soul, And forget not all His benefits” (Psalm 103:1-2, NIV).

And so today, I am commanding my soul to remember.  Not just the broken and chipped me, made less by the world’s incessant bullying.

No, “all that is within me,” altogether me, every bit of brokenness restored and made whole.  As Ann Voskamp said, I am re-membered and re-collected through forgetting not.  It’s a discipline and a choice to live the here and now in view of past blessings and provision.

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Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer for www.myfrienddebbie.com and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2011 Heather King

A Week of Thanks: God’s Indescribable Gift

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Thanksgiving week has arrived and I’m so excited about the holiday itself plus a week with my kids while they have a break from school!  In the spirit of that, I’m going to take a few days off from writing new posts and share some of my posts from the past on thankfulness all week long.

Looking back through these months of devotionals blessed me and reminded me of what God has done.  I hope this does the same for you!

God’s Indescribable Gift
Originally published 04/11/2011

“He satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things”
Psalm 107:9, NIV

There’s that moment on every Antiques Roadshow when the appraiser pushes his glasses back on his nose and leans in with excitement.  “So, as to value . . .” he starts.  And the item’s owner looks up with humble and cautious anticipation.

This expert, who has spent all day telling people their precious items aren’t really rare or one-of-a-kind, that their genuine treasures are copies and fakes, that grandmother’s fascinating brush with fame never really happened—this expert places a breathtaking value on an object.

A thing.

A material substance made a treasure because it is unique, somehow special because of the famous person who owned it, or so wrapped up in story and history that the ordinary, everyday is transformed into a retirement fund.

I’ve seen rugs on that show worth more than my house.

At times, I watch that “thing” now deemed priceless and I wonder—what is hidden in my garage and stuffed in my closets?  What bookshelf conceals my children’s college education?  In what closet could I discover my dream home?

But, I’ve been through all my stuff and it is actually just stuff, perhaps priceless to me and valuable in my life for its utility or the way it connects me to the past, but nothing an appraiser would lose his breath over or call his buddies about.

So then I wonder, how is it that we human creatures can look at tangible objects formed of wood or stone or cloth and so arbitrarily place on them a price tag?  This one picture costs as much as feeding a village of people in Africa.  The cost of this antique toy could build a well in a village with no clean water.

Seems like something’s wrong here.  Seems like the way we assign value is a little off.

That’s one of our problems, really.  We don’t really know value when we see it most of the time.

And so when God pours Himself out for us and blesses us with good gifts, we sometimes mistake them for not enough and seek out everything that is “other” to fill us up instead.  We keep telling Him we are empty and hold our hands out to Him for more, more, more.  He offers us all that is good and true wrapped up in His presence, but it seems so simple and plain.  Not enough.  Meanwhile, we gorge ourselves on everything we believe will satisfy the deep yearnings and cravings in our hearts.

We pour into our hearts:
success
possessions
romance
position
friendships
successful kids
knowledge
food
entertainment

And it just seeps out of our souls, flowing out as quickly as we can dump it in.  We don’t value what God offers as much as this worldly buffet of good eats around us.  It’s ingratitude.  It’s sin.

Ann Voskamp writes in One Thousand Gifts:

Satan, he wanted more.  More power, more glory.  Ultimately, in essence, Satan is an ingrate.  And he sinks his venom into the heart of Eden.  Satan’s sin becomes the first sin of all humanity – the sin of ingratitude.  Adam and Eve are, simply, painfully, ungrateful for what God gave . . . Our fall was, has always been, and always will  be, that we aren’t satisfied in God and what He gives.  We hunger for something more, something other.

It’s like the Israelites trekking through the desert.  God rained down on them wafers of honey they named manna,  miraculously, faithfully and abundantly every night as they sleep.  It’s tasty and satisfying, nutritionally able to sustain them through long desert marches for 40 years.  He graciously provides all they need and more and all while they rest.  No toil involved.  No effort on their part.  All part of God’s generous provision for His people.

And yet, they complained.  “We remember the fish we used to eat for free in Egypt. And we had all the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic we wanted” (Numbers 11:5, NIV).

Nothing they owned, used or ate in Egypt was free.  Everything came at high cost to them–they exchanged hard labor and 370+ years of bondage in slavery for fish and a salad bar.

Seems like something’s wrong here.  Seems like the way they assigned value was a little off.

Adam and Eve were not satisfied with the fruit God had given them for food.  The Israelites were not satisfied with the manna God miraculously laid at their feet every day.  We aren’t always satisfied with God’s Word, with His promises to us, with His provision, with His direction.

Yet, Scripture assures us that God is fully satisfying.

“And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work”  (2 Corinthians 9:8, NIV).

“These all look to you to give them their food at the proper time.  When you give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are satisfied with good things” (Psalm 104:27-28, NIV).

He “satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s” (Psalm 103:5, NIV).

Have you felt empty, thirsty, hungry, plagued with holes that never allow you to be filled—not with joy, not with peace, not with hope?  We are offered the Bread of Life and buckets of Living Water drawn up from a well that will quench our thirst eternally.

We are offered Christ.  Christ abundantly sufficient for our needs.  Christ the once-for-all sacrifice to cover all our sins.  Christ our Peace.   “Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!” (2 Corinthians 9:15, NIV).

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Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer for www.myfrienddebbie.com and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2011 Heather King

Weekend Walk, 11/05/2011–Celebrating Thanksgiving

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Hiding the Word:

For those reading Lisa Harper’s book, Stumbling Into Grace, along with my small group, today’s memory verse will match up with chapter 11, “Empathizing With Enemies.

In her book, Lisa Harper writes, “We can become less critical by choosing to focus on the whole of other people’s stories as opposed to one irritating chapter” (p. 129).

It’s so easy, too easy really, to judge others.  That they’re flaky.  They made a bad decision.  They’re sinful.  They’re a mess. They’re rude, impatient, annoying . . .

Whatever.

We’re generally just masses of human opinion waiting to jump on a soapbox at the slightest provocation.

I’m so thankful God has so much more grace for us than we have for each other.

So, this week, our verse is a reminder to love one another.  After all, God has shown an awful lot of love to us.

Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.
1 Peter 4:8

Celebrating Thanksgiving:

Well, my faithful blog readers, normally in this weekend space I’d be sharing with you a rerun of a post from the past.

But, I just can’t contain my excitement about Thanksgiving.  It’s far and away my most favorite holiday.  This mystifies my children, who cannot understand how a turkey dinner can compete with Christmas presents.

Yet, there it is.  The month-long inspiration to give thanks, the emphasis on family, the traditions of spending time together in the kitchen baking—it’s yummy to my very soul!!

So, when I thought about how to spill some of my Thanksgiving excitement over to you all, I decided to take one post a week in November and share some ideas on how to make my favorite holiday truly a celebration for your family.  Some of these ideas will work well with kids and grandkids.  Some don’t need anybody but you in order to participate.

I sure would love to hear your traditions and thoughts on this, too!  So, I hope you’ll hop on here and post your ideas about making Thanksgiving special.  What traditions does your family enjoy?  What’s your favorite Thanksgiving recipe and your favorite reason to be thankful?

The Thanksgiving Journal

 Remember the wonders he has done,
   his miracles, and the judgments he pronounced (Psalm 105:5)

So many of us go around the table each Thanksgiving day and say “one thing you’re thankful for . . . other than family.”

But it’s hard to remember year after year what that one special bit of Thanks was about.

And sometimes we really need a record of gratitude so we can indeed “remember the wonders He has done” (Psalm 105:5).

So, this year, I’m taking an idea from Focus on the Family’s magazine, “Thriving Family” in their Oct/Nov 2011 article “Turn Turkey Day into Thanksgiving.”

Create a family Thanksgiving journal.  This can be a blank spiral bound journal or even a notebook with pages that you insert year after year.  On Thanksgiving day, take the time as a family to list off the blessings and answered prayers from God that year.  Be specific.  Truly consider what God has done.

List your thanks into your family journal and say a prayer of gratitude.

For the ardent scrapbookers among you, add pictures and decorate the pages so the book of thanks becomes a true family keepsake.

Or, keep it simple!  The important thing isn’t the artistic value; it’s the giving thanks that matters.

The next Thanksgiving, pull out the very same journal and look through the reasons to give thanks from years past before adding to the list for the new year.  Over time, this Thanksgiving journal will be a record of blessing, answered prayers, and gifts from God, a way of remembering all that He has done.

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer for www.myfrienddebbie.com and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2011 Heather King

Thanks for Everything

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For those reading Lisa Harper’s book, Stumbling Into Grace, along with my small group, today’s devotional will match up with her fifth chapter: “Cat Appreciation Day”

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“Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”
(1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, NIV)

There I was, sitting at the cafeteria table with my kindergartener.  When she had seen me in the hallway on the way to lunch, she grinned and waved so hard that her arm propelled her whole body into swaying back and forth.  Now, here we were munching away at peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and drinking lemonade together in the middle of her school day.

And I was thankful.

Thankful for a school that allows me to pop in to have lunch with my kids in between their math lessons and their reading time.

Thankful that my daughter grinned when she saw me.  Thankful that my first grader introduced me to all her friends.  Thankful that I got a hug and a big kiss from each of my older girls. Thankful that, for the moment at least, Mom isn’t too embarrassing and kissing her cheek in public hasn’t become “uncool.”

Thankful that kids all around the cafeteria waved at us.  Thankful that my daughters have found and chosen such great friends, knowing that who they play with on the playground and sit with at lunch makes a difference.

So very thankful.

Not that everything in my life is perfect and I live carefree, without worries or problems.  But if we are only grateful in the perfect moments, we’ll never give thanks at all.

We train our kids before they can even repeat after us to say “thank you” every time we hand them the graham cracker or the cup of juice.  It’s one of those universal mom techniques that somehow we all know how to do even though it isn’t written down in a parenting manual.

Hand child cracker. Tell child, “Say ‘thank you!'”

What cracker has God handed you lately?  Have you heard Him prompt your heart for a thankful response?

Sometimes we begrudge the praise He expects.  Sometimes we make our worship come with strings attached.

I’ll give thanks—sure, when His gift is sufficient for my need.  This cracker isn’t enough to sustain me or satisfy me.

I’ll give thanks—sure, when He cleans up all of the messes and spills around me and I can sit and enjoy this outstretched cracker without distraction, fear, worry or messy troubles on my right or left.

Yet, there is power in gratitude, in contentment, and in trusting the God who always gives good gifts.

Not power in vague thankfulness and the sweeping praise of generalities, though. Not quoting Paul who was ” always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,” and agreeing to be thankful but never saying why.

Ann Voskamp in One Thousand Gifts said, “I discover that slapping a sloppy brush of thanksgiving over everything in my life leaves me deeply thankful for very few things in my life” (p. 40).

Yes, and it is the deep thanks, the specific and the named gratitude, that transforms.

It transforms us.

Giving thanks makes Daniels out of us, people of consistent prayer, going before the throne over and over through our every day and thanking Him.  Just like Daniel, who “three times a day  . . . got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before” (Daniel 6:10).

Before the issuing of an evil decree written specifically for Daniel’s destruction . . . he prayed and gave thanks.  After the decree . . . he prayed and gave thanks.

Giving thanks for him was never circumstantial.

Gratitude transforms something else, too.  It turns the insufficient into sufficiency.  It alters our circumstances.

When Jesus stood on a hillside surrounded by more than 5000 people, He could have denied God praise.  Weren’t these men with their families out in the country for a good reason?  Hadn’t they come to hear the teachings of Christ?  Hadn’t they patiently listened all day? And now it was late and they had nothing to eat and nowhere to go for food.

Jesus fingered a lunchbox with loaves and fish and eyed the hungry crowd before Him.

Was the gift God had given enough?

Not in the slightest.

And yet Jesus lifted the basket high and “gave thanks” (John 6:11) and suddenly there was a feast that fed the thousands on the hillside and included leftovers.

Ann Voskamp says, “Jesus embraces His not enough . . . He gives thanks . .  And there is more than enough.  More than enough!  Eucharisteo (giving thanks) always, always precedes the miracle” (p. 51).

We don’t give thanks after the miracle.  Sometimes our miracle depends on our giving thanks.

So when God hands us a cracker, we don’t remind Him of the three-course meal we asked for; we thank Him for the gift He’s offered.  We insist that our heart be content.

We express praise, true and heartfelt, for a God who sees our need and responds with grace and generosity.  In so doing, we express to Him that we trust His gift-giving and act on the belief that “your heavenly Father knows that you need them” (Matthew 6:32).

For what are you thankful today?  Don’t just nod and offer the two-second prayer, “Thanks for everything.”   Think hard.  Dig deep.  Be specific.

And give thanks.

Thanking God for shared lunches, for tea parties, for evenings at home, for knitting, for cozy sweaters and cool fall sweater-weather.

If there is one book I could encourage you to read (other than your Bible) this year (and I’ve been busy reading many), it’s Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts.  Please don’t miss out on reading this one.

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer for www.myfrienddebbie.com and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2011 Heather King

I’ve Fallen and I Can’t Get Up!

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“Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before” (Daniel 6:10)

Bam!
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.
Sniffle, sniffle, sniffle.
Mom!  Mom mom!!

With my genes, my girls didn’t have much of a chance at grace and my baby girl is no different. So these are the sounds heard in my home multiple times any given day.

It’s the immediate reaction of any child to trouble, the crying out to mom and the running to her side to tell her all about the tragedy and pain.

There’s little I can do most of the time to fix the problem.  My baby’s fallen and hurt (maybe even angry) and while I can’t change the fact of her fall and no Band-Aid is going to alleviate the temporary soreness, I can kiss her, cuddle her close and tell her I love her. And so I do.

Then I fall down, tripping over my own sin, or another person who invaded my space, or an obstacle I didn’t foresee, or an unexpected pit in my road.

To whom do I run?  What is my immediate response, my instantaneous reaction to pain?  What is yours?

For some, it’s to hold our bruises close for a while and to snap at any bystanders who offer to help us stand back to our feet.  Maybe even hide our heads in embarrassment for the spectacle of the fall in the first place.

For some, it’s to call out for help from those nearby, asking them to both hoist us up and even bear the burden of our weight for a while as we wobble around on a weakened leg.

For some, it’s to haul out our own first aid kit and apply ice and bandages to our own wounds and refuse the expert care so readily available.

For some, it’s to sit without moving, paralyzed by fear.  What if our leg is broken?  What if we never walk again?  What if . . . what if . . . what if . . . ?

In Beth Moore’s study, Daniel, she notes how his immediate response to the king’s edict prohibiting prayer was to go “to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before” (Daniel 6:10).

He didn’t worry first and then pray.  He didn’t try to fix the situation through his political abilities and then pray. He didn’t even concede defeat and stop his public prayer habits, choosing instead to silently petition God at night while others slept.

Daniel prayed.  It was his initial reaction; it was his only solution.

Then there’s the matter of what he prayed.  Sure, some of us have indeed trained ourselves to “take it to the Lord in prayer” without hesitation.  We run to his side and bury our noses in the hem of His robe, sniffling out our requests to Him.  But are we giving thanks amidst those tears?

Daniel was.  Scripture says he “got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to God” (Daniel 6:10).  When I’m smarting from an injury, I’m more likely to complain about the pain than sing hymns of thankful praise.

Not Daniel. Political enemies, a manipulated king, a dangerous edict, his faith attacked, his life on the line—still Daniel gave thanks.

Paul made the same connection when he wrote,

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:6-7).

Peace in the midst of pain is there for the taking sometimes, and yet we choose anxiety instead.  We opt for fear by trying to control our own problems rather than running to God’s side and dumping them at His feet.  We allow worry to reign in our hearts and minds by refusing to pray with thanksgiving at all times and in every situation.

I confess I’m a rebel at times.  Even though I know I should shove aside my grumbling and choose to be thankful—even when it takes struggling and squinting to see that sparkle of light in a dark place– still I decline.

I dusted off my thankfulness journal this morning after two weeks of shoving it aside. I didn’t want to be thankful.  I wanted to feel wronged.  I didn’t want some secret formula to maintaining joy in trials; I wanted no more trials!  I wanted God to feel pity for me and feel sorry for letting me be hurt.  Perhaps what I wanted was an apology from Him.

It’s like emotional manipulation of the Almighty God.  “I’m not going to praise You or worship You or give You thanks or hand over my fears to You until You rescue me in the way I desire.”

It’s handing God a sheet and pillow and pointing to the couch.
It’s ignoring His phone calls and giving Him the silent treatment at the dinner table.
It’s holding my breath until he gives me what I want.

And it’s just about as effective as all those tactics.  So when my tantrum is done, I pray and I give thanks.  Reluctantly at first, perhaps, and yet I try.  Maybe the next time I trip and fall, I pray with thanksgiving immediately because I have learned that gratitude shifts my focus off my need and onto the face of my Deliverer.

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer for www.myfrienddebbie.com and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2011 Heather King