Thankfulness

  A Deeper Sense Of Thankfulness A spirit of gratitude and thankfulness is surely one of the great keys of the kingdom. The beginning of man’s rebellion against God was the lack of a thankful heart. Do we genuinely desire and long for God, or for other things? The truth of the matter is, if we are not content and grateful for what we have and who we are, then we are not loving God as we should. As Francis Schaeffer put it, we are “coveting against God.” A thankless spirit wants things now. Rather than being impatient, we need to learn to love the journey we are on more than the point of arrival; to learn to embrace trust rather than control. There is a supernatural power in expressing our thanksgiving to God that brings divine multiplication. Murmuring and moaning put our focus on lack. Thanksgiving is aware of abundance. Each day we have is a gift, not a right. Our attitude towards life, towards our God, will determine the quality of the “soil” of our life and whether God can plant seed there that will lead to an abundant harvest of blessing. We can choose unbelief, murmuring and complaining against God, which leads to anger and anxiety. Or we can choose thankfulness, which leads to peace and rest. Entitlement breeds envy, greed and restlessness. Gratitude waters the garden of our heart with wonder, joy and faith. The grass is not greener next door – it’s greener where we water it! Let us unwrap the gift of “today” with the childlike humility and awe that God’s gift deserves. Thankfulness results in a willingness to surrender to God’s will for our lives, because we trust Him to be who He says He is for us – the perfect Father. If we want two good indications of how much we are really trusting God, we should pay attention to our levels of anxiety and anger when things don’t go our way, and to the steadiness of our stream of thanksgiving, whatever the circumstances.

Our calling

  Called To Purpose God has called each of us with a specific purpose and given us the grace necessary to fulfil it. Some people speak about the subject of “calling” as though it is very mysterious and difficult to discover. Not so, because the Bible is very clear about our fundamental purpose on earth. Thomas Merton wrote, “Before the Lord wills me to do anything, He first of all wills me to ‘be.’ What I do must depend on what I am.” First and foremost God has predestined us to conform to the image and likeness of His Son, Jesus (Romans 8:29). “Success isn’t a place to reach, but a state of being,” writes Steve Backlund. Alongside this, God has set in a place a “prosperous” plan for our lives (Jeremiah 29:11) and preordained our days (Psalm 139:16). A recent piece of research from medical practitioners indicated that the majority of their patients suffered from a profound lack of purpose in their lives. In other words, apart from continuing to do the expected things – family, work, social life – their lives had no overarching goal; their goals were pretty meaningless. This in turn had an effect on their health and wellbeing. We realize from the Bible, however, that God has given each of us the opportunity to walk in His perfect plan for our life, bringing heaven to earth and living purposefully. “For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” (Romans 8:15-16) “We love Him because He first loved us.” (1 John 4:19) This means that our primary calling is rooted in our identity – to become a beloved child of God. Rooted in that place of love and acceptance, we are given the “greatest commandment” (Matthew 22:38) to worship and love God with every breath we breathe. Only then can we begin to fulfil the second great command to love our neighbor as ourselves. If you are searching for your “calling”, focus on the high calling of loving God and enjoying Him forever.

Grace

  Entitled? In the beginning, in the Garden, we were not encumbered by the trap of comparison to others, or by feelings of insignificance, jealousy, envy, vanity or pride. Our focus and attention was fully upon God, our Father, and our glory covering was too thick for us to be aware of our nakedness. We were simply happy to be in a love relationship with our Father and one with another. This freedom is our inheritance in Christ today. But the orphan spirit of Cain still strives to come to the fore, to bring an “offering” better than Abel’s, and is consumed with the murderous thoughts of darkness. Orphans must succeed and prove themselves. Sons and daughters of God, however, stand approved by heaven, enjoying their relationship and working alongside their Father. In Matthew 20:1-16 Jesus told a parable about the master of a house who hired a number of workers for his vineyard. Some labored for several hours and others for a much shorter time, but they all got the same reward at the end. The workers who had toiled for longer immediately rose up with a sense of self-entitlement. “How come we didn’t get paid more than those others?” Jesus infers that it wasn’t that the master didn’t pay them a fair day’s wage, rather they had fallen into the trap of comparing what they’d received with what the others had received. Jesus’ simple, profound summary of this episode is, “So the last will be first, and the first last” (Matthew 20:16) The principle of the parable is that the Christian life is all grace from beginning to end. Jesus is the master in the parable, distributing grace generously to all. The workers who felt cheated received just as much grace as anyone else, but they measured it by worldly standards. We live in an upside down kingdom that makes little sense to the worldly wise. The principles of God’s kingdom have nothing to do with the principles of the world we’ve left behind. We must stop bringing all our “old ideas” to the table. There is nothing so wrong as the spirit which argues, “I have done this, therefore I expect something in return.” God is not a celestial vending machine. We cannot manipulate Him. No matter what we do, we can never argue for our entitlement. Rather, in His presence we receive all the reward we could desire and more. His presence is full of joy, peace and satisfaction. Let’s learn the art of thankfulness!

The Pressure’s Off

   The pressure to live well isn’t on me or you. Jesus did it all and He lives in us. Grace works as we yield to Him, living in and through us. Religion says, Do … achieve … earn your validation … justify your very existence … the pressure is on you to perform... Jesus says, Done … accepted … validated … justified … the pressure’s off! The daily lot of those driven by religion is striving, anxiety and, ultimately, exhaustion and burn out. The inheritance of the child of God led by Christ’s grace is freedom, joy and peace. Those who fall back on self-reliance and their own resourcefulness to navigate life, who have taken on the principles of the world, unwittingly or otherwise, will know the daily pressure to perform and be dogged by a constant sense of failing to reach an acceptable standard. For those who are dead to self, humbled and dependent, the pressure is off. Yet we so easily succumb to the trap of trying to resume control of our lives. Author Larry Crabb expresses it well: “We need to yield control over what happens in our lives and trust God to do whatever He thinks best … until we develop a taste for God we prefer a better life of blessings from God over a better hope of intimacy with Him … we prefer control over trust … you were saved by grace and you’ll grow by grace … the law imposed the intolerable pressure to live perfectly in order to live well. You now stand in the Law of Liberty. Stand tall. Live as free men and women.” When praying and reflecting upon His ministry in John 17, Jesus said to His Father “You have given me…” twelve times. Jesus’ humble dependence upon His Father is stunning and freeing at the same time. It reminds us that all we receive, we receive only by God’s grace. We live to play a role in God’s story, not He in ours. He is God, we are not. He is central, we are peripheral. It’s all about Him, not about us. There is freedom in this truth. The pressure is off!

Grace... undeserved favour

  Grace, Up Close And Personal Did we get into God’s kingdom by virtue of our own good works or merely through Jesus? The extent to which we understand our part in this process, I believe, determines the extent to which we will extend grace and mercy, both to ourselves and to those stuck in sin. The more we credit ourselves with inherent goodness, the less grace and mercy has a role to play! But the degree to which we become uninhibited receptors of God’s grace is the degree to which we can and will extend that grace to others. Pope Francis said, “The proclamation of the saving love of God comes before moral and religious imperatives.” In other words, when God looks at a person, He first sees someone whom He loves and wants unconditionally, before He is remotely concerned with their sin. Through the cross of Calvary God endorses, loves and invites every one of His children to heaven, before tripping over their sin, however vile it may be. But even this does not adequately capture Francis’ deeper insight – the priority of the person. This personalist with which God deals with us is one of the most radical aspects of the Christian faith. In every way that matters to God, human beings are completely equal and completely loved. They can’t be reduced to ethical object lessons. Their dignity runs deeper than their failures. They matter more than any cause. They are the cause. Grace is the empowering presence of God to do what only He can do. Grace doesn’t excuse sin – it empowers righteousness. Grace is unmerited favor. Let’s ask ourselves this question: “How much unmerited favor can I afford to pay out today? How deep are my reserves?” If we feel low on grace, we need only to return to the Source and ask to be refilled.

Orphan spirit

  Inside-Out We live in a world dominated by an orphan spirit. It teaches people to be defensive, self-reliant, self-sufficient. It militates against the vulnerability and dependence called for by Father God as we take on His kingdom values. We have been trained by an orphan world that says we must prove ourselves capable. This is a religious lie. We are not built for independence. In fact, the moment we decide to kill our independence, admit our own incapability, give up and look to the Father, is the moment of our greatest victory. Resolutions and commitments to change our behavior won’t work. Allowing God to change our heart – and the subsequent outworking of that change affecting our behavior – will transform us. Striving is the counterfeit of yielding. Religion attempts to transform us from the outside-in and does not work. The kingdom operates from the inside-out, and it does work, bringing about spiritual transformation. In order to give up our self-reliance and yield to God’s work in our life we need to learn humility. The orphan spirit is rooted in pride and control. It is offended by the prospect of making ourselves vulnerable. Yet, humble people cannot be humiliated or offended, because their self-focus has vanished, swallowed up by their love for God, themselves and others. Perfectionism and control tend to produce only shame and fear. But when we are justified by Christ’s perfection through faith in the finished work of the cross, He becomes our perfection. Suddenly, we are enough. We measure up. Slowly, our self-criticism and our judgment of others falls away, because we realize that everyone is significant. Let’s get rid of our pride, because God resists the proud. Let’s choose to go low and God will lift us up. Let’s embrace the inside-out working of the Holy Spirit in our lives and look towards the glory that God desires to bring through His grace.

May not be the answer you expect

  Surprising Answers 2 Corinthians 12:1-10 We don’t know exactly what Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” was, but it was so bad that he cried out to God, over and over, for deliverance and for it to be removed. We might expect God to do a miracle and answer by taking it away. Certainly many times in Scripture we see examples of times when God answered prayers by doing miraculous works on behalf of his people. This is not what happened with Paul’s “thorn.” We know that something happens every time we pray. God always hears. He loves his children. He is all-powerful. So, what did God do in this case? What was the answer to Paul’s heartfelt prayer? Are you ready? Here it is. God says, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). No thorns being removed. No immediate deliverance and spontaneous songs of praise for an undeniable miracle. Instead, God promises grace. God offers Paul power to make it through the torment of his thorn in the flesh. The thorn will stay, but so will grace. In this moment God says, “Let my presence and power be enough for you.” Paul’s prayers were answered, but in a way very different than he expected. He wanted the thorn gone. God said, “No.” The Lord of creation knew that what Paul needed was power in weakness and grace in the pain of life. Something happens every time you pray. It may be all that you hoped for and more. Or it may be different than you want—but exactly what you need. As we walk through life, praying with our eyes and lives wide open, praying for people and with people, praying for small things and big things, we can be assured that something good will happen every time we pray. Commit before God to seek and accept his answer for every prayer you make.