Be Thankful

The title of this post was inspired by this fantastic decoration on my dorm hall, courtesy of my RA. 

This blog post also has the serious potential to be the longest post known to man, but I will make sure that doesn't happen.

Anyways, this "BE THANKFUL" message is a pretty good reminder, not just on the fourth Thursday of November, but on everyday. 

We have a pretty sick tendency to pause for a brief moment, voice our thanks for this or that, but then gorge ourselves on food and go out and buy more of what we already have. 

I'm not saying that eating or shopping are necessarily bad things. I will have done both of them by the end of today. The point is that we have so much to be thankful for. All day. Every day. Not just on "Turkey Day."

I read a book recently called "One Thousand Gifts" by Ann Voskamp. 

This book rocked my world.

The author talks of making a list, a list where she writes down all of the things that she is thankful for everyday. In her words, a "list of writing all that is good and pure and lovely and beautiful." 

So I set out to do the same, starting this past January.

I currently have 20 pages filled with 1,176 different things that I've thanked the Lord for in the past 11 months.

The crazy thing is that this doesn't even scratch the surface of what the Lord has done and provided throughout this time period. 

Here's the deal. When we thank God for the things around us - for the huge, unbelievable miracles, for the small, minute, and seemingly boring details of every day life, and for everything in between - we see in an overwhelming way that HE IS GOOD.

How can one genuinely thank God for the things around them, the things given by His hand, and still stand in disbelief? Still stand in denial of His overflowing goodness?

The correct answer here is that they can't. 

And just wait, it gets better.

Through this process of giving thanks, we see that the Lord is good. And when we realize He is good, we see that we can trust Him. We see that He truly is faithful.

This realization allows us to live in utter and complete freedom. It allows us to literally dwell in it. To roll around in freedom and shout for joy that we don't have to worry or stress. To skip and laugh because we know that every detail of all of our days rests in His good, trustworthy, and faithful hands.

HALLELUJAH!!! 

I will save your time and eyes by not listing all 1,176+ things that I'm thankful for, but I will share one that I need to pause and be truly thankful for every day.

And that is the life, death, and resurrection of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, for through Him, a wretched sinner like me can stand before a Holy, Holy, Holy God and be seen as righteous. 

Here's one way I remind myself:

And that really is the truth of it. 

Jesus Christ lived the perfect life that I could never live so that He could satisfy a just God by dying the death that I so fully deserve. 

When we realize this in the deepest part of our being, when we dwell on it, when we accept this truth and surrender our lives to Him, we can't help but be thankful. 

If this truth doesn't show that we serve a good God, I don't know what does. 

"He Who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all - how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things?" -Romans 8:32

Some of the things in our lives may not seem good. A month ago my brother got in a car wreck. By the worlds standards, that is certainly not a good thing. But the Lord brought me to the realization that  I can be genuinely thankful for things that, in my finite mind, seem bad, because the Lord is sovereign and He is good. He can use the bad and ugly for good, for His glory. Because of this I can actually give thanks to the Lord for seemingly horrible things.

Ann Voskamp says it like this, "Thanksgiving is the evidence of our acceptance of whatever He gives. Thanksgiving is the manifestation of our "Yes!" to His grace. Thanksgiving is inherent to a true salvation experience; thanksgiving is necessary to live the well, whole, fullest life."

So Happy Thanksgiving everyone, today and everyday.