"And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me." Luke 22:19
I have been thinking allot lately about gratitude. William Law once asked a question: "Would you know who is the greatest saint in the world?" His answer is fascinating: "It is not he who prays most or fasts most. It is not he who gives the most money ... but it is he who is always thankful to God, who wills everything that God wills, and who receives everything as an instance of God's goodness and has a heart always ready to praise God for it."
Throughout the Bible we are encouraged to give thanks. 1 Chronicles 16:8 urges us to "Give thanks to the LORD." Ephesians 5:20 emphasize this, saying we should "always [give] thanks to God the Father." 1 Thessalonians 5:18 is even more direct: "Give thanks in all circumstances." Thankfulness is one of the most beautiful, and spiritually strengthening, attitudes of a Christian. It is true that God deserves our thankfulness, but duty and obligation are hardly good motivators. Thankfulness, as an attitude of the heart; is like a fuel that powers the Christian life and keeps us moving on the pathway of spiritual growth, even when the climb is steep and the trail rough. Unless we learn how to cultivate a thankful heart, we become stuck in bitterness. An attitude of gratitude is power to the soul. God offers it to us to drive out the spiritually degenerative illness of bitter, negative thinking.
I like to think of thankfulness as God's "spiritual air freshener." It replaces the stale odor of resentment with clean, fresh smelling air for the soul to breathe. It is precious smelling to God and to all those who live with us. Gratitude comes from the word “gratis” that without price or payment. Gratis is from the same root word of grace. Thanksgiving comes from the same root as “think”, so that to think is to thank. Thinking is the key to a thankful heart.
When we're not thankful, we rob God of His glory, lose sight of His beauty, our hearts become darkened, and we lose perspective. In other words if your heart does not respond to God with gratitude, your mind with be darkened. You surrender yourself to the blinding work of Satan. Gratitude is the guardian of the lamp of the soul. If the guardian dies the lamp goes out. Guard yourselves with gratitude!
It's spiritually dangerous to stop cultivating a heart of thankfulness. In Colossians 4:2. Paul makes a connection between watchfulness and gratitude. "Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving." Or, more literally, "Being watchful in it BY thanksgiving." The idea of watchfulness is vigilance and alertness. You recall in the garden of Gethsemane how Jesus admonished the sleepy disciples (Matthew 26:41), "Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation." In other words guard your self from temptation by watching in your prayer, by being alert and vigilant. But now Colossians 4:2 Paul says that the way we watch is "with thanksgiving." Guard yourselves with gratitude! Paul says another time , "In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will GUARD your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 4:6-7).
Thanksgiving is what Jesus counted of most important 12 hours before He was arrested. "And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me." (Luke 22:19). The word used for "given thanks" is "eucharisteo" where we get the word "eucharist, used in some churches for communion. The root word of "eucharisteo" is "charis",meaning grace. . So Jesus took the bread and saw it as grace and gave thanks. He took the bread and knew it was a gift and gave thanks to the Father for it.
But there is more. Eucharisto, giving thanks, envelopes the Greek word for grace, "charis", but it also holds its derivative, the Greek word "chara", meaning joy. So joy, grace, and giving thanks all are part of a thankful life. Deep "chara (joy) is found only at the table of thanksgiving where God's merciful, benevolent, grace is seen and savored. the height and depth of my joy is dependent on the depth of my gratitude and thanks to God.
If I can be thankful. I can be joyful. this means I can have joy here and now, even in trials and difficulties. Here in the midst of now, joy is possible, when God and His grace are seen as ever flowing, ever present, always giving and helping and providing.
I see a threefold cord of real life:
Chris-GRACE
Eucharisteo- THANKSGIVING
Chara-JOY
Is it not amazing that a little Greek word can give such meaning to a life of gratitude? Whisper the word "eucharisteo! See the grace from the Father pouring out to you. Give him thanks! Feel the joy! These three words are the keys to really living in the moment Eucharisteo!
Jesus is about to die to save His disciples and the world And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me." (Luke 22:19).
Jesus is surrounded by a hungry crowd and takes seven loaves of bread and a few fish and he took the seven loaves, and having given thanks, he broke them and gave them to his disciples to set before the people. (Mark 8:8)
Jesus faces a dead man buried in a tomb for three days and cries out. “Father, I thank you that you have heard me." (John 11:41)
Jesus sees thanksgiving as integral to the working of God and the faith that saves. I truly believe that we enter into the full life of faith only as we give thanks. God graces us, we see it poured out towards us, we are full of joy in it, and we express thanks.
If grace is a gift, than being thankful is receiving and accepting whatever grace He gives:healing, preserving, restoring, providing, testing, encouraging, comforting, renewing...and on and on. Gratitude is the echo of one who has received grace.
Sometimes the regular grace of God dulls our sense our sense of gratitude. But in reality grace, mercy, and love are new every mornin. Lamentations 3:22-23, "Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness." So much in this world eclipses God from my life and as a result pushes us to be disgruntled. I sometimes lag in the practice of thankfulness and have to remind myself that giving thanks is a discipline. As an act of my will, I must choose to dwell on good things, on the high qualities of my invisible but ever-present Father. I consciously bend my thoughts away from resentment and remind myself I must wait for God to work out His best plans in due time. Sometimes it helps me to pray prayers of thanksgiving out loud so I can hear the words of thankfulness. Once thankfulness becomes a habit, it takes on a life of its own and becomes a source of tremendous strength. Thankfulness is one of the surest paths to God and to a peace-filled spirit. God uses it to give us our life back and in fact, to give us a higher experience of our human life in a very fallen world. Many are those who waste their lives worrying, mourning, or crying out in complaint -and nothing good will come of it. For many of us, thankfulness starts out sounding shallow and trite. But the truth is, it leads us into a deeper journey with God than we imagined, taking us down to the core reason why we are here: to fulfill our own purpose for living-or His. Psalm 100:4, "Enter his gates with thanksgiving' " the psalmist wrote, "and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name."' If I want to enter God's gates and I do, with all my heart - it will only happen as God's spirit of thanksgiving enters me. Thankfulness isn't an obligation; it's my privilege as a child of God. It is our key, and your privilege, too.
Pastor Bill
No comments:
Post a Comment