Reflections on Gratitutde

Gratitude is the seed of joy. It is in a higher sphere than simple thanksgiving. Gratitude is more an ongoing attitude of humility & understood grace than it is a response to a particular situation, as is joy different & higher than happiness.

Happiness is a response to a sense of well-being from life operating & turning out as "planned" - under our control. It doesn't require God's gracious intervention to be happy when things go according to one's plans. But to have true joy means to live in an attitude of trusting God & gratitude for all He IS & has already done, trusting that He will continue to work in our lives, even when all appearances seem to show the opposite. It is an awareness of His (Supernatural) peace & well-being when all things start to "fall apart" from the way WE have planned them. This is why joy is called a "Fruit of the Spirit" & "happiness" is not.

It is at these very instances when our natural minds want to "jump ship" & many, sadly, do, but in doing so, miss out on the very vindication of their faith that they have longed for. Because if we hang on to our trust in God when we don't FEEL it, with gratitude, we come to experience the "peace that passes understanding" & our Lord's faithfulness displayed in our lives in a way we could never have imagined as part of our own small plans for ourselves. It also builds trust, humility, gratitude & a deeper understanding of God's grace & love better than any book or sermon ever could!

In his book The Screwtape Letters, the senior demon, Screwtape, in speaking to his nephew & underling demon, Wormwood, lectures him on the spiritual danger (from a demonic position, obviously) that occurs (so think of the opposite from God's perspective when he says): "Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, & asks why he has been forsaken, & still obeys." (Screwtape Letters, p. 40). This describes the believer that is experiencing what the "saints of old" referred to as "the dark night of the soul." It speaks of a period of time (that happens to all believers from time to time) in which we can't feel God's presence & see only bleakness around us. Yet, in the case of believers who have come to know & trust their Lord's ultimate goodness & wonderful plans for them, they can see no good around them yet still follow Him. This is when the enemy of our soul - Satan & his hordes - feel like their cause is most desperate & a reason for us to rejoice! God & His angels certainly are, & we will, too, if we keep going and do not give up!

A heart of gratitude, overflowing to worship, will increase our sense of hope & optimism based on the goodness of God, not what we see with our earthly eyes. An amazing road!

Shortcuts That Aren't

This world is obsessed with shortcuts.   We are compulsively driven to “save time,”  “work smarter, not harder,”  “be ahead of the curve,”  “get there faster,” and on and on. It is easy to veer off track.  I know that, where driving is concerned personally,  every time I’ve tried to take “a shortcut,” it has turned into a much LONGER cut as I’ve gotten dis-oriented and ultimately  lost. I'm sure this doesn't just apply to me & my directionally-challenged compadres.  I think it has happened to many Christians in our day.

While well-intentioned:  we want to do more for Christ and His Kingdom, to use our talents, to meet the myriad of needs we see around us, to address and stand for the many voiceless in our world, to right wrongs,  turn around the “upsidedownness” that this world’s system has inflicted on us. Good causes, and definitely necessary, but in the process we often lose sight of the forest for the trees. I know. I'm speaking first for myself.

One day I woke up and realized that all my “doing,” however I thought was born of a desire to please the Lord and help this world around me had turned into “shortcuts” to nowhere.  I became aware of a sense of loss:  where I should have felt fulfilled in doing “the right thing,”  there was emptiness,  where there should have been joy, there was instead apprehension.  Does God even LIKE me, much less approve of me? I didn't feel it.  After more than 40 years of “serving Christ” I came to the stark conclusion that somewhere along the way, I have “veered off course,” been deceived by a spiritual shortcut and ended up more like Jacob of the Old Testament:  surviving and scheming, making my OWN way in the name of God,  becoming so arrogant as thinking it didn’t matter if I read His Word because I KNOW a lot of it from having learned it so long ago.  I had slipped into unintentional hypocrisy, telling others that Jesus didn’t want them to “do it alone but in His power” while plowing through often myself with a sense that “when you first learn to drive, you have to pay attention to everything, but after a while, it all becomes automatic” and so does our life of faith, becoming not faith at all but drudgery without joy.

This is a confession.  But as I awoke to this revelation about myself, I remembered Jacob’s restoration as he wrestled with the “angel” (or a pre-incarnate Jesus, some theologians say).  And as I felt despair and cried out, “Jesus – do you even acknowledge me as yours – and why WOULD you?”  I sensed His still, small voice saying, “I wouldn’t be pursuing and wrestling with you if I were through with you.  It isn’t how I work.  It isn’t who I AM.  I have shown you these things about yourself BECAUSE I love you and want you to be filled with ME.  Only as you DIE to yourself can you be the carrier of MY will and BECOME the complete YOU that I have always intended you to be.  But the goal is NOT to become you, but to lose yourself in ME. 

This is the GREAT PARADOX of MY WAY.  This is why it is only IN Me that one can find their way TO Me. It is IMPOSSIBLE to REASON one’s way to God.  When you do,  it gets all jumbled up because man’s reason is not God's way, but in the end leads to death. My way leads to life and joy through My Holy Spirit.  But ONLY as you continually learn of me through my Word, and OBEY it in small, trusting steps that NEVER end.  You never get to the point where you “go it alone” – that is when you veer off into the wisdom of man.  

"Come back to simple, humble dependence on Me.  THEN you will experience my joy for you and your sense of my presence and pleasure.  This Word is not for you alone but for MANY of my children.  Stop relating to this world in a reactionary way.  There are many evils and wrongs going on and there always will be.  Stick close to me and you will see – individually – how you fit into My plan of Redemption.  

" You – my Body -  ARE My Ambassadors, my partners in reaching out to the world with My love.  But not by REACTING; rather by LISTENING.  I know that being still is the hardest thing that ANY of you can do.  But otherwise it will be you, not ME, that the world will see, and the end will make no difference.  People will continue in anger and fear, which is what I want to RESCUE you all from.  Sit, like Mary, at my feet. “Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your soul.” (Mt. 11:29.)  THEN (and ONLY then), when you get up, you will have the strength, boldness and courage to do greater things than I did, because of My Spirit directing you and giving you MY resources inside you, which, like springs of living water will flow out of you and not dry up.”

Amen, Lord.  Thank you and I pray – for myself and for EVERY believer – that we would take this admonition seriously and walk humbly & obediently with our God, and in doing so,  see this world set ablaze with His love and power, not our weakness which is what has often been seen and as it should be, rejected by the world as it is NOT Christ, and which ends up, as Paul warns Timothy (in 2 Tim. 3:5) “ – having a form of godliness but denying its power.”  That’s why we must stay close to Him and not get “ahead” of Him – as it comes “naturally” to us.  But “natural” is just another word for our fleshly nature, which will do NONE of us – or the world around us – any good.  It is the “wood, hay and stubble” that will eventually be burned up.  Let us  (and I speak first to myself) stay in step with Jesus in order to be found in Him and walk in HIS power and love.  THEN we will not be dazed and confused by “shortcuts.”

A Severe Mercy

       I read a book when I was a new believer, entitled A Severe Mercy, by Sheldon Vanauken. He was a man in love with his wife who (the cliff notes version) became a Christian after years of spiritual seeking, leaving Sheldon – not a believer - feeling left out and jealous of God for interjecting Himself between himself and his wife. To make matters worse, his wife suddenly died, leaving Sheldon angry as well as jealous, feeling as though God had “taken her twice,” not unlike a stalker who proclaims, “If I can't have her, neither can you!”

       It took a long time – and I recommend you read the book for yourself to fill in the many details – but Vanauken himself eventually entered a relationship with Jesus Christ. After much reflection, he concluded that the death of his wife all those years before was part of what it took for God to bring him to the culmination of his search for life and meaning: to Christ Himself. An ultimate mercy, he described it as, though as noted by the title of the book, a severe mercy nonetheless. He admitted that with his wife in his life, he probably would not have been brought to the realization of any greater need for God. With her taken out of the picture, however devastating as it was for him at the time, it forced him to go from good to best.

       Isn't that how it usually goes with us humans? I mean, when things are going well, it's easy to be so comfortable with our lives that we don't let our minds go further as to our need for more? I've found no clearer evidence of this in my own life – and in others I've observed as well - than when we have remained in a job that started out wonderfully but had gotten stale and gone south for any number of reasons. That ominous overshadowing of the not-so-great unknown clouds our rational sense. Instead of moving on then – or even starting the search for something better, we stay put in our misery because of the “known” misery (or evil) supersedes the dreaded and mysterious “unknown.”

       Yet what I am learning in this life – albeit admittedly slowly – is that, for the believer in Christ, life is a long journey (it feels at times, though ultimately quite brief as any 80+ year old will tell you!) toward trust leading to freedom in a way that unbelievers cannot claim. Not because of any innate superiority on our part, but because it is only as we walk humbly with our God and follow His directions (which is by no means a linear experience), giving up self-will and trusting when everything we think and expect turns upside down, that we begin to accept His “severe mercies” in our lives as mercies indeed, and in doing so, awaken slowly to fragments of freedom that represent our true selves, seen now only through a glass dimly but one day will be complete as we see Him face to face.