Attitude of Gratitude

Pastor and author, Aiden Wilson Tozer, made a profound observation: “What comes to mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you.” In the beginning, God created us in His image. We’ve been creating God in our image ever since. We often want to turn the God of creation and make him into our own personal God. We form and shape Him into the God of our reality, our wants and needs, we force our perspectives on Him, our beliefs, our imperfections, we try to turn Him into who we are so we can feel right about our self, to make us look good, to make us right and others wrong.

When we do this, we turn “God” into “god”. That would be a false image right? What would you call that false image? You should be thinking that you’ve turned God into idol. How does God feel about idols? Pick pretty much any book of the Bible and you can see how God feels about that and his response to his people that worship false images of Him, making a mockery of Him, turning Him into an idol. What comes to mind when you think about God? What is his posture toward you? What is the look on his face, the tone of His voice?

If you think the look on His face is one of a stern God, an upset God, you would be wrong. God still loves you, His arms are wide open wanting to embrace you because He blessed you before anything else, the only part of creation that he blessed.

As I said last week, God won’t bless pride or greed but blessing us is God’s most ancient instinct, it sets the table for everything that follows. We must position ourselves for God’s blessing because it’s who God is and blessing us is what God does and has blessings in areas of life that you have possibly never thought of yet.

Paul planted the church in Thessaloniki while he was on his second missionary journey and this is a letter he wrote a few years after that, possibly around 51 AD. The church is at a pivotal moment and is facing challenges as they are today and Paul offers his words of comfort.

1 Thessalonians 5:16–18“Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

What is the will of God? We often think about “who, what, when, where” when we think about this. We think more in the line of what do we do, where do we go. While discerning the will of God we must remember that God orders our steps, preparing us to do His will and we often put this circumstantial view on the will of God. But it is more than that, it has a lot to do with our attitude toward God and His will for our lives. Paul just told you what the will of God is, rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all things.

Jut to clear up a few things here, because it sounds like this is impossible to do, how can I pray continually? Rejoice always? Continual prayer is not prayer that prevails without any interruption, but prayer that continues whenever possible. The adverb for continually (adialeiptōs, also in 1:3) was used in Greek of a hacking cough. Paul was speaking of maintaining continuous fellowship with God as much as possible in the midst of daily living in which concentration is frequently broken.

To rejoice always isn’t simply about our circumstances we find ourselves in, but from the blessings that are yours because you are in Christ.

Many of us are way too worried about making mistakes or wrong turns. We are afraid that one mistake could bring down the whole house of cards. Let me relieve a little pressure. God wants you to get where God wants you to go more than you want to get where God wants you to go. We often make excuses for not doing what God wants us to do because as I said last week, doing God’s will, will complicate our lives and in many ways that may make us feel uncomfortable. But when we give into this, we begin to see how we are giving up ourselves and giving in to the will of God.

It can be hard to rejoice in everything, we don’t see the good in all that we go through, and yes, it is hard to rejoice in losing a job, having more bills than you have money to pay them. It can be hard to lose the thing you love, even it it’s your health. It is in those moments we ask God to change our circumstance so we can have something to rejoice about.

The circumstances you are asking God to change may be the circumstances God is using to change you!

We often “narrow frame” our life and choices. We ask questions in a either/or instead of both/and. It’s thinking in a true/false way when God is giving us multiple choice especially when it comes to the will of God and we find ourselves with a problem. “Should I marry this person? Should I take the job that’s out of town?” We will drive ourselves crazy when thinking this way because we are limiting ourselves. We put restrictions on ourselves when we try to narrow down what we should do or with what God wants to do in our lives. We are so afraid of making a mistake and we will miss the will of God because we’re afraid of missing the will of God. We miss out because we don’t want to miss out. The God of all of creation, who spoke space, time and matter into existence, who breathed life into us and blessed us, whoever told you that the God that can do all of that, is only calling you to ONE thing in your life. He looked at you when he created you and told you that you can only do one thing in your life, I know what I’m calling you to do and you have to guess what it is or you fail? He may be calling you into twenty things so don’t put res restraints on God.

Whatever you don’t turn into praise, turns into pride.

James 1:17 “Every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.”

Everything good comes from God and God doesn’t change. Brightness is to the sun as blessings are to God. But the lights of this world vary due to the shadows they present but there is no shadow in God is what James is saying here. We are the ones that will misinterpret what a blessing is or isn’t. Often things that we think are blessings are the things that come back and attack us to cause us pain. This is because of the value we place on it and not the value that God assigns to it.

The things that we see as a curse may actually be a blessing. The difficult times we go through can be the very thing that propels us to growth in ways we could never imagine. We will face trying times and our faith will be tested and when we can endure in our faith, our faith grows. When our faith grows, the kingdom grows. We can begin to see that God is in all things and all things can be used for God when we open ourselves up to His will in our life.

According to the Talmud, the Jewish commentary on the Old Testament, “A man embezzles from God when he makes use of this world without uttering a blessing.” In other words, if you enjoy something without giving thanks, it’s as if you have stolen it from God.

An observant Jew would pronounce one hundred blessings per day. Those blessings would begin with, Baruch Atah Adonai (“Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the universe”).They would then fill in the blank with thousands of different things.

God answers prayers in many ways, at times, He answers them over time.

When we pray, sometimes that prayer is answered partially, we get part of the miracle, not the full answer. There are times when God answers over time, to bring us along slowly, maybe to see what we will do, how we respond. Even Jesus prayed twice. These are moments where we praise God for every step we take with Him, trusting that He knows what is best for us. Maybe He does this to make us focus more on Him and the work He is doing in our life.

Your focus determines your reality

Philippians 4:8 “Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

There was a study done years ago with college students that consisted of two questions. One, was how happy are you and second, how many dates did you have the last month? The researches found a weak correlation between the level of happiness and the number of dates. Then they switched the questions around. How many dates and then how happy are you? Then they saw a strong correlation between them. The reason was because of the order of the questions that caused the students to focus on their dating or lack of dating. This is called the focusing effect.

What you focus on becomes who you are, how you view the world, effects your happiness or sadness, makes you into a positive or negative person. Whatever we focus on effects our lives so much so, that it changes us into whatever that focus is.

If you focus on negatives, you will become negative. Paul tells us to focus on what is right, pure, lovely, gracious, we are to focus on the things of God, not how bad the world may be, but on how great God is. Keep in mind that Paul is writing this letter from prison!

He tells us that he knows what it’s like to be in need, and to have plenty and the secret is to be content in whatever state we find ourselves, to focus on the good and not the bad. Being content is about our attitude, your focus determines your reality. don’t let what’s wrong with you keep you from worshipping what’s right with God.

If you are looking for something to be mad about, you’ll find it. If you’re looking for something to be grateful for, you’ll find it. We can’t look at the world through a lens made of this world, we must look at through the lens of God, to see His creation, to see the image of God in each other, to see the beauty of a sunrise, to see life all around us and that it was placed here by God.

The way we do this is to see the cross in your life. No matter how bad life may be, you are worth the cross to Christ. Every sin, every bad day is nailed to that cross. Every failure, every mistake you’ve made or making now is nailed to that cross.

We should take the time to see the good around us, we may have to look past some of the bad, we may have to live in it at times but in all things we should see God working things out, to see Him in all that we go through knowing that the cross has broken the evil and sin in this world and brings us into His presence and His kingdom.