Giving Thanks, a Christmas Adventure – Day Fourteen, the conclusion

 

Here we are, at our last day together on this journey to learn how to quit grasping and live grateful lives. I do hope you have found some takeaways that will help you walk into this holy season with your eyes on Christ, that your heart may be full of treasure that no amount of money can buy. Surely, there is no better place to wrap up our study on gratitude than with the delicious truth of Emmanuel, God with Us.

The more I yield to God, acknowledge Him, in the good, bad, and ugly moments of my life, reaching for His peace, love, and joy, yielding to what He says rather than what I see, the more I find He proves (demonstrates) my hope to me by showing me WHO is living in me—and this only fortifies my expectations of more! Father is supremely confident in this– and I am growing in it as I determine to understand the admonition to give thanks in all things.

Surely He led James to speak to our inability to count it all joy for God knows that He is the source of this strange ability that I’ve often tried to find in myself.

But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. James 1:5

The word doesn’t say if anyone lacks knowledge. Knowledge of God doesn’t give us the ability to count all things joy. Can we agree to that? It is acknowledgement of God that leads to His wisdom, which is Christ and His power manifested in us.  Wisdom can only be gained from the acknowledgement of God because wisdom is Jesus Christ, the hope of glory, in us—this is power!

THIS IS WHAT I’M AFTER FATHER—THE WISDOM (that brings with it the power) TO COUNT IT ALL JOY! You’ll find me asking for this wisdom today and tomorrow.

Give me God Gusts of wisdom to forever shift things in my heart and constantly reorder what I’m thinking in the vexing and annoying times, and the painful and hard ones…

Counting it joy implies thanksgiving. Count your every blessing, name them one by one. We discount the importance of Thanksgiving because it seems too “easy” for lack of a better word. We think of it as somehow a lesser grace than say, intercession, when it is in fact the foundational acknowledgement of God from which every graces proceeds!

The other day I was thanking God again for something I had already thanked Him for in the past when I realized that God was still in that past moment as much as He is in this present moment and the next moment! Awesome!

Confession? Sometimes I feel like I can’t be open with my gratitude because of the sorrow around us. Have you ever felt that way? This is me, with an announcement. God forbid I should ever do such a thing again. What a complete bill of sale from the enemy. My holding back on giving Him glory will not lessen the sorrow of this world, but it will encourage, and it will feed those around me. And that brings us right to our last and final point.

Eighth point: Living Thanksgiving fulfills our God determined destiny on earth.

We will never be a blessing to men without learning to bless God first. It’s only by knowing the blessedness of living thanksgiving and continually blessing God through acknowledgment and gratitude can we then be a blessing. Reciprocal grace is thanking the Giver of the blessing and then showing others the grace that has been shown to you.

Nehemiah 9:5 “…arise, bless the Lord your God forever and ever. Oh, may your glorious name be blessed and exalted above all blessing and praise!”

When we learn to bless God, He will live through us to bless others. It can only happen through dying to the acknowledgement of self and living to the acknowledgment of God. I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed, but if it dies, it produces many seeds. John 12:4

In dying to myself I can become a life-giving spirit. It is the loveliest of progressions.

God blesses us.

We learn to bless God.

God blesses others through us.

Thank you for sharing this time with me. I believe we’ve seen that acknowledging God through thanksgiving is the earliest crossroad of our faith journey, the growth of thanksgiving is what reveals the maturity of our faith, and the fullness or lack of thanksgiving is a great predictor of whether or not we’ll fulfill our God determined destinies on earth, by being the blessings we are chosen to be!  

 Jesus, the Gracious Plenty. May we have an elegant abundance of the Savior with the intention of sharing and may we spread the joy of Emmanuel throughout the remainder of this holy season and into the years to come.  

Merry Christmas!

Blessings and Hugs,
Shellie

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