I have a Master’s degree in Moody. There are some who see the glass half full, and others who see the glass half-empty. Left to my own devices, I see the glass as 100% of whatever mood I may be in.
That said, I’m re-learning (God is such a patient teacher!) a powerful, powerful principle:
Never, never, never pass up an opportunity to say “Thank you.”
Why?
Because gratitude is the gateway to abundance. I am living it.
Gratitude widens the road – at least in the spirit, if not in the circumstances. As I live gratefully, forces line up to move the circumstances. But in the meantime, even while the circumstances are narrow, my soul is broad.
That’s hard for the Master of Moody to accept sometimes. I am capable of such broodiness that disciplined gratitude must be that – disciplined. And I don’t do it well.
The Spring of My Discontent
After starting off the year like optimistic gangbusters, this year turned quickly into the “spring of my discontent.”
Plenty of blessed moments, mind you, but a lot of battles, stresses, fightings within and fears without.
Do you ever have one of those seasons when you make good decisions but still get bad results – at least in the short run? That pretty much describes the first half of this year.
Okay, maybe a few bad decisions mixed in there, too. But I’ve been spending a lot of time in the Land of You-Gotta-Be-Kidding-Me. The details aren’t important; suffice it to say it felt like I was tied to a slow motion conveyor belt, heading for a buzz saw.
Then came the change.
It wasn’t a change in circumstances, yet.
It wasn’t a change in mood – too bloomin’ late in the day for that.
It was a change in what establishes moods in the first place – my thinking. Put in biblical terms, I stopped “forgetting the Lord’s benefits.”
It was 10:00 at night, and the dog wannabes kept walking up to me and looking at me like they were offended or frustrated or something. Finally (I’m slow) the thought hit me – we’re out of dog food, and have been all day. So I jumped in the truckster and zipped up to the grocery store.
Turning into the parking lot, my mind was fixed on “what am I going to do to solve this impasse of a problem?” Not the dog food. The bigger issues. Suddenly, as I shifted gears in the pickup, Someone Else shifted gears in my brain. And I began to remember.
You see, the truckster had been a gift – a complete surprise, given to me by someone very precious who was expressing both faith in God and love and gratitude for me several years ago. And there in the parking lot that night, just when I needed it the most, I remembered.
I remembered how the Lord had taken care of a need then. And for good measure, how He had taken care of other needs in similarly dramatic fashion prior to that.
(Pause here… do you have any memories like that? I’ll bet you do.)
And there on the way to dog food, I simply said, “Thank you” and “I trust you” to the Lord.
The next morning I was lying in bed thinking about one of the more recent blessings from the Lord – frankly, one I had complained about more than expressed gratitude for. I began to see what a blessing it was. And I literally got out of bed grateful for His benefits.
This is No Appetizer
Let me pause the story right here to say that in both of these cases, the circumstances had not changed – only my attitude and perspective.
It’s also important to point out that my benefits from the Lord were not along the lines of my script. In other words, I they didn’t show up in the manner I would have designed.
Is that OK? Can you and I trust that the Lord has ways of blessing us that are more aware of our need and potential than we are? Can you be grateful, and let God be God when the benefits are passed out, if they don’t exactly match your blueprint?
Bless the Lord, O my soul,
And all that is within me, bless His holy name.
Bless the Lord, O my soul,
And forget none of His benefits; (Psalms 103:1-2, NASU)
“His benefits.” The temptation when you read this famous psalm is to rush past this verse as something of a low-calorie appetizer, where the main course is that awesome list of benefits that follows (“Heals all your diseases,” “crowns your life with good things,” all that).
But the emphasis there, and here, is on whose benefits they are. They are the Lord’s.
The psalmist sees the blessing, and blesses the Source.
He’s saying “Thank you.”
Bible statistics (read the 10 lepers here) suggest that’s about a one-in-ten possibility.
I want to be one in the 10.
The psalmist is calling out his soul here. Why? Because of how easy it is to forget. Ask the thirsty Israelites three days after the Red Sea about their experience, and they’ll say it’s some sort of conspiracy. Souls do that.
He’s also calling out the soul because souls have a tendency to see the benefits but forget their source. The whole emphasis of the following verses is on the fact that God is the one who heals our diseases, etc., not us or somebody else.
Did you get well when you were sick? God did that. Did you find your strength renewed? Ditto.
Lethargic souls forget. Or, lethargic souls remember, but tend to rewrite history, with the self as the hero.
So somewhere, like the psalmist, we need a tickler – a reminder – a memory trigger that calls the soul out of its fog to say, “Thank you.” Why? Because as any four-year-old can tell you (in his own words), gratitude for benefits leads to more benefits.
This is more than spiritual politeness. It’s spiritual alignment. It’s soul rejuvination. It’s worship. It’s life.
That Was Fast!
Back to the story. It’s hard to describe it, but if you’ve lived it you know what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the peace, the joy, the gratitude that flows, even though nothing has visibly changed. Here is what I wrote in my journal that morning:
Today is a day for gratitude. For getting up off the floor and manifesting supernatural power that I can uniquely bring to the table and receiving from the strong hand of a good and faithful God.
One day later, with no advance warning, I received an email. One that changed everything. Again, the details aren’t important. And it certainly doesn’t always happen that fast. But it dramatically changed the view on the horizon.
The next day I received an email from a cherished friend I had lost touch with and have grieved over. And on top of all that, it finally rained here that afternoon. Again from my journal: “I am grateful now for what I am seeing – after being grateful for what I HAVE SEEN.”
Have you remembered any benefits lately?
Gratitude, someone once said, is the memory of the heart. Gratitude is the gateway to abundance, because abundance begins in the heart – not the circumstances. What are you grateful for? Who are you grateful to?
You have the opportunity to say “Thank you.” Now.
Are you going to pass that up?
Thank you my friend. Blessings and peace and prosperity to you in abundance.
And to you, dear friend. 🙂
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