The Composition of Gratitude

Habakkuk 3:17-18 is a passage which has clung closely over the years:

“Though the fig tree does not bud
and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
and no cattle in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the the LORD,
I will be joyful in God my Savior.”

...and usually in those moments when gratitude is the furthest thing from my questioning or listless thoughts.

What is it about circumstances which makes us so highly susceptible to being suspect of God, or at least, doubtful about why we should be praising Him? As one devotional phrases the friction, “Why should you allow any human experience to alter or affect your divine relationship with your Father?” (Come Away, My Beloved/Frances Roberts).

Circumstances are meant to shape, and sharpen us, but when we think that our “return,” what we offer God, is contingent upon what lies around us, then we prove ourselves to have misconstrued the true basis for giving thanks. For God does not come to us demanding that we “earn” His attention or affection, and neither should we relate to Him in such a way.

A lyric from a song I recently heard has stayed impressed upon me: “center of unbroken praise.” An old song (“Joyful, Joyful”), but one which struck me in a new manner, and which causes me to ponder how our lives are not only to be a continual surrender to Him, but also vessels through which we are constantly offering Him praise without having gifts in our hands to prompt us. Are we as willing to offer Him gratitude for who He is when we are “without” as when we count ourselves “blessed?” Are we steadfast in the way we come before God, always giving thanks to Him, not for His tangible gifts, but for His very Person? Are we willing to cry out with Habakkuk that our rejoicing comes in Him, independent of all else, no matter how much circumstances would bombard us? Can we even be grateful for the fact that it is through those very circumstances that we discover how deep our loyalty to Him lies?

Are You "Filtered?"

We can easily take on faith that everything is ordained by God: “Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made” (John 1:3).

We can avow to the cry to God which says, “You are good, and what You do is good” (Psalm 119:68).

...and then comes pain.

But if the God who ordains all that we witness is truly sovereign, and truly good in all His dealings with us, should we not then accept that He remains the same, even as He moves us into situations in which we are hurt?

Perhaps we're reluctant to see that God desires for us to be 'patient when wronged' (2 Timothy 2:24); outright resistant to the fact that we're to 'accept joyfully' (Hebrews 10:34) the injustices committed against us. But I tend to think that the issue centers not so much on whether we know our calling, or are willing to release an offender from some “debt,” nearly so much as that we dislike relinquishing our claims to “self.” We tend to act like a container which must fastidiously hold the liquid within, as though we must harness all of our troubles in an effort to defend and preserve ourselves; as though we must not suffer to “spill.” Yet the reality is, we are not our own (1 Corinthians 6:19-20); the moment we submitted to His Lordship, we forfeit all those claims, which means we are not to hold anything – even pain – as our own.

God is particularly clear in His wanting to “filter” the pain through us; in seeing us become sieves, which let pour through us all the hurt and wrongs which He would have transferred to His hands. Indeed, He has declared repeatedly that any pain we experience He is already most eager to take unto Himself (1 Peter 5:7; Psalm 55:22; Matthew 11:29).

Yet somehow we only see that truth when, surrendered to Him, we finally stop striving to preserve “self” and begin perceiving that what lie before us, willing to receive the pain we are incapable of bearing, are the nail-pierced hands of the One who Himself was “emptied” (Philippians 2:6-7) --

So the question is: Are you “filtered?”

Behold the Lamb

“...the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world.”

~ Revelation 13:8

Somehow the fact that Christ was crucified from the start always courses through me like some new thought. In other words, God is not reactionary, and His death, this holy suffering, was what He'd originally deemed the ideal plan for His creation.

For one who is stuck in this temporary realm, where one event follows another, the Fall looks like it preceded God's redemption; appears like it was a “salvage” operation – but that is only evidence of the discrepancy between human wisdom and God's. It's mind-boggling to grasp that sometimes He only manifests His outer workings after some time-bound event has taken place, and perhaps it's for that reason that we finite creatures struggle to accept that He's the driving force fully sovereign over all we witness.

Perhaps the issue isn't so much in recognizing that God's removed from time, able to see all eternity when we can't even perceive the next moment ahead of us. Perhaps instead the battle is in seeing how God, having known all that was to come, didn't choose some other way.

But if He's omniscient, then He understands completely the ramification of every choice He presents us; if He's omnipotent, then no one can thwart His plans; and if He's all-loving, then every purpose ordained is for the best of His beloved – which means that we are never in a quandary; never locked into some situation for which God hasn't been prepared (since the 'foundation of the world,' no less).

And in that, there is great comfort, for such a reality means that the God we serve is not passively allowing our wills to play out to our detriment, nor is He practically mustering some good of what's been twisted, but is passionately and pro-actively administering a design which He knows to ultimately yield our best.

As Ephesians 1:3-4 says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world...”