Word of Encouragement (4/30/2020)
Good morning~! Today, let’s continue our reflection on prayer of thanksgiving. Since we talked about giving thanks for our past, let’s talk about giving thanks for our present.
Giving thanks to God for the present starts with simply “counting our blessings.” This is not that easy for many of us. We are prone to focus on the few things we don’t have rather than the many things we already have. For some reason, the grass seems so much greener on the other side and our cup seems half-empty at best. What we have, we take for granted. What others have seems so much better and more desirable: just the fact that it’s not in our possession makes it glow with iridescent light. Only if we can remember how quickly that light fades away. So many of what we have and take for granted now once shone with the same light.
What can help us “count our blessings”? It is to remember, “by the grace of God I am what I am” (1 Cor. 15:10); “What do you have that you did not receive” by the grace of God (1 Cor. 4:7)? Grace is the favor God extends to sinners, who don’t deserve it, who actually deserve God’s wrath. If what we deserved was nothing less than hell and we are rescued from it by the grace of God, we should be the most thankful people, regardless of what our present condition may be, shouldn’t we? So then, no matter how difficult our life happens to be at the moment, we ought to say, “I have been blessed with so much more than I deserve.” This is all the more so because “He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities” (Ps. 103:10) but leads us to repentance by His kindness (Rom. 2:4).
If grace is God’s disposition toward His people, then we should thank God for all the things we have as well as for all the things we don’t have. Just as God gave us what we have by His grace, He withholds from us what we don’t have by the same grace. Think about how much God loves us. “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things” (Rom. 8:32)? If God loves us so much and hasn’t given us whatever we think we should have, it is only because He in His infinite wisdom determined that what we desire is not what is best for us, at least for now. If it is what is best for us, He will grant it to us at His perfect time. So then, we should give thanks to God even for what God has not given us out of His grace and love. This is why God answered Paul’s prayer for the removal of his “thorn in the flesh” with “My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Cor. 12:9).
There is another thing to remember as we thank God for our present. Paul says in Eph. 1:3, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places….” He declares that “every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” is ours now in the present—God’s election in Jesus (1:4), our adoption as sons in Jesus (1:5), our redemption and forgiveness of our trespasses in Jesus (1:7), the knowledge of the mystery of His will for our glorious future in Christ (1:8-10), our eternal inheritance in Jesus (1:11), and the Holy Spirit as the guarantee of our inheritance (1:13-14). If all these things are ours in the present, which we are privileged to enjoy by faith, should we not give thanks to God for the abundantly rich life we possess now in Jesus Christ? We have so much to be thankful for our present.