I Thessalonians 5:18 says,
“Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus."

Wow, that is not always the easiest thing the Lord commands us to do. Most of us have walked through some really difficult things that bring us, at its worst to deep grief and anguish, and at best, to feeling bewildered or confused as to why it happened. 
 
If we are not careful, we can find ourselves living under the assumption that life should be easy and trouble free because we follow Jesus. But that is the exact opposite of what Jesus told his disciples, the men who gave up everything to follow him. In fact, he said, “in this life, you will have trouble."  That word trouble in the original language means, anguish, affliction, trouble, and persecution.  And yet God’s Word still tells us to “be thankful in everything."

Thankfulness is about faith and trust, Colossians 2:7 says, “ Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness.” 

​There are truths in God’s Word we learn with our heads that cannot be seared onto our hearts until we experience them.

The sudden death of my father is one of the things the Lord used to make this truth about thankfulness real for me. This is the single most difficult thing I have walked through; the grief was so overwhelming at times I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Even now, after 11 years, I write this with tears in my eyes.  You see, being thankful is not the same thing as being happy about a circumstance, or denying the pain or the ugly wrongness of it.  
 
Thankfulness is about “letting your roots grow down deep into him,” allowing the things the Lord has allowed in your life to drive you deeper into His grace and mercy, so you are able to trust Him, and your thankfulness overflows not in the circumstance but in who He is.
 
As we drove to my father’s funeral, the Lord met me in that car with a simple children’s song from Psalms 33**, He spoke this truth to my heart.
In You our hearts rejoice, for we are trusting in your name,
in You, our hearts rejoice
We depend on You, for we are trusting in your name,
we depend on You
Our hope is in you Lord, for we are trusting in your name,
our hope is in you Lord

I am still filled with thankfulness as I remember the tender way He accompanied me to the funeral. Reminding me I can rejoice in Him, not in the circumstance, I can depend on Him, even when I don’t understand why the Lord allowed this, and I can hope in Him because this life is not the end. He has an incredible eternity marked out for my Dad and me.
 
Oh, Ladies, we can give thanks in ALL THINGS because we belong to Christ.  After Jesus said “in this life, you will have trouble” he said “ fear not, for I have overcome the world” and in that we can truly be thankful.  

**Psalms 33 is written by Rob Biagi, I added the link if you want to take a listen.
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​Next week my husband will have cataract surgery. He will have surgery on one eye and then a week later on the other. He is rather young to be having this surgery in my opinion, but because of some medications he has had to take for other health issues, the cataracts appeared quickly and his vision has suffered because of it. Ironically, he is an eye doctor, so he needs to be able to see clearly when examining the vision of others.

Recently he told me the story of a patient who had cataract surgery at the age of 95. That is rather an old age to be having surgery, but she was healthy in allother regards and the cataracts which had been there for a long time threatened to rob her of vision completely. She had needed the surgery for 20 years but had been afraid to have it done.

So, at age 95 she had the cataracts removed, and she could see again. What had once been blurs of her loved ones became clear and distinguishable faces. Her vision acuity was great again. She was amazed at the difference and very grateful for having had the surgery. And, my husband told me, she was also quite sad. She was sad that she had waited 20 years because of fear. She was sad at all of the sights she had missed in those years; at all of the family events that had just been blurs on the screen of her eyes. She deeply regretted having let fear have dominion over her life.

The disciple John tells us in his gospel that when Jesus walked on the earth, He declared that He was the Light of the world and then He healed a man who had been blind since birth (John 9). The man’s life changed instantly. The man who had been a beggar for years because of his blindness, could now see. The change was so incredible that his neighbors questioned whether he was really the blind man they had known his entire life.

The religious leaders decided to get involved in the conversation because this life-transforming miracle happened on the Sabbath, a no-no in their eyes. Their vision was fixed on their own legalism rather than on the miracle that had just occurred.

The Pharisees accused Jesus of being a sinner. They brought the formerly blind man’s parents in for questioning. They continued to deny the work of God that was right before their eyes. The now-seeing man told them as they questioned him a second time about his healing, “‘I don’t know whether (Jesus) is a sinner,’ the man replied. ‘But I know this: I was blind, and now I can see!’” (John 9:25)

The healed man was thrown out of the synagogue by the religious leaders, cut off from community. Jesus found the seeing man and revealed Himself to him, telling him, “I entered this world to render judgment—to give sight to the blind and to show those who think they see that they are blind.” (John 9:40)

It is quite the paradox, Jesus enabled a physically blind man to see, both physically and spiritually, while the physically seeing religious leaders denied the spiritual and physical miracle right before their eyes. They were the blind ones. All of the blind man’s sightless years were swept away in a moment by the hand of God and he was also blessed by the gift of beholding God himself, and he believed.

My 5 year old son enjoys math and will randomly ask me different addition problems throughout the day. Recently, he was asking me what eight plus eight equals. I told him that it was sixteen and very confused, he looked at me and said, “No, I said what is eight plus eight?” I gave him the same answer, and then he questioned me again, saying, “Are you sure?” At that moment, because he kept doubting me, I started to doubt myself too, thinking maybe I told him the wrong answer. After taking a moment, I reassured him that sixteen was, in fact, the right answer. 

As I sat there, finding it humorous that I let my 5 year old cause me to doubt a math fact that I had been taught my whole life, I realized how easily it is for us to be swayed in our thinking. Whether it’s our culture, the enemy, or our personal worries and unbelief, it is so easy for us to doubt the truth of God’s Word. We can easily find ourselves questioning things that we know to be true, some of which we have been taught our whole lives. 

God knows that we will deal with doubt, which is why, in His wonderful grace, He reminds us all throughout the Bible to be steadfast and on guard. We can do that by daily reading His Word, memorizing Scripture, and spending time in prayer so that we will not be easily swayed by other teachings or beliefs that are thrown at us. Ephesians 6:13 says, “This is why you must take up the full armor of God, so that you may be able to resist in the evil day, having prepared everything, to take your stand.” When we are consistently reading the Bible and spending time in our relationship with God, it will strengthen us for when those doubts try to creep in. We will more easily be able to spot the lies in our thinking and combat them with the truth. Even Jesus was tempted by Satan in the wilderness to deviate from the truth, but Jesus fought those lies by quoting Scripture. 

It’s like the familiar story that is told about the person whose job it is to recognize counterfeit money. The way they become so good at it is by taking time to truly study what the real dollar and coin look and feel like. That way, when something counterfeit is in front of them, they can quickly realize it, because it differs from the real thing. In John 10:4-5, Jesus gives a similar illustration about sheep with their shepherd: “The sheep follow him because they recognize his voice. They will never follow a stranger; instead they will run away from him, because they don’t recognize the voice of strangers.” When we are so familiar with truth, it will be easier to flee from the lies of this world and not doubt the Word of God. 

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