Tag Archives: gratitude

What’s Your Ask-to-Thank Ratio?

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I’ve gotten two terrific answers to prayer in recent months. One within my family, one within my church that has been shared by many (which I’ve cryptically alluded to).

The number of individual entreaties I made of God in these two matters are well into the hundreds for both. When the answer came back from the throne, I committed myself to thanking him. I didn’t want it to be another “thanks God, see you next crisis” on my already considerable list.

But it occurred to me…how much thanks is enough?

What if God got one thanks afterward for each request beforehand?

For a fleeting moment, I thought that was a great idea. Until I remembered that this is probably exactly what God’s been getting at in the Bible this entire time.

Don’t worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. (Philippians 4:6)

Nobody is without grounds for thanksgiving. Every one of us can look backwards to something we once spent hours on our knees for, something which once gripped our hearts with a fierce desperation, something which we’d give anything to see God grant us.

Maybe that’s one reason we’re constantly commissioned to give thanks: we’re being urged towards a respectably low ask-to-thank ratio. Doesn’t every pleading, every session, every “amen” deserve its own thank-you? It seems to fit the rich, vigorous, austere tone that the true faith always holds.

I won’t let that desperation evaporate into complacency, as the enemy would desire. Tonight, I will go to bed and give thanks for these two things and others, not because I must to earn his grace (though that grace will also get its thanks), but because I wish it. Because God deserves it.

It’s the least I can do. Because there was once nothing I could do, and God did it instead.

 

I’m glad you tuned in today. If you found this post to be of value, please feel free to share it on social media. Thanks a bunch!

Having Abundance Takes…Contentment?

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abundanceAt some point, we have all probably quoted this verse to encourage ourselves:

I am able to do all things through Him who strengthens me. (Phil. 4:13)

We might have mis-quoted it, too. The context of this passage is not declaring the ability to do anything you want to do, but the ability to handle what God wants you to do:

…for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know both how to have a little, and I know how to have a lot. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being content — whether well fed or hungry, whether in abundance or in need. (4:11b-12)

The context reveals that contentment, not abundance, is the goal for the Christian (and is honestly the more impressive trait anyway).

So if you ever launched out on some project without consulting God, then wondered why it faceplanted even though you read this verse, that might be your explanation: the verse doesn’t suggest you can do just anything. It’s about glorifying God, both his power in you and his purposes for you (desirable or otherwise).

But you know what gets me about this verse?

The idea that you would have to be content in abundance.

Because the verse implies that Paul needed contentment in both abundance and need.

Like, why on earth would Paul need contentment in abundance? I ask myself. You’d think that’s where you wouldn’t need contentment. Just sit back and enjoy the good life, for as long as it lasts.

But Paul experiences otherwise, and it seems to suggests two things.

One has to do with that pesky “as long as it lasts” tag: the good life is not entrenched. Fortunes come and go, sometimes triggered by the most trivial and frustrating events. Jesus had some bad news for the guy in Luke 12 who upgraded his barns and decided to eat, drink, and be merry. All things in this life are transitory.

And that leads to the second truth: abundance does not bring contentment. Anyone who thinks it does, has probably never had abundance. Or has taken it for granted.

When I worked on the reservation years ago, many of my students had their eyes fixed unwaveringly on attaining abundance. Get more money, they reasoned, and life would be better. They weren’t entirely wrong. Poverty was a real problem and causing genuine pain in their lives. I could sympathize; there had been a time when I, too, was living paycheck to paycheck.

But having come from off the reservation where the median income was higher, I could tell my students that being better off wasn’t making anyone particularly happy. It just made you want more. Get a nice middle-class home and your middle-class conversations shift to how awesome those big homes up on the hill must be. Attain that level and the conversations turn to the architecturally fancy mansions up on the mountain. Each step you take up the socioeconomic ladder, you build a lifestyle that sucks up everything you have. And on and on it goes. Someone’s always got a bigger boat.

Paul could have been talking about either one of these things when he referenced having to be content, of all things, in all things. You either want more, or you end up tightening your grip on what you have, out of worry.

I want neither existence. Chasings after the wind, both of them. I want peace today, and God. More of him. Paul got that, and he spends his epistles swearing up and down that it’s the best thing ever.

If wealth increases, pay no attention to it. (Psalm 62:10b)

Today, if you’re having trouble being grateful for what you have, I heard a question once that rocked my world: “What would you lose if God were to remove everything from your life tomorrow that you hadn’t given thanks for today?”