Wednesday Words of Encouragement: Cultivating Thanksgiving

 
Colossians 3:15-17  ~

Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the Word of Christ—the Message—have the run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense. And sing, sing your hearts out to God! Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way.

There is a trend on Facebook each year where people list something they are thankful for every day throughout the month of November. It's not a bad idea and I've been blessed doing this myself some years.

But I also want to work on being thankful year around and not just during Thanksgiving. I don't want to list my blessings just one month out of the year. As believers we are to cultivate or develop thankfulness in our lives.  We are to be thankful not just when things are going well, but when things are falling apart.  In fact, as these verses state, we are to thank God every single step of the way of our lives.

And that's difficult at times. It's hard when things are tight financially and we are just one crisis away from flat broke.  It's difficult when our medical benefits run out. It's difficult when people are thoughtless or unkind. It's hard when I have a mile long to-do list and not enough hours in a day. It's hard on a day like today on the one-year anniversary of my mother's passing. 

When I focus on the difficulties, I'd rather hide under the covers than face the world. And yet, when I decide to cultivate Thanksgiving in my heart, I get up, face the new day and say, "Thank you, Lord, for today." 

Because thanksgiving is really a choice we make, isn't it?  We can choose to be thankful or choose to grumble. We can choose to focus on the negative, or choose to focus on the Lord and His solutions. We can choose to be miserable or choose to be joyful.

Today, I'm choosing to thank the Lord for another day.  I'm choosing to be thankful that I have another opportunity to put these things into practice. I'm making the choice to be thankful in advance for how He is going to work in various situations in my life, even if I can't see the end result.  I'm choosing to be thankful for life.

And most importantly, I'm choosing to be thankful for another opportunity to cultivate thankfulness. Will you choose that too?

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!