As Thanksgiving week continues, one of the key words that we often speak of is gratitude. Thanksgiving and gratitude go hand-in-hand. As you sit and contemplate for what it is you are thankful, you demonstrate a spirit of gratitude. One online dictionary explains it this way: “Gratitude, thankfulness, or gratefulness … is a feeling of appreciation felt by and/or similar positive response shown by the recipient of kindness, gifts, help, favors, or other types of generosity, towards the giver of such gifts.”[1] I think most followers of Christ would recognize that it is more than just simply a feeling of appreciation but instead is a choice of the heart that reflects our love of God (the Giver of all good gifts) and love of neighbor (the secondary giver of gifts by God’s grace).
A Guiding Principle
Jesus’ brother and first pastor of the church in Jerusalem provides a great principle to help us get one step closer to a life full of gratitude. In the first chapter of James, the context relates to pressure-filled circumstances or just simply pressures in life. He writes that we can “count it joy when you face various pressure-filled circumstances” (James 1:2, my translation). Why would one count it pure joy to face pressure? Because God is using the pressure in your life to help you become the person He desires for you to be at the characterological level. Here is the life principle: God is growing you spiritually through pressures as you endure them.
Pastor James suggests that we need wisdom in order to respond to these pressures. So much so that he challenges in the midst of pressure-filled circumstances to pray and ask God to grant us wisdom (James 1:5). Wisdom allows us to know how to respond such that we receive blessings through the pressure rather than get drawn away by our own desires and sin in the midst of pressure (James 1:12-15).
Now catch what James explains next.
16 Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. 17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. 18 Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures. (James 1:16-18)
He challenges us to understand this well and to not be deceived in the area of handling pressures in life. He describes that God is doing a good work through the Word of God to help you become His kind of person in or through the midst of trials. He uses the word firstfruit to describe it. As you go through trials, you become the person on earth today that God desires for you to be ultimately in eternity ~ a foretaste of what a redeemed people will eventually look like, sound like, and be like. How? God is doing that spiritually as you endure pressures in your daily circumstances.
To get a bit closer toward contentment, here is the verse you must read and understand. Look how James describes the pressures we face in life: “Every good gift and perfect gift is from above…” (James 1:17). He calls the pressures we face good and perfect gifts. How and why could he say that? Because the pressures come from God in a way that grows us up spiritually to be God’s kind of person as we endure them (the greater context of James 1:2-18). This is important.
Pressures are part of God’s grace to help us become like Christ. As such, they are good and perfect. This of course does not mean that sin against you is good or that catching a potentially deadly virus is exciting; instead, it means the process of going through such things in God’s plan and timing is good because of what it produces in you through endurance ~ you become a firstfruit or a more mature follower of Christ.
Now Take Your Thinking a Bit Further (Toward Contentment)
Now we apply this principle to our circumstance. It means something like this: whatever your pressure and temptation to complain, flip that and consider what it is you can be grateful for in the midst of the pressure.
I read these statements recently online from Chelsea Lee Smith that may be helpful as good examples here. Her list helped me start my list.
- Early wakeups by children = Children to love
- House to clean = Safe place to live
- Laundry = Clothes to wear
- Dirty dishes = Food to eat
- Crumbs under the table = Family meals
- Shopping to do = Money to use
- Toilets to clean = Indoor plumbing
- Lots of noise = Kids having fun
- Endless questions = Kids learning
- Getting into bed sore and tired = I’m still alive
- Dead battery = Vehicle to drive
- Long hours working = Job to help provide
- Volunteer responsibilities at church = Place to grow and change
We could go on and on with this list. In fact, that is exactly what I want you to do. Let this list become yours as you think through your own pressures.
Notice how contentment is just a bit further down the road. We look at our pressures as part of what God gives to us, then we take it one step further to recognize that as we go through these pressures, God uses these to help us become like Christ. Once my spirit is there, I can see these pressures for the actual good each one brings in my life. Instead of complaining about the pressure, I can see past the complaint to something better for which to be grateful.
When you are tempted to complain about various pressures in your life, take it a bit further:
- Remember that God is using pressure to help you become like Christ and, as such, the pressure is a good and perfect gift.
- Consider how your pressure actually represents something for which you can be thankful or grateful.
- In the process, you will begin to more content.
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KevinCarson.com | Wisdom for Life in Christ Together
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