Use your power tools

Today June Hunt continues her presentation of seven strategies we can use to train our brain to forgive (Chapter 7, How to Forgive) by discussing how to use your power tools of thanksgiving and praise.

3.  Use you power tools: thanksgiving and praise.  June encourages you to being your mornings by expressing gratitude for God’s many gifts or for certain people He’s brought into your life.  In his book Our Heavenly Father, Dr. Robert Frost describes what can keep you from being offended at God for the adversity He allows in your life:

“There is nothing more precious to God than our praise during affliction. . . . What he does not protect us from, he will perfect us through.  There is indeed a special blessing for those who do not become offended at God during adversity.”

Ms. Hunt observes it is impossible to perpetually view yourself as a victim or dwell on “an eye for an eye” justice when you are intentional about thanking God for the blessings in your life.

4.  Pray for your enemies.  During the times you struggle to pray for those who wounded or offended you, it is important to realize that your enemies aren’t spiritually healthy.  If they were spiritually healthy, they would not have hurt you.  June points out the benefits of praying for our offenders:

“Praying for others helps us to see them as God sees them.  It paves the way to forgive as God forgives.  Praying for your enemies enables you to more easily take them off your hook and place them onto God’s hook.”

Today’s question: What has been an encouragement to you to use your power tools of thanksgiving and praise?  Please share.

Tomorrow’s blog: “Wounds from a friend”

 

Use your power tools

Closed doors

“And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write, The words of the holy one, the true one, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, who shuts and no one opens.”- Revelation 3:7

In Chapter 9 (“Thank God for Closed Doors) of All the Places to Go, John Ortberg admits that generally he doesn’t like or understand closed doors.  Closed doors discourage us.  We feel as if our lives are diminished and God doesn’t care.

Prayer is an important factor here.  Pastor Ortberg observes that the single greatest motivation for prayer is answered prayer.  Answered prayer encourages us to pray more.  Conversely, the greatest demotivater for prayer is unanswered prayer.  Yet, John emphasizes:

“Surely it must be a good thing that God alone has the power to shut in such a way that what is shut cannot be opened.”

Closed doors that frustrate us at the time often become occasions for gratitude later on.  We may never know for sure in our lifetime whether we should keep knocking on closed doors or let go and move on.  John states God has greater things in mind for us than “knowing for sure.”  Yet, gaining clarity on why some doors shouldn’t be opened helps us differentiate between knocking and moving on.

In the next part of Chapter 9 John discusses four things God may be up to with closed doors in our lives.

Today’s question: What closed doors have you been thankful for in retrospect?  Please share.

Tomorrow’s blog: “Unanswered prayers”

Closed doors

Till the sky spills over

“Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.”- Colossians 2:6-7

“When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.”- G. K. Chesterton

“The remedy is in the retina.”- Ann Voskamp

I have yet to attend one of my Luther South (Chicago) Class of 1969 reunions.  However, when I received advance word that South would be celebrating its 50th Anniversary on an August weekend in 2001, culminating with a Sunday service of praise and thanksgiving in the school gym, I dropped everything to contact them.  I wanted to express my gratitude through serving as the organist for the worship experience.

The sky spills over with gratitude as I reflect on South’s blessings to me:

a.  a strong college prep curriculum with outstanding electives that provided a smooth transition to Concordia- River Forest

b.  extra-curricular opportunities: drama club, musicals, school newspaper (mailing editor, sportswriter)

c.  opportunities to minister in worship; as senior accompanist for the A Cappella Choir and assistant chapel organist

This is not to say that high school was a cakewalk.  Socially, it was a difficult and awkward time.  For an unhealthy amount of time, I chose to ruminate on those social issues rather than focus on the greater blessings with gratitude.  The personal slights I felt infringed on my perceived right to happiness and obstructed my vision.  C. S. Lewis once commented on thinking about the world in God in the Dock:

“If you think of this world as a place intended simply for your happiness, you find it quite intolerable; think of it as a  place for training and correction and it’s not so bad.”

Joy is hiding in gratitude.  That’s why G. K. Chesterton describes joy as “the gigantic secret of the Christian.”  As Ann Voskamp points out, we can begin with one act of thanksgiving  for the seemingly insignificant, especially when things go wrong with us, and unlock the mystery of joy:

“When we lay the soil of our hard lives open to the rain of grace and let joy penetrate our cracked and dry places, let joy soak into our broken skin and deep crevices, life grows. . . . The clouds open when we mouth thanks.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rT2k5dQNf7U

 

Till the sky spills over