Walk in Thankfulness

“My counsel for you is simple and straightforward: Just go ahead with what you’ve been given. You received Christ Jesus, the Master; now live Him.  You’re deeply rooted in Him.  You’re well constructed upon Him.  You know your way around the faith.  Now do what you’ve been taught.  School’s out; quit studying the subject and start living it!  And let your living spill over into thanksgiving.” – Colossians 2:6-7

I will rarely quote from The Message bible.  Even in this text, I find flaws (such as a direction to stop studying Christ).  However, the overall thought conveyed by this passage is overwhelming.  The messages to “start living it” and “let your living spill over into thanksgiving” are things I need to grasp.

I find the thought of walking in thanksgiving (or gratitude) a complicated topic.  I guess I’m not sure what that should look like.  I suppose the concept is a daily moment-to-moment living in thankfulness for, well, everything.  The idea is to appreciate that everything is a gift.  How often do we get in our car, walk in our home, eat a bite of food, choose which shirt or pant to where, drive where we want to go, etc. and never consider that each of these is a privilege.  But even the pagan can see this type of thankfulness.  Usually by comparison to other national standards of living or even comparisons to other standards of living in their own town.

Another level of thankfulness is being thankful for opportunity.  I get to mow the grass.  I am thankful because we have grass to mow.  I get to go to work.  I am thankful that I have work to do.  I get to clean the house.  I am thankful that I have a house to clean.  This is a different mindset of thankfulness from the first because in chores or work there is some difficulty.  It is always harder to be thankful in difficulties.

Yet another level of thankfulness is for pain.  Francis Chan did a great job of explaining this in his “Holiness Above Comfort” message so I won’t try to top it.  The thought is that the pain has made you or is making you who you are today (assuming you took the effort to learn from it), so you are thankful for it.  It also allows you to relate to others who are in pain and help them in it.  One person said we should be thankful for pain because it means you are alive.  Only dead people do not feel pain.  I think this is true in the physical, emotional, and spiritual realms.

All of these levels of thankfulness are possible in Christ Jesus.  We can be thankful that we do not have to carry the weight of our sins today.  We can walk in a radical freedom that very few people understand.  We are not bound by anything in this world outside of His love for us and our love for Him.  If He only desires what is best for us, has given us His Words to live by for our best, and we can trust Him for our eternity, then surely we can be thankful with an overflowing gratitude and obey joyfully to live our best life. 

“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words but to live by them.” – John F. Kennedy

The classic hymn sings “Count your many blessings name them one-by-one.  Count your many blessings see what God has done.”   Take a moment today to walk in thankfulness.  Let His blessings overwhelm you to tears.