GRATITUDE.

It feels like we are flying through the year. It’s March already! This is the month where we celebrate what Jesus did on the cross for us. I chose to call this months post “gratitude” because sometimes I think we can easily forget the magnitude of the cross and what it meant to have Jesus defeat death. As followers of Christ, we sometimes get caught up in the cycle of life; looking after the family, working but never feeling like it’s enough, making sure the kids get to school on time, wondering why the cost of groceries keep going up but your money stays the same. So many things can weigh us down, and we forget about the power of the cross! We start to complain about life being hard, how everything is bad, bad, bad! We come to church on Sunday feeling the stress of the week, singing the worship songs on auto pilot, and trying hard to listen to the message given and resonate with the words spoken. We stop living like we believe God because life is just too hard!

Well, I am here to tell you that life is hard! In fact, Jesus never said following Him would be easy. The bible tells us that there will be trials and tribulations that we must endure to the end! Even Psalms 23 tells us that we will walk through the valley of the shadow of death! What sets us apart from the rest of the world is that we don’t walk through times of danger, scarcity, and the unknown alone, for God is with us! He is the cloud by day and the fire by night, and He goes before us and follows us. Because of God’s love for us, we don’t need to fear or be weighed down with anxiety because life is hard. Our strength to endure comes from the Lord.

Sometimes, we can be guilty of thinking too much about what we don’t have, feeling like we are being punished because the desires of our hearts have not been met. We complain, and we obsess about what we feel we lack, and we forget about what we already have, the best gift of all; salvation! We complain so much that we become ungrateful. We act like spoilt kids when we don’t get our way. What saddens me is that we have become entitled when we don’t even deserve all that God has sacrificed for us! God gave us His one and only begotten son as payment for our sins. Jesus knowingly gave His life as a ransom for us. He chose to die a horrific death because He knew that was the only way we could ever have a relationship with God. God gave us the ultimate sacrifice, and here we moan when we don’t get what we want! God doesn’t have to do another thing for us! He has done enough already, but he still blesses us, even though we are ungrateful, because we serve a good God who loves us like no other!

Often, we find ourselves walking a thin line between the standards of the world and the standards of God. We live in a world opposed to the message of the Gospel, and we can sometimes get drawn into what the culture tells us we should have, instead of what God wants us to have, the two can often be very different! PSALMS 37:25 “ONCE I WAS YOUNG, AND NOW I AM OLD. YET I HAVE NEVER SEEN THE GODLY ABANDONED OR THEIR CHILDREN BEGGING FOR BREAD.” This verse has stuck in my head of late, and I think it has been a powerful reminder that I have everything I need. I haven’t been anxious about anything in particular, but I think it’s verses like this that keep me humble and thankful. They remind me of how blessed I am! There was a point where the things I didn’t have became almost like an idol in my life. One of my desires was to have my own house, the idea of living alone became the most important thing, so important that I became sad when I saw others living the life I wanted, what I thought I deserved. I almost started to think that maybe God was punishing me because my dream felt unattainable. It made me ungrateful, and I stopped noticing all the ways God was blessing me in my life, I just took everything I had for granted. Then, one day, God revealed my heart to me, and I was repentant! Every morning, I opened my eyes to see a new day, and I was grateful. Every day, my body didn’t fail me in some way. I was grateful. Every day, I never had to worry about what I was gonna eat, I was grateful. Every time I never had to stress about my bills, I was grateful. Every night I went to bed, I knew I had a roof over my head, and I was grateful. All the things that seemed so small and insignificant, I knew somewhere out there someone else was not so blessed. When I realised what I had made an idol of, only served me, I felt selfish. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not saying it’s bad to ask God to fulfil the desires of your heart, He pretty much tells us to ask, and we shall receive. But it becomes an issue when our hearts desires become a stumbling block for us. MATTHEW 6:33 “SEEK THE KINGDOM OF GOD ABOVE ALL ELSE, AND LIVE RIGHTEOUSLY, AND HE WILL GIVE YOU EVERYTHING YOU NEED.” Notice it say’s NEED, not want!

Since the begining of man we have been ungrateful, and it all started on that fateful day when Eve convinced her husband Adam to consume the only fruit forbidden to them, because she was conviced by the serpant that God was holding out on them, when the reality was God had given them Eden, He had given them everything! It really is in our nature to question the goodness of God, to be unsatisfied. But yet God still overlooks that part of us because of the depths of His love for us we will never comprehend! So He hatched a plan, a plan He already had in motion before the fruit was consumed by the man and woman in the garden. He knew the nature of man who He created, a flaw you may say, but it was the only way He could create us to exprience love, love that came from having the freedom to choose. So He honoured their choice to be separated from Him and banished Adam and Eve from Eden, cursing the land as punishment. From that point on, men grew evil and cold, murder tainted the land. But God watched on reaching out to those who still called on Him. Until the only God fearing man remained, and God instructed Noah to build an ark because the evilness that grew angered Him, and He saw that nobody but Noah and His family were righteous enough, so he plunged the earth back into the depths of the water He seperated it from. Starting again, the great reset.

As the land became dry and life began to spring from the ground, God made a promise with a rainbow to Noah, never to flood the earth again. As man once again populated the earth, so did evil. But God still remained faithful to those who were faithful to him, His chosen people Israel. But even Israel would fall into temptation time and time again, so God would choose people and raise them up to prophesy on His behalf. But still, Israel were hard headed and refused to listen. Then He sent them the law through Moses, a law that was meant to show them their sin, a law that they could never follow because of their nature, a law that was meant to bring them to repentance, but never did. All this setting the stage for His plan to save us from our sin, the plan from the beginning. Then, one day, a child was born, a virgin birth, concieved by the Spirit of God. Gods plan wrapped in flesh, His promise now a reality. The child named Jesus full of wisdom grew into a man, and this man filled with the Holy Spirit preached a message of repentence. He called on all who knew they were sinners, and He taught them about the Kingdom of God, about faith, hope, and love. He healed the sick, raised the dead, and freed the demon possessed. He was God incarnate. Come down from His mighty thrown to be a lowly servant to an ungrateful nation. He was the plan from the very beginning. He knew we would never be able to make ourselves right. We failed every test given, and we could never pay what was owed. So He chose to pay our debt for us. Jesus drank the cup that was given, and He gave His life on the cross, beaten, humiliated, disgraced, nailed to the wood born of a tree, a reminder of a tree that once produced fruit forbidden to man.

But death was not the end, Jesus defeated death, and on the third day, the tomb He was buried in was now empty! Jesus is alive! Sending out His disciples to spread the good news to all nations, He left us with the gift of the Holy Spirit in His absence, promising to return for His final judgement. Now that He paid our debt, we all recieve the free gift of God’s grace, and all we have to do is repent and accept Jesus Christ into our hearts as Lord and saviour, believing in the finished work of the cross. This is what reconciles us back to our father in heaven, and that is all He ever wanted, not to have us separated from Him. It’s the greatest love story ever told! And because I accepted Jesus, I get to be a part of that love story. Eternal life is something that I find hard to fathom, but it is mine, and it is worth more than gold! Salvation means we are being saved from something and that something is judgement, the wrath of God when Jesus returns. God never breaks a promise, so rest assured, judgement will come. The question is, where will you find yourself?

PHILIPPIANS 2:10-11 “SO THAT AT THE NAME OF JESUS EVERY KNEE WILL BOW- IN HEAVEN AND ON EARTH AND UNDER THE EARTH- AND EVERY TONGUE WILL CONFESS THAT JESUS CHRIST IS LORD, TO THE GLORY OF GOD THE FATHER.”

So this is a friendly reminder that God has given you everything, He has given you Jesus! He has given you everything you need, and your treasures await you in heaven. So keep your eyes focused on things from above. Everything else is just noise. Tune it out. It will give you contentment when you have abundance and contentment when you lack. Be grateful because you are saved! And that is more important than anything on this earth. God bless you all, and Happy Ressurection Sunday.