Gratitude

Posted on July 30, 2015 by Graeme Wilson in Victory Call

One of the e-devotions I read is called “Girlfriends in God” and a recent reading is the encouragement and motivation for this Victory Call. I’m sharing a portion of it with you today. My hope and prayer is that you are encouraged to remember NOT to forget all that the Lord has done for you and give Him thanks.

Thank God for My Dirty Floor
For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him,
but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened
. Romans 1:21

A friend told me of sitting with his father discussing the distribution of his “worldly goods,” when the time came to do so. “My dad had very little joy in his life,” Mike explained. “As we sat there discussing who was going to get what when he died, I saw a pride in him I had never noticed before. ‘I did all this,’ he said as he waved his hand around the room like Vanna White. ‘I worked hard and earned it all.’”

“In his mind, he had earned it; he had done it all. Never once did he give thanks to God for all his blessings or acknowledge God’s goodness. There was no gratitude, no thanksgiving, and certainly no joy. His things had become shiny shackles that kept joy at bay all his life…

I thought of Henry Ward Beecher’s words: “Pride slays thanksgiving…a proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.”…

Gratitude can change your perspective on the simplest of mundane tasks and transform them into moments of sudden glory. One day I was mopping the kitchen floor and my mood was anything but grateful. I grumbled with each push of the mop and complained with each dip in the bucket.

Here I am mopping this floor again and no one even appreciates it. I feel like this housework is never finished. Clean today, dirty tomorrow. Why do I even bother?

Then right in the middle of the kitchen, God showed up. Actually, He was there all along, but my grumbling blinded the eyes of my heart to recognize His presence. New thoughts began to emerge as I pushed the mop across the linoleum floor. I believe God put them there.

Suppose you were blind and you couldn’t see the beautiful patterns on the linoleum floor or the spilled juice by the refrigerator door. Suppose you were deaf and you couldn’t hear the soothing sound of the soap bubbles dissolving in the scrub bucket or the rhythmic sound of the mop being pushed back and forth across the floor’s hard surface. Suppose you were in a wheel chair and you weren’t strong enough to stand upright and grasp the wooden handle in your nimble hands to erase the muddy footprints and make the floor shiny and clean again. Suppose you didn’t have a home or a family to clean up after.
Suddenly, my grumbling turned into a song of praise and gratitude.”…

Dear sisters, my encouragement to you today is this: no matter what your situation or circumstance this very moment, regardless of how you’re “feeling”, no matter how stinking your thinking may be, will you pause for quite a few moments and give the God of your salvation the praise He is due? Selah.

Stephanie Dale
Stephanie D. Paul serves as part of the Addiction Recovery Team at America’s Keswick as Director of Women of Character. She has been married for over 30 years to Sesky Paul who is a graduate of the Colony of Mercy. They have two grown children. Her single focus in ministry at Keswick is to image Christ in grace and truth to wounded and hurting women, encouraging them to make Jesus the truest Lover of their soul and the One in whom all hope lies.

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