Bible Ballistics: An Attitude of Gratitude                           Vol. 1 No.2

As we have spent the last few days focused on “thankfulness” during this Thanksgiving season, I can’t help but remember many of the ways that God has blessed us in this past year.  We have been so abundantly blessed with God’s grace and mercy and it reminds me of a question I saw on a church sign several years ago: ‘Are you humbly grateful, or grumbly hateful?’  It kind of sums it up—our attitude is up to us, and I hope we will continually be giving genuine thanks to our God for all of His marvelous works that He has done, is doing and will continue to do on our behalf.  Thanks and praise be unto our God.

I’d like to share several passages that speak of “thanks” today:  1 Cor. 15:57 “But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Oh, how I long to be truly grateful for all that HE IS, not just what He does!!  That brings to mind 1 Thess 5:18 “In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.”   May we ever work on that “attitude of gratitude” as we keep our eyes on Jesus?  Remembering that HE is working “all things” together that we might be more like him.

One of the things that I am so grateful for is the confidence that we can have in this God who cares for us beyond what our hearts and minds can even comprehend.  How do we learn to have confidence in this God to whom we are to be grateful?  There are many ways, but I’d like to mention a few for us to ponder today.   Psalm 20:7-8 ‘Some trust in chariots , and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the Lord our God.  They are brought down and fallen: but we are risen,  and stand upright.”  It is when we learn that God IS faithful to keep His word that we can grow in our confidence.  We learn to do that by knowing and obeying the Lord step-by-step and circumstance-by-circumstance.  Learning that His word works in our lives and leads us to trust Him ourselves and then we are His witness to others.  Paul told the Philippians in chapter 2:12-13  “wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.  For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of HIS good pleasure.”  I/we can be totally confident that God is busy doing HIS work in ME/US.

It took me many years to learn (and I’m still learning) that God is never asleep and HE is always working to make me more and more of what He wants me to be.  We see in this in Romans 8:28-29 “For we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose. (29) For whom He did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.”  Many of us know verse 28 “all things work together”, but we have often thought of that as something to quote when emergencies come, or cancer, or some other crises.  Yet we often forget that God isn’t just the God of “emergencies”, for when we look at verse 29 it is declared by our God that HE is at work in everything that comes into our lives is to “conform us to the image of His Son”…..   How much confidence we can have when we know God is always at work in our lives—no matter how big or small, seemingly trivial or significant things around us may seem!!  The same God who is faithful in the “big” things is also concerned in every detail of our lives.  He is always at work to make us more and more like our Lord Jesus Christ.

As we take time to reflect on the works of our God may we ever learn to trust Him more and cultivate that “attitude of gratitude” in all things?  I close with Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not to thine own understanding.  In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths.”  May you have a blessed week walking with the Lord, remembering to keep that “attitude of gratitude” as you watch for God working in, around and through you this week and always.

I’m sure that most of you, by now have heard about the release of the 1940 census records.  It is interesting to consider the information revealed by these statistics.  I was reading just recently  that the records reveal some interesting things about our  current society.  One of the things that I was reading recently 

was that almost 40% of people in our culture don’t marry at all, as compared to some 4% in the 1940’s.  I found this to be a most thought provoking piece of information.

What does this tell us about ourselves as a society, and even more importantly what does it tell us about those of us who claim to follow Jesus, Christians!  I can’t help but believe that we see a lot in this new (old) information.  Why are almost half of adults not marrying?  I see several things indicated in these statistics.  First and foremost, to me, is the fact that we no longer hold marriage in “high esteem”.  We no longer hold, if you would, a Biblical view of marriage.  In Hebrews 13, it tells us that “marriage is honorable, and the bed undefiled; but aldulterers and whoremongers, God will judge.” So what’s the deal?  As I see it we have adjusted our perspective away from the Biblical view; God established marriage and we have “un”established it.  We no longer see the “immoral” in “immorality”, anything is acceptable if we just give it a new name.  Premarital sex is now ‘exploring our own human sexuality’, and that , we say, can’t be done without experience.  Extramarital sex is now ‘freedom of expression of our human sexuality’, who would expect anyone to be monogamous?  We are moral, reasoning beings created in the image of God and able to make choices of right and wrong–and God set the standard–but we reap the consequences or blessings of those choices. It appears that we have become our own ‘gods’ and have changed God’s standard of Biblical morality for our own, skewed standard.

If two people “love” each other it’s ok that they sleep together.  That is no longer “adultry” but simply co-habiting.  Checking out the merchandise before the purchase, so to speak.  If one marriage parner becomes bored, lonely, discouraged or lusts after someone else, that’s ok too.  Everyone is entitled to be “happy”.  Even school teachers are no longer holding to the time-honored standard of not being involved sexually with their students.  The headlines are glaring with new stories almost daily of this violaiton of decency and decorum.  Why?  Because our skewed standard has abandoned God’s original plan–and without that original plan we are adrift in a sea of confusion and hopelessness.

So what is our hope?  Praise God, our hope is Jesus Christ–who saves us from sin, transforms us into His image and prepares us for life in eternity with Him, if we but repent of our own sin and call on Him in faith, believing in His substitutionary (he took my place) death on the cross for my salvation and deliverance.  That He also gives us the power through His indwelling Holy Spirit, (given to every true believer) to overcome sin  and the work of sin in our lives.  We are no longer bound by sin, even though we are still living within a body of flesh, in a broken and sinful world.  As 1 John says ‘greater is He that is in us, than he that is in the world’…   We can have victory and live HOLY, righteous lives by His grace, His power and through the understanding of, and devotion to His Word.  Given  that  “all scripture is inspired by God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction and instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be perfect (mature), thoroughly furnished unto every good work”, we CAN live victoriously.

Our hope is an eternal hope–the hope of Jesus saving work and power.  I am so grateful that He is at work in all things around us to shape and conform us into His image.  He is taking all the junk in and around us and weeding, pruning and shaping us to be faithful servants.  We can be faithful and ready to meet Him when He comes or calls  us unto Himself.  How are you doing in the “holy” catagory?  We all come short but we all can keep pressing on.  As Paul said in Philippians “forgetting that which is past……… I press toward to mark, of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus”  and we can do that because 1 John 1:9 reminds us that “if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness”….

Praise God we can walk in victory.  It’s not perfection that we strive for but  for excellence in God’s Spirit.  “if we walk in the SPIRIT, (emphasis mine) we will not fulfill the lust of the flesh…”  Ephesians   …….   I pray that you will spend time in the word and prayer that you will know how to walk in His Spirit and find greater and greater success each day.  It’s not that we won’t stumble and fall down but that we won’t STAY down.

I thank God that He is in the saving and keeping business and if we will but yield to His leadership and prompting in our lives we will find better recognition of the enemies tactics, quicker responses to right and wrong and more earnest devotion to Him who calls and saves us.  I pray that God will illumine our hearts and minds as we share His word and fellowship together.