Grateful in Every Season

Hi there,

It's been a while.

It'll be four months tomorrow since my last post, and I think we can correlate the beginning and end of a school semester to be just exactly that.

Life has been busy, and challenging, and stretching and all together wonderful and full of grace and joy and love. The Lord is cleaning me out. Sort of a late "spring cleaning", if you will, of who I am and the things I hold onto. It's really amazing grace when I look back at who I was at the beginning of this year and to who I am now. Now, I'm not perfect, far from it, but I am different. Last time this year I looked back at a year of struggle and failure and the revelation of a wicked heart and looked forward in fear at a year I could see being no different than the last. I was holding onto my doubt that God is a gracious God, capable of forgiving and sanctifying me. I was relying on my own power to push me through, and was putting God off as an afterthought. I would come to Him after my methods or my strength failed. I would seek Him after I had tried in all my power to control the situation. I wasn't seeking Him first. But, through a long list of battle and struggle, and stubbornness on my part (people say I rival my grandmother's stubbornness... when I get to heaven I'll be sure to thank her for it) the Lord was gracious enough to pull me out and to bring me alongside Him again. Not only that but he made something wonderful out of the ashes of my sin and is laying foundations for wonderful things to come and I am so excited!

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So, for today's post I wanted to talk about something that has recently come to my attention because of a study that my study group at church is going over. We're studying a book called Trusting God by Jerry Bridges. It's been fantastic so far and just what I needed for where I'm at as far as being sanctified. The Lord has proven Himself trustworthy time and time again and I still doubt! I'm crazy! I know! My group meets on Thursdays to discuss the chapter for the week and this weeks chapter happened to be God's Power over Nature. The chapter started out by talking about how God is in control of nature and natural disasters. You know the age-old question, "If God is such a good God, why do these horrible things happen?" Earthquakes, tsunamis, fire, etc. People have their differing thoughts, the Bible will point us to trusting God as a good and all knowing God, but that's not the main point I ended up focusing on. As I was reading I came across a sentence that made me stop and I literally interrupted my mom from an episode of Judge Judy to exclaim "Mom! When we complain about the weather, we're sinning!!!" Simple as it seems it was like a DUH moment like someone had knocked me on my forehead in a matter-of-fact way. Saying it out-loud and thinking about it now it makes it seem totally obvious, but it was a thought I never considered.

Complaining, in and of itself is sinful because we're essentially saying we deserve more than what we have, or we deserve a better situation. Let me tell you straight up right now, none of us deserve a better situation than what we have going on right now. We deserve worse if anything.

It was said in the discussion of the chapter that we often look towards the catastrophic "acts of nature" and declare that it's God's judgement or that it was God's hand, but do we not see that every act of weather is the hand of God? The sun rising in the morning, the cool breeze that relieves you on a hot day, a heavy rain in the middle of the night. It's not just the disasters that God purposes and controls, its even how often the trees rustle because of a gust of wind has picked up. When the sunshine hits your skin on a cold day just enough to make you feel warm and smile, God was purposeful in that act of nature.

Sing to the Lord with thanksgiving; Sing praises to our God on the lyre, Who covers the heavens with clouds, Who provides rain for the earth, Who makes grass to grow on the mountains. He gives to the beast its food, And to the young ravens which cry. . . Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem! Praise your God, O Zion! For He has strengthened the bars of your gates; He has blessed your sons within you. He makes peace in your borders; He satisfies you with the finest of the wheat. He sends forth His command to the earth; His word runs very swiftly. He gives snow like wool; He scatters the frost like ashes. He casts forth His ice as fragments; Who can stand before His cold? He sends forth His word and melts them; He causes His wind to blow and the waters to flow (Psalm 147:7-9, 12-18).

I think the issue is that we treat nature and everyday life like routine. The sun will rise, the sun will set. I will wake up when the sun rises (or more likely my alarm goes off) and be upset about it and roll around in bed pretending there's a way for me to slow down time and sleep for another hour. We can kind of get into this thinking that everything will happen the same and God kind of has nature on a spin and only sometimes does He put His hand in there and mix things up a bit. But this is so wrong! We need to realize that every day, every rising of the sun, every rain drop, ever rustle of the leaves is God actively working in the world to cause it to happen. And for this we should be grateful!

The Sunday before Thanksgiving a friend of mine spoke for our youth groups Sunday school and talked about being thankful and grateful. Towards the end of the message he brought out a list of things that we should be thankful for, but probably wouldn't think about being grateful for. One of those listed that hit me the hardest was "I am thankful for my alarm clock because it wakes me up in the morning and means I have another day to live and serve the Lord." Basically, be thankful the alarm wakes you up because you have another day!!

See one of my bad habits is this: I can find any reason to complain about the weather. Living in Florida, it's very easy to remark about how humid or hot it is. Although I enjoy some time on the beach I'm often remarking about how I'll finally be happy once it's cooler and I can wear sweaters and close-toed shoes. But then, guess what... Once winter begins I'm complaining about how cold I am and how it'd be nice if it were a bit warmer! I'm just being ungrateful, my heart is focused on me and myself.

Nature is not independent of its Creator. Every day, creation must look to Him for His provisions: The young lions roar after their prey, And seek their food from God. When the sun rises they withdraw, and lie down in their dens. Man goes forth to his work And to his labor until evening. O Lord, how many are Thy works! In wisdom Thou hast made them all; The earth is full of Thy possessions. There is the sea, great and broad, In which are swarms without number, Animals both small and great. There the ships move along, And Leviathan, which Thou hast formed to sport in it. They all wait for Thee, To give them their food in due season. Thou dost give to them, they gather it up; Thou dost open Thy hand, they are satisfied with good. Thou dost hide Thy face, they are dismayed; Thou dost take away their spirit, they expire, And return to their dust. Thou dost send forth Thy Spirit, they are created; And Thou dost renew the face of the ground (Psalm 104:21-30).

 When I complain about the weather I'm saying that I don't trust God's sovereignty, or I don't think He has chosen what is best. Now those words exactly would never come out of my mouth, but just by complaining I am living them out! We must focus our beliefs and live them out in word and truth. Even in the cool breeze or the hot sun we are experiencing his sovereign grace over us. The mere fact that he blesses us with what He does is amazing.

So this Christmas season I encourage you to praise the God and Lord of nature! He is actively involved in our everyday lives just with the fact that he told the sun to rise this morning to shine on us and give us grace. I want to find ways to praise the Creator by enjoying His nature even on the hotter days. And I hope you choose to do the same and look at life more purposefully just because of what's around you.

I hope you have a wonderful holiday, I promise to write soon.


Love Always,
Christina