Learning To Be Grateful

Nov 26, 2022

I was in a store three weeks ago today, and couldn’t believe it. They were already playing Christmas music.

On November 5! Wait! What happened to Thanksgiving? Is pausing to gather with family and friends and acknowledging all we are grateful for a tradition that has suddenly come to an end?

As you might be able to tell, it’s really bugging me that “Have a Holly, Jolly Christmas” is playing already. As I’ve been obsessively thinking about that, recognizing that this devotional will be published two days after Thanksgiving, I’d like to ask you to think about some things with me.

First of all, Happy Birthday to our daughter, Brittany, today! She is one of the things I’m most grateful for. This week is filled with reasons to be grateful for our family. Our daughter-in-law, Amanda, turned a year older on Tuesday, and on Thanksgiving Day, she celebrated 12 years of sobriety!

There are many things I’ve had to learn to be grateful for.

Each morning, before my feet hit the ground, I thank God for another day of life. After so much loss of those I loved in my formative years, I’ve learned not to take life for granted. I’ve learned to be grateful for cancer and the journey that God has allowed in our lives since Ken’s diagnosis seven years ago. I could go on and on with the “usual” things, like home and job, and yet, I hold those things loosely, because I know they could all go away tomorrow. At the end of the day, I’ve learned to, in ALL things, give thanks to the provider, God.

What I am MOST grateful for is that God sent His Son, Jesus, to the world to show us how to “Go First” and live a life that honors Him.

And then He died on the cross, the perfect, once and for all, sacrifice. Our table group is studying Hebrews and it has struck me, yet again, the true cost of what Jesus, our Redeemer, paid for us on the cross! Hebrews 9:13-15 says:

The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!

- Hebrews 9:13-15

For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance - now that He has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.

We’ve been set free from sin! He has given us power.

I love the way Paul writes in his book to the church at Colossae:

For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

- Colossians 1:13-14

There is such a beautiful exchange we get to see when Jesus died for us. He not only exchanged dominion over the darkness of sin, but the power to overcome!

What sin in your life is Jesus giving you the power to overcome today? Shame, addiction, despair? He gave me the power years ago to be set free from shame and a 20 year battle with an eating disorder. Friends, we are loved and chosen by God’s grace, truth, mercy and hope. And there is no better time than now, to give Him thanks for that power to be set free from the things in our lives that are keeping us from “going first!”