The Art of Thanksgiving - Part 1

Our fall was, has always been, and always will be, that we aren't satisfied in God and what He gives. We hunger for something more, something other. --Ann Voskamp

How many of our problems are rooted in our desire to have more? More power, more control , more things. We always want that which we do not have. Isn't that why God commands us to not covet? Isn't that why He commands us to have no other gods before Him? Because He knows that we are prone to wander; to think that we can do better and have better things than what He has done for or given us. 

I have been reading about David and the other Israelite Kings, and have often found myself wondering why it is that King David was called "A Man after God's own heart." How did a man that murdered and committed adultery gain this name? Why did God, even when faced with David's disobedient offspring, still choose to honour the legacy that David left behind?

I have read these stories, gripping the pages as though my life depended on finding the answer to these questions. I know it is because I myself want to be a woman after God's own heart. I want to find the answers, I want to know how to be something better than the me I am now. 

But the more I read the more I begin to realize that though part of the answer is in The Book, most of it is not contained in the weight I hold in my hands. Few things worth finding ever are able to be held. The answers I seek are not in the words I underline or the pages I mark. David's story points me to something other than the Word of God as my answer; my Salvation is not found in those pages.

My Salvation is found in God Himself. Though the Book holds many answers; though it has told me most of the things I know about God and life and love, it is not God Himself. The World became flesh. The Lord speaks to me in that moments of realization: You are looking for answers when you should be looking for me.

I ask myself what made David's heart different from the hearts of those around Him, what made it different than mine. And I find that the answer lies where my allegiances so often do not. 

In God.

David, though a great King, knew himself not to be The King; never tried to play God because he knew that someone else already had that job. Even when his son died David praised the Lord - because He was confident in who God was in and what He was doing. David was a man who was fully satisfied in God. Read the Psalms and you will see the beautiful relationship that David had with his Provider.

It seems like such an easy answer - trust God, be humble, be satisfied in Him. The answers are easy but the questions of how are what make things difficult. We now live in a world where every day there are thousands of things screaming at us, telling us that our lives are not full yet, that we need more, that we need to be more. We somehow come to this understanding that who we are is not enough and that what we have is not enough - we need to do and be and have more. And so we lead busy lives, we hoard things and we constantly try to improve ourselves mentally, physically and spiritually. 

We believe these things because, in essence, they are true. Who we are is not enough, what we have is not enough, what we do is never enough - because only God is ever enough; only He can ever truly tell us who we were meant to be; only He can completely satisfy. 

But most of us are content, at least momentarily, with finding our fulfilment in things other than Him. That is why there are addictions, that is why we date the wrong people, why we spend endless hours at the shopping mall (guilty) and the gym, that is why there is war. It is because we are looking to others, or to the world or even to ourselves for the things that we need, rather than to the Lord. We are not satisfied with God. We are not satisfied with the Creator of the universe! Or perhaps we are to easily satisfied with other things, things who's satisfaction is neither eternal nor all-encompassing. 

We have believed a truth, and answered it with a lie. We have believed in our nothingness, but have failed to believe that God is everything.

"They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator" (Romans 1:25). Soon we begin to serve the things that God has given us rather than God himself. We even begin to look to books written by intelligent pastors or to music for the answers, rather than to the very God who created the questions. We aren't satisfied in God. Instead we try to make our own gods, or become our own god. 

And lately I have come across many situations or conversations or books where there is this idea that the lack of satisfaction we feel is rooted in our unwillingness to the thankful, because if we were thankful for what we had we wouldn't feel the need to ask for or work for or even want more.

I have been a pessimist much of my life. I have tended to look at the things I lack instead of the things that I have been given. At Christmas, I noticed the gifts I didn't get instead of being truly grateful for those I was given. But perhaps God is doing something new in me. Perhaps He will take the wilderness of thankfulness that has been hidden in my heart and plant new seeds of thanksgiving. 

"Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland." - Isaiah 43:18-19

I hope that God can teach me how to be truly grateful for everything I have - all of which is a gift from Him and can be taken away so easily.  May I learn to worship the One who creates, instead of the things He has created, and may I find my forever and fullest satisfaction in Him and Him alone. I pray you will too.

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