Thankful: Acknowledging the Present
“No discipline is joyful.”*
Oh, how I hated this verse as a child!
Hearing it was supposed to make me feel better about feeling bad about something that was being done to make me be better!
It is challenging enough to give thanks for the hard things God brings into our lives. Most of us can quote Romans 8:28^ in our sleep, or at least in several translations! It is more difficult to give thanks for those things that trigger the recitation! Usually our response is a heavy sigh and a shrug, and that’s only if the source of our trouble is outside ourselves. When we know there is something we need training in, there is some teeth-grinding that goes on.
It has taken me a long, tooth-grinding time to gain some self-control in the area of both my thinking and my choices about food. It is still precarious, and I have no one to blame but myself for the health issues and discomfort that propelled me to get help.
Behold: painful discipline! It is hard for us to admit that we need discipline, let alone give thanks for it. Yet that is exactly what God desires and, in fact, commands! We are to give thanks IN everything+, FOR everything++, not just find things in what is happening that we feel okay being thankful for.
What is He thinking?!
His end game is (and always has been) to have a people of His own, who reflects His fabulous nature to the rest of creation (seen and unseen), and to have that people be fit to be near Him, enjoying Him. In order for this to become an experiential reality, we have a lot of training that needs to happen, some character that needs to be shaped, some thinking that needs to be transformed. He wants us to share in His holy nature so we can be close. The only way we are able to do that is to respond to His painful discipline of us with a “Yes, Papa,” and a “Thank You, Papa, for loving me so much You are not willing to leave me as I am!”
Being disciplined, and still following Jesus every day in the everyday,
Christi
*Hebrews 12:11; ^And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. ; +1 Thessalonians 5:18; ++Ephesians 5:20
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