A THANKFUL HEART FOR A PERSONAL GOD

I was invited to a SILENT retreat hosted by a friend's church a few winters ago. The setting was a historic regal seminary nestled around a frozen lake in the middle of nowhere, Illinois, complete with beautifully crafted buildings enhanced with intricate brickwork and tall stately columns. The setting was breathtaking! We were in a glorious white winter wonderland with nature at her best.

The purpose of the retreat was to be quiet and alone with God. It was designed specifically and strategically around being before God—one on one; communing with our Creator without holding back; and then being quiet and seeking His voice, His response. Praising and listening. Repenting and receiving. Relenting and believing. I was 100% in!

We met in a beautiful candle-lit room with sky-high ceilings, and a long wall of ceiling-to-floor windows which showcased the constant snowfall outside. A life-sized wooden cross surrounded by dozens of candles lay on the old wooden floor. And gathered in this silence were women like me in pursuit of a personal God.

The focus of the meditation session the first night was on being “thankful.” It is easy to rattle off things we are all thankful for when prompted, but that was not the challenge. This night, we were challenged to search deep within for things HE wanted us to be thankful for. “Ask, and then listen,” as our host added, “be thankful IN your circumstance, not FOR your circumstance.” I laid out my yoga mat on the floor with soft music in the background and listened to our meditation facilitator talk us into that still, chaos-free, inner place of silence of the mind and soul.

Since the crash, my thought life is very different. My mind is literally a battlefield, and silence sometimes my worst enemy. But I began talking to the Lord in my mind about my struggles and revealing those hard places of my heart. And then I slowly laid it all down and let the silence overtake me. I pressed in like suggested and asked Him to show me places to be thankful. Minutes passed. I remember wishing I could stay in that room, in that silence forever. Then the stirring began.

The Lord revealed that I used to be a very thankful person beginning with the moment I awoke. Gratitude used to easily flow from my lips. Oh, how I used to love the sunrise! I would often thank Him for the sunshine and blue skies by saying, “I’ll take that as a kiss on the forehead from You!” But no longer. He revealed that though I was occasionally thankful, I was no longer a thankful person. The crash changed me in many ways, and though broken, He challenged the condition of my heart.

Then He gave me a revelation I NEVER thought about. A divine, humbling, soul-wrenching thought: He said, “I pray for you. Yet you are not thankful. My Word says that I intercede daily on your behalf before the throne of My Father. Yet are you thankful? I intercede for you because I love you, Rebecca. I want you to work on being a thankful person again. And though you feel it is impossible, if I speak it, it CAN be done.”

I want a thankful heart again. I want an embracing heart. What an awakening! No doubt, mending my heart in this fashion will take time, but I’m aware that the first painful step was asking, hearing, and accepting His revelation. God’s approach reminded me of a fighting pit bull; they go right for the throat and lock their jaws; but in this case, God went right for my heart and locked His grip. And that’s what I need…for Him to NEVER let go!  

That night, I laid there and cried, “UNCLE!”

Hebrews 7:25: “Therefore, He is able to save completely those who come to God through Him, because He always lives to intercede for them.” We have a SAVIOR who sits at the right hand of the Father always interceding for us—One who LIVES to intercede for us! Humbling! Too good for my mind to comprehend its fullness!

So, may I ask as we go into this perfect season of Thanksgiving, are YOU a thankful person or are you just sometimes thankful? Do you praise Him through the joys of life as well as the sorrows? For the triumphs AND the trials? During the blessings and the famine? Are you a model of thankfulness in your home? Like that night for me, could we change our prayer language to be, “Lord, what do You want me to be thankful for? What are the things that matter to You?” Ask, and then may we listen.

MY PRAYER:

Jesus, Lover of our Souls, may we seek Your heart and listen for Your voice. May we learn to pray the prayers YOU would have us pray. May we seek to be thankful for the things that matter to You. Thankful in the good times and the not so good times. Thankful FOR the trials and the triumphs. May we wake up in the morning with praise on our lips and praise as we fall asleep at night. As in our recent Sunday sermon, if You do nothing else for us in this lifetime except save our souls, may You find us thankful--a grateful and thankful people pursuing a personal God.

In Your name, Jesus, we pray. Amen.

A piercing thought taken from my friend adoggettbrown's Instagram post: