Gratitude, and God's Guiding Light

THIS WEEK was one of those wonderful weeks we wait for all year long, the week of a special holiday called Thanksgiving. I love that in America we have a whole day set aside for gratitude, just in case we've forgotten to be thankful for the rest of the year. I looked up "thanksgiving," as in 'gratitude toward God', in my Bible and I found a powerful little 5-verse Psalm. Psalm 100 is all about praising God and showing Him how grateful we are toward Him for everything.

"[1]Make a joyful shout to the Lord, all you lands! [2] Serve the Lord with gladness; come before His presence with singing. [3] Know that the Lord, He is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; we are His people and the sheep of His pasture. [4] Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise. Be thankful to Him, and bless His name. [5] For the Lord in good; His mercy is everlasting, and His truth endures to all generations."

It's a lovely little psalm. It reminds me how much I have to be thankful for: my parents and my sister and my brother, my aunt who is about to have a baby any day now, the cold and the warm weather, my house and clothes, more than enough to eat and drink, a Spirit-filled church family, and many more things than I could ever go about naming. I love Thanksgiving. I'm praying that we could have a spirit of thanksgiving all year long, because God is always good.

I'm thankful for answered prayers, and for the peace that God speaks into my heart. Today, and for the past few days, even while I have been joyful over Thanksgiving and over my cousin's birthday party, I have been feeling a little frustrated. Maybe it's partially because I visited another college, UF, on Wednesday, and my mind is on my future. All I want is to know what God wants me to do, because I've learned very well that I don't know what I'm doing nearly as well as I think I do. I just want to please Him. I have no idea how to make the decisions I have to make. So I've been praying harder and harder to hear what God says about all this. I've been begging to hear His Spirit talking to me, telling me how to serve him in the present day in the actions I take now, and showing me what steps to take in my future.

God has responded to my prayers, but not how I expected Him to. Surprising us with the way He answers prayer is something that God does pretty often. But He does answer. He answered me by giving me assurance, for which I'm truly grateful.

It came when I was reading John 8, the chapter when Jesus shows mercy to the adulteress and then deals with the arguments of those Jews who did not believe in Him. Jesus challenges the woman's accusers, the scribes and Pharisees, to let the one who is without sin throw the first stone at her. None of them, the religious leaders of the Jews, can bring himself to throw the stone. After they have all turned and gone, Jesus Himself, who alone is without sin, forgives her.

Then Jesus speaks to the people who had come to hear Him. v.12 "Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, 'I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.'"

Then after He has dealt with some of the arguments of the unbelieving Jews, Jesus speaks some more words of encouragement for believers. v. 31-32 "[31] Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, 'If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. [32] And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.'"

What these words of the Lord say to me is that all we need to do is keep following Jesus, and it will be clear what we need to do. He will light our paths. I still don't know where He'd like me to go to college, or what career path to take, or even who to talk to and what to say when I'm at school. But He will show me what to do in His wonderful timing. If we continue to actively seek Him in prayer and in the Word I know that we'll be able to hear when He calls. And if we serve Him by obedience and praise and show His love continually, He will guide our hands and feet and help us as we try to stay safe within His will.

I think that by these words the Lord wanted to remind me that I don't need to be frustrated. I think that's something I struggle with. I want to do His will and I'm afraid to miss it, so I tend to get frustrated while I wait to know something that maybe I'm not supposed to know until later. It's good to pray to be within His will, and for His will to be done. But it's not good to get frustrated when it seems there are things I just don't know.

After all, I'm not walking a road with no street lights here. He guides all of His people, and He lights our paths. He makes us free with His truth so that we do not have to struggle and stumble, chained in bondage to sin. He stays with us and shows us what He wants us to do. And I'm thankful for that. I'm thankful that we are justified by His grace, and by nothing else. Not by works and not by traditions. We are justified by the blood of God Himself, God-in-Man, Jesus, God's gift of Himself to us. And He will not now proceed to forget us. He is our light and our life, forever. That is something to be truly thankful for.