Psalm 21
At the beginning of almost every corporate prayer I give I say something along the lines of "Holy God we come before you today and the first thing we always want to say is thank you..." I do this for several reasons.
1) Dr. Gilbert Stafford suggested it in a class I took in seminary
2) to say thank you to God, something we all too often forget to do in life
3) so that we first focus on all that we have before we begin to focus on what we do not
It is this last one that concerns me at the moment, and it seems to have concerned David as well. While I am no fan of the context that David uses in Psalm 21 I believe that thanking God before you ask God to do things for you is essential.
The other day I saw a short video on Facebook. It was a story [real or not matters little] about a professor, a class full of students, and a test comprised of a white piece of paper and a solitary black dot in the middle of the paper. The professor asks his students to write about what they see and every one of them write about the black dot. The professor says that there is no grade for the test but notes how they all focused on the black dot on their paper as they focus on the negativity of their lives. Like the students we are given so much more good in our lives but we allow the negativity, no matter what it is, to too often consume us.
The thing we quickly forget is that we are still a child of God when we are going through a divorce. We are still blessed when we receive whatever bad news the doctor has for us. We still have those who care for us and take care of us when we are in the midst of the struggle. When the storms come we focus on the storm, as opposed to focusing on all that we have that will be with us through the storm and will be there should we make it out the other side of the storm.
+ How can you begin to focus on what God has done in your life instead of the storms that come?
+ Who and what are you most thankful for right now? Take a moment to let God know your thankfulness.
No comments:
Post a Comment