Tag: joy

 

Do not be anxious about anything, 
but in every situation,
by prayer and petition,
with thanksgiving,
present your requests to God. 
And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 4:6-7

 

There are times when we are inundated, either with our own personal experiences or through the outside world, with so much that’s going wrong.  

And when we enter into prayer it’s easy to jump right into those prayer requests, like we’re giving God our grocery list.  

But prayer is so much more.  

It’s sitting with and communing with our Heavenly Father.

Paul reminds us to pray with thanksgiving. In the Greek that word for thanksgiving means gratitude, or a grateful language, to God, as an act of worship.

Yes, we thank God for the things He’s done, but even more than that, we need to come to Him with an attitude of Thanksgiving. Of worship.

And that takes me back to the beginning. How do we pray with thanksgiving when everything around us feels like it’s crumbling? When all the world seems gray with empty shelves and unpaid bills and isolation and sickness and death?  

How can we see the good?  

We ask Jesus for His eyes. He sees the good, and when we see through His eyes we will see the good all around us – the things He’s done for us, the blessings we still have in the middle of it all, the beauty and kindness around us, like the kindness of a boy taking the time to stoop down for a minute to rid a yard of an ugly weed.  

And when He fills our hearts with His goodness, we can sit in communion, with hearts of thanksgiving, in worship.

With Jesus’ eyes, the world will go from gray to living color and we will be overcome with thanksgiving, just like this man who is suddenly able to see the beauty all around him that was there all along. 

 

 

Oh Lord, help us to see with your eyes…