Reflections on Thankfulness

November 30, 2012 by Art of Eloquence

All month long I’ve been sharing with you how we can become thankful and praise God even in the storm. There is a saying I’ve seen all month long that gives us some insight as to why:

It’s not happy people who are thankful

It’s thankful people who are happy

I think I’d change one word of this though. I’d change the word happy to joyful because happiness is dependent upon our circumstances while joy is dependent upon more stable things like the Lord. So here is my version in JoJoism# 370:

If we are able to become thankful for the blessings we have even if we are suffering through painful struggles, we will become joyful. That is the key to real living even among our most painful struggles.

If you have been struggling recently, especially if you have had multiple struggles or they have been long suffering, what are you thankful for?

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What happens to our communication when we are thankful-Part 2

November 28, 2012 by Art of Eloquence

So far this Thanksgiving month, we’ve talked about why it’s often difficult to Praise God in the Storm, what God Says about Being Thankful, What Being Thankful Doesn’t Mean, some things that will help us to remember in trying to be thankful. I’ve given you some practical advice with tips on exactly HOW to praise God in the storm. On Monday, I shared what happens to our communication when we are thankful and today I have a few more consequences of being thankful.

1. Others find us more approachable

The old saying, “laugh and the world laughs with you; cry and you cry alone” is quite true. Unless you’re so delirious with joy that you seem a Stepford Wife, the more joyous and thankful you are, the more approachable you seem to others.

Nobody wants to approach a Gloomy Gus and ask him for directions. If you are filled with the joy of the Lord, you are apt to radiate that to others who will find you a blessing in their lives because they feel they can ask you for help.

2. Others aren’t intimidated by us or afraid of us or uncomfortable with us

When we aren’t grumpy or frustrated, we open ourselves not only for others to ask us for help so that we may be a blessing to them, but we allow others to feel comfortable enough with us to spend time talking to us. How can we hope to share the Gospel or our ideas if we make others so uncomfortable that they don’t want to be around us?

3. We show and communicate God’s love

Another advantage of being joyous is that we have an opportunity to share and demonstrate God’s love. It’s difficult to communicate God’s love for His children if we are grumpy, frustrated and angry. Being filled with joy and thankfulness allows us to share that joy and thankfulness with others, even if we don’t utter a word.

Well, that concludes this month’s series of articles on being thankful and praising God in the storm although I will be back on Friday with some reflections on thankfulness.

I pray this series was a blessing to you especially if you are experiencing struggles in your life at present. Please leave a comment with your thoughts on this topic, especially if this series of articles has helped you or someone you know to be able to cope better during a struggle. I’d love to hear what made a difference for you.

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What happens to our communication when we are thankful-Part 1

November 26, 2012 by Art of Eloquence

All this Thanksgiving month, I’ve been sharing about how to Praise God in the Storm. I’ve talked about what God Says about Being Thankful, and What Being Thankful Doesn’t Mean. I’ve talked about how sometimes things that friends and family communicate to us can make our struggles more difficult and about things we can communicate to ourselves that can help us during struggles like some things that will help us to remember.

I’d never seen any practical advice with tips on exactly HOW to praise God in the storm and be thankful so I posted two articles on things we can do that will help us to be thankful and praise Him even during our most difficult struggles.

Finishing up this series, I’d like to share a bit about what happens to our communication when we are thankful.

1. Communication is easier

When we are happy, our communication is happy and easy. We are less curt with people and more grace-filled.

2. Open to good things rather than looking for the bad

People who are more joyous tend to look for the good in people which leads to not taking offense to things that aren’t meant as offenses and even those that are. This makes for easier conflict resolutions.

3. Communication becomes angry and hurtful when we aren’t thankful

The more thankful we are, the less angry we are. Anger leads to lashing out and often to hurting others. The more joyous and thankful we are, the less likely we are to be hurtful even if we don’t mean to be.

4. Become more Christ-like when we are thankful

Our communication is much more Christ-like when we are thankful and full of joy than when we are angry, frustrated and negative.

So the more joyous and thankful we can become, the more we communicate and spread that to others, but there are even more benefits to being thankful that comes out in our communication. I’ll share those on Wednesday.

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HOW to praise God in the storm part 2

November 21, 2012 by Art of Eloquence

On Monday I shared some things we can do that will help us become thankful so that we can praise God in the midst of the storms of our lives. Here are some more things that have helped me over the years and I pray they help you as well.

1. Remember that joy and happiness are two different things

Keep things in proper perspective. Happiness, as defined by Merriam Webster as good fortune or prosperity, a state of well-being and contentment, joy or a pleasurable or satisfying experience.

Joy is listed as the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires, delight, the expression or exhibition of such emotion, gaiety, a state of happiness or felicity, bliss, a source or cause of delight.

So happiness is dependent upon external circumstances, whereas joy exists in spite of whatever is going on around us and is a result of what’s happening on the inside. You can still have joy even though you are not happy because you can have a hope because you are in God’s will and will be rewarded in heaven even if you aren’t here on earth. You can be joyous in your strength or your endurance or your obedience even if you are unhappy about your health or your finances or your relationships.

2.Do things that bring you joy

Look at pretty pictures of God’s world and remember how everything is delicately balanced for us and given for us to use. It’s hard to look at he beauty of God’s world and not feel some amount of joy.

Listen to uplifting music and sing along or sing harmony. I am a wanna be musician. I used to write songs and I was a voice major in college before I switched to Speech Communication. I can’t help but feel better when I hear beautiful music and sing along. It usually makes me feel better to sing along to praise and worship music sometimes the same song over and over again. Here’s one of my favorites:

Call a friend. Sometimes you need a real, living person you can talk things over with. Just talking through our feelings can help us feel a bit better because we have expressed them and someone cared enough to listen. Many times we aren’t looking for a solution because we already know what our options are, but sometimes we may be surprised as our friend’s ability to help us find one! Even if nothing gets resolved, you will probably find yourself feeling better just because you were able to share your feelings with a good and trusted friend.

3.Read encouraging devotionals

Not devotionals on being thankful, but ones that encourage you. BibleGateway has a devotionals you can subscribe to that I have found helpful: Encouragement for Today, Devotions for Women and Devotions for Moms. I don’t recommend the one called Standing Strong in the Storm because it’s mostly about people who have endured religious persecution. While that might be important to read and inspiring at other times, I find that they are not something we can relate to when we are in the middle of stress. Unless your struggle is religious persecution on a grand scale, I find I can’t relate to them and they make me feel bad for even being upset about financial or health or relationship issues which doesn’t help me feel any better about my situation.

4. Help someone else

I know it sounds a bit backwards, but it can often feel good to be the solution for someone else’s problem. Sometimes we are almost paralyzed by our fear or stuck in our sadness that we feel a complete lack of control over our lives. It can feel empowering or at least uplifting to be the solution to something, no matter how small the issue is. As they used to say back when I was a little girl, “try it; you’ll like it.”

You may not be able to become happy about your circumstances, but you can do things that bring you some joy. This joy will help us see the blessings God has put in our lives and this will, eventually, allow us to thank God and even praise him in the storm.

Now that we have a few things we can do that will help us become more joyous, next week I will share about what happens to us when we are thankful. What happens to our feelings and what happens to our communication.

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What to remember about struggles

November 14, 2012 by Art of Eloquence

So far I’ve introduced you to the idea that we need to learn how to Praise God in the Storm, what God Says about Being Thankful, and What Being Thankful Doesn’t Mean. Sometimes things that friends and family communicate to us can make our struggles more difficult, but there are things we can communicate to ourselves that can help us during struggles.

Today I’d like us to consider some things that will help us remember that God is not out to get us when struggles come. God isn’t punishing us and that there is a reason and maybe even a blessing around the corner.

Here’s what we need to remember during hard times:

1. Even if we cannot feel Him, God is still with us

We can count on Him to help and support us through the difficult times. Often we feel abandoned by God when tough times come. It’s only natural that we may not feel close to God when we are struggling, but if we can remind ourselves that God has not moved away from us, we might feel Him near. It’s always harder to find something when we aren’t looking.

It’s almost like when you have a close relative who lives far away. You can’t reach out and touch them or hug them, but you can still talk to them on the phone, but only if we dial the phone.

2. This struggle may prepare us for an incredible opportunity

We may need to learn something from this horrible experience that will help us in the future. Just as the butterfly strengthens its wings as it tries to break through the cocoon, so we may be strengthened by the struggles we face. If you cut short the butterfly’s struggle to break out, you assure that he will not be strong enough to fly afterward.

It’s not fun to think about this, but it will help you see a purpose…a method to the madness and meaning in the wilderness.

3. Think of this struggle as an opportunity to trust God with your life rather than a time of meaningless strife

I remember delivering both my children via natural child birth. It was more painful than anything I have ever experienced in my life or likely will again. Part of the training the Bradley Method provides (similar to La Maz) is to realize that there is a reason for the pain. At the end of this excruciating pain so intense I felt like ripping my face off, I was blessed with a precious child of God.

Thinking about that pain now, I don’t think I could have stood it for just a few minutes if I didn’t know it was for a good cause. My pain wasn’t meaningless so I was able endure it and trust that God would end it with the blessing of a child.

Some labor lasts only a short time as mine did. My son was born only three hours and fifteen minutes after the first sign of labor. However some children are born after 20 hours of labor. Likewise, some struggles may last a day and others will last years. Knowing there is a purpose, even if we don’t know what that purpose is, will help us endure. If you can’t see a purpose in the struggle you are facing, try to think of the purpose as an opportunity to trust God.

4. Think of your struggle as an opportunity to obey God

Sometimes it isn’t a matter of trusting God with your physical life, but trusting Him with the course of your life. Instead of thinking of the experience as meaningless and difficult, we can try to think of it as an opportunity to obey God. Do you feel called to do something, but it isn’t working out? Maybe it’s helping you to obey God. Nobody said life was easy and nothing worth doing is easy either. Sometimes it’s so hard people often want to give up just prior to success. Did you know that Mother Theresa wrote in her diary that she struggled to obey God’s calling for her life? What if she had given up on God’s plan for her life because she was frustrated and tired? She did it anyway.

Even if our struggles are long and even if things are coming at us from all sides, just remembering these four things can help us to endure. So, as we saw on Monday, sometimes it is the communication of others that make struggles more difficult. Sometimes it is our communication with ourselves that can help us stand strong in the struggles.

Next week, I’ll give you some practical tips that will help us to be thankful for our blessings even in the midst of a storm in our lives. These are things that have usually helped me and I pray they will help you as well.

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Filed Under: Communication Articles Tagged With: Bradley Method, God, meaningless, praise God in the storm, strife, struggles, thankful

What Does God Say About Being Thankful?

November 7, 2012 by Art of Eloquence

Before we get too deep into how to praise God in the storm and being thankful to God for what He has done in our lives despite challenges and suffering, I’d like us to first understand what God says about being thankful.

God has a lot to say about being thankful. Here is a new one of my favorites:

“Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.” -Romans 1:21

This scripture makes me think about how we may know God, but if we don’t worship Him and thank Him for what He has given us, we are likely to become more concerned with ourselves and focus on what we lack. This leads us into a dark place where we imagine all sorts of troubles which can steal our joy. The darkness conceals our blessings so that all we have left within our field of vision are our struggles.

This is something I struggle with. When I get overwhelmed or frustrated or angry, I can usually joke my way out of my funk and still praise God until that feeling comes to a tipping point or lasts too long. I can usually fight off a negative feeling for a short time, but when I get my feet knocked out from under me after having been blindsided a few times in a row for several years, it gets more difficult. That’s when I begin to see the negative in everything. That’s when I find it hard to give thanks to the Lord for the good things I have that I can no longer see because I am focusing my eyes on what’s wrong with my life.

Being in a prolonged period of struggle where I find more negative than positive in my life means my communication with others suffers as well. Frustration, sadness and anger makes for harsh words, short tempers and selective hearing.

For those of you who struggle with chronic illness, prolonged financial issues or drawn out family difficulties, I pray that this series will help you too. Know that I am reminding myself of these tips as I share them with you.

Do you have any favorite scriptures on Thankfulness? Please comment and share them here.

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Filed Under: Communication Articles Tagged With: darkness, God, joys, struggles, thankful

Reflections on Thankfulness

It’s not happy people who are thankful

It’s thankful people who are happy

What happens to our communication when we are thankful-Part 2

What happens to our communication when we are thankful-Part 1

HOW to praise God in the storm part 2

What to remember about struggles

What Does God Say About Being Thankful?

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