The Thankful Countdown
I have a guest post up at Anne and May today. Anne’s comment there reminded me of a great lesson Dan uses when he is working with worship teams and church congregations. He relates our ability to worship God to the work of a muscle. The more you train yourself to see God for who He really is and give him the honor and respect that He deserves, the stronger those worship muscles get. You progressively learn to worship longer and more authenically as you practice.
Thankfulness is another muscle that we need to exercise. In his wonderful book, The Glorious Pursuit, Gary Thomas writes: “The virtue of thankfulness is power to the soul. God offers it to us to drive out the spiritually degenerative illness of bitter, negative thinking.” Remember when Oprah used to have her audience write in a Thankful Journal everyday? Not a bad idea!
Really, most of the time, espeically living with this crew, thankfulness comes pretty naturally for me. But it is still good to be reminded that being thankful, like any of the Christian virtues, is something that I can cultivate. In this upcoming Thanksgiving season I’m going to try to be more purposeful in exercising these thankful muscles.
I’m digging this idea that celebration and gratitude are disciplines. To hear it worded that way just clicks for me. Also, journal writing: Big fan. Everyone should do it.
Journal writing – also a Christian discipline! You would seriously love my Disciplines of Life class. It is based on the idea that our success in the disciplines is measured by our growth in traditional Christian virtues instead of by our ability to pray a certain amount of time or so forth.