Be Thankful

Ok, I know I wrote that last blog in a rush, there were so many errors I had to go back and fix them, I should have an editor, lol. I also left out some stuff. Although it ends up being a good thing cuz one of the things I left out, I now have more stuff to add on to. It is so funny how things will all start piling up and adding on to each other when we are studying something in the word of God. If you have your eyes and ears open, you will be blessed with so much wisdom, joy, and peace. I just love it when it seems like a bunch of "random coincidences" happen and we get a chance to grow and see God in a new light and come to a deeper place with Him. I hope this doesn't sound all scattered as I have a lot to say so try to stay with me, here we go...

In the last post I talked about love being a gift. Well, what do you have to do with a gift when it is presented to you? You must accept it. If you never take hold of the gift, then you never have it. (Which if you have never accepted the gift of Jesus from God then please talk to me about how you can do that) How good are you at accepting gifts or compliments or anything for that matter? Do you shrug things off by saying things like, you shouldn't have, or you didn't have to do that? Do you toss things aside or make the gift feel useless or rejected? According to the expert that was on Oprah the other day, women need to become better takers. Let that sink in for a bit. We want our men to be getter givers, but we also need to become better takers.

In both the Oprah epsidode I mentioned in the other post and the TBN show I mentioned a while back, the "experts" were saying how most men are naturally takers and most women are naturally givers. That we were wired this way. Think about your own relationships, does this seem to be true in your life? I know it is in mine. It was interesting to hear this being presented as the norm and that it was okay for the "balance" in the relationship to be this way. I mean I know I have griped many a times because I didn't feel Erick wasn't as giving, thoughtful, and helpful as I thought he should be. But in reality women, are we really looking for our men to be just like us? I really love doing things for my husband. I love making him feel special, easing his plateload when I can, taking part in the things he enjoys, encouraging him in his endeavors, giving advice and counsel, making things easier for him, etc... Especially when we were dating and first married. I fell in love with him and my loving him and wanting to be with him didn't really have as much to do with the way he made me feel or the things he did for me as it did about the way I felt for him and the things I wanted to do for him. I chose him and I wanted to be everything for him, to see all the desires of his heart come to pass, to help him in his journey with the Lord and push him to be his best, to help everyone else see the jewel I had discovered. My focus was not on myself and what I was getting, my love had everything to do with a giving and loving spirit. Not that he did anything to earn this from me, it was a compelling desire from within that gave me this attitude. (Now of course I desire to feel loved and cherished and special and to know that he thinks of me often and I would never turn it down when it came my way, but I don't expect it to be given to me as often as I feel like giving it out to him. And that is perfectly fine with me. I do not feel it needs to be "even" in the sense of who is giving what, but I do expect to receive his love in these ways more than just on occassion.) When we were dating and "in love" I didnt consume myself with the fact that the give-take balance was off. I knew he loved me and wanted to be with me despite that fact. It didn't make me want to stop being so giving or get angry at him because he wasn't more giving. I just loved him and acted on that love.

When we get married, this giving spirit is sometimes easily dimmed. We start becoming selfish and putting the focus on ourself and if our needs are being met and what our spouse is doing for us. Why does that happen? I believe it is a focus issue. If your focus was on God and because of that focus you were being filled by the spirit on a continual basis, then that is why you had such a great giving loving spirit for your spouse. If your focus was on your mate and how happy he/she made you feel then you were on an emotional high when dating and that is why you were in such a giving loving place. Now, when our focus is on anything but God, our emotional high from that thing will eventually wear off. And sometimes when we have been focused on God and he gives us an incredible blessing or gift we have wanted for so long, we will tend to take off on our own with that gift and in doing so we lose our focus on Him and it shifts to the gift.

This is what happened in my case. What we need to be careful of is taking our main focus off of God and putting it onto our spouse. When our spouse and their needs start coming before the Lord in our life, then all kinds of problems will crop up. When you are not focused on the Lord and living in His spirit, then the fruits of the spirit will not be abounding in your life. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control are hard for us as humans to live in day to day without the spirit. We can not just take the things of the Lord and then run off with them and expect to be able to handle them on our own and be successful and happy. I mean if you never eat then you will get tired and drained and run out of energy and eventually you will die. And if you stop going to work then you will stop getting money to live on and prolly fired. In the same way, if you stop looking to the Lord and being filled by Him and walking with Him then you will dry up spiritually and be drained and will not be full of the things of the spirit. The moment you feel that you are putting something before God, you better stop and repent right there. The sooner you catch yourself the better. Do a weekly or daily heartcheck if you have to. Because once God is not the focus of your life and you are not being filled by Him, then you will become empty and selfish and then whatever your focus has been- you will start trying to be filled by that. Whether it be your spouse, your job, your hobbies, your goals, whatever. And when those things don't fill you up (which they won't), then you become bitter, angry, depressed, etc. Your love, joy, and thankfulness that you once had for your spouse, job, stuff, etc will be long gone. Trust me, I have been there and it is not a pretty thing.
It is so important that we keep an attitude of thankfulness, prayer, unconditional love, etc.

Ok, so over the past few weeks I have been doing "The Love Dare", listening to sermons on the Song of Solomon, randomly caught episodes on TV about love and marriage, randomly read scripture on love, and I have also been doing a personal study on attitude in which the part I have been on has been about not complaining and being thankful. It is so interesting how they all go together so well. The study I have been doing is called Lord Change my Attitude before it's Too Late and is by James MacDonald (I highly recommend the book so far, the bible study is great to go along with it as well but not my favorite kind of study). I have not gotten very far in this study as I read the first chapter in the book which is on not being a complainer and then did the first week study that went with that chapter and I got stuck there for quite a while. It was nice though. I wasn't trying to get through the study just to do it- which I can sometimes do with books. Instead I was meditating daily on what I had learned. I relaized how much of a complainer I was, shockingly so. So I have been working on that a lot. I finally, after weeks, have decided to move on to chapter two this week, which is on having a thankful attitude. It is crazy because we just had a love dare that was talking about being thankful and concentrating on the positive things and not the negative things in your marriage and spouse. It is funny because the reason I started doing this study a few months ago was because at one of the youth nights at church they mentioned quickly how important your attitude is. Now this was not the main point of the lesson that night, but for me it was. It sparked something in me. Attitude is key. Your life in your mind can only be seen with your eyes. How are you looking at things? We must CHOOSE to love, to learn, to give, to press on, to make the best of things, etc. We can not feel defeated or broken or lost or hopeless. We must choose to rise above. God gives us the strength and ability to choose to do this every day. So this study I started months ago, goes right in line with the basics for the Love Dare I am doing now and all the marriage stuff we are learning right along side it. Isn't God cool?

With the love dare we were challeneged to write down a list of all the positive and negative traits of our spouse. Then we were to burn the negative list and tell our spouse of one positive thing about them. It stressed the need for us to consume our thoughts with the good and rid our thoughts of the bad. Lead your mind to where it should live. I know that can be hard to do. Being married to someone causes you to get to know them in ways nobody else does. And living with them day in and day out can show a lot of rough spots and dinginess on that jewel you thought you had found that was so perfect. (In reality you prolly thought is was so perfect because you chose to see the good in that person and want to magnify that good in that person, and present your jewel as shiney and beautiful and wonderful.) In yesterdays love dare I found a great nugget- "Have you ever wondered why God gives you overwhelming insight to your spouse's hidden faults? Do you really think it's for endless nagging? NO, it is for effective kneeling. No one knows better how to pray for your mate than you." Wow, that is amazing. I never stopped to really think about that truth and let it soak in. Isn't that an awesome thought. How cool is marriage? God is so wise in his design. That when you are married to a Godly spouse, you have someone who was made and given especially to you, to get to know you and love you and see you in such a way that they can lift you up to the Father for blessings like no other. When you start to look at it like that, you kind of get excited- at least I did . I mean I said I wanted to help make my spouse the best he can be, all that God wants for him- so wouldn't God need to show me where he is lacking so that I can be of use? How can you pray for something or help encourage or change something that you don't know needs fixing? Is God showing me these faults because He wants me to stop loving Erick or love him any less? No, it is so I can do what I wanted to do in loving him- that is to make him better- help present him holy.

One thing I have always said about people getting married is that the two people should be better and stronger for God together then they are apart. We should be striving to make each other better every day. (in a very loving and Godly manner) We should be wanting the best for each other every day. We should know that our spouse is there looking out for us, trying to protect us and help us and guide us every day to make us better and not to make us feel bad and rip at our soul. Being so close to someone and knowing them in a way nobody else does and seeing their faults like nobody else also means that we can hurt and tear apart our spouse more than anyone else. So we need to be careful. We have a lot of power when it comes to our spouses. Are you building your spouse or tearing your spouse down?

Choose to love, have a thankful heart and attitude, keep your focus on God, pray continually, give joyfully....