
The only reason any of this matters.
Greetings! “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,”
Woah! Weird way to start. That is Ephesians 1:3. It is how Paul starts his letter to the Ephesians. He’s like, “Hi, I’m Paul, salutations and y’all we are completely blessed.” It’s hard to tell people who don’t feel blessed that they are blessed. We know we are blessed, yet we don’t feel blessed. We feel stressed or entitled and that is all we see.
Yo, Jason, start soft, back up the train. Ok, I get it. Let me tell you why I am writing this post this week; because I don’t want to. I have a google doc with different blog post ideas. I saw this one and thought “nah” because I don’t feel thankful this week. What I do feel is stress. When I feel stressed, I see stress. Sundays take a lot out of me preaching. Mondays begin sermon prep for the next week, staff meetings, and Monday night church. It’s a 12-hour day. Oh, my kids were home on Monday so that was stressful trying to work. Dealing with some internal church stuff, protecting the sheep kind of matters, that is eating at me and wearing me down. Tuesday night I have a staff meeting so that will be another 12-hour day. Wednesday I am running youth so that is a 12-hour day. My brain can’t focus on the work, so all my work legit feels like work, taking so much effort. I have meetings to schedule. I feel maxed and overloaded. Three nights in a row I won’t go to bed till well after 9AM with a mind that is racing. I wake up at 3:50AM. That is not good.
All of what I said is reality. No lies. No exaggerations. I was annoyed writing it as I am sure you were annoyed reading it. I am not speaking of the goodness of God. I don’t give you a feeling that God is good. I can do the Christian thing and say all of that but end with “but God is good.” Ok, true but do you feel it? Do you know it? I could just as easily end with, “God is awful, He doesn’t get me.” My lament could just as easily conclude with a statement like that. When I sit in my stress, all I see is the stress.
When I force myself to write a blog like this, I am forcing myself to see and feel differently. It is just that forced, not natural. Wanna know how amazing my week is?
Y’all, we just had 202 people at church this week. We are experiencing growth. So many connected with the sermon. I was able to spend so much quality time with my kids, we played go fish so much because it’s my daughter's new favorite game. My boys are working out and grinding. Brady was such a joy at dinner last night. I have a situation going on at church, but I have the support of the elders and the privilege of being a shepherd. My wife is by my side through it. My son is excited about youth group and giving me amazing feedback. I’m selling a good bit of my books, having now sold over 13% of my copies! I didn’t think I was losing weight but when I looked back at my weight log, I’ve actually lost four pounds this year, that is encouraging! Someone I deeply care about who struggles with faith said he would read the gospels with an open mind to give Jesus a chance. Such a huge step!!!!
All that is true. All of that is reality. There are no lies and no exaggerations. What changed? Forced perspective. Know what else has literally changed? My face. You can’t see me typing this but I went from a frown to smile while typing. I couldn’t help but notice my grin as I typed my “positive” paragraph. Now, I can end that paragraph with, “how amazing God is” or “how blessed I am” and it seems so fitting. It would seem weird to conclude, “God is terrible.”
I think this is something we all know but struggle with. We know in comparison to the rest of the world, we have it good. We know if we traveled to the slums of a 3rd world country we would feel blessed. But we haven’t and we don’t.
Or maybe your life is hard. Yesterday was the two-year anniversary of my niece's death who was only 18 months old. That situation does not fit the little “exercise” I did earlier spinning my week from a different perspective. That is hardship, pain, and tragedy. Is that where you find yourself? This is still for you.
My brother, through that journey, kept a journal to see how God moved. It had aspects of where he saw God’s hand and where he could be thankful for it. It didn’t take the pain away, but it helped hm find perspective in the unimaginable.
It’s looking back on the day your husband passes away and thanking God for what an amazing day you had with him. How do you find that perspective? How does one stop and thank God for an amazing day that ended in tragedy? I don’t know. But my Nana did. You pause, you reflect, and you LOOK for God.
Where are you in this conversation? There will be times we are a little bit of it all. We are dealing with a sick kid or parent and every day is a literal grind. It is early mornings and late nights with hardly any margin in-between.
There will be times of death. Death of a relationship, death of a life, death of a job, and so on.
There will be those busy hard, stressful weeks where you need a little perspective shift to see the good.
Or maybe life is simply good, you have much to be thankful for and this is simply a reminder to pause and remember the one from whom all blessings flow.
Ok so what are we to do? How do we maintain perspective or find perspective? There are countless things we could say and encourage here. Hang with positive people. Get involved in a mission greater than yourself. Help the less fortunate. Build a habit of starting your day with God. Yes, all are needed and all should be stressed.
However, I want to point out two things that have helped me in addition to what I just mentioned.
First, when lamenting to my friend Graeme one day about a particularly hard week I was having, he gave me some unique advice. I was lamenting and talking about a passage I read in Hebrews, feeling like I had a hard time being grateful and it was blocking my worship. He suggested I take a week, a full week, of intentionally praying only prayers of gratitude. Don’t pray about your problems, trust God to deal with the problems as you just focus on gratitude. On the first day, you can find the typical things to be grateful for, but by days 4, 5, 6, and 7, you are really digging deep and this is where you begin to see the hand of God. It was hard because it forced me out of my norm and out of what I felt prayer should look like. In the end, though, I was in a much better head space, a space of worship.
Secondly, this was suggested by someone when I started out in ministry. I honestly forget who but I can tell you it has been helpful. The advice was to keep a ‘gratitude folder.’ This could be a literal folder in a desk where you keep handwritten notes and cards, or in my case, it could be a folder in your inbox. If I get a text message, written note, or social media message I will take a picture and send it to that folder in my email. Why? Cause there are dark days when you feel hopeless and meaningless. There are days when you need to dig through the folder and remember that God is at work, He is using you, and you are not the sum of what people are saying about you. I remember in 2020 when life hit the fan for us in so many ways when I was driving with Ava feeling particularly defeated. I handed her my phone and asked her to read some of the encouraging things people had said in the past. It made me cry and brought me back to a place of gratitude.
Two simple suggestions. By no means is it an exhaustive list, not even close. But I do hope it triggers thought, propelling us to a place of gratitude and worship. God is on the move. You matter. You are valued. You have EVERY SPIRITUAL BLESSING. You are blessed. You are truly blessed. Sometimes we just need to do our part to see it and feel it. Stop looking for the “missing blessings” and remember the complete blessing we have in Jesus Christ. There is a kingdom to be built. LET'S GO!
Go make much of the name of Jesus. Soli Deo Gloria.
Jason
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