Count Your Blessings, Not Your Troubles

I confess that I lifted today's title from a principles list in Dale Carnegie's classic work, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. Mostly because I could hardly say it any better--and because the contrast points up a major struggle in my own life. Counting troubles is so much easier.

Many a parent and teacher can testify that it's the bratty children who get attention, while the quiet, well-behaved ones are taken for granted unless their performance proves exceptionally good. Life's circumstances are little different. When things go smoothly, we take it as no more than our due; when circumstances impede our wants, we can think of nothing else. We're like the Israelites in the wilderness who set up a wail when the water supply ran short and complained that their daily diet was too monotonous, rarely thanking God for His miraculous provision or trusting that He would keep it up.

Trusting God: therein lies the key issue. If we truly believe He loves us and has our best interests at heart, we should have little trouble seeing the many good things in our lives; if we think in terms of "I know what's best for me and I have a right to it," everything that interferes with that ideal is the enemy. To whatever degree you believe that good thoughts attract good things and bad thoughts bad, the biggest roadblocks to our happiness are the ones we build through our own "I want what I want and I absolutely refuse to accept anything else" attitudes. Because very few people come close to getting everything they want.

Even those who do tend to find it considerably less satisfying than generally assumed. Selfishness is a sure path to misery; it's just not what we were made for. We were created, as the old catechism goes, "to glorify God [not ourselves] and to enjoy him [not our own ideas of perfect circumstances] forever."

And when we focus on Him, blessings become far clearer as well.

Count your blessings, not your troubles:
If you look at wants and lacks,
Misery will fall upon you
As a battered vessel cracks.
If you look at God's abundance
And you let Him fill your life,
Joy will come to rule your spirit
And your happiness will thrive.

Count your blessings, not your troubles:
God gives special gifts to each
As His wisdom sees is fitting:
Do not for another's reach.
Joy in what is yours, and use it
In God's grace to serve your Lord,
Do His work, and praise His glory--
You will find your sure reward!

Ingratitude

A much-neglected Scripture passage is 1 Timothy 2:1-2: "I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone—for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness." Americans have turned their traditional right to question "all those in authority" into a pandemic of brutal authority-bashing. No boss or teacher escapes backbiting; disrespect for parents is actively encouraged in many a therapist's office; and the worst examples among clergy, law officers, and politicians are held up as standard. As for the highest authority in the land--the current President of the United States, and at least the two immediately before him, have been plagued nonstop with "impeach him" cries and with accusations of being everything evil up to and including the Antichrist.

(No, I don't want to argue any of these men's actual faults or fitness for the presidency. St. Paul wrote the 1 Timothy lines during the imperial reign of Nero, who made the worst of U. S. presidents look like saints.)

No one in authority, it seems, gets credit for good intentions. No one gets acknowledgement for positive accomplishments. Too many Christians' idea of prayer for authority stops at "remove him from office" or "change his mind [to correspond to my notion of what's right]"--the same way most of us "pray for" our enemies, which says a lot about how we regard authority figures. If they give us what we want when we want it, we take it for granted; if they don't, we believe only the worst about them.

Small wonder, with such attitudes toward human authority, that we treat the ultimate Authority no better. Eve swallowed whole the implication that God's command was a selfish attempt to keep her from the best option; Cain got angry enough to kill when God urged him to "do what is right"; Jacob turned swindler because he doubted God would keep His "you will be the head of your family" promise; the Israelites in the wilderness whined "God hates us" at every problem and inconvenience--the list continues through the Bible, through history, and up to the present day. The problem is rooted not only in mistrust but in ingratitude: if we really appreciated what God has already done for us, we wouldn't find it so hard to believe He cares enough to continue giving His best. If we weren't so distracted by schemes to obtain a bite of the forbidden fruit, we could be wholeheartedly enjoying the beauties of the garden.

Life will never get better until our attitudes do.

God gave manna to His children
Every day for years and years--
And they whined about the menu
Till they ate the bread of tears.

God sent Jesus to redeem us
From the power of death and hell--
And we whine for ease and riches,
Making life an empty shell.

We demand mere earthly treasures,
And pursue our fleshly schemes--
While God longs to give us blessings
Far beyond our wildest dreams.

Put aside your thankless whining;
Seek the Lord with joy and praise--
Only then will true contentment
Shower upon you all your days.

Guilt or Grace?

The essence of what makes Christianity theologically unique is summed up in Eph. 2:8-10: "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." All religions prod to good works, and many believe in a Higher Power that makes some allowances for human shortcomings; but Christianity alone teaches unequivocally that grace comes before good works—any good works.

That is, pure, Biblically-based Christianity teaches such. You'd never guess it from what's heard in many churches. "All God wants from us is obedience." "Every day millions of souls die without Christ—what are you doing about it?" "Your church is in desperate need of more financial contributions/teachers/blood donors." The causes behind such appeals may be valid, but the implication comes down to "it's your personal responsibility to meet all outstanding needs as you and your spiritual leaders see them, or God will be disappointed in you." Or, bluntly, it comes down to a guilt trip.

God does not send His people on guilt trips. Certainly He convicts of sin; but failure to personally meet every outstanding need is not sin. In fact, it may actually be sin to try, particularly when we are so busy relying on human judgment that we never bother to ask for God's guidance. What's really wrong with works-based religion is that it's human-based: humans decide everything that needs doing, humans do everything that needs doing. Humans thus take over God's privilege of running the world, and God becomes the insurance company that pays out our eternity in Heaven because we kept up the premiums during our lives. There's no grace involved, merely our rightful due.

To do our good works as God intended—motivated by gratitude rather than guilt, fully relying on His guidance alone, and with acknowledgment we are only giving Him His rightful due—is to experience divine grace to its fullest.

What is driving your devotion,
As you seek God's face?
What is your chief motivation?
Is it guilt—or grace?

What propels you on your duties?
What's the goal you chase?
You are working in God's service,
But through guilt—or grace?

Is He just your Lord and Master?
Is there any trace
Of delighting in His Friendship,
Trading guilt for grace?

He Who gave His life to save us,
King of time and space,
Longs to free us from guilt's burdens:
Praise Him for His grace!

All That I Have is Yours, O Lord

"But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this?" prayed King David as Israel dedicated its contributions toward the future Temple. "Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand" (1 Chron. 29:14, NIV).

There are quite a few Christians today who could learn from David's attitude. Research consistently shows that as many as ninety-seven percent of us give less than ten percent of our income to Christian causes. And when we do put money in the offering plate--or spend part of our free time volunteering at church, or donate our old clothes to charity drives--we act as if we're doing God a big favor by deigning to notice Him. When we hear of someone who gave away her new clothes, or gives ninety percent of his income to the church, or left a thriving business to become a career missionary in a country that doesn't even have indoor plumbing--and who is brimming with joy over the privilege--our reaction is as likely as not to be, "This person must be a little weird in the head."

We could remedy part of the problem by cleaning up our language a bit. Instead of legitimitizing selfishness by constantly saying "my income, my car, my time, my life," we might adopt the philosophy attributed to entrepreneur and lay evangelist Robert LeTourneau: "The question is not how much of my money [or any other resource] do I give to God, but how much of God's money do I keep for myself." It's not simply a matter of how much we drop in the church plate, either; we can donate twenty percent of our income and still effectively keep it for ourselves, if we treat it as a "tip" to ensure God will prosper us in return, or if we expect human applause for our generosity. Likewise, we can spend part of our income on simply enjoying ourselves and still give it to God, if we enjoy ourselves in thankfulness to Him.

But let's start by giving the "firstfruits" directly to God's people and their work. If Christians took this responsibility seriously, there'd be no complaining that "the church is always asking for money."

The worst problem would be the one recorded in Exodus 36:3-7--that people were giving too much.

All that I have is Yours, O Lord,
For all has come from You:
You give the strength that drives my hands--
The brain that guides them, too;
So how can I say all my wealth
Was earned as rightful due?
You gave me all my property--
I give it back to You.

All that I have is Yours, O Lord,
For all has come from You:
You preordained each year I live--
Each hour and minute, too;
So how can I say I have right
To choose what I should do?
You gave the precious gift of time--
I give it back to You.

All that I have is Yours, O Lord,
For all has come from You:
Your very life was paid for mine--
For all I proved untrue,
For all my pride and hardened heart,
That pierced Your own heart through,
Your mercy gave me back my life--
I give it back to You.