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!

Out of Our Control

Many religions preach that everyone is, quite literally, a potential god, or at least part of a God that is defined as the sum total of all that exists. While the idea that we are the real God's equals is anathema to orthodox Christianity, many sincere Christians imply almost as much: "You'd be healed if you just trusted God enough." "God would never let my plans fail, not when I'm doing His work." This is risky thinking not only because it implies we know as much as the Lord, but because it puts us in danger of completely losing faith in Him when--as happens to all of us occasionally--He fails to "deliver" what we expected.

Are you capable of looking directly at the thing you fear most and saying, "If this should ever be Your will for me, Lord, I will accept it with joy even if I don't understand it"? If the idea makes you shudder, don't feel too guilty; I don't claim to be particularly confident in that area either. Perhaps thinking too much about what God might ask us to give up isn't that good an idea to begin with; it has a way of feeding worry instead of dissipating it. If we regularly got our minds off earthly things, and concentrated on God and God alone, we might find it easier to fall so completely in love with Him that we could say with St. Paul, "I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage" (Phil. 3:8). Incidentally, Paul's dismissing his earthly gains as "garbage" is even more radical than it sounds in translation; the original Greek word is a coarse term for "excrement."

Not that Paul's primary goal was--or that anyone's primary goal should be--hating earthly things for the sake of hating them. His purpose was to stress how much more God is worth than "all [other] things [combined]"--something few of us find easy to accept. All our goals, our dreams, our attempts to control our own lives are manifestations of the idea that we know what we must have. And since there is no absolute guarantee we'll be able to hold onto anything, most of us are ruled to some degree by the fear of loss.

The only way out is to surrender completely to fear of the Lord: a terrifying leap into what seems like utter blackness, a complete loss of control.

Which, of course, is the point. The only people who know true security are those who trust God--rather than themselves--to control every aspect of life.

There are those who would have us believe

Fate is held in our hands alone—

“What you think is what you will achieve”—

That you sit on your own life’s throne.

“All it takes is the power of a thought.”

“All you need is within your soul.”

But in truth, that can all come to naught:

Things can spin out of our control!

Illness even can come to the fit;

Even healthy eaters die young;

And some positive thinkers are hit

By disasters that life has sprung.

Yes, however well-laid are your plans

And however firm-set your goal,

Things may slip away out of your hands,

Life may go out of your control!

Friend, the God Who can do everything

Shakes His head at our human pride:

“Come and taste of the life that I bring;

Set your human-based plans aside.

For the ones who place all in My care

Are the ones who are truly whole.

I relieve all the burdens you bear,

If you just let Me take control!”

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Ask What You Can Do

The speaker at the Christian entrepreneurs' meeting was going full throttle on the value of positive thinking. On how her life was a failure in terms of health, income, and family relationships until she realized God wanted only the best for His children. "And then I prayed: 'God, I want this illness to shrivel up and disappear, and I want to find a six-figure job, and I want this family problem to be resolved for good...". On and on went the list of "I wants," without even a "please" finding its way in edgewise.

I went away wishing I'd had the nerve to ask that speaker a few questions: Are you saying that we always know what's best for us? Was St. Paul a weak Christian because he never got rich? What's more important: that we be comfortable and successful according to the world's definition, or that we become as spiritually mature and Christlike as possible?

Certainly there are strong Christians who are successful by the world's standards (and don't we all long to be counted among them!), but I doubt many of them got there by talking to God as though He were a butler. Jesus Himself told us to seek first the advancement of God's Kingdom and godly righteousness, and then expect God to meet all our needs (our basic needs, not our every wish--see Matthew 6:31-34). And while "You do not have, because you do not ask God" is also in the Bible (James 4:2, NIV), in context that verse is hardly a license for demanding what we want when we want it--quite the opposite, it is part of a warning against greed and selfishness.

Even among Christians serious about developing godly character, it is relatively rare to hear someone pray, "Lord, show me what to do and I will do it." We'd rather make our plans--and they may well be made with every intention to serve God or meet genuine needs--and then ask God to bless them.

What we really need is to remember Who has the right and wisdom to make all the plans in the first place.

Our God is a God of provision;
He fills every cup to the brim:
But ask not what He can do for you,
But what you can do for Him.

Our God owns a world full of riches,
And all of the stars and the sea:
But ask not what He can give to you,
But what He would have you be.

For the joys of this world are fleeting,
And the rich of this world are poor
If they spend their thoughts on earthly wants
And miss Christ's knock at the door.

We become distracted by good things
And forget that "one thing" is key:
If the way of Christ is your one goal,
He will give you all that you need!