The Burden of Gratitude

Lately I have been reminded that I have so much to be thankful for. It is like a burden of gratitude. When I think about what the Lord has done in my life, how He has blessed me, and where He has brought me it brings me to tears. I am not sure if burden is the best word, but I just can't stop thinking about all He has done and it is weighing on my heart. 

One thing I love about life is learning from others, especially others that have paved the way for me to be where I am today. When I hear amazing stories of the heroes of faith in the Bible, missionaries, and Pastors from years ago, I am blown away. They followed the call of God with nothing more than their faith, and I mean nothing! I have been in Costa Rica going on two months now and I can honestly say that I would be lost without technology, without a connection to home, or without a phone call to comfort. So how did they do it? Was faith enough to say that they would leave everything they know and everyone they love just because God said so to? I thought thats what I did, but it doesn't compare. I have heard stories of missionaries that would travel for months just to arrive in a village or country, to learn a language that had never been translated, to live on bread alone, only to receive news months or even years later of loved ones passing away. Sometimes I just feel selfish. I have so much. I have a Facebook to keep me updated every second with news from home. I have family and friends who can hop on a plane if I need them and be here in just a few hours. I'm in a school of language in which every preposition and pronoun will be taught to me by incredible teachers. Every resource imaginable is available and yet at times find myself treating it like its not enough.


It is 2011 and there are still millions of people around the world living with nothing. Barely breathing! How dare I be so selfish? I have so much and others have so little. Right now in Africa there is a serious drought killing thousands. Millions are homeless, abused, and hurting. There are children all over the world that will go to sleep tonight without food, without water, a home, and without someone to love them. This may not be news to you, but it is very easy to just become numb to it. It is so easy to live a life without gratitude. We can be so consumed with our own lives that we forget the overwhelming needs of others. We can also forget to appreciate that somewhere, someone paved the way and prayed for us to be where we are today. And most importantly that God sent His son to die for us so that we may be loved and love others. 


At times I can't comprehend how God loves me as much as He does. It seems like He should be unreachable so He can spend more time on people who need Him more. I don't know what its like to be persecuted like the heroes of faith, to live with radical tenacious faith like missionaries in the past, to go to sleep without anyone to love me, to starve, or to beg, yet I still have the opportunity to love Him.  


The Bible says in Matthew 5 that,

3“Blessed are the poor in spirit,

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

4Blessed are those who mourn,

for they will be comforted.

5Blessed are the meek,

for they will inherit the earth.

6Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

for they will be filled.

7Blessed are the merciful,

for they will be shown mercy.

8Blessed are the pure in heart,

for they will see God.

9Blessed are the peacemakers,

for they will be called sons of God.

10Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

I may not be Mrs. America and I don't have an answer to end world hunger but I do know how to cling to the word of God for answers. I believe that God will take care of His people and that His promises are forever. He is the hope for the hopeless and a father to the fatherless. He brings comfort when we need it. He has more than enough love for each of us, and it is His love that conquers all. I could not be more thankful for this burden of gratitude especially at this time in my life. I refuse to take this opportunity for granted. It is my desire to do my best in all that God has called me to do.  And one day in Heaven I will have an opportunity to really say thank you to the people that paved the way, to those that lived without. I will thank them because their faith and their lives push me to out of bed every day. Their stories compel me to fight for God's purpose in my life and in the lives of others, and most importantly they have compelled me to fall more in love with Jesus than ever before. 


Our life of poverty is as necessary as the work itself. Only in heaven will we see how much we owe to the poor for helping us to love God better because of them. 
Mother Teresa 

A Call to Anguish.....

A good reminder.............

A Call to Anguish, by David Wilkerson

And I look at the whole religious scene today and all I see are the inventions and ministries of man and flesh.  It’s mostly powerless.  It has no impact on the world.  And I see more of the world coming into the church and impacting the church, rather than the church impacting the world.  I see the music taking over the house of God.  I see entertainment taking over the house of God.  An obsession with entertainment in God’s house.  A hatred of correction and a hatred of reproof.  Nobody wants to hear it any more.  Whatever happened to anguish in the house of God?

Whatever happened to anguish in the ministry?   It’s a word you don’t hear in this pampered age.  You don’t hear it.  Anguish means extreme pain and distress.  The emotions so stirred that it becomes painful.  Acute deeply felt inner pain because of conditions about you, in you, or around you.  Anguish.  Deep pain.  Deep sorrow.  The agony of God’s heart.

We’ve held on to our religious rhetoric and our revival talk but we’ve become so passive.  All true passion is born out of anguish.  All true passion for Christ comes out of a baptism of anguish.  You search the scripture and you’ll find that when God determined to recover a ruined situation… He would share His own anguish for what God saw happening to His church and to His people.  And He would find a praying man and take that man and literally baptize him in anguish.  You find it in the book of Nehemiah.  Jerusalem is in ruins.  How is God going to deal with this?  How is God going to restore the ruin?  Now folks, look at me… Nehemiah was not a preacher, he was a career man.  But this was a praying man.

And God found a man who would not just have a flash of emotion.  Not just some great sudden burst of concern and then let it die.  He said: “No.  I broke down and I wept and I mourned and I fasted.  And then I began to pray night and day.  Why didn’t these other men… why didn’t they have an answer?  Why didn’t God use them in restoration?  Why didn’t they have a word?  Because there was no sign of anguish.  No weeping.  Not a word of prayer.  It’s all ruin.

Does it matter to you today?  Does it matter to you at all that God’s spiritual Jerusalem, the church, is now married to the world?  That there is such a coldness sweeping the land?  Closer than that… does it matter about the Jerusalem that is in our own hearts?  The sign of ruin that’s slowly draining spiritual power and passion.  Blind to lukewarmness, blind to the mixture that’s creeping in.  That’s all the devil wants to do is to get the fight out of you and kill it.  So you won’t labor in prayers anymore, you won’t weep before God anymore.  You can sit and watch television and your family go to hell.

Let me ask  you… is what I just said convicting to you at all?  There is a great difference between anguish and concern.  Concern is something that begins to interest you.  You take an interest in a project or a cause or a concern or a need.  And I want to tell you something.  I’ve learned over all my years… of 50 years of preaching.  If it is not born in anguish, if it had not been born of the Holy Spirit.  Where what you saw and heard of the ruin that drove you to your knees, took you down into a baptism of anguish where you began to pray and seek God.  I know now.  Oh my God do I know it.  Until I am in agony.  Until I have been anguished over it…  And all our projects, all our ministries, everything we do… Where are the Sunday school teachers that weep over kids they know are not hearing and are going to hell?

You see, a true prayer life begins at the place of anguish.  You see, if you set your heart to pray, God’s going to come and start sharing His heart with you.  Your heart begins to cry out:  “Oh God, Your name is being blasphemed.  The Holy Spirit is being mocked.  The enemy is out trying to destroy the testimony of the Lord’s faithfulness and something has to be done.” 

There is going to be no renewal, no revival, no awakening, until we are willing to let Him once again break us.  Folks, it’s getting late, and it’s getting serious.  Please don’t tell me… don’t tell me you’re  concerned when you’re spending  ours in front of internet or television.  Come on.  Lord, there are some that need to get to this alter and confess: “I am not what I was, I am not where I am supposed to be.  God I don’t have Your heart or Your burden.  I wanted it easy.  I just wanted to be happy.  But Lord, true joy comes out of anguish.”  There’s nothing of the flesh that will give you joy.  I don’t care how much money, I don’t care what kind of new house, there is absolutely nothing physical that can give you joy.  It’s only what is accomplished by the Holy Spirit when you obey and take on His heart.

Build the walls around your family.  Build the walls around your own heart.  It will make you strong and impregnable against the enemy.  God, that’s what we desire.