Grateful and Awake

Running on Empty: Finding God’s Strength When the World Has Taken Yours | Day 19

“Praise the Lord, my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. Praise the Lord,  my soul, and forget not all his benefits.” — Psalm 103:1-2 (NIV) 

Good morning. There is a posture this series has been quietly building toward, and  today we name it plainly: gratitude. Not as a feeling to manufacture before the coffee is  ready, and not as a spiritual performance layered on top of everything already weighing on us. Gratitude as a way of seeing, a discipline that does not change what is in the  room but changes what we notice first when we walk into it. 

The Soul That Forgets 

The danger Moses named to Israel standing at the edge of the promised land was not  that they would openly reject God once the good life arrived. It was something quieter  and more natural. “When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for  the good land he has given you. Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God...”  (Deuteronomy 8:10-11, NIV). The warning is about full stomachs and short memories.  About the way comfort tends to crowd out awareness of the One who provided it. They  were not warned against dramatic apostasy. They were warned against drifting, against  the ordinary human tendency to stop noticing what is already good because it has  become familiar enough to feel automatic. The blessings had not stopped. The attention  had. 

We know this drift from the inside. It does not announce itself. We do not wake up one  morning and decide to stop being thankful. We simply stop paying attention. The  blessings we once named out loud become assumed. The mercies we once received  with open hands become background noise. And in that dimming of awareness, anxiety  finds its opening, because a soul that has stopped noticing what God has already given has nothing clear in view except what it still lacks. The worried mind rehearses what is  missing. The grateful mind has learned to rehearse something else entirely. 

This is one of the lesser-named causes of the exhaustion this series has been tracing. It is not always suffering that empties the tank. Sometimes it is the cumulative weight of  noticing everything wrong and forgetting to notice anything right. The commute that got  us there, the body that carried us through another day, the roof, the bread, the people  who are imperfect and demanding and still here. Gratitude is not naive about the hard  things. It is honest about the full picture. And most of us, on our most depleted days, are  operating on a dangerously narrow view of that picture, scanning for problems with all  our attention and walking right past the provision without ever seeing it. 

What Wakes the Soul Back Up 

The psalmist does not begin with a feeling. He begins with a command issued to  himself: praise the Lord, my soul. All my inmost being, praise His holy name. And then,  without pause: forget not all His benefits. This is not passive waiting for gratitude to  arrive on its own schedule. It is the deliberate act of someone who knows exactly how  easily the soul drifts toward forgetting and has decided to counter that drift by running 

the inventory. What has God actually done? What is already true regardless of what this  week has brought or taken away? 

“...who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the  pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good  things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” (Psalm 103:3-5, NIV). This is the  list the psalmist runs. Forgiveness first, not health, not prosperity, not the resolution of  whatever is pressing hardest right now, but the forgiveness of every sin. The thing that  should have separated us from God permanently, dealt with entirely and completely. If  we begin the inventory where the psalmist begins it, everything we count after that is  already overflow. 

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the  heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” (James 1:17, NIV). Every  good thing already present in our lives has a source, and that source is not our own  effort or our own merit or the cooperation of circumstances that happened to go our  way. It is Him, the Father of heavenly lights who does not shift with the seasons or with  our moods. That stability is what makes gratitude possible even on the days when the  gifts feel thin, because the Giver has not changed even when the inventory feels harder  to compile. 

Paul draws the most direct line between thanksgiving and the displacement of anxiety  anywhere in Scripture, and it deserves to be read in full. “Do not be anxious about  anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your  requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard  your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:6-7, NIV). He does not say  wait until things improve and then give thanks. He says in every situation, with  thanksgiving, bringing requests to God not stripped of acknowledgment but wrapped in  it. And what follows is not a feeling we work ourselves into. It is a peace that transcends  understanding, meaning it arrives by a route we cannot fully explain and guards us by a  power that is not our own. The world cannot manufacture this. The devil cannot  counterfeit it. Anxiety cannot coexist with it. And the path into it runs directly through  gratitude. 

But Paul does not stop there. He knows that a soul freed from anxiety still needs  somewhere to direct its attention, because the anxious mind does not simply go quiet. It  looks for something else to fix itself on. And the world, the enemy, and our own worst  habits all have suggestions ready. Paul cuts them off. “Finally, brothers and sisters,  whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is  lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such  things.” (Philippians 4:8, NIV). This is not wishful thinking or a command to pretend the  hard things do not exist. It is a deliberate retraining of attention, a decision about what  the mind will dwell on when it has a choice. And on most days, it does have a choice.  The world wants our attention on what is broken. The enemy is relentless about keeping  it there. God tells us to look at what is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable,  excellent, and praiseworthy. The grateful soul is not the one that has run out of hard  things to see. It is the one that has learned, by practice and by grace, to see further than the hard things stop.

“...always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus  Christ.” (Ephesians 5:20, NIV). Always. Everything. Paul does not narrow the scope  when the circumstances do not cooperate. The always is the hard part, and this series  cannot soften it. The practice of gratitude in the difficult seasons is not a pretense that  everything is fine. It is a posture of faith, the deliberate choice to turn the eyes toward  what God has done rather than letting them stay fixed on what He has not yet resolved. 

None of this finds its footing apart from Jesus Christ, because the first benefit the  psalmist names, forgiveness, is the one He purchased at the highest possible cost. The  gratitude that wakes the soul back up is not gratitude for easy circumstances or  resolved problems or lives that have finally gotten comfortable enough to feel thankful. It  is gratitude rooted in the finished work of the One who took everything that should have  disqualified us and buried it in a tomb He did not stay in. That is the ground underneath  every good gift James names, and the source from which every genuine thanksgiving flows. And it is a source that does not run dry, which means the soul that learns to begin  there is beginning in the one place where the tank is always full. 

Prayer 

Father, I confess that I have spent more energy this week cataloguing what is wrong  than counting what You have already given. The drift toward forgetting is so quiet I  rarely notice it until the anxiety has already moved in and the tank is running low again.  Forgive me for the gifts I have received without acknowledgment and for the mercies I  have accepted without returning thanks to the One who provided them. 

Lord Jesus, wake my soul to what is already here. Begin the inventory where the  psalmist begins it, with forgiveness, with redemption, with the renewal that only You can  give. Teach me to bring my requests to the Father wrapped in thanksgiving rather than  stripped of it. Guard my heart and my mind with the peace that only You can give, and  train my eyes to rest on what is true and lovely and praiseworthy rather than on what  the world keeps pushing into view. On the mornings when the list feels hard to start,  remind me that it begins with You, and that beginning is always enough. In Jesus’  name, Amen. 

The list is longer than the hard things would have you believe. Somewhere in this day  there is a foothold for thankfulness, and the soul that finds it this morning will walk into  the rest of the day more awake than it went to sleep. Tomorrow we go one step further,  asking a question that cuts to the heart of everything this series has been building  toward: what is joy, and why does it not depend on a single thing this world can give or  take away? 

To God be the glory. 

Pray, praise, and give thanks, for God is good and His mercy endures forever. 

If you received this message and are not on the daily distribution for them via text or  know someone you would like to share these messages with, just have them text “add”  to 833-779-8793. To visit the website, copy morningencouragement.site and paste it  into the address bar at the top of your internet browser, then press Enter. Links cannot  be included directly in these messages to ensure they reach your phone reliably.