Tag Archives: thankfulness

Guest Post Winner

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This week we have featured eight guest posts from a pool of people on the topic of thankfulness. You can see the rules of the contest here. The winner of the contest will win a set of three books from us, including Do Hard Things, 99 Thoughts on Leading Well, and The 9.

To judge who would win, we used what we thought was a fair formula described below:

  • 30% of the decision is on which Jeremy believes is the best article.
  • 30% of the decision is on which Jeremy believes is the best article.
  • 40% of the decision is on the number of views each article gets.

Thus, if all three of the factors disagree, in the end you the viewers get to decide who wins.

So without further ado, the winner of this month’s guest post contest is Adam Lorenz with the blog Thankfulness? Hell No. To receive your prize, please send your full mailing address to us via our contact page.

Guest Post: Altars of Thanksgiving

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It was the end of summer 2009 when we got the news… “you need a biopsy.” Let me tell you that tiny four word phrase can stop you in your tracks. In a moment’s notice all aspects of life suddenly came to a screeching stop. Previous cares and concerns instantly vanished as they became overshadowed by this potentially huge mountain.

Our family instantly went into action; the action of prayer. To help us keep focused on faith and not fear, we committed to having communion each and every evening until we received the biopsy results. November 12th, 2009 our potentially huge mountain immediately disintegrated as we received the biopsy results of “no cancer.”

The father of our faith, Abraham, built altars of remembrance and thanksgiving to God. When God appeared and declared a promise to Abraham, Abraham built an altar there to the Lord. (Genesis 12:7). When Abraham successfully reached a new destination, he built an altar to worship God (Genesis 12:8).

Why did Abraham build altars?

One reason is so he could return to that spot and recall the event. He did not want to forget when God appeared to him, made a promise to him, or blessed him. Abraham taught his son Isaac the importance of building and keeping a strong faith by never forgetting God’s promises and blessings. Isaac, seeing it modeled by his father, also built an altar after the Lord appeared to him and Isaac called on the name of the Lord (Genesis 26:25).

November 12th has become an altar of thanksgiving for our family. Our altar of worship is to take communion every year on November 12th in remembrance and thankfulness of what Jesus specifically did for our family. Like the father of our faith…we do not want to forget God’s blessing.

Altars of thanksgiving are powerful faith builders, especially when life gets tough. They are like beacons rediscovered by weary fearful sailors searching in a lightless ocean directing them to the safest route home. Their fear of an uncertain future turns to hope. Confident in knowing they will be okay, their faith is strengthened. We are not building physical structures as altars in our home. However, it is important to convert those “mental altars” to something, like a beacon, that can be physically seen. Here’s an idea.

  1. As a family, discuss and list those defining moments where God intervened, declared a promise, and/or blessed.
  2. Create plaques and/or document each event and frame it. Present these remembrance altars all throughout the house.

Abraham wanted and needed altars to continually strengthen his faith. Imagine one of your children focused on an altar in your home during a moment of doubt and in remembrance becomes strengthened by what God did and/or promised. Their fear of an uncertain future will turn to hope. Confident in knowing they will be okay, their faith will be strengthened. Christian families need altars. Let’s follow what Abraham modeled and create our altars of thanksgiving.

Guest Post: An Attitude of Thankful Prayer

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Ahh, Thanksgiving. The main day in the year when gluttony becomes a patriotic duty of every American and it is our challenge to eat as much as we possibly can. Sometime between that first Thanksgiving meal centuries ago and today’s modern world we’ve lost a lot of the meaning of being thankful. The first Thanksgiving meal was truly a time to be thankful because they had survived in this foreign land. Our thanksgiving meal today is more of a celebration of how much we can stuff ourselves!

However, we have retained some aspect of what it means to be thankful. After all, how many times have you heard “What are you thankful for?” or “Remember to be thankful for all the good things in your life” at this time of year. It seems like for these couple weeks in November, we’re bombarded with thoughts and messages about being thankful. Sometimes it seems like it’s coming at us from everywhere, so much so that it’s easy to take it lightly and even be a little annoyed by hearing the same things over and over again. For me, by the time Thanksgiving is over, I’m thankful that all the overwhelming thankfulness is finally over!

So, how do we have a thankful attitude, without being cliché? Prayer is one of the best ways I know of. Two Biblical texts come to mind when I consider this subject: Philippians 4:6-7 and 1 Thessalonians 5:16-1.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, 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

Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

So, what should your attitude be like?

We learn from the Philippians passage that we should not be anxious about anything! In writing this, Paul is making the point that prayer is the opposite of anxiety. If we are anxious about something then we are trying to take care of it ourselves and worrying about it and stressing over it. But if we are praying to God about whatever it going on in our lives, that counters our anxiety and gives us an attitude filled with God’s peace. If we are thankful for what we have, we will not be anxious about what we do not have!

In Thessalonians, it states up front that we should be joyful always. Notice that last word there – “always.” This is a very important little word. Paul doesn’t tell us that we can only be joyful when we feel happy and things are going right. Paul doesn’t tell us that we only have to be joyful some of the time when it’s easy. No – Paul says be joyful always. Always. That means all the time, regardless of how life is going or what kind of mood we’re in. We even have to be joyful during the tough times in life when we’re struggling just to get through each day.

Remember that being thankful in joy is different than simply being happy. We are happy when things are going well for us and life is pretty easy. We are joyful and truly thankful when we trust God completely and drawing our strength from him – especially through the tough times of life. These times make us mature and complete in our walk with Christ, and they help us to truly be thankful for God and everything He has done for us.

In this season of Thanksgiving, enjoy the time you can spend with your family and friends. Enjoy the food that you will eat together. Take time to thank God for all of His blessings in your life and all that He has done for you. Have a joyful attitude in all circumstances, even during the stresses of the holidays. Pray often. Present your requests to God with Thanksgiving, and he will give you peace beyond your understanding. And most importantly, just remember to say thanks!

Guest Post: 3 Ways to Stay Thankful After Thanksgiving

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Well, it’s that time of year again. We relax. We reflect. We enjoy family, football and food. The holidays are in full swing, whether you like it or not. As always, Thanksgiving has been smashed somewhere between Trick-or-Treating and cookies for Santa. Nevertheless, it’s probably my favorite holiday of the year. No hustle and bustle, just family and food.

The infamous question has arisen once again, “What are you thankful for?” For some, this stands as an easy question to answer. In the past year, some have experienced increase, blessings and abundant life. However, if you’re like most people in America, you have experienced decrease, struggle and exhaustion. The economy continues to put strain on our bank accounts, families, relationships and hearts. But you know something; God’s economy is not man’s economy. It’s time you quit living in doom and gloom and started living in bloom. You’ve got to stand up, put your shoulders back, and make the decision to be thankful.

Look around at your life; sure some things are bad, but some things are good. You still have a house. You still have Internet. You still have love. You still have family. You have much to be thankful for, but you must choose to express gratitude. You see, having joy is a choice. A choice that very few people make. Let me offer you three quick tips to help you experience joy regardless of your circumstances:

  1. Happiness is a choice – and you have to choose it
  2. Know what to ignore – don’t let little things steal your joy
  3. Travel light – forgive a lot and pitch the baggage of hurt and bitterness

Your joy is a gift from God. Don’t give that gift away. The person who cuts you off in traffic doesn’t deserve your joy; don’t give it to them by getting angry. Your boss doesn’t deserve your joy. Your way probably is better, but it’s not worth your joy. Sure gas prices are rising, but it doesn’t have to cost you your joy. After Thanksgiving is over, don’t go back to your old “doom and gloom” mentality. Stand up and begin to get your joy back. If you’ll stay in a thankful state of mind, I believe God will bless you with an abundance of joy, peace and love. Start your day off by reading these three tips. Write them down and keep them with you in the car, in the office and at your home. You have to constantly choose to be thankful and joyful. As you do, God will raise you up to be the person you were created to be.

Guest Post: Do You Model Gratefulness?

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“This generation of young people is so ungrateful. They want the latest gadgets and games, they want hip clothes. They want the biggest sweet sixteen party ever and they all want to be famous. They keep wanting, they’re never satisfied with what they have. They’re so ungrateful.”

Ungratefulness is just one of the many complaints about this generation of youth. There may even be some truth in this one as young people are spending a record amount of money on phones, clothes and gadgets. But can we blame them?

Consumer behavior is taught, not inherited. While an inherited impulsiveness may not help people in curbing their spending, the biggest issue is what young people are being shown, being taught.

We can complain they are ungrateful, but tell me, where are they supposed to learn gratefulness? Who is teaching young people to be grateful with what they have and not constantly want more? TV? Commercials? Magazines? Social media?

Every single message aimed at young people is telling them to buy, to spend, to want. There’s not a single voice telling them about gratefulness, about saying ‘when’. So how can we blame young people for believing that message, for always wanting more?

If we want young people to become more grateful, we are going to have to be that single voice. We are going to have to teach them gratefulness and God’s perspective on materialism. And the best way of teaching gratefulness is to model it to them.

So my question to you is this: what are you doing to model gratefulness to your young people? Do they see and recognize true gratefulness in your day-to-day life?

Gratefulness is something that’s not meant to be kept private, it’s meant to live out in public. A grateful heart should always show itself at every opportunity, especially in the months where consumerism is shown at its worst.

Guest Post: 3 Ways To Show Your Leaders You Are Thankful For Them

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I am thankful for a lot of people who poured into me, and my life. Sometimes there are moments in ministry when you are able to look back and appreciate the people who have helped you get to where you are today. Maybe that is during a slow time, or maybe that can be during this Thanksgiving. When I step back and look at my ministry I realize that it isn’t mine. It’s God’s.

Here are 3 simple ways I show my leaders how thankful for all they do:

  1. Pray. I pray for my leaders. They are investing in teenager’s lives, and that is on top of everything else. I pray for them, their spouse, family members. They are encouraged knowing that they are being prayed for, and not just saying the words “I’ll be praying for you”, and forget.
  2. Build Relationships. Do you want to work for someone you don’t know? I sure don’t. I take my leaders out for lunch a few times a year, and once a year all together. Sometimes we meet for wings, other times we meet at the local starbucks. I do try to meet with my leaders once every two months one on one, or if my leader is a woman I will meet with her and her husband.
  3. Cards. This isn’t something that I picked up naturally. Actually, I hate doing this (My love language is not gifts!). My mentor is a relational genius. He would write 40 cards a month. I have learned from him, and my leaders always appreciate it. If you send a card make sure it’s snail mail.

Those are a few ways you can show your leaders you are thankful for them. How else do you thank you leaders for all they do?

Guest Post: Thankful Sabbatical

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After graduating seminary it quickly appeared that my wife and I were on track to land my first youth ministry gig. That quickly fizzled and we have since been looking, sending dozens of resumes out all over the northeast with the standard smattering of a few emails from some conscientious churches and deafening silences from many other avenues of ministerial employment.

It wasn’t until around September that my perspective had changed on this down time between ministries. My wife and I switched churches, needing better personal discipleship and a fresh start. That fresh start opened our eyes into our own spiritual lives and ministry aspirations. We grew closer together in becoming very consistent in our quiet and prayer times as well as finding an age appropriate Sunday school class with a strong community.

That’s when I discovered it, we’re more on a sabbatical than in some ministerial purgatory while I wait for God’s call to send me to a ministry where I can fully utilize my youth ministry and pastoral counseling gifts.

It’s recently dawned on me that I needed to come clear of the cloud of hard work and stress from seminary and my old church and hospice job to a place where I can begin to see clearly again. I’m loving it. During this downtime I’ve finished my first book and have grown more spiritually intimate with my wife, which has been its own reward.

While we never panicked, waiting on the LORD can be very difficult at times. At the beginning of the process we both knew we were in ‘comfortable’ places of employment and not desperate for a job. We knew we could wait on Him.

I’m thankful this year for the wait. Thankful for the clarity of mind and soul these past 6 months have brought us. Thankful for a wonderful wife with who I can fall more and more in love with ever day. Thankful for new friends at a new church. Thankful for God’s perfect timing. Thankful for ministry partners and community from Simply Youth Ministry, Pastor2Youth.com and Facebook.

Contrary to the Occupy Wall Street movement, abundance is not found in not being one of the 1% or the 99%, but in God’s perfect peace and contentment with His sovereign plan. Like the Psalmist in Psalm 66, I’m thankful that no matter the trial, tribulation, refinement, His promises are steadfast, He is sovereign and in Him is our abundance.

Bless our God, O peoples, And sound His praise abroad,
Who keeps us in life And does not allow our feet to slip.
For You have tried us, O God; You have refined us as silver is refined.
You brought us into the net; You laid an oppressive burden upon our loins.
You made men ride over our heads; We went through fire and through water, Yet You brought us out into a place of abundance.
I shall come into Your house with burnt offerings; I shall pay You my vows,

Psalm 66:8-13

Guest Post: Thankfulness? Hell No.

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Thankfulness?

Hell no.

This is the last thing I want to write about with where this season of life has taken me. Parker Palmer calls this season Autumn, maybe even Winter. The time where death becomes more and more present – I simply call it my personal hell. This hell on earth is one where love was not enough, relationships have broken, and pointing which way is true north in life is simply disorientating, all the while making the jump into my 30’s.

Needless to say, being thankful is not at the top of my list.

In my youth, I was bombarded with the often-trite messages to rejoice in my suffering – that God was somehow at work in this. Of course He is, but right now it’s really hard to see that. Hindsight is always 20/20. Recently, I began to see that I might have unknowingly connected hope and thankfulness. A connection that I now see simply continues a distorted belief that if I do, believe, or attempt to live [insert any number of moral issues] in the midst of struggles then God will of course deliver me out of them, and ultimately give me what I desire.

Or there are even the words of comfort that ‘God will never give you more than you can handle’. Yet, the more I examine this statement with the God I see at work in Scripture, the more I see a God that doesn’t promise to give us more than we can handle. But instead, joins us in our suffering no matter how deep the rabbit hole might go.

So in this hell, what is thankfulness? What good is it to be thankful?

At its root, being thankful challenges us to remember. To remember when we received love we did not deserve; encountered grace when all we deserved was opposition; joy¬ instead of frustration; peace in the place of anxiety; hope when all rationality told us differently.

The challenge then lies in our ability to articulate the thankfulness; so it may serve as our personal Ebenezer, as the stones of remembrance in our personal and communal walks of life. Thankfulness asks us to lament to God. Thankfulness begs us to see that not that He has forgotten us but that we might remember where we last encountered Him. For when we are in the midst of hell-everything, even our own selves push us away from God.

May we, as individuals and communities erect these stones of remembrance, of thankfulness, in the midst of suffering, injustice, heartbreak and pain. May we remember that we are not alone, may we remember that God is in our midst, even when we are not aware of it.

Guest Post: My Three Year Old Lens

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“Thanks Mama”.

My three-year-old nephew still can’t pronounce “grandma”. But he knows how and when to say thank you better than anyone I know. Or maybe I should say it another way, he knows how to live out of thankfulness. Every time a member of our family changes his diaper, he says thank you. Every time someone gives him a chicken nugget from McDonalds, he says thank you. Every time someone sits down and plays with him and his toy trucks, he says thank you.

Left to his own devices, my nephew wouldn’t be able to survive. From changing his own diaper to preparing food, he would be utterly helpless without someone else’s help. Thankfulness for my nephew isn’t an act, or a word that you speak aloud; it’s a way of seeing the world.

Maybe, thankfulness is an awareness of how vulnerable we all really are.

Without others to help us navigate through this glorious, yet sometimes treacherous life, we would be left to fight through on our own.

I know what you may be thinking; a three year old that is able to articulate his own vulnerability? A three year old who is able to articulate his thankfulness?

I don’t think so. But the way in which he sees the world, others, and himself, is through this thankfulness lens.

Is that not how we, as followers of Jesus, are called to live?

As people who are grateful for each breath, each morning, and each conversation in our lives.

As people who’s utter vulnerability drives them to simply open their hands and whisper the words, “thank you”.

As people who don’t see the world through cynicism and despair, but thankfulness and hope because of the resurrected Christ.

May you this holiday experience a posture of thankfulness in your own vulnerability and hope through the resurrected Christ.