thanksgiving – Oh Lord Help Us

Gratitude, thankful, thankfulness, thanksgiving, burdens, thank you, Oh Lord Help Us, Christian, women, mentor, ministry, nonprofit

Thank You: Burdens Disappear in the Presence of Gratitude

DevotionalsNovember 12, 2019November 12, 2019

When we choose to dwell on the struggles of this life, we can easily become burdened. A simple ‘thank you’ releases these burdens through gratitude and thanksgiving to God.

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful. By it, we may serve God acceptably, with reverence and awe,
Hebrews 12:28, CSB

We have all had days that start off on the wrong side of the bed. We wake up to instant chaos and all things wrong, knowing it’s an extra cup of coffee kind of day… only to find we forgot to buy more coffee at the store.

The Burdens Are Real

I have had so many days like this! At this point, I feel like they have become my normal routine. Children wetting the bed at 5:30 A.M., an hour before the alarm clock goes off. Someone getting sick on a day I have tons of errands to run. Forgetting the keys as I walk out the door, only to find I locked the door before shutting it.

Getting in the car to take kids to school and suddenly realizing I never filled up the car with gas the day before. Yep, it’s a miracle I’m able to write and share this with you today. But hey, God has a sense of humor, and I like to think He includes my life in it. Whatever helps me cope, right?!

Point being, we are all faced with messes we have to clean up. We are constantly greeted with unexpected frustrations that try to get the best of us. At any moment we may choose to drop it all and have our own fallout, pity party, adult tantrum; wishing all these burdens would magically just go away. At least, that’s how I feel most days. I realized my soul was struggling inwardly to understand how to receive peace the way Jesus spoke of in John 14:27.

Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Don’t let your heart be troubled or fearful.
John 14:27, CSB

The Inward Struggle Is Real

We all have asked this question at one point in our lives or another: What’s the point of all this? Every day has the same repetitive issues while juggling a whole new set that gets thrown our way. The cycle of life seems never-ending, and most of the time, just flat-out depressing and exhausting.

I want to be happy and at peace, but this world seems to completely rob me of that luxury. How on earth, literally, ON EARTH, am I supposed to have joy and peace when I am surrounded by all this negativity and mess? This translation in Ecclesiastes, I think, perfectly describes how I feel most days…

That’s when I called it quits, gave up on anything that could be hoped for on this earth. What’s the point of working your fingers to the bone if you hand over what you worked for to someone who never lifted a finger for it? Smoke, that’s what it is. A bad business from start to finish. So what do you get from a life of hard labor? Pain and grief from dawn to dusk. Never a decent night’s rest. Nothing but smoke.
Ecclesiastes 2:20-23, MSG

I have a feeling I’m not alone in this way of thinking. I’m sure Solomon, the writer of Ecclesiastes, knew people would think this way too; which is why he wrote it.

Listen Carefully

I found myself in another jumbled up chaotic day where nothing was going right. I was tired, frustrated and just completely fed up with life. I woke up irritated with an extra load of laundry from a child wetting the bed; the kids were late for school and my car wouldn’t start after dropping them off! Of course, I did all this without coffee because I forgot to buy more at the store. Like I mentioned earlier; it’s a miracle I am able to write this!

This was just another day full of annoyances and frustrations that were causing my attitude toward my husband and kids to be very unkind! I am never a pleasant person for them to be around when I start my day like this. Somewhere in the middle of the chaos of my day, I quietly heard God whisper to me: “I am here…I am with you…I know how you feel. Go and sin no more.”

I huffed and complained the whole way, but finally decided to sit down and spend time with God. I turned off all the distractions around me, and I turned on my ears to hear what He was trying to teach me through this messy day. God sweetly spoke to me; “Offer up prayers of thanksgiving child.” The Lord wanted me to go throughout my day so far and find the things that went right, rather than wrong, and say thank you for them.

Don’t worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 4:6-7, CSB

Follow His Guidance

And so the list began…

Thank you, Lord, for the laundry detergent that allowed me to wash my child’s sheets. Thank you for the water for him to shower and the soap to get him clean. Thank you for the person you provided today to help jump-start my car when it died. Thank you for giving my husband the knowledge to know what was wrong with the car and the ability to fix it. Thank you for allowing me to have this time spent with you so I can reflect on the things that went right instead of wrong.

With every thank you I sent up, a new feeling of peace and calm were sent down. I finally understood what the Lord meant when He said…

Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
Matthew 11:28, CSB

The more I offered up those prayers of thanksgiving to God, the more I felt the burdens of that day drift away. Through this, my soul found rest.

Say Thank You

We were never meant to carry the weight of life’s daily frustration and stress. The whole purpose of the cross was to take those burdens away from us. Jesus took our place so we could enjoy life, not be burdened by it.

Out of my distress I called on the Lord; the Lord answered me and set me free.
Psalm 118:5, ESV

When we all sit down and really think about what Jesus did for us, how can we honestly say anything BUT, Thank You?

Today, I invite you, dear reader, to try this out for yourself. When you feel burdened by life and things seem to be falling apart around you, don’t get discouraged, Friend! Instead, reflect on your day or situation, and find something to say thank you to God for. It’s there. You just have to be intentional to find it.

We were never meant to carry the weight of life's daily frustration and stress. The whole purpose of the cross was to take those burdens away from us. Click To Tweet

Aarón Blanco Tejedor

Gratitude, thankful, thankfulness, joy, blessings, God’s provision, provision, Jesus, Oh Lord Help Us, Christian, women, mentor, ministry, nonprofit

Source of Joy: Have You become Bored with God’s Blessings?

DevotionalsNovember 10, 2019November 10, 2019

God gives us many blessings. Once we move past our initial thankfulness, the weight of what we must steward can distract us from the source of our joy.

Perception

For a month or more, the Lord has been confronting me… I hear messages about my perception of His blessings. Most of the time, He returns me to a small portion of the Israelite’s story; when they journey out of Egypt and into the land God promised…

Now the rabble that was among them had a strong craving. And the people of Israel also wept again and said, ‘Oh that we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. But now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at.’
Now the manna was like coriander seed, and its appearance like that of bdellium. The people went about and gathered it and ground it in handmills or beat it in mortars and boiled it in pots and made cakes of it. And the taste of it was like the taste of cakes baked with oil. When the dew fell upon the camp in the night, the manna fell with it.
Numbers 11:4-9, ESV

Bored of Blessings

As an outsider looking in, I become outraged on God’s behalf. He blessed the Israelites with precious food straight from heaven so they would not have to hunt for food. When they woke in the morning, the manna lay in wait for them, alongside the dew. Then, they had the audacity to dream of returning to their lives as an enslaved people because they were bored with God’s provision.

As Christians, we like talking about the blessings of the Father. We praise God for the blessings as we receive them. Once we have them in our possession though, what do we do with them? Do we continue to praise God for them? Or do we become a little like the Israelites, wishing for more or different blessings in the midst of God’s goodness?

Steward His Blessings

God gives plentifully.

He will love you, bless you, and multiply you. He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, your grain and your wine and your oil, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock, in the land that he swore to your fathers to give you.
Deuteronomy 7:13, ESV

The Word promises that God will bless us on Earth. He allows us to multiply through childbirth. He blesses the land and animals that He created for us to provide us with food. Once we possess this bounty, then, we must steward over them.

The blessings, never less so blessings than when we received them, then become responsibilities. This is precisely when we start taking them for granted, viewing them as burdens. Jesus tells us quite clearly in the parable of the talents that we are to steward over what He gives us. When we do we will be blessed with even more responsibility.

Source of Joy

His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’
Matthew 25:21, ESV

The master praises the servant for managing the gold given to him well and promises him more to oversee. The promise of more influence brings happiness, much like when we receive a hard-earned promotion. The reality, though, includes more work and greater challenges. We are still called to find joy in those challenges, not in spite of them.

I must reflect on when I received those gifts to remember the joy I found in them. I must seek a greater source of joy in the greatest blessing ever bestowed on me: His love, expressed most earnestly through His death on the cross.

The Joy of the Lord

Entering into the joy of the Lord can be difficult for a few reasons. First, we mistake the temporary and conditional emotion of happiness with joy–an attitude of the heart which is steadfast and constant. Joy persists in the midst of very strong, negative emotions because God is present with us in those moments, He is our source of joy.

Do not get me wrong, happiness is expressed in the Bible. It is not absent, but it does not have the sustaining power of this joy that God gives us freely. In Nehemiah 8, we are told that the joy of the Lord is our strength. It allows us to traverse challenges, to steward our blessings, whether we find happiness in them or not.

Additionally, if you are anything like I am, you look for joy in who you have become or are becoming. I read the bible to find me. I look for who I am and who I should be. At the end of the day, though, the protagonist of the Bible is God. All the stories in the Bible, all the statutes, and all of the commandments point us to who God is and what He has done. God is our joy. He is our strength. He sends His word out as the source of our joy.

so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. For you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace;
Isaiah 55:11-12, ESV

A Challenge

I challenge myself to find joy by reading about who God is. I challenge myself to look at what He has given me to steward over and remember their origins as blessings. If this is something you struggle with, I invite you to come alongside me in this challenge.

We must remember God’s gifts of provision and the joy we found in them. But never forget the greatest blessing ever bestowed on us…God’s love, expressed most earnestly through His death on the cross. Click To Tweet

james shepperdley

A Little Side of Holiday Cheer

Eat, Stay SaneDecember 16, 2014

For Thanksgiving this year my mother-in-law requested glazed carrots. I said sure! Even though I’ve never made glazed carrots in my life. Shhh, she didn’t know that. But I knew I was going to be ok because I had just gotten my December issue of Southern Living. I love, love, love that magazine. And in this (double) issue there was a recipe for glazed carrots that sounded a little risky and a lot yummy. I can take absolutely no credit for this recipe. I would never have dreamt to put cumin and ginger together. Never. Ever.

Ingredient:

Approx 1 3/4 lb carrots

2 Tb olive oil

1 tsp kosher salt

1 tsp cumin

1/2 cup orange marmalade

1/2 cup orange juice

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp minced fresh rosemary leaves

Step One:

Preheat oven 475. Peel carrots.

Step Two:

Toss carrots with olive oil, salt, and cumin. Arrange in single layer on baking sheet. Bake for 25 minutes.

Step Three:

While carrots are roasting, combine marmalade, juice, and ginger in saucepan and bring to a boil stirring often for about 4-6 minutes. Remove from heat and add rosemary.

Step Four:

Toss carrots with marmalade mixture. Place on serving platter.

Some notes. I bought the carrots, and marmalade at Trader Joes. I already had the cumin, ginger, and oj. My mother-in-law had fresh rosemary. I used 4 lbs of carrots instead (big family) and did not change the amount of marmalade mixture. It was plenty. I thought it was super yummy, the kiddos maybe not so much. Regardless, it was very festive looking!

Here is the price breakdown:

Carrots 4.98

Orange marmalade .96

OJ .18

Olive oil .09

Total: $6.21 That served 8 adults, 5 kids, and had a few left over.