Rabbi’s Reflections – Sunday, February 9, 2025
Shavuah Tov,
“The Power of a Thankful Heart – Part 4”
By Jerry Miller
“Therefore as you received Messiah Yeshua as Lord, so continue to walk in Him…established in your faith…overflowing with thankfulness.” (Colossians 2:6-7, TLV)
“Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you might be blameless and innocent, children of God in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation. Among them you shine as lights in the world.” (Philippians 2:14-15, TLV)
Today we are concluding our focus on the importance and the power of a thankful heart. Giving thanks to God, regardless of how we may feel, is always appropriate, and it is a key to living in the joy of our salvation. As I’ve previously mentioned, the attitude and act of thanksgiving actually has an empowering effect on our souls, enabling us to thrive in our walk with God. In my previous RR we were reflecting on the challenging exhortation from Philippians 2:14, to “…do everything without grumbling or arguing…” This is a high standard, but it’s one that’s possible as we walk with Yeshua in a relationship of intimacy, allowing Him to shape our hearts to become more like His heart.
As a new creation in Messiah (see 2 Corinthians 5:17), we have been given a new heart that is alive to God and tender toward Him. But it’s our responsibility to cultivate, nurture and maintain a tender heart. This is no easy thing, as we live amid a culture in which discontentment rather than gratitude seems to be the rule—the standard behavior. Discontentment leads to complaining, and complaining can harden our hearts. When complaining is our habit, we will struggle in our desire to be thankful. In our minds, we might be able to rationalize complaining tendencies, but the problem is, it detracts from the testimony God desires for us to have. In the same passage that exhorts us to eliminate grumbling, Sha’ul goes on to say that our victory in this area is key to the testimony God intends for us.
As those who walk with Yeshua, it’s the beauty of His life that is to shine from our own lives. But we cannot shine in the midst of a world trapped in darkness if our own hearts are hardened. Gratitude and thanksgiving are the expression of those who reject the idea of simply doing and saying what comes naturally to us. It’s the expression of those who truly want to shine as lights in contrast to a perverse generation steeped in complaining and negativity.
Considering these issues, some might think or say, “But I just like to complain…that’s just how I am.” Well, that may be how we think we are, but clearly it is not what we are called to become as those who are to represent Yeshua to a hardened world. We must see the importance of this issue in God’s thinking. He really does expect us to be growing in our likeness to Messiah, and He has made it totally possible for this to take place as we walk with Him in relationship.
I want to encourage you to take a radical stand in your life in this area. Yeshua deserves to have a people committed to a testimony that’s inspired and empowered by His supernatural presence and life. We want the pure ways of Yeshua to be the desire of our own hearts, so that His very nature be expressed in our thoughts, our words and our conversations. A thankful heart is key to dealing with the temptations we face to give place to negativity and complaining. When gratitude fills our hearts and comes forth from our lives, the tendency to complain becomes weakened.
The quality of our lives is not based on how our circumstances are going. It’s not based on how much money or how many things we’ve accumulated. I believe the quality of our lives is based largely on the simple issue of—how thankful we are toward God. The one who is consistently thankful will tend to have much joy and enjoyment in life, but the ungrateful soul will often be complaining and unhappy. The principle we see in scripture is that, as we begin to thank God, even in the midst of difficulties that have not yet changed, our hearts become more tender. We find that we begin to experience grace from God for dealing with the challenges we’re experiencing. In Psalm 50:23 God says, “A sacrifice of praise honors Me, and to the one who orders his way (through praise) I will show the salvation of God.” It costs us something to praise God when we are hurting or discouraged or overwhelmed by life’s challenges, but to do so is actually a part of our healing, and it’s a beginning of His work of salvation and deliverance in our lives.
Don’t allow negativity and complaining to prevail in your heart. Embrace thanksgiving as a lifestyle, and release yourself to a walk of gratitude and praise. Let there be a song in your heart all the time, flowing from a heart of thanksgiving. Truly, Yeshua deserves nothing less.
Daily Bread, reading plan by Lars Enarson (https://www.thewatchman.org/)
Sun 9-Feb-2025 11th of Sh’vat, 5785
Ex 18:1-12 1 Ki 19 Ps 119:73-96 Jn 3 (1 Th 3)