peace to live by

Thankfulness Despite Circumstances, Part 1 (TMF:2498)

Wednesday, December 04, 2024
Peace to Live By: Thankfulness Despite Circumstances, Part 1 (TMF:2498) - Daniel Litton
(Tap to play feature or right-click to download)

       Continuing in verse 3: “We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven” (v. 3-5, ESV). Notice next, again, that the prisoner Paul had a ‘thankful attitude.’ This is important because Paul models for us, despite his unpleasant circumstances, that he was thankful. The use of thankfulness, saturating the mind of things that one can be thankful for, can also lift one’s spirit, lift one out of the mire of mud. A good method seems to be to create a list, a list in which everything is written out that is positive. The mind has a tendency to only want to focus on the negative. And it’s not just that, but then the mind magnifies the negative it is focusing on it makes it out of proportion with the rest of reality. The mind uses the internal sin-nature to accomplish this by incorrectly focusing in on the negative and conveniently disregarding that which is positive. This sets up an artificial picture of reality.