Journal - Enter With Praise - wk11

Hey, y’all. It’s Daisy. And today I am leading us through a devotional. We are going to be studying the verse Psalm 100, verse 4. That is what we are meditating on today. And I will read this verse a couple of times, and then you will pause the recording, and go meditate on the verse on your own. And then we will come back together and continue with the devotional.

Psalm 100:4 (NLT)
4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving; go into his courts with praise. Give thanks to him and praise his name.

So, go and meditate on this verse, and then come back when you’re ready to continue, and we will carry on with the devotional.

So, something that y’all don’t know about me, is that I’m a very, very skilled gift giver. It is my favorite thing about myself. Or one of my favorite things. I listen really well, and so I pick up on things and I give really good gifts. And I have just always been that way.

And I remember in fourth grade, I really wanted to be friends with this girl. And she was popular, and she was cool. I overheard her saying that she wanted something from the book fair. And I saved up all of my little money, and I think it was a journal or something, a diary. And I saved up all my money, and I gave her this journal on the bus ride home one day. And I attached a little note to it that said, do you want to be friends? And she – not only did she not appreciate the gift, but she also gave it back.
 
She, I guess, didn’t want to be friends with me. And so, she didn’t accept the gift, and she gave it back, and it hurt. It cut so deeply. It hurt me so bad because I really save up. I had put all this effort into trying to befriend this girl. And I just felt so disappointed when she didn’t accept it.

And so, I was thinking about that earlier today, that little story. And I just thought, how many times does God give me things? And I’m so focused on myself, that I’m not even aware of the blessing. I’m not even aware of what he’s giving me because I’m so set on what I want and my focus on the direction that I want to head in, you know, and the things that I’m doing.

And then, I complain because if something doesn’t go my way or if something doesn’t happen the way I thought it was going to happen. I have all of this resentment, and then I am just complaining, and my only focus is on how miserable I am.

And this verse is just such a good reminder that praise is so important. It is our lifeline to God. To be grateful means to be humble and to recognize every single good and perfect gift that God has laid out for us.

And so, as we move on into the application part of this devotional, I want you to look at the distractions in your life. What is distracting you? What are you complaining about that you could turn into praise? Where are you a little bit ticked off at God because he’s not showing up in a certain area or he’s not doing a certain thing? And how can you turn that into praise? So, think about that and pause the recording, write in the APPLY section of your journal, and then come back and press play when you are ready to continue.

As we move into the RESPOND section, I want you to think about the ways that you can go into this week and catch yourself when you’re complaining. Or catch yourself when you’re not being grateful. And how can you create an awareness and a sort of gameplan for implementing more gratitude into your daily life? How can you lead this week with gratitude instead of frustration? And how can you really start to notice – like, how many things can you notice that God has give you? There’s an abundance of it. I have a bed. I have a working body, I have friends, I have family, I have light, I have air, I have clean water. I mean, the list goes on and on.

And when you start to think about all of the things that you have, all of the things that you take for granted, and how focused you are on such small little details that God is already working out for you anyway, when we can really take a step back and just be in awe of how God has really blessed us. It makes all the things that we’re so upset about seem so small. And so, as you respond to God, think about the ways that you can really show up with a grateful heart and go into his courts with praise. So, think about that, and then I will say a prayer for us when you come back and are ready to press play again.

Let’s pray together.

God, it can be so challenging for us to realize how much we have to be thankful for. We’re so caught up in the things that are going wrong, and then our fears, and then our worries, that we lose sight of what we already have, lose sight of the things that we have that we used to be praying for, and we take them for granted. And we can become so ungrateful. And we can become so dissatisfied with what you have given us. And so we lose sight of your blessings.

Help us to remind ourselves daily to give thanks. To start our day with thanks, to infuse our life with thanks. To infuse our relationships with gratitude. Lord, thank you for your goodness. Thank you. Thank you for the ways that you have blessed us. Help us to practice living life through the lens of gratitude and fill our hearts with peace.

The verse that we meditated on today asks us to enter your gates with thanksgiving, to enter your courts with praise. And so, we come to you, God, and we are so thankful. And Jesus is the greatest of all of the reasons for us to have gratitude. And so, we bring our grateful hearts as offerings to you. No amount of praise will ever do you justice, but we thank you anyway. Thank you for everything. In Jesus’ name, amen.