Month: June 2025

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The Source of Gratitude

Luke, the gospel historian and Gentile physician, records a heartening account of ten skin-diseased men calling out for healing, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!”1 Jesus ordered them to go and show themselves to the priests in keeping with the Law of Moses, and on their way, all ten were made well. Yet only one of them “turned back, praising God with a loud voice; and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks.”2 Jesus blessed the man, a Samaritan, yet voiced the obvious: “Where are the other nine?”3 It is an unsettling question, for we find ourselves asking, “How would I have responded?” Would we have returned in true thankfulness with the one, or gone along in mere happiness with the nine? Personally, I can envision either.

God knows the frailty of human character. His Law came with a warning, “Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day. Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God.”4 Note the relational regression from satisfaction to pride to forgetfulness. This is exactly the path God’s people chose over time, as He voiced through Hosea centuries later: “When I fed them, they were satisfied; when they were satisfied, they became proud; then they forgot me.”5 Exactly as God had foretold.

Yet Paul exhorts us to “give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus,”6 Then if thankfulness is so often so elusive, how do we live in it? Paul writes, “Just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.”7 Then this from the next chapter: “Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts.”8 So perhaps thankfulness begins with that for which we are both most grateful and least able to boast: “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”9 Thanks be to God, the source and object of our gratitude.

“Let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe.” Hebrews 12:28 NIV

Father, You are so good in who You are and who You have made us to be — Your own. May our redeemed lives echo our thanks and praise now and throughout eternity. In Christ we pray. Amen.

1 Luke 17:13 NIV
2 Luke 17:15-16 NIV
3 Luke 17:17 NIV
4 Deuteronomy 8:11-14 NIV
5 Hosea 13:6 NIV
6 1 Thessalonians 5:18 NIV
7 Colossians 2:6-7 NIV
8 Colossians 3:16 NIV
9 Colossians 1:25 NIV

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The “U” in Unity

Middle-borns are often peacemakers: they tend to mediate, negotiate, and even manipulate in pursuit of common ground. Born a middle child, I have lived all these things. My taste for manipulation vanished early in my faith life, fortunately, and while I still have a proclivity to pursue commonality among the divided, I have more recently come to realize that I alone cannot bring about unity in anything. The restoration of oneness requires a change of heart among all those mired in division, and no one can change another’s heart, except the Holy Spirit of God. Yet Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers,”1 so there must be something we can do to foster peace and unity around us. But what?

I think a healthy premise in pursing oneness is to understand that we are already one with each other in Christ through same the Holy Spirit who lives in all believers. Writes Paul, “We, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.”2 This is identity, this is foundational; this is us. Then how do we live into this oneness? We choose to. If we can decide to entrust our soul to the person and saving work of Jesus Christ, we can just as well choose to obey His commands. Yet even this is God’s grace, for through Ezekiel He promised, “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. . . I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.”3 And so, in Christ, He has.

Then ours is to appropriate this grace as the body of Christ, each of us beginning with ourselves. Regarding judgmentalism and accusation — which reduce oneness into splinters — Jesus exhorts each of us to “first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye!”4 For when the Holy Spirit lovingly reveals our own shortcomings and gently redirects us away from them, we experience His kindness and savor His grace. Then through the corrective lenses of freedom and joy, we may see each other’s faults — and their struggle against them — differently. Compassion triumphs over condemnation. Blame gives way to balm. Separation fades amid support. Only in the love of God are we free to live the imperatives of peace: “Aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.”5

Unity among us begins with each of us; unity begins with “U.”

Father, You are the God of restoration. As You have made us one with Yourself through the redemptive work of Your Son, lead us as one through the transformational work of Your Spirit. In Christ we pray. Amen.

1 Matthew 5:9
2 Romans 12:4-5 ESV
3 Ezekiel 36:26-27 ESV
4 Matthew 7:3-5 NASB
5 2 Corinthians 13:11)

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Couch Dynamics

One evening a couple weeks into our marriage, Peggy and I had just finished cleaning up the dinner dishes when she said, “Let’s sit on the couch.” “Ok,” I replied, and so we sat. “What do we do now?” I asked. “We talk,” she replied. “Oh. About what?” echoed my response from a chasm of cluelessness. “Anything. Our days, maybe,” she said. And so we did. We’ve since come to call this “couch dynamics” — purposefully carving out time to share and hear what’s on our minds. We can, and often do, accomplish the same on our walks together; either way, we regularly and intentionally take time to relate to our “other half.”

Believers are fond of saying, “Christianity is not a religion; it’s a relationship.” Actually, it is both. Have you ever noticed, though, that even as we tout “relationship” with God theologically, we too often feel distant from Him experientially? We wonder why, yet the answer is close at hand, for when asked about daily time in prayer and the Word, we mumble our confession, “Not so much.” But if Christianity is a relationship, doesn’t it follow that we regularly and intentionally relate with Him who has made us one with Himself? Then how?

We purposefully carve out time with God to share and hear what’s on each other’s minds. Think of it as celestial “couch dynamics.” Then to hear Him, where better to go than to His Word? It is life itself,1 and it is truth.2 The Word is “breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that [we] may be complete, equipped for every good work.”3 His Word is “alive and powerful. . . .It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires”4 when we cannot understand them ourselves. It is “a lamp to [our] feet and a light to [our] path.”5 Yes, God speaks.

Yet the Father also listens; we are heard. Through Jeremiah He promises, “You will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you.”6 John, too, assures us, “this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us.”7 No wonder Jesus himself “would often slip away to the wilderness and pray.”8 He was relational, intentional; He still is. Then let us likewise take time to relate with Him.

You know, like couch dynamics.

Father, grace me to “[store] up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.”9 And “Let my prayer be counted as incense before you, and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice!”10 Amen.

1 Matthew 4:4; Deuteronomy 8:3
2 John 17:17
3 2 Timothy 3:16-17 ESV
4 Hebrews 4:12 NLT
5 Psalm 119:105
6 Jeremiah 29:12 ESV
7 1 John 5:14 ESV
8 Luke 5:16 NASB
9 Psalm 119:11 ESV
10 Psalm 141:2 ESV