Yesterday while driving through a nearby city I saw the following on a church sign:
Humbly Grateful or Hateful Grumbling
This is a choice.
Everyday of our lives and every moment of each day, we choose to be consumed with God or self. There is no other choice; no “in-between” choice.
To be humbly grateful in its truest sense and action begins and ends with God; His attributes and His works! If its hateful grumbling, then the focus is solely on self.
Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all. (1 Chronicles 29:11)
There is none like you among the gods, O Lord, nor are there any works like yours. All the nations you have made shall come and worship before you, O Lord, and shall glorify your name. For you are great and do wondrous things; you alone are God. (Psalm 86:8-10)
Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable. (Psalm 145:3)
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. (Colossians 1:15-17)
Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. (James 1:16-17)
Paul David Tripp says it this way. “Every awesome thing in creation is designed to point you to the One who alone is worthy of capturing and controlling the awe of your searching and hungry heart” (Awe: Why It Matters for Everything We Think, Say, and Do).
As you approach Thursday, stop for a moment and ask yourself, “Am I humbly grateful to God alone?” “Is my thanksgiving submissively and joyously Godward or is it based upon life going my way?” “Is my hungry heart satisfied because of Who and What God is?”
The answers to the these questions is always revealed by my humble gratitude enabled only by God’s grace or my hateful grumbling enabled by my sinful, selfish heart.
“If praise is celebrating God’s awesome glory, then complaint is antipraise.” (Paul David Tripp)
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord! (Psalm 150:6)
From A Pastor's Heart 