Always giving thanks to God the Father for everything...

Ephesians 5:20.
Always giving thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ...
Wow.

Someone once told me, “Thankfulness is the key to Joy.” I think that is right on the money. You probably could even say that thankfulness and joy are best of friends. Thankfulness flows from a place deep inside your heart where there isn’t any room for fake gratitude. From a mile away you can tell if someone is just paying their dues and telling you what you want to hear or what they feel obliged to say. Likewise, you can also clearly see someone who, out of the overflow of something deep and pure inside their heart, say, “thank you.” Then all of the sudden Joy is present, and when Joy has been set free to collide with facial expressions, to amplify emotions, & burrow its truth into very heart of our memory it has a way of making our fellowship with the Father so much more clear, rich, and true. I want that…

At face value this verse is bold. Give thanks for everything, really? What about pain? What about weariness, loneliness, anxiety, frustration, and opposition? Am I to be thankful for everything?

I think this is what James is hinting at in James 1:2
“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”

Do you ever just thank God for your issues? Maybe I should repent about judging trials in a negative way and not counting it pure joy as I should. Maybe I need to accept in my mind that my Father is Good and wants me to know Him in every situation. What if all our issues were meant to make us, “perfect and complete?” That sounds good to me. Do you know that God wants you to be, “lacking nothing?” Your Father has made a way for pain to serve you. I know it isn’t hard to believe that in Christ death is conquered and that is great news, but what does it truly mean to be made, “MORE than conquerors?” DON’T settle for less. We need to show the world that in suffering and trials we have something more... Something salty distastefulness of hurt and something bright in the darkness of pain. If I can be more than a conqueror, why would I settle for just conqueror? There is more for you waiting inside of the things that our Savior has conquered for us. To be more than a conqueror is like what happened when David conquered Goliath and all of the Philistines became the servants of Israel.  To be more than a conqueror means that the Father has made a way for the things that have been defeated to serve us! Pain, death, anxiety, troubles, have all become chisels in the hand of the Father and He uses them to make us full and complete.

Wow, thank you for my troubles Father. Only you could take something that hurts so much and turn it into joy and victory. Because in all of these things I now have a direct path to the dependency that you have designed in such a way that immediately connects me into the deepest place of your heart. Yes and Amen to you Jesus the Founder of my salvation who was made perfect through suffering. You have seen the Father perfectly in every situation and You stand forth and beckon us to lift our eyes up as you did to see that my Father is, was, and always will be Good.

For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong- 2 Corinthians 12:10