God's word for the year....Thankful and praising. What are you facing this year? Maybe everything is going good, but maybe not. No matter what God has for you, can you thank Him? It is always easy to be thankful when God gives us what we desire. It's easy to be thankful when every area of your life is going well.
Maybe in this season you are facing the sadness of losing a loved one. Maybe you are battling physical problems or illness, maybe finances hard to maintain, maybe a relationship is broken. Whatever the problem is, we need to try to be thankful. God is in control. In 2020 I was a mess. It became a blank year. I traveled through it, but so much was just blank. Everything was hazy. My pain level was high the entire year. I continued with my daily routine, but I wasn't really there. I ended up in the hospital with an enlarged heart.
The thing I did do was read God's word. He gave me many little nuggets of knowledge only God can give us. For the first time in my life, I knew what depression felt like. Yet, God was my constant, and my wonderful husband John was also with me. John has helped me along with our God to get up, and dust me off, and help me cope. The downside was, I lost track of what God wanted for my life, and I lost the will to write. The fact that I am writing this is huge! I seemed to have no words left, and for a writer that is devastating. I felt far from God, and isolated! I was trying to trust, to let God hold me up. I was trying to view my circumstances through Jesus eyes instead of viewing Jesus through my circumstances. Jesus always comes before circumstances. 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 says, Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen but on what is unseen. Since what is seen is temporary but what is unseen is eternal. Keep your eyes on the eternal. Everything we do should be focused on Jesus! Then we can let go, sit back, be thankful, praise Jesus, and see what He will do!
