With Grace and Joy

In my weekly Bible Study we are studying Beth Moore's "Daniel: Lives of Integrity and Words of Prophecy".  I cannot tell you how much I am learning!  I spent a lot of today thinking about "friendly captivity" and how I play right into it! 

I have spent so much of my life doing what I thought I needed to be doing by everyone else's standards.  My parents, my husband, my neighbors, my friends!  But I wasn't paying enough attention to the standards God had set for me.  WOW!!  It seems so silly!  I should have known that I needed to be paying more attention to what God wanted from me and not what the world wanted from me.  But for whatever reason, I wasn't.  Well, I am paying attention now!  I want to receive the knowledge and understanding that God desires to give to me.  And I know that someday, I will hear the voice of God. 

I am reading the book "One Thousand Gifts" by Ann Voskamp.  She has brought into my live a new word... Eucharisteo.  It flows so sweetly off my tongue and its meaning is just as sweet.  It means "thanksgiving", however, Ann goes even farther into its meaning.  "Eucharisteo, thanksgiving, envelopes the Greek word for grace, charis.  But it also its derivative, the Greek word chara, meaning "joy"."  The word means thanksgiving, with grace and joy! 

That got me thinking.  Do I give thanks to God with grace and joy?  Do I really?  Do I thank Him for days when nothing goes the way I want it to?  Do I thank Him for the hard times that have happened to me?  I know I thank Him for the good stuff, but do I thank Him for the not so good stuff?  And even further, since I am not sure that I am giving thanks with grace and joy, am I being obediant to what it is He wants for me? 

I think I know the answers to those questions and I feel shame.  But I also know that today is not over and there is no need for shame, only the need to fix it.  To go to my Father, on my knees with thanks for everything. 

Melinda