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Content, Thankful, But What's Next - Part 2 - Thankful

by Jerry Ousley  
4/05/2013 / Christian Living

I heard a story once that illustrates being unthankful. An employer was in the neighborhood of one of his employees one Saturday and he decided to stop, knock on the door and say "hi." He thought it might be good for employee-employer relations to let the man know that he thought about him even aside from working together.

He knocked on the door and his employee answered. During idle chit-chat the man noticed a small boy peeping around his father's legs and so he commented, "That's a fine looking young man you've got there!" The father was thrilled that his boss had noticed and he brought his son around in front of him so his boss could get a better look at him.

The employer got down on one knee so that he was at the boy's level and said, "Son is there anything you'd like to ask me?" The boy quickly looked up at his father, then back at the man and asked, "Could I have a nickel?" Laughing at the boy's request the employer quickly pulled a nickel from his pocket and placed it in the young man's hand.

Then the boy's father looked down at his son and said, "Now what do you say to the nice man?" The boy looked at his lonely nickel then back up to the employer. His father was fully expecting him to say, "Thank you, sir," but instead was shocked when his son asked, "Can I have another one?"

That seems to be the attitude of many in the world today. We aren't really thankful. We look at someone whom God has blessed with much and covet what he has in our hearts. We can't seem to understand why God would bless that person with so much and not us. "It just isn't fair Lord!"

I don't know why God allows some to have so much and others of us so little. We can come up with a lot of reasons but inside we feel that we deserve it and can handle it just as much as the next guy and perhaps we are right. Only God can see into the future and know what we can and cannot handle. I do know that we must be grateful for what God has allowed us. Learning to be truly thankful is a quickly disappearing art.

We have even made a holiday that was originally designed to give thanks to God. Like all the others it has been commercialized and sold short of what it is really supposed to be. Some even seem to bypass it altogether. In our modern world the Thanksgiving holiday is mainly remembered by grocery stores that stand to make the most money from it. Others put out their Christmas advertisements as soon as Halloween is over.

Being thankful goes along with being content. We must be happy with what God has given us and give Him thanks for it, realizing that it is His blessing that has allowed us to have what we have. Oh, we may have worked hard to earn the money to buy it, but in reality and in essence everything including our jobs, our finances, and the food and things God has allowed us come from Him. When we can really get that through our thick skulls we can begin to be truly thankful. Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians 5:18, "In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you." Now this doesn't mean that when something bad happens to us that we thank God for the bad things, but it does mean that we see His hand in protecting us in the bad things and we thank Him for it. It could be worse you know. We should be thankful in every situation we find ourselves. We are thankful for what God has allowed us to have and we are thankful for the lessons learned and the experience. Being thankful when God gives us a nickel means that we don't look at it and wish for a dime, but that we look up into the loving eyes of our Heavenly Father and in true heartfelt gratitude say, "Thanks, God."

Jerry D. Ousley is the author of ?Soul Challenge?, ?Soul Journey?, ?Ordeal?, ?The Spirit Bread Daily Devotional and his first novel ?The Shoe Tree.? Visit our website at spiritbread.com to download these and more completely free of charge.

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