A Practical Walk

Between our Sunday school teaching, our church reading through Psalms and ladies Bible study, something’s been forming in my mind.

I think I need more admiration and worship of God in my life.

Recently I heard teaching about the difference between adoring God and giving thanks. I tend to pursue thanksgiving more than worshiping God. Maybe a better way to phrase it is this: My journal is filling up with thanksgiving about things God’s given me, and very little about who He is.

Now I know that those go hand in hand. God giving me the option to choose salvation says leaps and bounds about who He is. God giving me His written Word shows me His character.

But I’ve come to realize that while it’s not bad, my thankful journal has lots of lists of things I’m thankful for and they’re usually things like, “ice coffee, good nights sleep, garden produce…” And very little of, “That You’re a good God. That you chose to love us. You are mightier than any other.”

I guess what this reveals to me, is that even in my gratitude toward God, it’s still pretty self-centered. What I’m thankful for are things making me comfortable right now. It all still is revolving around me. I need more admiration of God in my life.

Maybe if I’m focused more on who He is, I’ll be able to fight irritability easier.

Maybe if I spend more time worshiping Him, I’ll have less time for useless worry.

Maybe if I learn better who He is, I’ll have less reason to not trust Him.

Now….I don’t feel like I can end this post yet. After all I did name my blog PRACTICAL Walk for a reason. How do I practically do this? I don’t know, but I’m about to brainstorm some ideas….here goes!

• Reading Psalms. As I already mentioned, our church is currently in Psalms already so this fits nicely for me. But the Psalms have a lot of God-adoring going on in them, so as I read, I want to be specifically on the look out for it.
• Write at least one character of God I’m thankful for whenever I write in my thankful journal. I think it’s still good to list the little earthly blessings, but I want to add to it something about God that I’m grateful for.
• Thanking God Himself when I see things. For example, I started this silly little thing of saying, “Thank you pollinator!” whenever I see a bug doing it’s job in my garden. What if instead, I said, “Thank you God for coming up with this crazy-complex-yet-works-really-good design!” Maybe this will help turn the focus away from the gift and onto the Giver of the gift.

We’ll see how this goes. Maybe I’ll come up with more later, but I’ll start with my three above ideas.