Trust and Thankfulness

I have a friend that sent Zine and I the devotional book, Jesus Calling.  She sent it right before we went to Mayo. That book has spoken boatloads to me almost everyday! 

A quote from today's devotional...
"Trust and thankfulness will get you safely through this day.  Trust protects you from worrying and obsessing.  Thankfulness keeps you from criticizing and complaining:  those 'sister sins' that so easily entangle you."

So I began to ponder what to trust really meant.  I think if I had to define that word it would be to rely upon or place confidence in.  I realized that my trust in the One who loves me the most has been lacking!   I have not had problems relying upon Him to get me through the difficult days. Some days I have uttered up many prayers of survival! My problem has been in the placing confidence in.  All of a sudden, I felt like life had been tossed around and things were a mess. But I didn't place my confidence in the Lord of my life.  Instead, I've felt like He was responsible for the mess.  This past week, God gave me a real sweet analogy that I will share in a later post!  It really opened my eyes to the lack of trust on my part.  I can't say that my attitude changed all of a sudden.  But God pricked my heart to see where I was lacking!  Now my job, is to start placing that confidence in Him.  Thankfulness seems to come when I am relying upon and placing confidence in.  The two "sister sin's" are so closely related that I can't fathom how the two can be separated. So...if my trust has been lacking...I'm pretty certain my thankfulness has been lacking.  As a matter of fact, that's the area where I realized I had been lacking in first!

1 Thessalonians 5:18 says, "In everything give thanks for this is the will of Christ Jesus for you."  I have struggled so much with this verse.  I can ask God to help me be content in the circumstances of life, but I'm not sure I can be thankful for immune deficiencies, chiari malformations, muscular dystrophy, and multiple sclerosis.  In search for getting my head around this verse, John MacArthur had a phrase that caught my eye.  He said no matter what the situation we are to find ways to thank God.  And all of a sudden a light bulb came on in my head...at this point in  my life...it's okay to not be thankful for those diseases.  But I can be thankful about things that happen in spite of those diseases.   Maybe one day, I will be able to say I am thankful for those diseases.  But for today, it is my job to be thankful despite those diseases.