Gritty Gratitude

``A 26 year old girl is driving down a long road. She's on her way home after a weekend with friends. She falls asleep at the wheel. The car flips. She's ejected. Her body is found several feet from the car. She should be dead, but she survives. Eleven bones broken in her spine, a pinched spinal cord, lung damage, paralyzed organs, a broken right ankle. Her spinal injury leaves her paralyzed from the waist down. She has no feeling any longer. She's now wheelchair bound. Her name is Emmy. She is my very sweet friend. [00:49:31] (57 seconds)  #EmmySurvives

She has gritty gratitude, y'all, for very small things. It's inspiring. She doesn't give up. She doesn't let up. She's always looking for the wilderness wind. Lord, give me a heart like Emmy who looks for the wilderness winds, the winds in the Tohu Va Bohu. [00:52:25] (22 seconds)  #GrittyGratitude

And it's been really hard to watch her in her tohu vavohu season. Everything has changed for her. Her independence has changed. Her life has completely changed. But I have seen God turning her wilderness to beauty. [00:50:57] (19 seconds)  #WildernessToBeauty

But I'm what I'm talking about here is gritty gratitude. Gritty gratitude is being intentional about the small, small, tiny things that we really don't, think to thank God for. I'm talking about taste buds. Things like taste buds, things like eyelashes, things like dirty dishes. Do I have to I'm preaching to myself right now. Things like dirty dishes. Thank you, God, for dirty dishes because what does that mean? That means I have food in my fridge that I was able to cook up for my family because my brain is firing the synapses that it needs to do in order for me to shake that pan, mix that thing, put it all together. Thank you for for dirty dishes because that means that I have a a resource, something that gave me the food to put in my fridge and cook, which means that my brain is working. Things are working. God is providing for me. It's finding the the the small wins is gritty gratitude. [00:45:33] (65 seconds)  #TinyGratitude

the have you ever heard that the brain won't let you feel anxiety and fear at the same time? I said, excuse me? Anxiety and gratitude. Sorry. Have have you ever heard that your brain won't let you feel anxiety and gratitude at the same time? And I was like, this is crazy. It's revelatory. My mind was blown. And so I researched it, and it's true. It's true that genuine gratitude and anxiety cannot exist at the same time in the brain. The brain uses a similar, section of the brain in order to feel those feelings. Overlapping brain regions within the limbic system, particularly the amygdala and hippocampus, it make it very difficult to feel them both intensely at the same time. And when you start thinking thoughts of gratitude, it releases cortisol, which calms down your fight or flight response. Isn't that so cool? It's so cool. So gratitude is the win, which we all know and we've all heard before. Right? I think, that's why sometimes when we hear that verse out of James one that says, count it joy when you experience trials of various kinds, We kinda roll our eyes a little bit because we're like, you ain't never been through this. I'm going through a bit of a wilderness. [00:44:20] (74 seconds)  #GratitudeRewiresTheBrain

God's in the business of creating a pointillism masterpiece with your life. You need every single one of those dots in order for the masterpiece to be complete. Every dot that that is the wilderness moment, every dot that is the blessing moment, you need every single one, even the ones that have a little bit of space in between. [00:41:33] (26 seconds)  #EveryDotMatters

Maybe you've experienced this once or twice in your life where you've gone through a mess and you get on the other side of the mess and you look back and you think, I see what God did there. I I would have never thought that God could use that mess, but he did. He used the mess, and it added into the beauty of the masterpiece. He used it because he's God and he can do what he wants. [00:42:41] (31 seconds)  #WriteDownWins

Anytime that God is good, write it down. Anytime that God comes through, write it down. Anytime that God has a promise for you that he's answered and and given you clarity on, write it down. Because how often and how easy it is for us to forget when things are going well and then something happens, we forget god's goodness. Write it down. Make a record of these things so that we can be reminded that god is with us in the wilderness. [00:39:10] (30 seconds)  #FirstWildernessWin

And so I would hope as they head into the wilderness of shore that it would trigger something in their mind to remember the story because the story gave provision and promise. I hope that they would capture the first wilderness win, and that is remember what God has done in the past and trust that he holds your future. [00:36:33] (23 seconds)  #WinInTheWilderness

The next win in the wilderness is owning owning that god's perspective ain't my perspective. God's perspective ain't my perspective. And I said, ain't. And I put it in the slide because it ain't. It ain't my perspective. [00:41:14] (19 seconds)  #AllDotsNeeded

You need the big dots. You need the little dots. You need the shaded dots. You need the dots that keep you up at night praying. You need the fat dots of chaos. You need the thin dots of concern. You need the dots of struggle. You need the dots of financial blessing. You need the dots of financial hardship. Every single dot matters. [00:41:58] (22 seconds)  #MasterpieceInProgress

And owning that family, really getting that God is building a masterpiece with your tohu vavohu will give you a wilderness win because you know sometimes the Lord will give you a glimpse into the masterpiece before it's complete. [00:42:21] (20 seconds)  #GodMeetsUsInNeed

I want you to see two things here. One, there's provision. You see at the top of the verse, it says that the angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness. On the way to shore, she found some water in the wilderness and also the promise at the end of the verse. Just keep imagining with me, got your Israelite sandals on. Okay? We're walking through the desert wilderness of shore, and now we are in this moment that we could have never imagined possible. We have more in common with Hagar than we have ever thought possible. Why? Because there's so many parallels here. [00:35:06] (36 seconds)  #HagarParallels

Hagar, an Egyptian slave. What were we? Egyptian slaves. Hagar, living in a season of tohu, babohu, living in a season of wilderness and chaos, and we living in a season of chaos and wilderness. Hagar abused, abused and mistreated by her master Sarai, us abused and mistreated by our master Pharaoh. Hagar leaving the the the tohu vavohu season and heading into a literal tohu vavohu, us Israelites leaving our tohu vavohu season and going into a literal tohu vabohu. Do you see the parallels? [00:35:43] (50 seconds)  #FromChaosToPurpose

There's a lot of stuff happening up in there, but let me just kinda give you a synopsis. Alright? Abraham and Sarai are married. They cannot have babies. So Sarai thinks it's a good idea to invite her Egyptian slave to come into the marriage. Things do not go well. Hagar has a baby with Abraham. Sarai gets jealous, and Abraham gives permission to Sarai to abuse her Egyptian slave, Hagar. So Hagar is living in a season of chaos. I mean, this is complete hot mess, Jerry Springer moment. She's living in a season of chaos, and then she escapes out of this season of chaos into the wilderness, into the Tohu Wabohu. [00:33:36] (49 seconds)  #GodUsesTheMess

The pattern of provision and the pattern of promise. What plays out in Hagar's tohu babohu and all the stories that you've heard since you were small is now playing out in real time in your Israelite life. And, man, if we could just find this win when we first step into the wilderness, our little pinky toe, as soon as it steps into the wilderness, if we could capture our thoughts and remember what God has done in the past and help us to bring us through into the future, I feel like that's gonna help us find that wilderness win. And, honestly, I think we could start writing things down a little bit more. [00:38:31] (39 seconds)  #FreedomIsDependence

Well, it's the same for us in the scriptures. We have the whole story of the Israelite people, and we're we're far enough back from it where we can see God's provision, God's direction, how God works in the storyline. But friends, let me tell you, God is is working that way in our storyline as well. [00:40:22] (21 seconds)  #ThornyWeek

Some of us have had a bad week. The the week that you think, wow, can things get any worse? Like, Monday, the fridge broke. Tuesday, I don't know. Tuesday, my car broke down. Wednesday, my favorite team lost the game. Thursday, I get a bill in the mail for $500 that I wasn't expecting. Oh, and by the way, it's been negative 375 degrees below zero this whole week. That's a tohu babohu week. It's a thorny week indeed. How about a bad season? [00:29:57] (29 seconds)  #TohuVavohuSeason

Wilderness, chaos. It really it it means desert. It's wild and waste. Vavohu. This is the word that is used through the, Old Testament and it's really a place when you hear the word tohu vavohu, you are automatically brought into a place, an image in your mind that this is a time testing. And some of us probably know about testing in our life. Have y'all ever had a bad day? Raise your hand if you've had a bad day. [00:28:49] (29 seconds)  #DesertSeasonStruggle

A season that feels desert, dry, flat, thorny, wild, wasted, a season where the thorns and thistles of life come and they try to creep and choke out the garden of your life. I would say we've all been there at least once, a Tohu VaVohu season. [00:30:30] (27 seconds)  #GratefulForSmallMercies