My Dragon Scales

We recently watched "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of The Dawn Treader" and although I loved it, it for sure did not stick to the book. Rick was reading a great deal of it last night to Caed and he was commenting on how "hey, that's not what happened in the movie!". Well kido, sorry to burst your bubble but this is how that whole thing goes. Rick was reading to him the whole grueling process Eustace goes through to return to a human. How he is unable to do it himself so Aslan has to do it for him and it hurts badly.

It begs the question "what is your scaly issue lately?" LOL!

Mine has been perspective and attitude. I've really been struggling with a stagnate emotional response to God the past few months. Nothing in my core faith has changed but I've felt drained from some intense trials over the last five years and just plain numb I think. When I'm not numb I'm overwhelmed with how to respond to tiny trials every day.

I'll skip through a lot of this to the point.

God has convicted me this week that He wants me to really understand his will of thanks for me. "In all things" is not a "if you can" or "try your bestest" statement. It's a command and of course, like Eustace, I cannot obey it. Christ has to lend his aid and it's painful, but I'm looking forward to some scales falling off.

It's so cliche to say "be thankful!" Yet, this command really means so much more! It means when my tween (for 24 more hours anyway! Yikes!) is ranting away at me I need to respond with thanks for God challenging me to cling to Him, respond in Him, fail and learn through Him, and be sanctified by Him.

When my house depresses me and I wish it looked more like Mrs. Soinso's does, I need to respond in thanks at what he has blessed me with and demonstrate that by taking decent care of all I have as well as stewarding it well.

When my van starts to act like it's going to die again (this literally happened to me last night in a very busy intersection, in Christmas traffic with a child, my friend, and two guinea pigs in with me) I want to learn to truly be thankful that (1) He is going to care for me and provide my need, and (2) He is giving me a trial that will perfect my faith.

These things I know, but I don't work at them like an exercise. Many spiritual exercises I run from because they are based in legalism which is of man. This however, is point blank scripture. I'm thankful God brought this verse to mind for me a week ago.

I think it will be my heart burden in the coming year.