Thankfulness is the ability to see back in the past for what God has done.
Praise is the ability to see and create what God can do in the future.
Praise looks into the future and creates a place for God to inhabit and to come and change this earth.
Proverbs 13:12 12 Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. 13 Whoever scorns instruction will pay for it, but whoever respects a command is rewarded. 14 The teaching of the wise is a fountain of life, turning a person from the snares of death.
A scientific study showed that you cannot be anxious and thankful at the same time.
Depression words that describe a condition.
If you're in that condition what do you do what's the answer what's a solution?
When we as human beings lose hope we believe that there's nothing we can do to change the situation and so then therefore we stop trying. And when we stop trying our hope is deferred it's gone and we succumb to the situation. It becomes our ruler, it becomes our God, it becomes our dictator.
Now some people may say you know you have to get out and do some things and all of that which I think is part of living it's it's the whole part of you that has to be revived.
But there's a core part where hope has to be renewed to undo the effects that the feeling of hopelessness has produced.
Luke 21:26
26 Men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.
So we have to reset or redefine what we want our habits in our actions in our lifestyle to be.
But it has to come for him a place where we truly believe that if we make these changes life will actually change. That takes faith and trust in God when we have experience contrary to what is good
Matthew 12:34 Abundance of the heart the mouth speaks
To stop and turn around or to go in a different direction we actually really have to stop going in the direction we're going if you're driving forward you have to come to a stop before you can go into reverse you can try to just go the other direction but what happens is you really destroy the gears because they're really only meant to go one way at a time.
So we have to recognize that we are doing things that take us to a place of hopelessness we are doing things that that moves us in the direction of depression and we have to stop doing those things and then begin doing something else and that's the challenge we can stop sinning
Psalms 95:2-3 Come before the Lord with Thanksgiving. For the Lord is the great God.
If we don't start living now we're not moving at all and really that's just as bad as still being depressed being hopeless or still at that place until we start going the other direction we're still stuck there.
Discussion Points
How did your perceptions of raise and thankfulness change?
What truth prepared you to overcome the Giants of Anxiety or depression?
What part of the word came to you or what was a precious nugget you wrote down?
