God's Grace brings Joy

Sunday is our day to go to a 'building' intently for the purpose of worshiping our Father for all the grace he pours out and the mercy he so willingly gives.  As parents, we do not feel in the slightest that it is routine, boring, out of obligation, or anything else of the like. We look forward to the time to worship with great music, hands held high among other believers, giving the praise our God so aptly deserves.

And on most Sundays our kids have the same attitude. Not this Sunday though... ALL THREE were complaining about 'having to go to church'. Wha, wha, what?? This is an attitude I personally will not let hang around for any too long.

As a child, I grew up Lutheran, had the church service memorized and fell asleep at the sermons; we went to church because we had to, it's what we did on Saturday nights. I don't remember Sunday school, though I know I went when I was younger. But going through 13 years of 'going to church' left me nowhere but LOST.

When starting our family, it was a fear of mine that I wouldn't know how to LIVE with God and live by faith because it did not see that in the family I grew up in. To date, God has blessed us with his grace and guidance and I feel that our story is different than the one I would write about my childhood, and the proof is in the kids.... or so I thought.

So back to the attitude adjustment - right after one of my children complained about having to go to church, I adjusted. No, we don't go to church because we have to. We go to church to thank God for all the graces he's given us, even just today (a free pancake breakfast (thank you friend!), a firetruck ride, playing outside for two hours, lunch on the table, toys to play with, a cool camo tent for a fort, shall I go on...?!). And we are giving God an hour of our day, of our week, I went on to say. Imagine if God gave us only an hour of his time during an entire week. How would that be? I don't even dare to have you really think about that for any too long. No we go to church to praise God all he does and for Jesus because we are thankful and we want to.

We got ready and left. All three walked into their respective rooms with frowns on their faces. Actually one we left outside the door to the room, told him to have fun and left his pout-y-ness stand there. They all knew the choice they had made to grumpily enter into God's grace.

(side note: reminds me of a few verses in Colossians 1: We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives,^{[e] 10} so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, ¹¹ being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, ¹² and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you^[f] to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. ¹³ For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, ¹⁴ in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. 

Joyful thanks - joy is not an emotion that can be pushed out of the way by other emotions; no, joy is everlasting, deep seeded happiness/contentment/thankfulness/humility all rolled up in one created by reverent fear of our Father and, IMHO, it can only be truly embraced when you truly understand God's grace. 

We proceed to our room and have an awesome time, as usual, with great worship and lots of cheering for those souls who proclaimed their faith in Jesus by being baptized among their friends and loved ones. And then we picked up our kids, one by one. And each one had a huge smile on their faces... hmmmm, looks like God's grace filled their classrooms with some fun among the truth taught, even though they were reluctantly at first to receive it -that in itself is amazing grace, that he would bless knowing beforehand that we are reluctant to receive his gift.

And as we were saying prayers, one of my children said 'a lesson was learned' and it was: 'I shouldn't be grumpy about having to go somewhere because I'm not there yet and I don't know what it's going to be like.'  I didn't ask, I didn't coax it out and I didn't aid in tailoring the lesson's wordage to make it complete - it was spoken true right out of the mouth of my babe. 

So many miracles of God's grace in this one story, just one of many stories written in our family on Sunday. 

How can we be anything less than joyfully thankful for all God does for us, not the least of which was giving up the physical bond with his son, Jesus, so that we could join in relationship with the Trinity? Anything that strips that joy create the strings that keep us tied to this earth making us that much less attached to God.