Out of the Valley: 7 Days to Processing Brokenness and Getting to HopeSample

There’s a reason that we decided to title today’s devotional “Practicing” gratitude -- because being grateful looks like hard work and a conscious effort we have to make in our daily lives. 

It can look like making lists of gratefulness, or it can look like calling out moments of God’s faithfulness from the past. Maybe that means you pick up the phone to call a friend and have them reminisce on a season in your life when you felt forgotten by God, alone, and like you would never make it out of the woods; walk back through those stories and try to find the ways God showed up in the end, even if it took months (or maybe years) and even if it didn’t look the way you thought it would. I like to call those moments in our lives, “Ebenezer's” of God’s faithfulness. The word, “Ebenezer” is in reference a symbolic reminder that you literally plant into the ground on your journey to mark the spot where God showed up and changed your life irrevocably. We’ve got to become better Ebenezer planters, and that means recounting moments of His promise-keeping! 

It might be helpful right now for you to take the time to decide for yourself what the enemy of gratitude in your own life looks like in this season; this might take a ton of self-reflection to search for the thing that’s standing between you and your praises, but no matter how many faces the enemy of gratitude can take in our lives, there are little victories to be won and new progress that can be made in the day-to-day. It’s almost as if that’s all we ever need when we approach God: gratefulness and our reality. We can be grateful and broken at the same time.

So let’s practice a small prayer of gratitude together! 

God, Thank you for who You have been to us in the past -- we still may not see the purpose for some seasons in our lives, but we know that Your truths declare that You work all things together for good. Thank You for promising to do good for us, to us, and through us and never wavering from that. 

God, I feel broken. And sometimes my brokenness feels more real than any other thing in my life, even You and Your faithfulness. I bring my brokenness to You today and ask for Your help in moving forward -- I can’t do this on my own. Remind me who You are, especially when I forget. 

Thank You for never leaving me even in my brokenness. Thank You for the hope that You stand for and that You designed and brought into my life. Thank You for what You are going to do with even the darkest of seasons I have had to sit in. 

Amen.