Does it ever seem surprising to you that God made the Israelites wander in the wilderness for forty years because they grumbled? My kids may have spent thirty minutes in their rooms for griping, but forty years? What a severe discipline! Ouch, it seems harsh.
God clearly is not pleased with grumbling. It does not make Him happy to hear His children complain constantly. Sound like any children you know?
Being grateful is a choice. It’s not a feeling dependent on our circumstances, as we can clearly see in the Pilgrims’ lives. They believed that God was in control – “Providence,” they called it. They responded to the circumstances of their lives with a perspective that said, “God has allowed this for our good.”
John Piper has written in his book A Godward Life: “Remembering our dependence on past mercies kindles gratitude. Gratitude is past oriented dependence; faith is future-oriented dependence. Both forms of dependence are humble, self-forgetting and God-exalting. If we do not believe that we are deeply dependent on God for all that have or hope to have, then the very spring of gratitude and faith runs dry.”
Gratitude is what we express when we take time every Thanksgiving Day to remember God’s past mercies and provisions and then pause to thank Him for them.
The stories of those who have gone before us inspire our faith. When we consider those great saints listed in the “Hall of Faith” in Hebrews 11 or our Pilgrim forefathers or those men and women we know in recent times who have modeled great dependence on God, our faith is stretched and increased. Their example of placing all hope in Jesus Christ encourages us to do the same.
Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Those who sailed on Mayflower knew their Bible well. They were convinced that God existed and could only be pleased through faith (Hebrews 11:6).
Someone has said, “Faith is a firm conviction, a personal surrender, and a conduct inspired by your surrender.” The Pilgrims were totally surrendered to God, and they believed that He was leading them to the New World. So they went, confident that He would guide and provide.
