Live Thankfully Week Three: Chara

It is our last week of practice, and the word of the week is chara. This should sound pretty familiar. It is a derivative of some of the words we have already explored:

Charis - grace / gift

Eucharisteo - giving thanks

Charizomai homologeo - acknowledging grace

Chara means JOY! Specifically chara means joy, gladness, or joy received. This word shows up 59 times in the New Testament. In the writings of the Apostle Paul, chara is often found with another word: pleroo.

Pleroo means being filled to the fullest, abounding. It is the fullest of full!

So paired together, chara and pleroo convey being filled to the fullest with joy. FULL joy. Deep, abiding, abounding joy.

Through acknowledgement and thanks for our good gifts, most especially remembering and giving thanks for the good gift of God’s grace through Christ, we find deep chara joy.

One of Jesus’ last directions for us was to remember and give thanks. We see this echoing through the years through the sacrament of Communion (Eucharist, Lord’s Supper).

Remembering and giving thanks brings joy.

How else can we maximize our joy? Our personal study this week focuses on things that bring joy to believers: redemption, hope, God’s Word, prayer, giving, and more!

Enter this last week of practice in thankfulness and praise. Rejoice in these days that God has made!

Suggested Practice:

One of the things that brings us joy as believers is giving. What is something that you personally or your family could give this week? Maybe it is giving your time to a service project. Maybe it is money. Maybe an encouraging word. An apology. A thank you.

Choose something to give. through giving we can learn to live thankfully and generously.

#livethankfully

Live Thankfully Week Two: Eucharisteo

Eucharisteo.

There are some pretty big concepts surrounding thankfulness in the Bible. First of all, thankfulness is not passive. It is a mental or verbal recognition and expression of acknowledgement and appreciation. Let me say that again.

Thankfulness is recognition and expression of acknowledgement and appreciation.

Recognition, expression, acknowledgement, and appreciation. Of God's person. God's blessings. God's sovereignty. God's grace.

Anyone have bells going off? Ding ding ding -- I'm remembering some of those words from this past week!

Thankfulness is a repsonse to God's grace!

Okay, so are you ready for that big concept way to express thankfulness? There are two main versions found in the New Testament:

1. Remember charis? Now we have charizomai homologeo. Meaning grace acknowledgement and confession. Our prayers of confession and thankfulness are one way we acknowledge and appreciate God's grace.

2. We also see Jesus breaking bread with the disciples in an act of thanks. This word may sound pretty familiar: eucharisteo. Very literally it means "good grace." When it appears in the context of Jesus eating with his disciples, it means "giving thanks." Eucharisteo is derived from charis. I can mentally almost see it enveloping charis. Jesus sees the bread and cup, counts it as a good grace, and gives thanks for it.

This week, we will explore why we should be thankful, what happens when you are thankful and the dangers of thanklessness.

Right now, check out this video from Ann Voskamp to frame your week:

Suggested Practice:

Keep a gratitude journal for the week. Have each family member write down 3 things each day for which they are thankful. If this seems like a chore, remember that you are actually training your mind toward gratitude!

Be creative with this! Maybe make a paper chain for each family member and watch the links grow the chain. Or keep personal journals. List on a piece of paper and keep in your Bible or taped to the bathroom mirror. Make a family poster to hang on the wall or refrigerator. Cut out leaves to make a gratitude wreath. However you do it, look for the light together!

#livethankfully

Live Thankfully Week One: Charis

Charis.

Sweet grace, undeserved benefit. God’s merciful kindness toward us. The root of gratefulness and joy.

Thankfulness grows when we remember stories of God’s grace.. in the Bible and in our lives.

Jesus tells so many stories about grace, and we see grace flowing through all of Scripture. God’s grace is essentially the foundation of the Gospel.

“For God saved us and called us to live a holy life. He did this, not because we deserved it, but because that was his plan from before the beginning of time -- to show us his grace through Christ Jesus.” - 2 Timothy 1:9

Stories of grace are woven together throughout Scripture. Everything that happens from the first page through the resurrection of Jesus is pointing toward the gracious redemption of humankind.

So for our first week, we are going to be reading from the story of Esther. A little background: This took place in Persia which was the dominant superpower in the Middle East at that point in history (483 B.C.). The Medo-Persian Empire spanned the provinces of Media and Persia as well as the previous empires of Assyria and Babylon. Esther lived in the capitol city of Susa.

Esther was a young Jewish woman. The Jewish people were a displaced people group. They had been in captivity in Babylon and then freed by a Persian King. Some of them chose to stay in Persia. It was home. They were established. It was potentially dangerous to go back to Jerusalem, a place many of them had never known. Esther’s family had stayed in Susa where the Jewish people were a minority.

As we read this week, look for the things that stick out as God’s sovereignty and grace toward His people.

Suggested Practice:
Have each family member think of a story of God's grace in his or her own life. Not the story of a friend or a Bible story; something that is personal to each one.

Write out the story or draw a picture of it. As a family, take the time to share each story. The story doesn't have to be long or complicated; just something simple that showed God's grace.

Help any children to understand what God's race is. One way to explain grace is something you did not earn or deserve, but it was given to you anyway. Ask each other for God stories. Ask how they know God is real.

#livethankfully

Live Thankfully: A 3 Week Practice of Biblical Thankfulness

For this Thanksgiving season, I have written an exploration and practice of Biblical thankfulness. Each Thursday leading up to Thanksgiving, I will post a blog and suggested personal study for the week. Check back for other resources as we work through what Biblical thankfulness looks like and how we develop it in our lives.

Grace is pervasive in Scripture.

What I mean by that is that story after story in the Bible shows God's grace. Grace goes hand in hand with gratitude. Even the words in Greek go together!
The word for grace or gift is charis and from that word is derived eucharisteo which means giving thanks or very literally "good grace."

I love that there are many words in Scripture that, in the original Greek or Hebrew, immediately imply something when read. The original reader, or hearer, sees the word and is immediately reminded of some concept, other word, or other piece of Scripture. For instance, there is a word that David uses in his psalms to cry out for help that implies that God has already answered and sent rescue before the psalmist cried out. So in that case, a call of help implies that rescue is already coming!

In this situation, when the reader sees charis a response of eucharisteo is implicit. They simply go together. Grace and gratitude. And likewise, when we see eucharisteo, it can be inferred that charis came before. When we see gratitude, we know that there was a good gift received.

And so beautiful is this language that it doesn't stop with grace and gratitude.

We see another word derived from charis and eucharisteo... chara: joy.

Even the way these words developed show us this process of grace, gratitude, and joyfulness. We don't skip straight to the point of joy. Sometimes we seem to think that once we have joy, then we can be thankful. That's not how it works. Thankfulness in response to grace is what creates joy.

Thankfulness as a response to grace is what creates deep, lasting joy.

So maybe like me you are at the point of asking, "How do I grow thankfulness?" That is what we will work through. I don't have the complete answer.

But. We have been given grace and promised joy... It is our turn to step up and create habits of gratitude. Let's dive into this together.

#livethankfully