It has to matter

        "It has to matter."
        Those wise words from my husband have stuck with me these past few weeks.  Today, I just heard him repeat them again:  "It has to matter."
        You see, a few weeks back, discouragement was dogging my steps.  Nothing big causing it--just some relatively little disappointments, minor frustrations,  small setbacks.  In other words, life.
        Yet for some reason, I suppose the cumulative effect of it all was to wear me down and result in a loss of perspective.  Discouragement causes amnesia...we forget God's presence, His extravagant goodness, His amazing grace, His infinite love, His continual care.
       And tragically, replacing our trust in our Good, Good Shepherd is an ugly "what have You done for me lately attitude."  Ugh!  We can be staring at an endless ocean of His blessings...yet all we can see is a tiny, shrinking tidal puddle of our "problems."
       I desperately needed a perspective correction.  Maybe another way to say this is: I needed to recognize my selfishness and sin and repent!  Sure, we can't help how we feel...but we sure can help how we respond to our feelings.  We can help what words we will speak to our hearts--whether words of Truth or of deception.  We choose our response--whether of faith or fear, of gratitude or grumbling.       This is why the gift of other believers in our lives is so essential.  Sometimes we can't see it.  We lose the forest for the trees, the ocean for the puddle, and we need a brother or sister to remind us of what's really true.  Of Who's really in control.  Of how blessed we really are.
       That's what my dear husband did for me a few weeks back.  He reminded me of what I knew...but had shamefully forgotten:  God's goodness.  His forgiveness.  His love.  His faithfulness.  And all His extraordinary gifts in our lives.  And then he showed me the picture he keeps on his cell phone as his background photo: Janie lying in that ICU.  Unconscious.  Unresponsive.  Tubes everywhere.  
       "It has to matter," he said.  We cannot forget what great, wondrous things God has done in our lives...it has to matter today.  We cannot forget.  We dare not forget.
        He said the same thing today, as he was sharing about a bout with discouragement which had assailed him today.  But he had remembered.  Like David in the Old Testament, my husband "strengthened himself in the Lord."(I Sam.30:6)  He had reminded himself of God's Truth.  Of God's utterly underserved grace.  Of answered prayer.  Of food on the table.  Of friends to love.  Of children and family to cherish.  Of health and strength.   Of the bloody cross and the empty tomb.  Of costly grace and glorious freedom in Christ.
        As Tim Keller says, we need to know and remember "both how lost and how loved we are."  When we recall--as John Newton shared at the very end of his life--that we are great sinners but that Christ is an even greater Savior, we are transformed from people of discouragement to people of overflowing thankfulness.  Rather than being absorbed with toxic self-preoccupation, we are filled with love and happy other-centeredness.   And oh my, that is a place of such freedom and joy!
       "It has to matter"--what Christ has accomplished for you on the cross.  What God has done in your life.  What the Lord has so generously and undeservedly given you--
        It.  Has. To. Matter.
       To God be the glory.