All Things Skin, Wellness & Faith

BREADCRUMBS OF FAITH DEVOTIONAL 34: Correcting Your Spiritual Vision with God Glasses & See Blessings in Every Circumstance

• Natasha Dias

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We explore the transformative practice of turning complaints into thanksgiving and learning to live with gratitude in all circumstances. This spiritual discipline helps us see God's blessings even in challenging situations, closing doors to the enemy and opening our eyes to divine goodness.

• The problem of "blurred vision" that prevents us from seeing the blessings right in front of us
• How complaints create openings for the enemy to gain footholds in our lives
• The concept of "God glasses" that help us see blessings in every circumstance
• Practical examples of reframing complaints: seeing jobs as provision, cars as transportation, and quiet seasons as preparation
• Biblical foundations for gratitude in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 and Psalm 67
• How complaining has become normalized conversation in our culture
• Practical ways to live in the land of thanks: morning praise, gratitude journaling, blessing jars, and worship
• The challenge to end each day by reflecting on God's goodness
• Understanding that even on our worst days, God is still good

Today I encourage you to put on your God glasses, see the blessings, speak the thanks, and live in the land of gratitude. Keep your heart soft, keep your vision clear, and worship out loud because our God is working.


Speaker 1:

Hey, there, you're tuned into another episode of All Things Skin Wellness and Faith, a podcast where you'll learn simple ways to implement skincare and wellness techniques from a holistic approach. On this podcast, we'll explore practical ways to address skin health and overall holistic spiritual well-being, while deepening your faith. I'm your host, natasha Diaz, a licensed holistic esthetician, day spa owner and a faithful believer and follower of Christ, and it's time to get ready to get encouraged and empowered as we dive into All Things Skin wellness and faith.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to today's episode of Break Clumbs of Faith by All Things Skin, wellness and Faith. Today, I want to bring you a message of encouragement that I pray meets you in a quiet moment of reflection. Today, we're talking about turning our complaints into thanksgiving and learning how to live in the land of thanks, which I think is a very important message that we all need to reflect on from time to time. I think it's something that we're well aware of and if we're in our Bible, if we're in our word, that we know about it. But I think it's also one of the things that can just get pushed to the back of our minds sometimes. So today I just want to take a little time to just bring that to the forefront of our minds and to just focus on that. I really feel it's time that we start walking through life with a blurred vision. I feel like we're missing the blessings that are right in front of us because we've been so focused on what we're missing instead of what we're already being given. And there's no condemnation in this message. Again, this is a place that I myself slip into more frequently than I like. It's something that the Holy Spirit has brought to my attention, and the good thing about these podcasts is, as I record them and spit them out to you, it often starts off as a reflection that's been brought to my attention, a lesson that I'm walking through and I'm learning, so that I can in turn turn it over to you. So yeah, let's talk about it. Sometimes I feel like we need just to have a new spiritual lens. A new lens or a spiritual lens I kind of coined this as God glasses.

Speaker 2:

What happens is, I feel like we'll just say things like I'm tired of this job. Why is my car always breaking down? Just little complaints that we don't really realize can easily get out of control. We'll say things like you know, my life just doesn't feel full, I feel empty. But I feel like if we just take a second to just kind of reflect on these things a little bit deeper, we could see the beauty of God in everything. I feel like we'd realize that that job is actually God's provision, that that car that we have, that we complain about, is getting us where we need to go, that that quiet season where we just don't feel full or we may feel alone or aka in the wilderness, is actually a season, a quiet season. That's God's pruning and preparation.

Speaker 2:

In 1 Thessalonians 5, 16 through 18, it says rejoice only. It tells us to pray without ceasing and to give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. I think that scripture kind of really sums it up and just kind of gives us a point to reflect on and everything, no matter what the circumstances, that we need to reflect and rejoice and just give thanks and be prayerful and thankful about everything that we have. I think that if we flip these complaints and look at them as blessings, that will open the floodgates of heaven and that we'll actually be able to be blessed even more than what we can understand. We have to train our spiritual eyes to see that there's a blessing in everything. I think that a lot of times those blessings are hidden, but if we dig and we search for them, I feel that we'll find them. It might not be what we wanted, but it's there.

Speaker 2:

And God's word says in Romans 12, 21,. It says to do not be overcome by evil, excuse me, but to overcome evil with good. Evil, excuse me, but to overcome evil with good. Something else that we also have to realize is that, ultimately, if we're looking at these situations and we're complaining about them rather than finding the blessing in them, then we're feeding the kingdom of darkness and allowing it to thrive more in our lives. In this scripture it tells us to overcome evil by doing good. So what happens when we have a situation and we dig into it deep and we kind of look at what the hidden message is? We can just go to the father and we can just say okay, you know, in this season I may not be a% happy in that job, but what is it, lord, that you're showing me in this season? And when we reflect on that goodness, then ultimately what we're doing is we're shutting the enemy down instead of glorifying him and giving him more lead way to kind of wiggle and work in our lives. For the Bible also says do not give the enemy a foothold. So when we complain we don't realize that we're actually opening a door, opening a crack, even if it's just a tiny one, even if it's just a second. We're opening the door for the enemy to come in, and we know that the enemy doesn't play fair. Once he sneaks in, once he sees that little crack, he's reaching back, he's calling back to all of his minions and he's like I got a foot in, let's, you know, another one, come in and another one, and before you know it, you're overcome with these thoughts of just, you know, anxiety and just all kinds of negative thinking and things that slowly creep in and they take over.

Speaker 2:

Now, one thing also I want to think about is how often, if we look at it from a perspective for those of us that have children, that is I realize all of us listening to this may not have children, but this is also another perspective that the Holy Spirit brought to my attention and if you think about it like this, how often do our own children ask for more, not realizing the value of what they already have, ask for more, not realizing the value of what they already have? So many times I'm thinking of my own children when I think of this situation, and my kids are always comparing themselves like oh, we don't have this, like so-and-so, so-and-so's parents does this, so-and-so has that, so-and-so has this gaming system, so-and-so has an in-ground pool and we only have, you know, just this little dinky pool. I think that we need to look at how much we've been given, and I had to reflect upon this myself as I'm speaking to my children, the Holy Spirit reminded me that the Father deals with me the same way. How we sit there and we say that, oh, we don't have, you know and I'm guilty of this one too oh, my car. You know, maybe the AC stopped working but, like I reflected on before, the fact that you have a car, the fact that you're not at the bus stop, the fact that I have a car that is, you know, overall pretty much decent, just because it has one little mishap that can be fixed maybe not easily fixed, but God has given me the provision to fix it I need to be thankful and rejoice in the fact that he has given me a car. He has given me a car that's fairly decent. He's given me a car that is now for two plus years, is paid off, is still running well, you know, I mean there's so many different things that we just need to look at and embrace from a positive lens rather than a negative lens and, like I said before, he's given us so much.

Speaker 2:

We need to reflect on little things, and some of these things are not little things, I mean just things like he gives us the breath in our lungs, there are people that are in hospitals, you know, that are on respirators and different things like that, people that are, you know, in hospice, people that you know are on their last breath. And on the other side of that is, these people are people that may not even be saved, may not even realize that they're going to spend their eternity in a very dark place. We should be thankful more than anything that we have our salvation and that we're working out our salvation with fear and trembling, and that one day hopefully, we're all living in this posture we get to go before the Father and we get to live with him. You know, in eternity Not everybody has that privilege, which is another. It takes me on another tangent that you know how we need to go out there and we need to be doing our walk. As Christians, we need to be going and delivering the gospel and things like that for people in that situation. That's a little bit off the subject. Excuse me, for a minute I digress. But to get back on task, we need to be thankful for the things we have. You know, roof over our heads grace for our sin, joy in our sorrow. I mean, I personally, I go out and I work with the homeless and that in itself, as I say, roof over our heads, with the homeless, and that in itself, as I say, roof over our heads, is such a humbling situation, because to go out and to see people that are living in tents and living without real means to survive, that are depending on churches and, you know, other communities and things to provide for their needs, where we have God that is so graciously provided for our needs I mean we may not live in million-dollar mansions, or even those of us that may not even own our homes, but the fact that we have a roof over our heads. I was just thinking about this the other day as I saw a post on Facebook Now that the warm season is coming in, we have extreme temperatures of extreme heat and extreme heat, and it's just funny because the time is going by so fast.

Speaker 2:

I feel like, personally, it was just a few months ago that we were saying, oh, it's so cold, I can't wait for summer. And now the summer is here and we're like, oh, it's so hot, this heat just needs to break. We need rain, we need thunderstorm, we need this, we need that. No, we need to be thankful in every season For when the winter comes, we need to be thankful that we have warm winter coats, that we have hot coffee, hot chocolate, things to warm us up.

Speaker 2:

We have cars that have heat. We go to work to that job that we may not particularly care for, but we go from our warm car to our warm job, back again to our warm home, and it's the same thing in the summertime. It's like, yes, it's hot, but I mean you get in your car, you go in your air conditioned car and even if you don't have air conditioning in your car I'm just saying that because my car has recently, you know, the air conditioning has kicked the bucket temporarily, but I'm in the process of having that taken care of. So, looking at that situation, I'm thankful for that. It's like my air conditioner is broken but I have the means to have it repaired and have it fixed. And again, I have that means to do that so easily because the Lord has so graciously blessed me to pay off my car that I no longer have a payment, so I don't really have to stress about oh, my goodness, I have to make this car payment and now I have to fix the AC. No, he is provided. He's Jehovah Jireh. He's our provider, he's Jehovah Rapha. He provides us with healing. So we just have so much to be thankful for.

Speaker 2:

And again, like I reflected on previously, another big one is grace for our sin. For even in these moments where we fall short and we complain because complaining is a sin all we have to do is go before the Father and repent and he so graciously forgives us. And the Bible says you know, it speaks about you know us forgiving others. I think about how many times it's so hard for us to forgive others, but look at how many times he forgives us. The Bible says how many times should we forgive someone who forgives against us? And I think it's Peter that asked. Yes, it is Peter. He says is it seven times? And no, jesus says it's 70 times, 70 times seven, which is like over 490 times. And in other words, what he's saying is it's not so much about the number, it's more so saying that we just need to forgive repeatedly, without you know thinking about the number, because this is how the father deals with us, and so we really just want to try and step away from that complaining.

Speaker 2:

Complaining says that you know that God is a liar, that his word is not true and it just it grieves the Holy Spirit. You know, we are really called to be different. We're called to be thankful. The word says do not be conformed to the patterns of this world. And as I was reflecting on that scripture, one thing I noticed is that complaining in the world today is done so casually that we don't even realize when we're complaining. We think of complaining just as common conversation.

Speaker 2:

And I think about that as I was at work and people came in. People came in and I'm asking them you know, hi, how are you? And they're like oh, it's brutal out there. You know it's so hot, oh, this heat just needs to break. You know, thank you for the heat, because if it wasn't for the heat, then we wouldn't have the flowers, we wouldn't have the plants, we wouldn't have the vegetation to grow. You know that vegetation supplies oxygen, it's a food supply.

Speaker 2:

There's so much blessing is what I want to reflect on, and we just have to look for it instead of being so quick to just complain about every little thing. And really what I want to bring you to is that we're called to be different. What I want us to reflect on is, again, the scripture that says do not be conformed to the patterns of this world. I believe that's in Romans. But, yes, we don't want to be conformed to complaining and just being in a place where we're just nagged and we complain about every little thing. The word says in James 1, 17, that every good and perfect thing is a gift from above, coming down from the father of lights. Again, the Bible just speaks repeatedly and it's very, you know, adamant about not complaining. It's very adamant about the gifts that we have, the blessings that are bestowed upon us. When we practice Thanksgiving, we shift from entitlement to awe, from lack to abundance.

Speaker 2:

And another scripture that I was reading that was actually brought to me this morning before I even decided to do this podcast, was Psalm 67. This was brought to my attention today in one of my devotionals that I read. I believe it was from the app on Dwell, but I just want to read it to you really quick in a message translation, because it really depicts a posture of thanksgiving. It reads God, mark us with grace and blessing, smile. The whole country will see how you work and the godless nations will see how you save God. Let people thank you and enjoy you. Let people thank you and enjoy you. Let all people, let all far-flung people become happy and shout their happiness because you judge them fair and square. You tend the far-flung peoples, god. Let people thank you and enjoy you. Let all people thank and enjoy you. Earth display your exuberance. You mark us with blessing, o God, our God. You mark us with blessing, o, god, our God. You mark us with blessing. O God, earth's four corners honor him.

Speaker 2:

Now, if you listen to this psalm, we know that when the Bible repeats something, when it repeats it twice, it's really calling our attention to it. If we go back on this scripture, how many times is it repetitious? How many times that it says let all people thank you and enjoy you. God, let all people thank you and enjoy you. It's really focusing on how we need to give thanks. This Psalm is a praise explosion. It reminds us that God is with us in his blessing. He's deserving of our thanks, not because everything is perfect, but because he is good and he is present.

Speaker 2:

Living in the land of thanks is just also another thing that I wanted to focus on in this podcast today, and it's like really let's focus on how do we do that. How do we live in the land of things. I like to give you examples of how we can not only just read scripture, but how can we apply it, how can we walk this out in our everyday walk. And a few things I wanted to focus on is just starting our day with praise. Even in the posture of prayer I often use or not often use but the acronym PRAY comes to mind, and it's PRAY, p-r-a-y, it's praise, repent, ask and then yield, and the first P of that is praise. So start your day with praise, not with problems. This is a day that the Lord has made and the Bible tells us to rejoice and to be glad in it. That's in Psalm 118, 24. You can start off just meditating on the scripture like that.

Speaker 2:

You can journal. Like I've mentioned to you before in previous podcasts, journaling is a great way to just write down things and kind of reflect. It allows us to see our growth. It allows us to see all the different things that the Lord has brought us through Writing your blessings down daily. Another thing that I've spoke on in previous podcasts is my book of. It's not book of blessings, it's actually it's a book of things, and basically, after I write all my prayers down on my prayer wall. I write them down on sticky notes. I've told you guys. I've told you guys this before after those prayers have been answered, what I do is I take the sticky notes, I put them in this little book of thanks and I just write down a quick thank you prayer, just saying thank you and acknowledging him and praising him for the good that he's done. So, yes, definitely write down your blessings daily.

Speaker 2:

Another way another pastor in an old church I used to go to. Another way another pastor in an old church I used to go to. He had us do a blessings jar, just writing down your blessings. Every time you're blessed with something, no matter how small or how big, write it down on a piece of paper, stick it in this jar and at the end of a period of a year or six months or whatever may have you, you can kind of go back through this jar and you can see, through whatever period of time, all the ways that the Lord has blessed you. And I really, really like these things because it's ways to just, you know, tangibly, see how good God is and to reflect on his goodness in the tangible way.

Speaker 2:

Another thing we can do is turn every complaint into a thank you prayer. Instead of saying I hate this season, say, lord, I thank you that you're still working in this season. And another important one is worship. I love worship. I love worship music. I've actually compiled a playlist of some of my favorite songs and when I feel like those negative thoughts starting to creep into my mind, you would be surprised how having a list of your favorite worship songs and just playing them totally brings you into a posture of praise and thanksgiving. It's a great way to just again bring everything from the negative back to the positive. Psalms 145.3 says great is the Lord and greatly he is to be praised.

Speaker 2:

So I just want to challenge you as we close up. I'd just like to leave you with a challenge, and what that challenge is is to just basically take a moment, take a moment to reflect, take a moment to just each at the end of each day, to just look at the goodness of God. Take a moment at the end of your night, even if it's just. I mean I'm not a hundred percent good at this one, but I like to start my day with prayers. I'm trying to focus more on ending my day days with prayers and to have them be more meaningful and have them be you know, have a little bit more depth to them.

Speaker 2:

But this Christian walk, like I said, we walk it out. We walk it out with fear and trembling. Each day that goes by, we strive to be better, but what I want you to do is to start living like someone who knows that they're blessed, because even on your worst day, god is still good. Even when life is dry, his river of grace still flows. Even when you can't see the full picture, his hand is still painting it. So today, I encourage you to put on your God glasses, see the blessings, speak the thanks and live in the land of gratitude. All right, guys, I'm going to wrap it up for there today on that note, but until next time, I want to encourage you to keep your heart soft, keep your vision clear and to worship out loud because our God is working. So that's it for today's episode and, as always, I just want to remind you also, additionally, to be blessed and go out and be a blessing. All right, I love you, guys, until the next episode. That's it for today, ciao.