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The PasswordOur son, Garrett, recently wrote and shared this teaching and I was so inspired by it that I asked His permission to share it with you here. I hope you receive the encouragement from it that I did.
By Garrett Harper
In our lives almost everything we do requires a password – social media, bank accounts, music downloads, even just to get into our computer.
It is how we access the most important, protected information. Even children understand this concept - “What's the password?” - they ask when playing games. We are told that our password needs to be complicated and unique but more often than not we make it something that we can remember easily, i.e. my daughters name and birthday, “Vivi72115.”
Psalm 100 talks about one of the easiest passwords - “Thank you.” It is a very recognized verse – verse 4: “Enter his gates with thanksgiving, go into his courts with praise.” I have heard and encountered that verse many times before, but it never occurred to me to picture it as a literal gate until I was reading this passage in The Message version where it says “Enter with the password: Thank you! Make yourselves at home, talking praise. Thank Him. Worship Him.”
I deal heavily with computers and technology on a daily basis, so when the verse said “password” a light bulb went off. But even thinking back to before the techno-era, when they used passwords for physical places and you could not enter with out saying the correct combination of words – hence “pass-word.” It all seems very obvious once it is laid out on paper, but think of how it relates to your spiritual life. Do you use the “password” when entering the kingdom of the Lord? Do you start your day with thanking God for who he is? David also said in that passage in verse 3, “Acknowledge that the Lord is God! He made us and we are his.” How often to we take the time to thank God for who he is and what he has done in our lives before we ask something of him?
Think about this: The Bible says “out of the heart, the mouth speaks,” right? So, if that applies in all situations, if it is a blanket statement, that would mean that it applies when we communicate with God. So, if the first thing we talk with him about is our problems or how we need his help, we do not have our priorities right; our heart is out of sync, it is out of line, out of tune. How then do we re-tune, re-sync our heart? I like to use three words, “Attitude of Gratitude.” I am not sure where I heard it from, but it has helped in many situations where the words out of my mouth are sour and ungrateful. If we constantly refocus our hearts to have an grateful attitude in all situations, then when we communicate with the Lord, we will overflow with gratitude for our Savior! Our Hearts will be in the right place, our words will be uplifting and we will be in-tune with the Holy Spirit. We will be able to commune with our loving Father and give him the praise and honor he deserves for all that he has done for us.
Copyright © 2008-2015 Debbie Reynolds Harper
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