You Don’t Need More to Be Grateful | Mornings with Mico

yo yo what's going on good people my name is Miko this is mornings with Miko today we are taking a look again just at some letters that you've written in and using that as inspiration to create content around to create you know our devotion for the day so I'm gonna kick us off with this though right gratitude grows best in the places that have the least in places that feel like lack that are lean you know just not a lot of meat on the bones not a surplus of provision those are the places where gratitude tends to grow the best I got a letter from a guy down in Florida who spent most of his beard so far just a lot of months with um well you know what he would describe as nothing you know no money on the books he didn't say anything about visits or anything but you know being locked up that kind of comes with it as well probably not getting visits or maybe he is I'm not sure I don't want to put words in his mouth but he just spoke about just just having lack you know just not being in the best situation and I'm sure many of you can relate you know whether you can relate specifically right now or maybe it's a season that you have been through or maybe you got a bunkie or selly or you know you you you around people who can relate to that you know firsthand and um but he wrote and he mentioned that he had just recently got a canteen job and was super excited man his letter wasn't a complaint about the months before his letter was more so just Thanksgiving for the provision now in something as simple as this canteen job he wrote that he trusts God to provide in all areas of his life right like he's this is something that's developed over time just this trust and then this canteen job shows up or whatever and it's just I don't know he's just posited and you know just grateful for it he even went as far as pointing out to the scripture in Bible when it talks about the birds you know the one when Jesus is saying how the ones who don't sow or reap and they still get fed and then he wrote a line that I've read like a dozen times he said it's funny I don't have much financially I do have my life that God has preserved and that's just one of those like humbling statements to be able to no matter your circumstance to just posture yourself in gratitude for that right I know for me there have

been seasons or times when like I find myself really wrestling with just things not going the way that I would hope they would go and just feeling like the bottom was falling out in life and for me I've also had to like press my rack I remember most the last time I was in a halfway house and I just began to thank God for the simple things like you know I got to talk to my son today like man God it sounded like getting smart you know the line for child wasn't super long and they like things like that I just found myself just choosing to just thank God for these things and it completely shifted my heart and all of that I want to paint bring up the scripture that he mentioned and not just reference I actually want to read it it's in Matthew chapter 6 starting at verse 26 and it says look at the birds of the sky they don't sow or reap or gather into barns yet your heavenly Father feeds them aren't you worth more than they and I think contentment is one of those things like it's easy to like preach I mean there's so many passages that talks about contentment so it's easy to just sit up here behind a mic and just talk about you know contentment but I'll have to be the first to admit that it's sometimes it's it's it's pretty hard to live it's hard to live a life of contentment Paul talks about learning contentment whether he has little or whether he has much I think for us a lot of times we you know it's especially experiencing having little or what feels like nothing we can do the math and and when we do the math it's like okay what we have then taking into consideration what we're lacking and then comparison kicking in seeing what everyone else has and ultimately that math doesn't come back in our favor you know the math ain't math right you know the math is coming back to more than likely it's gonna come back to not enough but in his letter what I see with him is he did a different math right he started taking into account different things he started to take into account he counted his life he counted a meal he counted a God who preserved him through everything that should have ended him right he shared in the past just to store his story in life and things that he's been through but this time he he's he's not he's not looking back on everything that he's been

through seeing like how God has preserved him throughout all of that and how God has provided for him now and where he arrived was a place of gratitude, man, this place of contentment. And if you pay attention, like his story, his contentment didn't stem from this place of abundance. A lot of times we feel like, well, if I have this and I have that and I have this, or once all of these things are going good, then I can get to this place of contentment. But for him, it stemmed from a place of what many of us would call lack or at least lean, you know, like not, not, not plenty. I think that, that usually, um, that's how it works though. That, that, that contentment grows from this place of lack or this place of leanness. It's not meant to grow from this place of abundance, right? Because then you can begin to just attribute, you know, contentment with having a lot, but contentment is being at a place of peace, whether you have a lot or whether you don't. And specifically in a space of, you know, in a place of scarcity where it strips away all of those resources and, and it strips away the illusion that you were ever even able to provide for yourself anyway, or that, or that, um, that, that, that, that the provision in itself was what was keeping you at a place of peace where there are people who have plenty and still lack peace, still lack contentment. Right. And I think what, what, what, what a lot of times as we posture ourselves and we grow in contentment in these seasons of lack, it, it, it gets us to this place where we, we, we can acknowledge that we're simply the birds in God's hands that they talk about here in Matthew six. You don't need to be more grateful. You don't, or no, you don't need more to be grateful, right? It's not that, that, that if I have more than I can be grateful, you don't need more to be grateful, but you need eyes to see what you do have and a humble heart to value it. Like, that's what, that's where this contentment comes from. I want to, I want to leave you with a question. What is the place in your life currently a place of lack or leanness, right? Where maybe there's just not a surplus that you're experiencing right now. And what has God preserved in the middle of all of it? Not, not, not, not pretending like you, you, you're not experiencing what you're experiencing, but I challenge us to just look a little deeper, look a little closer and acknowledge, okay, but what is God doing in this? What has God preserved in all of this, right? Whether it's relationships, whether it's joy, if it's peace, maybe it's just sanity. I don't know. I don't know what that is for you, but today I want us to lean in and, um, and seek that thing out and choose to see it, notice it and give thanks for it.

All right. Let me pray for us. Father, teach us, teach us to do the right math, take into consideration all that, um, that you're doing in the midst of what may feel like lack, or may feel like, um, just having nothing or whatever the case is. Lord, may, may our eyes be open. May our hearts be humbled, Lord, to embrace what it is you're doing in it. Father, may it grow us in gratitude, may it grow us in contentment, and may it grow us in your likeness to be more like you, to see things the way you see things, and to value you as our father, as our Lord, as our provider, that you are with us in all things. We thank you. We pray all this in your son, Jesus' name. Amen.