Being Hijacked at Gunpoint
When we moved to South Africa to help plant a church in 1995, Johannesburg was a war zone with more than a thousand car hijacking per month at gunpoint. A year later it was my turn. My 4-year-old daughter Elly and I were held up in a hijacking attempt in our own driveway on a Friday night.
I can still see clearly the man with the pistol, his two accomplices flanking both sides of the car wanting to steal our vehicle. It was awful. I scolded him from inside the locked car and laid on the horn. No help came. It was truly a miracle that we were not both shot dead right there in our driveway, but it was not our time to go. We survived.
But when you experience trauma, the trauma is not over with the experience. I had to relive it a thousand times, retell the story a thousand times. This compulsive reflection backward on traumatic incidents opens up a huge key to the discipline of being th(i)nkful. Your reflection can make the original incident better or worse.
Objective Experience vs. Subjective Experience
I stumbled over an interesting concept recently while reading The Happiness Advantage, by Shawn Achor. He shares how there are many ways to help promote happiness in our lives. Oddly enough, happiness does not come from outside stimuli but is built from within our brains depending on how we shape our brain’s neural pathways. We can create happiness even within difficult circumstances. His use of the term “post-traumatic growth” especially fascinated me.
When a person goes through a traumatic experience, that person experiences the happening objectively at first. But the later subjective re-experiencing of the happening is what I want to focus on. We relive notable experiences many, many times. It is in this subjective replay of the original experience where the key lies. You can choose how you relive an experience.
My Own Battle
As I reeled through my own subjective re-experiencing of the hijacking over and over, one of the keys to healing was to rehearse my gratitude for how God helped me through every part of that test.
- God had prepared me earlier in the day by rehearsing a lot of verses about fear with a girl I was counseling;
- Neither Elly nor I were touched, hurt, shot, or killed;
- They didn’t get our car (that time);
- We had just filled up the car – they didn’t steal a car with a full tank!
- We had a short-term missionary’s bags in the back – they didn’t steal a car with a luggage bonus!
- God caused them fear and confusion when our gate started to close on its timer;
- Elly and I got in the house and locked up while they were regrouping;
- Although they jumped the wall and tried to get in, they never did;
- We were privileged to be attacked by the evil one because God was transforming the lives of people through the gospel;
- We had a sense that God was right there with us.
God’s grace in helping me to be th(i)nkful as I reflected on the trauma provided me with post traumatic growth. My faith-walk with the Lord actually grew stronger.
A Challenge
As we leave 2018 and move into the brand new year of 2019 in a few days, I would like to challenge you to make a simple “thank you” part of your living. As you process daily things, as well as work through things of the past, insert a simple “thank you.” Let God help you to develop eyes to see not only all His blessings, for which you can be grateful, but also to see His designs in the dark places, because He is there too. And having His hand hold you through a valley of shadows is a cause for deeper gratitude as you get to know His ways, and heart, and character, and purposes more deeply.
At first you may feel awkward and clumsy in how to express this thankfulness, but don’t give up. Keep on forging that pattern of looking for things to think thanks for. It will bring a cupboard full of blessings for you. Just image this time next year reading through a notebook of daily things that you were th(i)nkful for. I can promise you that you will be edified and encouraged. Life will serve you hard things in 2019, no doubt, but as you move those things through the sieve of giving thanks to God for everything, you will grow.
“May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father,
who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.” Colossians 1:11-12
in the wrong order. We tend to look first at our circumstances and try to interpret God’s love and care, which seems missing.
The strength of being th(i)nkful can only come from trust in a sovereign Creator and God that is good and worthy.
This is a visual of what happens when we constantly complain.
Jane Gibb, a dear co-worker of mine, shared with me how she was struggling with some stress at a particular time. She decided to engage thinking thanks about that situation, and as she cultivated the thought pattern of looking for things to give thanks for in her situation and started writing things down, the stress lessened. She benefited. She was putting God’s Word into practice by renewing her mind.
Truth has no elements or shades of unreality. Something that is true is not a lie. It has fidelity (loyalty) to the standard. It is true to the original.
Where I grew up in Norway, snowstorms at times would bring “whiteout” conditions where you couldn’t see a few feet in front of you. If a building near town was 20-50 yards away, a whiteout was dangerous. Some people got lost and their frozen bodies weren’t found until spring. So the town put up a rope fence tying the buildings together.
You need hope and a powerful weapon! Heath Lambert, author of Finally Free: Fighting for Purity with the Power of Grace, said something in a lecture that grabbed my attention. He said that “gratitude is the opposite to every sin we commit.”
Those two things are 1) our relationship with God and 2) our commitment to do His will for our lives.
I remember when David was practicing law as a young new lawyer in south-eastern Pennsylvania that I prayed earnestly that we would be able to buy a large white historic house on the outskirts of town. I even made a name for it and dreamed about how we would raise our family there and use it for hospitality. It was a great dream, just not the Lord’s will for us.
Nurturing my relationship with God and earnestly renewing my thoughts so I can discover His good, acceptable and perfect will for my life (Romans 12:2) can bring simple joy and contentment.
Nick and Julia had been reading different things to try and find some answers, and they had come up with a plan. As Nick started to talk to his child he laid down some rules that the child needed to follow when he began to feel great anger. The idea was to help him get control of these overwhelming feelings he was experiencing. They called it “Take 5.”
One evening their little guy was allowed to stay up after the others had gone to bed, and just Daddy, Mommy, and the little victor each got to enjoy a Take 5 bar. Hearing about this made my heart smile.
Difference Between In and For
th(i)nkful 