When God Binds Our Gratitude to Our Grief (X marks the spot)

This is Faith to Witness 99, motivating us to hear God and share the Shepherd. 

Here’s the gist, human. Embracing God’s nature, clinging to his Son’s robe with every fiber of my inner and outer being is not something I can do alone. Neither can you. It is God’s right hand, it is the surrendered will of Jesus that binds the moments when my gratitude shares space with my grief. Tell me it isn’t the same with you. When God’s grace saves us by bringing us into the struggle, and tells us to stand with him in the fire. That his nature, his divine presence is so powerful that he can bring us through, bring us closer, yes closer to his presence. 

This is how he grows us in his image. Join us to hear a little about who said “God is in the fire, bro. It’s beautiful.”

E185.

When God Binds Our Gratitude to Our Grief (X marks the spot) 

__________

God has a way of giving us a Part 1 and Part 2, an inspiration followed by an insight. And it is that reflective chasm between them that takes root in our spiritual character. Simply, that Holy Spirit tells our soul to sit down, be still for a moment, and listen more carefully. 

I’m Kathryn Bise, your host.

The 2018 film release of I Can Only Imagine deals with Bart Millard’s (“mil-lard”) life story, a troubled childhood and relationship with his father. Bart is a renowned American singer-songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist for the Christian rock band MercyMe. He wrote the hit song “I Can Only Imagine,” which became the first Christian song to go double-platinum. 

The film I Can Only Imagine 2 was released in March of this year, 2026, a sequel to the 2018 release. Milo Ventimiglia plays Tim Timmons, the musician who plays the opening act for MercyMe’s tour twenty-five years later. 

Holding Grief Alongside Gratitude

Midway through the film, there is a scene, a conversation that is bouncing off my brain and my heart. So much so I went back to re-listen to it. It is a conversation between Bart and Tim. 

Tim has just asked Bart to listen to a song he is working on inspired by the song It is Well With My Soul. He has composed the chorus but is struggling to make sense of the verses. He asks Bart to finish it for him. That all he cares about is writing something that helps people. He doesn’t care if his name is on it. 

Spoiler alert. 

In this scene Tim is sitting at the piano on their current tour stage, and Bart comes in completely distraught about his relationship with his son. Bart does not take Tim’s request well. He responds to it with his own self-consuming pain, that Tim couldn’t possibly know the pain he is feeling rooted in his turbulent relationship with his own father. He is walking away until he hears Tim’s next sentence. 

“I have cancer.” And he is talking about a beautiful, yet brutal balance.  Fulfilling the dream of being on tour with MercyMe and finding out he is going to be a father in the face of an unrelenting disease that intends to rob his life of bucket list dreams, a loving marriage and parenting his first child. 

He says he is holding the grief alongside his gratitude. And he draws an X on the inside of his wrist every morning to affirm that gratitude is how he enters his day. Gratitude is his first claim on the day.

He savors every moment. Wouldn’t change it. He says he is finding a way to hold them both together. His grief and his gratitude.  

And he tells Bart, “God is in the fire, bro. It’s beautiful.”

This conversation sears right to the center of suffering for me, and how to preface it with gratitude. In the middle of the fire. Daniel 3:25. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.

Daniel 3:25

25 He said, “Look! I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods.”

And it was in this moment I returned to one of my early episodes, I had to search for it, about what God’s blessings on our life really are, what the purpose is. Episode 30, Do God’s Blessings Bring You Closer to Him?  Here’s the link if you want to check out the full context:  https://kathrynbise.com/buoy-e30-do-gods-blessings-bring-you-closer-to-him-beyond-a-hashtag-mentality/

So, here’s a central thought strand from e30, that digs deeper into what a blessing from God actually is, the provisions he grants us so we can spiritually grow. Because when suffering hits us, when what feels tragic jumps in to jolt us, God in all his glorious nature, shows up.

To manifest himself in us because we are made in his image.

Gratitude Begins with A Suffering Jesus

God participates in revealing the truth about Jesus to those who believe in Him.

John 6:44

44 “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day.

This is where blessing always starts. When we name who Jesus is.

When God blesses us, it is a representation of the intimacy we have together and the inheritance we will receive in full. God’s blessings are about enriching our spiritual walk with Him.

The Greek word for blessed, used by Jesus when he “blesses” Peter, is makarios (“blessed”). Listen to Strong’s definition: it describes a believer in enviable (“fortunate”) position from receiving God’s provisions (favor) – which (literally) extend (“make long, large”) His grace (benefits). This happens with receiving (obeying) the Lord’s inbirthings of faith. Hence, faith (pistis) and blessed (makarios) are closely associated.

Paul says in:

Romans 4:5-7

5 However, to the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness. 6 David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the one to whom God credits righteousness apart from works:

7 “Blessed are those

    whose transgressions are forgiven,

    whose sins are covered.

The blessings we receive from God begin with forgiveness, justification and righteousness. All other blessings build on and deepen our understanding of Him—to know him more intimately.

This is why Peter tells us in:

 1 Peter 4:10

10 Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.

Peter is saying that God has provided for us through His grace, and we should steward His provisions…. What comes with that is joy, wisdom, peace, all qualities that are spiritually independent of the rugged context within which blessings are given:  poverty, adversity, trial, meekness, hunger for more righteousness, and as Jesus says—being “poor in spirit”—knowing that this is all spiritually sourced by God. Living in a blessed state of heart, mind and soul because we are sourced by God….

Testify About Your Gratitude in Every Circumstance

I am with Peter. Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God. I am maturing in the fruit of the Spirit as I serve others with my spiritual gifts. I am obeying the inbirthing of faith in me, given by God.

When Tim said, “It’s beautiful” God had him right where he wanted him. And it wasn’t the end for him. Not by a long shot. 

So, when I say, “I am blessed” I am talking about being in an enviable position, receiving God’s provisions of grace for my life, in every circumstance. Every earthly provision He gives me, whether a comfort or a struggle, has a higher spiritual purpose. The rest of my self-made provisions commit spiritual fraud.

Holding grief and gratitude together is how God takes care of your heart, mind and soul, so much so, that he strengthens you through life’s most powerful lessons. The lessons that triumphantly reveal who he is to you, how he is taking care of you and preparing you for his house of many mansions.

Holding gratitude and grief together helps us know God more intimately.

This brings me back to the black X Tim Timmons draws on his inner wrist every morning. To be blessed is to be grateful. To be blessed is to be holding gratitude and grief in the same moment. To be blessed is to be suspended in the middle of the fire, and knowing, feeling God with you.

Thank you Tim Timmons for living this testimony. Thank you Milo for depicting it so powerfully. 

When we give our life to gratitude we beckon the divine presence of the name of our Lord Jesus and we illuminate a powerful testimony that is ordained by God. And it does happen through the painful depths of our grief, our suffering. This is something someone needs to hear, human. 

Find your piano bench. Tell someone.