Giving thanks in all circumstances
The good news is that God has given us a wonderful weapon to fight this called gratitude. One of the best balms to soothe our fears, our grumblings, our despair is thanksgiving . Because gratitude and grumbling cannot co exist.
The Psalmist declares in Psalm 69:" I will praise God’s name in song and glorify him with thanksgiving. This will please the Lord more than an ox, more than a bull with its horns and hooves."
Here the psalmist is saying that the sacrifice of thanksgiving is more pleasing to God than the sacrifices of animals that they had to make in old testament times. I think its quite helpful for us to realise that thanksgiving is a sacrifice- like any sacrifice, this too, isn't easy for us to make.
It costs us something- it costs us our pride- as we are admitting when we give thanks to God that whatever good we have in our lives are from him, are because of him.
Thanksgiving can also cost us our time- it is easy to cruise through life in haste , forgetting to acknowledge and give thanks to God- we see this in the story of the ten lepers that Jesus healed -only one of them returned to give thanks to God. There may be other things that thanksgiving may cost you.
So, so far we have seen that-thanksgiving is a strong weapon to fight anxiety and that thanksgiving is a sacrifice that pleases God.
Now let us look at Jesus’ life. Jesus modelled a life of thanksgiving. He was constantly giving thanks to God the father. There are several verses in the gospels that encapsulate this. In Matthew 11:25 “Jesus declared, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children.’”
In John 11:41 when he prays for Lazarus to be raised from the dead “Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, ‘Father, I thank you that you have heard me.”
In Matthew 15:36 Jesus “took the seven loaves and the fish, and having given thanks he broke them and gave them to the disciples . . . ” And even during the last supper, before his greatest time of suffering, Jesus raised the cup of wine and the bread and gave thanks to God.
That brings us to perhaps the most important part of this message which is that God calls us to give thanks not just in times of joy but also in times of suffering.
Paul writes, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:16–18).
How can we give thanks when we go through suffering? I would like to share with you an extract from one of my favourite books- ‘The Hiding Place’.
Some of you may have heard of this book. This is an autobiography of a lady named Corrie Ten Boom. Corrie lived in Holland during the second world war with her father Casper and her sister Betsie who were all Christians. In the 1940s, when the Nazis invaded Holland, their family helped their Jewish friends hide in their home. For this crime they were sent along with Jews to prison and eventually to the infamous Nazi concentration camp called Ravensbruck.
Wherever they went they smuggled in their Bible and shared the gospel with fellow prisoners. However, when they were moved to Ravensbruck, Corrie was despairing.
She writes: "Barracks 8 was in the quarantine compound. Next to us--perhaps as a deliberate warning to newcomers--were located the punishment barracks. From there, all day long and often into the night, came the sounds of hell itself. They were not the sounds of anger, or of any human emotion, but of a cruelty altogether detached: blows landing in regular rhythm, screams keeping pace. We would stand in our ten-deep ranks with our hands trembling at our sides, longing to jam them against our ears, to make the sounds stop.
"It grew harder and harder. Even within these four walls there was too much misery, too much seemingly pointless suffering. Every day something else failed to make sense, something else grew too heavy.” Yet, in the midst of the suffering, the women prisoners around Corrie and Betsie found comfort in the little Bible studies they held in the barracks.
Corrie writes they gathered around the Bible and ‘the blacker the night around us grew, the brighter and truer and more beautiful burned the Word of God." When they were moved to Barracks 28, Corrie was horrified by the fact that their reeking, straw-bed platforms swarmed with fleas. How could they live in such a place?
Her sister Betsie however said to her:
"Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus." That's it, Corrie! That's His answer. "Give thanks in all circumstances!" That's what we can do. We can start right now to thank God for every single thing about this new barracks!'
"I (Corrie writes ) stared at her; then around me at the dark, foul-aired room…" They thanked God for the fact they were together. They thanked God they had a Bible. They even thanked God for the crowds of prisoners, that more people would be able to hear God's Word.
And then, Betsie thanked God for the fleas. “The fleas! This was too much. 'Betsie, there's no way even God can make me grateful for a flea.' "'"Give thanks in all circumstances,"' she quoted. 'It doesn't say, "in pleasant circumstances." Fleas are part of this place where God has put us.' "And so we stood between tiers of bunks and gave thanks for fleas. But this time I was sure Betsie was wrong." It turned out that Betsie was not wrong; the fleas were a nuisance, but a blessing after all.
The women were able to have Bible studies in the barracks with a great deal of freedom, never bothered by supervisors coming in and harassing them. They later discovered that it was the fleas that kept those supervisors out. Through those fleas, God protected them. Through those fleas, God protected the women from much worse things and made sure they had their deepest, truest needs met.
We can give thanks in the midst of suffering because Jesus works it together for our good, and because God is in it with us. He is an everpresent help in times of trouble.
In Colossians 2:6–7 Paul writes, “as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.” . So may God help us abound in thanksgiving today and everyday.
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