I have heard it said by a number of people whom I respect and admire that they regard Thanksgiving Day to be the most Christian of holidays. Certainly, the virtuous practice of giving thanks is a fundamental feature of authentic faith. Even a hasty inventory of Bible verses convinces me that a hallmark of holy living is an attitude of gratitude. Consider these few:
Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise (Psalm 100:4).
Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His faithful love endures forever (Psalm 107:1; 118:1).
Don't worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God (Philippians 4:6).
First of all, then, I urge that petitions, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, (1 Timothy 2:1).
In anticipation of these November messages on Sundays and Wednesdays, I have been meditating on a particular verse of Scripture for several weeks now. With reference to his own call to ministry and the consequences that ministry brought upon him and delivered to the nations, Paul writes:
For all this is because of you, so that grace, extended through more and more people, may cause thanksgiving to overflow to God's glory (2 Corinthians 4:15).
I am drawn by a flow, a direction, a process God seems to have prescribed for our lives. Paul observes this course. He declares that the treasure of the Gospel has captured him and is transmitted to others in the form of grace. That grace then produces gratitude, which culminates in glory to God. So, the pattern is grace – gratitude – glory.
Gratitude is perhaps the most fitting response to grace. When believers are properly grateful to God, our thanksgiving, or as I have come to prefer, our thanks-living, becomes a witness to other people by which they become receptive to God’s grace in their lives. This transference of grace and gratitude abounds and redounds to the glory of God! Our thanks-living exalts and magnifies the Lord (Psalm 69:30).
Surely, we believers and followers of Jesus Christ should be of all people most thankful, and continuously so. We should be grateful because we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies (Ephesians 1:3 ff – O, please make time to read and meditate upon verses 3-14 as often as possible the next several days!). I want us to be careful today, however, to catch the implications the little word “every” suggests for our gratitude. Here is cause for us to distinguish between nostalgic commemorations of an American holiday and daily celebrations of God’s grace-gifts in our lives. God’s Word – “Give thanks in everything, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:18) – mandates this distinction and might be characterized in these two quirky lines from an anonymous poem I found recently:
I’m thankful for peas and pies.
I’m not thankful for fleas and flies.
Can I be thankful even if my football team loses the big game? I know the biggest issues in life do not revolve around the
Can I be thankful when I find myself limited by physical liabilities? In 1967, Joni Erickson broke her neck when she dove headfirst into shallow water. The accident left her paralyzed. It also paved the way for a remarkable ministry launched in 1979, and an extraordinary testimony. I read an eyewitness report that on at least one occasion she raised her arms as high as she can in her braces and exclaimed, “This is the prison where God set me free!”
Can I even imagine ever being thankful for fleas?! As recorded in her autobiographical book, The Hiding Place, Corrie ten Boom related how she learned to give thanks in all things. She and her sister, Betsy, were imprisoned during WWII at the Ravensbrook Camp. Their barracks were seriously overcrowded and flea-infested. One morning, after they had read together 1 Thessalonians 5:18, Betsy said, “Corrie, we’ve got to give thanks for this barracks and even for these fleas."
"No way am I going to thank God for fleas!" Corrie retorted. Betsy insisted, however, and they did indeed begin to thank God for the fleas.
The sisters began to notice that the guards seemed not frequent their barracks. The girls took courage, then, and began to lead the women in prayer and Bible study. Their barracks became a sanctuary. How had God graced them with this favor, even in a Nazi death camp? Simply put, the guards avoided their barracks because of the severe infestation of fleas!
What grace might the Lord desire to bring to bear in our lives so that we will be grateful and He will be glorified? Can we learn to give and live thanks even in the midst of cancer, unemployment, internment, war, or family pain? Can we learn to be thankful for peas and pies as well as fleas and flies? May we be a people who make God known by living and “giving thanks always for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 5:20).
To the ends of the earth until the end of time!
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