Thanks - The Benefit of Giving Thanks

Transcription

1 Thanks - The Benefit of Giving Thanks Last week we started a sermon series that will last for three weeks titled, Thanks. Our main scripture last week told us that we are to give thanks in all circumstances because this is God s will for you. We took a look at how we live above circumstantial thanks. Other words how do you live being someone that doesn t allow your circumstances to dictate whether you have joy or not, whether you are still going to be a person who is thankful. Hebrews talks about in reference to Jesus, For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame The joy Jesus had was not his current circumstances. What He would endure on Calvary and even leading to Calvary was brutal! His joy came from knowing what would be the end result of what was going to happen on the cross. He was focused on future joys. When we are in the midst of difficult circumstances sometimes that is what we have to focus on. Maybe we have to focus on how God is going to use the difficult situation we are going through to make us more into Him image. For those with bodies that just don t work like they used to and you seemed to be imprisoned by your body now, the future joy is the new body that you will have one day that your current body can t even compare to. Another way to be a person of thanks despite our circumstances is to focus on the people that God has placed in our lives and blessed us with. God has surrounded you with some great people. Let those people be a blessing to you during those times don t hold them out. Focus on what a blessing they are to your life. We also said that we need to focus on the sustaining power of God that will give us the power to live day by day in our circumstances. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is living in you. I think He has the power to get you through each day although there are times that are certainly a challenge. It is God s will for you to be a person of thanks no matter what your circumstances are. So what is the benefit of being a person who gives thanks? We are going to take a look at that this morning. When I think of all the things that the Bible says about giving thanks or having a spirit of gratitude there is always a couple of verses out of Philippians that come to mind. Philippians 4:6-7 says, Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. There is a formula here in these verses. Prayer plus thanksgiving equal peace. If you want peace prayer is an important part but we are told it s how we pray that is important as well. If we want the peace that passes understanding, the kind of peace that makes the world

2 scratch their head then when we pray we pray with thanksgiving. We pray giving thanks to God. No matter what our situation is like when we pray we pray with an attitude of gratitude. When we pray with that spirit of thanks for what God has done in the past, thankful for his blessings even in the midst of our difficulty and thankful for His blessings in the future we will experience a calming peace. But there are times when we fail to present our requests to God with that spirit of thanksgiving. Well known Bible teacher Beth Moore in her book Breaking Free changed the verses to how most people respond. Do not be calm about anything, but in everything, by dwelling on it constantly and feeling picked on by God, with thoughts like, And this is the thanks I get, present your aggravations to everyone you know but Him. And the acid in your stomach, which transcends all milk products, will cause you an ulcer, and the doctor bills will cause you a heart attack, and you will lose your mind. That would be funny if it wasn t so true for so many people. So what is a benefit of giving thanks? It is a key component in having the peace that passes all understanding. I think we see a connection with peace and thanksgiving in Colossians as well even though it may not be quite as direct. Colossians 3:15 says, Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. For as members of one body you are called to live in peace. And always be thankful. Paul makes it clear that we are to live in peace, the kind that comes because you know that Christ rules in your heart. Paul sticks in there, and always be thankful. The two are connected. Without gratitude you will not know real peace. I guarantee you that you will not live in peace without being thankful. If you are not thankful you will not be content and if you aren t content you will not have peace. When the late John Claypool lost his ten-year-old daughter to leukemia, gratitude was the only way he survived. He tells about that experience in his profound book, Tracks of a Fellow Struggler. After his daughter s death, John walked down three different paths. The first path was to say, Well, it was just God s will. I have to accept it. But that was not helpful. He could not believe that God willed ten-year-old girls to die of leukemia. A second path was to try to find an intellectual answer as to why this happened. He tried to make sense of it. But that didn t work either. His daughter s death didn t make any sense. Finally, John walked the path of gratitude. He realized that life is a gift. We are not entitled to it. That we have any life at all is pure gift and pure grace. Therefore, John chose to be thankful for the ten good years they had together rather than being consumed with resentment for the years he did not have with her. This path of gratitude wasn t easy, but it was the only path that offered any help. (Gratitude stories

3 There are a lot of things that can rob you of your peace if you let it, but there are very few things that can bring you peace. The benefit of giving thanks, praying in a spirit of thanks is the peace of mind that comes with it. Now there is another benefit of giving thanks and as Christians it should be the benefit that means the most to us. What is that benefit? You are pleasing God. Colossians 3:17 says, And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. God loves it when we give thanks to Him. He loves it when His people are thankful. Last week s main scripture reminds us of that. I Thessalonians 5:18 says, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God s will for you in Christ Jesus. The fact that it is God s will for us to give thanks no matter what the situation is tells us that having a thankful heart pleases Him. I m also reminded of the time in Luke when Jesus had healed the ten lepers. Remember that because of their condition they were not allowed to live with their families. They had to live outside of their community. They couldn t go to their house of worship. Essentially these men lost everything. They come to Jesus asking to be healed. He tells them to go show themselves to the priest and on the way they are healed. One of them came back and thanked Jesus. Jesus response is found in Luke 17:17, 18. Jesus asked, Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner? God wants us to be thankful and to express that thanks to Him. Author Kent Crockett wrote, I know a man who has always been thankful for his shoes. When I asked him why, he replied, When I was a boy during the Depression, my parents couldn t afford to buy new shoes for me. I put cardboard in my shoe bottoms whenever they got holes. When I walked through rain and snow, I had to keep replacing the cardboard. I ve always been thankful for shoes because I've never forgotten wearing those shoes with holes in the soles. His reference point for thankfulness was his childhood memory of worn-out shoes. If we will think of times when we did without, we ll become thankful for what we have. That s why God told the children of Israel to remember how He brought them out of the house of slavery (Deut. 8:14). He wanted that experience to be a reference point in their minds for thankfulness. (Kent Crockett, I Once Was Blind But Now I Squint, Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers, 2004, 163) I think that had to be one of God s greatest frustrations with the people of Israel. He saves them from slavery and instead of living in thankfulness and remembering what God saved them from they instead were a bunch of grumblers. The food God was providing wasn t good enough. We want

4 something different. We want this and we want that. At one point forgetting the very fact that they were in slavery when they were there they were essentially like, at least they fed us good in Egypt. They seemed to grumble at every turn and God was fed up with it. He was fed up with it because they never seemed to remember what He had done for them in the past. They were just living in the current moment and they were full of discontent. God loves it when His children remember what God has done for them. He loves it when we give thanks for what He has done for us in the past. He loves it when we express it. That is why there are so many Psalms in the Bible that talk about thanks. Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, his love endures forever. Oh give thanks to the Lord, call upon his name, make known his deeds among the people. There are so many Psalms that tell us to bring our praise and thanksgiving to God. Instead too many of us are just like the Israelites were. What God has done for us is in the past and we are living in the here and now. What have you done for me lately God? I m here to tell you that God detests that kind of attitude. This rolls right into the most obvious benefit of giving thanks and that is this: It helps us not to lose sight of our blessings. The truth is if we don t focus on our blessings, if we don t focus on what we have to be thankful for we really do lose sight of those things. David was one who certainly didn t want to forget all the things that God had done for him and he encouraged through his writings for others not to forget either. Psalm 103:1-5 he writes, Praise the Lord, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not his benefits who forgives your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle s. Forget not all the blessings God has brought in your life. When we praise and thank God for the things that He has done we will not develop a case of amnesia like the Israelites had. I don t know about you but I always found it so hard to believe that they could groan and complain after watching God open up the Red Sea so they could escape the Egyptians and then watching as He drowned the enemy by allowing it to crash back in on them. I mean that was a dramatic miracle that they experienced. Knowing what He did for them there how could they forget what He had done for them? How could it become nothing but a distant memory? I will tell you how. It s because they were not a group of people who gave thanks on a regular basis. In many respects our country is in the shape that it is because we stopped giving thanks to God. We stopped remembering where our blessings come from. We take everything we have for granted and are put out at the slightest inconvenience. We have so much that we don t know what to do with it all.

5 A woman fell out of a second-floor window and landed in a slow-moving garbage truck. Half-buried in the litter, she tried without success to get the truck-driver s attention. A foreign diplomat standing on the sidewalk saw her and quipped, "Another example of how wasteful Americans are. That woman looks like she s good for at least another 10 years." (From a sermon by Charles Cockroft, Forget Not The Benefits, 12/3/2009) Funny if it didn t resemble the truth so much! We are a wasteful people and a forgetful one as well. We as a country can t keep going down the road that we are and expect to experience blessings. When we stop giving thanks we forget that we should be thankful. In his book FOLK PSALMS OF FAITH, Ray Stedman tells of an experience H.A. Ironside had in a crowded restaurant. Just as Ironside was about to begin his meal, a man approached and asked if he could join him. Ironside invited his to have a seat. Then, as was his custom, Ironside bowed his head in prayer. When he opened his eyes, the other man asked, "Do you have a headache?" Ironside replied, "No, I don't." The other man asked, "Well, is there something wrong with your food?" Ironside replied, "No, I was simply thanking God as I always do before I eat." The man said, "Oh, you're one of those, are you? Well, I want you to know I never give thanks. I earn my money by the sweat of my brow and I don't have to give thanks to anybody when I eat. I just start right in!" Ironside said, "Yes, you're just like my dog. That's what he does too!" That is the kind of country we live in today. People forget where their blessings come from and often times forget that they are blessed. When you give thanks on a regular basis. When it is a daily part of your life you will not lose sight of your blessings. There are benefits to being a people who give thanks not just in November, but who make it a regular part of their life. They are the ones who experience the peace that other people don t understand. They bring pleasure to God and they don t lose sight of their blessings. Maybe today is the day that you make the commitment to be a person who gives thanks on a regular basis. Let s pray.