In November in the United States, we celebrate life in a holiday that is dedicated to being grateful for our blessings. We eat until our waistbands are too tight because without food we would never survive, and we are grateful that we have delicious cuisine of all varieties to sustain our bodies. We gather in large and small social groups knowing that our family and friends and even strangers that we have not yet met are blessings that enrich our lives. We remember the past—from our earliest memories of gathering with family to the story of the first Thanksgiving in America when the Pilgrims had traveled to a strange new land unprepared for the circumstances they found there. We recount the details of how during that first winter many of the novice immigrants died of starvation, cold, and disease. We remember how strangers came to them, the Native Americans, and helped them with food and taught them how to survive in their new homeland. The next fall, these Pilgrims were thankful that they now had enough food and good shelter to survive the coming winter, so they decided to celebrate with a feast with their friends and saviors, and they thanked God that they had hope.
The Thanksgiving holiday is not the only time when we should sit down and count our blessings. Taking time every day to remember the good fortune that we have experienced and to thank God for these blessings is beneficial. What are you grateful for today? I am thankful that God has given me so many spiritual brothers and sisters, and for the time we get to spend together. In fact, I have many blessings in my life to celebrate, but sometimes I forget that truth. When my aches and pains seem overwhelming or when another person treats me badly or when money worries pop up unexpectedly or when I am simply scared, I do not always feel like thanking God. I just want to curl up in my misery and whine. Even when life is going well, I tend to be an ungrateful person, taking for granted all the gifts that God has given me. Whenever I am confronted with my own callousness, I feel like I have disappointed God, but after considering this issue more deeply, I realized that I was still being self-centered in my thinking, like a two-year-old who believes that the whole world revolves around her wants and desires. You see, God is not disappointed when I am ungrateful because He does not need my thanks. God is not sitting around waiting for His children to declare what a great fellow He is. He does not need our affirmation, but He does crave our love.
God does not need our thanks, but the opposite is not true. We desperately need to thank God. It is a necessity for us to notice the blessings that God has given us and to raise our voices up in gratitude to Him. The reason is that when we start focusing on the good in our lives and more importantly, when we start focusing on the fact that our blessings come from God, something changes in us. Life starts to feel a little brighter, and our hurts start to feel a little less painful.
The Bible gives some insight into this process. In Philippians, Paul gives us advice on how to live out our lives. First, he says, to rejoice. Philippians 4:4 says “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.” Sometimes, I have had a hard time figuring that one out. After all, if I am not feeling happy, how can I rejoice? Then one day, I started to gain some insight into this phenomenon. I realized that Paul does not tell us to always be happy. He says to rejoice IN THE LORD. More insight came as I was reading the book of Nehemiah in the Old Testament. The book describes how the Jews had returned from exile in Babylon and were participating in a ceremony where they were listening to a priest named Ezra read the scriptures. As Ezra read, the people realized how terribly far away they had gone from God and the blessings that God had wanted to give them, and the people began to weep about the lost opportunities of the past, but Ezra urged them not to cry. Instead, they were to celebrate because God was with them now. “Then he said to them, ‘Go your way. Eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to anyone who has nothing ready, for this day is holy to our Lord. And do not be grieved, for the joy of the LORD is your strength’” (Nehemiah 8:10). In a way, they were told to have a kind of Thanksgiving Day feast, and the central point of their feast was to let the joy of the LORD be their strength. As I was reading this passage, I realized that joy is not happiness, but it is something much more powerful. It is the knowledge that God is with me, that Jesus loves me, that I have a Friend and Comforter who is with me even in the darkest hours. Our joy comes from knowing that even in pain and suffering and loneliness, we are not alone. God is with us and when we acknowledge that, we really can rejoice in the Lord.
The next piece of advice that Paul gave the Philippians is in chapter four verses five and six. “Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” Why does Paul tie having a reputation for reasonableness together with rejoicing in the Lord and not being anxious? It helps to look at the idea from the opposite perspective. Why are people unreasonable? Usually, it is because they have had a rotten day, or they are in physical or mental pain, or they are just plain selfish. Paul knows that followers of Jesus do not have to be unreasonable because we have God with us. He reminds us that the Lord is at hand, so we do not have to be anxious. He tells us that when we start to feel worried and irritable, we can lift our troubles up to God in prayer. Then Paul brings his readers back to the theme that we are examining: the benefits of gratitude. He says that we need to let our requests come to God with thankfulness. Why? Because God loves us and wants to give us blessings, so we can be thankful even before the blessings come because we know that they are on the way.
In Philippians 4:7, Paul tells us the result of lifting our anxieties and troubles up to God with thanksgiving. “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” God’s peace will come to us to guard us from those challenges that the world gives us. In short, thanking God brings peace during the troubled times of your life. If you are not experiencing that peace, I recommend that you take a little time to be with Jesus and talk to Him and thank Him for loving you. However, do not expect to immediately have a change of attitude because it frequently takes time for us to let the Spirit inside our barriers so that He can do His work of bringing peace to our hearts, but God has promised it, so we can trust that He will give us peace.
In Philippians 4:8 Paul gives his last piece of advice for the way that a Christian should live. He says “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” In other words, stop focusing on your problems. Instead, focus on the truth of Jesus’ love for you. Focus on the honorable treatment that others have given you and on how the Father’s faithfulness never fails, and cling to the fact that God’s promises can be counted on. Focus on the just, the pure, the lovely, the commendable, not the meanness and hurt. Look for the people and experiences that are worthy of praise. Yes, Paul brings us back to praise again. He seems to think that thanksgiving and praise are necessary for a Christian to have a good life. Of course, he is right.
I want to end with a little story. Once upon a time, there was a dad who had ungrateful children. One of his sons left home and cut off all contact with his father. For years, the father hoped for a message, but he never received even the slightest acknowledgement from his son. That loving dad worried about his lost child a lot. He missed him. In fact, it felt like a piece of His heart had been torn out, like there was a big hole that nothing except his son could fill, but his son had left him. It had been several years, but the dad still could not help but gaze every day at the place where he had last seen his son walking away and wish against all common sense that his son would come running up the path, and yell, “Hi, Daddy!” just the way he used to as a loving little boy, but every day there was only emptiness. . . until one day a figure came limping up the road. As the father watched in shock, joy began to rise in his heart. It was not possible, but he knew who that dirty young man hobbling down the road was. Contrary to his dreams, his little son was not running up to throw himself into the father’s arms, so instead, the father began running toward his helpless son and gathered him up into his own arms full of thanks and rejoicing that the empty hole in his heart was full again.
By now, you have figured out that I was telling you the story of the prodigal son, but I want you to think about this as the story of God and you. There is a place in God’s heart that only you can fill, and every day, God rejoices that you have chosen to stay with Him and place yourself in His arms. When you rejoice in the Lord, He rejoices in you, just as a father does when his little son comes running into his arms. Without you, there would be a big, gaping hole in the Father’s heart that He would yearn to fill with your presence. God does not need our thanks, but God longs for our presence. It was impossible for us to bridge the gap to God, so Jesus took the initiative to come to us. That is the source of our rejoicing and the healing that we cannot find within our own selfish hearts and relationships. I invite you to rejoice in the Lord and be thankful for His blessings every day as Paul tells us to do, but I also want to remind you that Jesus told us in the parable of the prodigal son that the Father rejoices in us and is thankful that He has us in His arms forever.