Choose to be Thankful

It is hard to believe that this is the week of Thanksgiving.

This year seems to be moving quicker for some reason.

As we enter the holiday season, I think we should all look at Thanksgiving Day as a time for us to practice being thankful.

I do know that there are many of us whose desire is to be thankful, but you are going through some really hard times.

I want to preach a message today answering the question, “How can we be thankful even though times are really hard?”

“How can I be thankful even though I have had so much loss?”

How in the world can God expect me to have a thankful spirit when He knows what I am going through?”

These are all great questions and I understand that the holidays are so exciting for some of us but so hard for others.

I do think that it is possible for us to be thankful in every situation throughout life.

Open to Luke 22:13-19

Luke 22:13–19 NIV

13 They left and found things just as Jesus had told them. So they prepared the Passover. 14 When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. 15 And he said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. 16 For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God.” 17 After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, “Take this and divide it among you. 18 For I tell you I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” 19 And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”

Point 1: We should learn to be thankful to God no matter what our circumstance is.

This is one of the things in the Bible that I read about and question how can this be.

I question how a person like Jesus knows that He is about to suffer the most painful death yet He can still be thankful.

We also read stories in the Bible like Stephen when he is being stoned to death in Acts 7 and he is praying for those who are throwing stones at him.

How can we get to this point of being true to who we are as a Christian without allowing our circumstances change our character.

We have a hard time praying for people who say bad things about us while these guys are praying for their enemies as they are being killed.

The writer of Hebrews goes as far to say, in Hebrews 12:2 “For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

How can anyone in their right mind consider it joy, or even be thankful, knowing what is ahead of them?

Jesus is about to be betrayed and crucified; He is about to die the worst death that anyone could and knows that this will happen, yet He is still thankful.

As Jesus being our example to live by, if He could be thankful before His betrayal and Crucifixion then surely we can find a way to be thankful in all circumstances.

Point 2: How can we be thankful in every circumstance?

The Bible actually tells us to give thanks in all circumstances, in 1 Thessalonians 5:18.

I would like us all to think about that for a minute.

It sure is easy to be thankful when everything is going our way.

It is easy to have a thankful spirit when our life is good, but how can we be thankful everyday no matter how things are going?

It is easy coming into the holiday season to be thankful if our life is going great.

It is easy to tell our brothers and sisters in the Lord, “You need to be thankful, joyful, and happy. You need to just do this.”

I think we all need to put ourselves in our people’s shoes, because guess what, we are all at some point probably going to go through this time of the year and everything is not going to be great on the outside.

I believe that it is possible to be thankful, joyful, and happy not matter what we are going through because Jesus, knowing that He is about to experience something that none of us will, remains thankful to the Father even to the end.

Yes, He was God, but He was also fully man.

We, as Christians, have the same spirit in us that Jesus had, so we don’t have an excuse.

In our passage, the Bible says that Jesus gave thanks for the Passover meal that He was about to eat.

This was not just any meal like we might sit down and have today after church with family or friends.

Jesus sat down in an upper room in Jerusalem to celebrate a meal that served as a reminder to the Israelites of their release from 400 years of slavery in Egypt.

God sent this last plague on the people of Egypt that killed all of the firstborn in the land, both people and animals.

There had to be a distinction though between the people of God and the Egyptians, so God told the people to sacrifice a lamb and apply blood from that lamb on the doorposts.

When the death angel went from house to house, it would not enter the house if blood was on the doorpost of that house.

In John 1:29, John the baptist sees Jesus coming towards him and says, “Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”

Jesus is giving thanks for a meal that remembers Israel’s past but also points forward to His death as our Passover lamb.

The Greek word for thanks in our passage is the word “eucharisteo” which probably sounds familiar to many of you.

It is where we get the word eucharist from which is the word that is used in some churches for communion or the Last Supper.

The root word for “eucharisteo” is “charis” which means grace.

We can even take this a little further by looking at the fact that the word “charis” comes from the word “chara” which means joy.

This word “eucharisteo” which has to do with giving thanks also has at its roots words meaning grace and joy.

Pastor Tom, you are really confusing us today. You are making me think too hard this morning and I’m not really picking up what you are putting down. Let me explain a little better:

***When we are thankful for God’s grace (Unmerited favor) on our lives we are filled with joy.***

We can be going through something hard, but that doesn’t mean that God’s favor is not on us.

The grace of God does not change according to our circumstance.

God doesn’t change, so if we feel different towards Him it is always us and never Him.

We have a reason to be thankful.

One author said that Jesus’ “eucharisteo” might look like this:

Thank you, Father, that my body, symbolized by this bread, is about to be brutally broken and I am about to be momentarily damned by your wrath so that you will receive supreme glory in being able to forgive undeserving sinners and I will share eternally full joy with hundreds of millions of forgiven sinners made righteous through my sacrifice.

Jesus’ thanks was not based on His present circumstances because He was about to endure the worst possible death. He felt thankful to the Father for the grace and glory that was coming because of the cross and this gave Him joy.

We can learn to celebrate in the fact that God’s ways are always steadfast and never changing.

We can live our lives, maybe wondering away from that at times because our thoughts and characteristics might change, but we can always go back to God and realize that He was the same as He was before and He will never change.

Numbers 23:19 “19 God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?”

We may change but He does not.

I say all of that to say that Jesus’ thankfulness came from what was in the future.

***The joy set before Him was not the cross but it was Him sitting at the right hand of the Father in Heaven.***

Jesus got through the cross by focusing on what was past it; what it was that was on the other side of the cross.

Have you ever tried to take a picture of something you were trying to hold and it was blurry because the zoom on your camera was picking up what was beyond what you were holding?

Just like Jesus, I think the way that we can be thankful in all circumstances by having our vision focused on where we are going and what all of this here means.

This is all temporary, but where we are going is eternal.

Remember, don’t give up on your destination because the trip might get hard and there may be detours, fix your mind on your final destination.

2 Corinthians 4:17 says,“17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.”

We know that we will experience momentary trials and troubles, but we need to remind ourselves that what we are going through now is temporary.

I know some of you might be thinking, “My troubles are not light. They are very heavy to me.”

I want to remind every one of us that our current situation might seem very big now, but compared to eternity it is very, very small.

I want to tell you that when you step into the presence of God, the fullness of His glory, nothing that you went through on earth will matter at all to you.

James 1:17 “17 Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”

Let’s try to learn to be thankful for the things we have and watch your mourning turn to joy.

Conclusion:

Let’s circle back to the question, “How can we be thankful in this upcoming holiday season if we are going through hard times? How can we be thankful if we experienced a loss in our family, if we have a terrible diagnosis, if we had a loss in income, or anything else?”

This year for the holidays try to remind yourself that you have been blessed with the greatest gift that anyone could ever receive which is eternal life through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross.

Jesus could remain thankful through one of the worst situations any person could go through because he was focused on where He was going to end up and not what He had to go through, we too can be thankful because of where we will end up if we stay faithful to the Lord.