Thankfulness in Difficult Times

Good morning, thank you for being with us today. Just as a reminder, we are using our new FM transmitter for the first time today, so if you want to hear us through your car radio as well as through the outdoor speakers set up here on stage, you can tune into 89.1 on your FM radio and you should be able to hear us loud and clear. I’m excited that we are able to add this resource to the things we use at this church to minister to our members and our community. We actually tested out the system this past Thursday, and after a few adjustments to figure out how the transmitter worked, we got it working, and I got in my car and drove away from the church to see how far the signal goes, in case we need the signal to reach the lower parking area across the street. Thankfully, the signal was loud and clear there too, and even as I drove farther away, all the way to North Street, there was only a little loss of signal. It felt great to know something worked like I hoped it would. I think we all like it when things go how we want them to go.

If I had my choice, I would live in a world where everything goes from good to better, from moments of comfortable existence to spikes of fun and excitement, and where there was no stress or worry. Life would be full of interesting opportunities for growth, but without the pain and struggle that often seems to be a part of what makes me grow in real life. Work would be a combination of productive times (highlighted by feelings of great fulfillment), and rewarding social interactions with co-workers who are friends and partners in meaningful endeavors; with no unproductive or difficult days, and no need to deal with problems or no need to change what I do because I am falling short in some way or another. Going home to the family would be full of only joy in seeing those I love, and times of rest, of laughter and fun, and of great food. There would be no need to deal with a list of home improvement tasks, no need to correct behavior, and there would be no sibling strife, no worrying about the bills, and the dishes would take care of themselves at the end of every meal (plus my clothes would automatically make their way into the clothes hamper every day). But this is not reality.

Reality for me and for all of us is that things are far from ideal, and life is full of difficulties both great and small.

Difficult times are a part of life.

We all knew that already, and then 2020 happened, and things went to a whole new level of difficulty.

Just over eight months ago, it seems that everything in our lives changed. What had started as just another cold and flu season on the other side of the world - like it had every year before this - turned into an epidemic in China and a few other countries, and soon became a pandemic that spread to every continent and every nation on earth. Hopes of containment, control, and a quick resolution to this new virus slowly gave way to a reality of a disease that seemed to pop up in unexpected places and resist our feeble efforts to limit its spread, and which seemed to persist even after the weather warmed and summer came and went. Businesses, schools, governments, churches, and just about every level of our lives have had to adjust and readjust to the ongoing changes in the local and national situation. In the midst of all of this, we are coming up on a holiday that focuses on being thankful, and sometimes it takes some effort to change our outlook on things in order to find things to be thankful for, but I’ve been encouraged by conversation after conversation that I’ve had with different people where they are finding things to be thankful for in spite of the hardships.

When things are difficult, it takes effort to change our outlook in order to find things to be thankful for.

One of the ways we change our perspective and refocus our minds is by remembering and repeating truths in the Bible about who God is, and about His character and attitude towards His people. This is one of the reasons why it is so important that we spend time in Scripture, reading and sometimes memorizing it so that when we are in a time of need we can remember the things the Bible tells us, and we can be reminded of the truth that speaks against the false ideas and feelings we might have when we’re going through a difficult time. An example of this is Psalm 100. If you have your Bible with you today, please open up to Psalm 100. I’m reading out of the New Living Translation this morning.

Psalm 100

Psalm 100 NLT

A psalm of thanksgiving. 1 Shout with joy to the Lord, all the earth! 2 Worship the Lord with gladness. Come before him, singing with joy. 3 Acknowledge that the Lord is God! He made us, and we are his. We are his people, the sheep of his pasture. 4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving; go into his courts with praise. Give thanks to him and praise his name. 5 For the Lord is good. His unfailing love continues forever, and his faithfulness continues to each generation.

Let’s pray...

As I read this passage earlier this week, it seemed like the person the psalmist is talking to is someone whose life is going pretty well, and who is already in a good place. But looking at it more carefully, you realize that this isn’t necessarily the case. The passage starts out with a list of commands: Shout, worship, come, acknowledge. It doesn’t say, “If you feel blessed, or happy, or fulfilled, or successful, then do these things.” Instead, it commands us to shout, worship and come to God with joy and gladness. and the reason we do this is because we acknowledge who God is, and we acknowledge who we are.

“Acknowledge that the LORD is God. He made us, and we are His. We are His people, the sheep of His pasture.”

A right understanding of God and of ourselves allows us to experience joy and gladness and thankfulness.

The LORD is God. To acknowledge that is to acknowledge all that is contained in that simple phrase. We don’t have to try to guess what it means to be God, because God describes Himself and reveals Himself in His word. If you want to read a passage where God describes Himself and what He has done, go to the book of Job 38 and start reading in chapter 38, where after 37 chapters of Job and his friends talking about God, God describes Himself in His own words and talks about what He can do. In Exodus 34:5-7, God comes down and speaks to Moses and declares who He is.

Exodus 34:5-7

Exodus 34:5–7 NIV

5 Then the Lord came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the Lord. 6 And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, 7 maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.”

Jeremiah the prophet says this about God:

Jeremiah 10:12-13

Jeremiah 10:12–13 NLT

12 But the Lord made the earth by his power, and he preserves it by his wisdom. With his own understanding he stretched out the heavens. 13 When he speaks in the thunder, the heavens roar with rain. He causes the clouds to rise over the earth. He sends the lightning with the rain and releases the wind from his storehouses.

You could spend several hours seeking out the passages in the Bible where God talks about His power, His wisdom, His love, His faithfulness, His holiness, and all the other things that He is. When the psalmist tells us, “Acknowledge that the LORD is God,” he is pointing our minds to think on the greatness and wonder of God, and to then in that mindset think about our relationship to Him.

Psalm 100 talks about how God made us, and that we are His people. In the Old Testament, this referred to the nation of Israel, but in the New Testament, under the New Covenant, or the new agreement that Jesus established when He gave His life on the cross for all of humanity, it is revealed that God’s purpose was always to include Gentiles as part of His people and His inheritance when they put their faith in Jesus(in fact, this is what we studied just a few weeks ago as we were studying Paul’s letter to the Ephesians).

The great and mighty God that we’ve been pointed to made you and me and He has called us His own. Wait… WHAT??? The Creator of the universe with the billions of galaxies, each with billions of stars, created ME and YOU, and He cares enough about us to call us His own and to adopt us as His children? How AMAZING is that??!!?!

The fact that people who are followers of Jesus are God’s people and that He cares for us, is a great truth to remember and lean into when we want to change our perspective and our attitude on life. Being a member of God’s people and of His family means that our life is about much more than the temporary struggles and difficulties that are a part of our current reality. Our lives here on earth are just the starting point of an adventure that goes on into eternity, and for believers only the first sixty, eighty, or one hundred years of that time will require us to deal with suffering and pain.

So focusing on the truths of the Bible helps us have the right perspective on life and to develop a thankful attitude in life. As believers and followers of Jesus, this is important because thankfulness isn’t just something we’re supposed to express once a year when a holiday comes around; thankfulness is something that is supposed to be a regular part of our lives.

As a normal part of our Christian life, we are commanded to give thanks to God.

Colossians 3:17

Colossians 3:17 NLT

17 And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father.

According to this verse in Colossians, whatever we do and whatever we say, we represent Jesus. Followers of Jesus don’t get to put on and take off our “Jesus Representative” hat depending on what day of the week it is, or on what activity we are engaged in. So whether you’re at a Sunday service, or working at your regular job, or dealing with a difficult customer service person on the phone, or any other situation you might find yourself in during the week, we are to approach it with an attitude of thankfulness to God, and with the realization that we represent Christ.

The question then becomes: How do we live this way? Because the truth is that if we are honest with ourselves, we don’t have it in us to consistently live this way. We need the help of God to do what He asks of us. Thankfully, as believers we have access to God and His power through the Holy Spirit that lives in all believers.

Thankfulness comes when we allow God’s Spirit to fill us.

Ephesians 5:18-20

Ephesians 5:18–20 NLT

18 Don’t be drunk with wine, because that will ruin your life. Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit, 19 singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, and making music to the Lord in your hearts. 20 And give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

When we allow the Holy Spirit to fill us, and work in us and through us, then we are able to live a life of thankfulness for everything. Wait… even in the midst of Covid? Yes. Even when you lose your job or your hours get cut? Yes. Even when my child or grandchild has a lame first year of Kindergarten or last year of high school ruined by lockdowns and distance learning? Yes. Even when Thanksgiving isn’t going to be like we usually celebrate it? YES.

Being thankful for everything doesn’t mean you have to pretend that you like something that’s difficult, or that you call something “good” that isn’t really good. But when you allow the Holy Spirit to fill you, you suddenly realize that even from the most difficult situations in life, God can create something beautiful and good. That doesn’t make evil good, but it takes the effects of evil and neutralizes them by creating something good in its place. So, having children study from home becomes an opportunity to spend more time with them and get to know them better; the loss of a job becomes a chance to start something new career-wise; a time of sickness becomes an opportunity to learn to lean on God more than you ever have before; a devastating loss becomes a time to let God comfort you and a time to trust Him even when you don’t understand why.

I just finished reading a book last week by a Christian woman who grew up in a home where her parents were not believers. She became a Christian later in life and married a man who became a pastor. Eventually her mom came to live with her and her family, and even though she sometimes agreed to go to church, the mom never wanted to have anything to do with God herself, even after she was diagnosed with cancer. It was only in her last week of life, as she went into hospice care, that mother and daughter had a conversation that changed things. Mom had always thought of her daughter as weak because of her faith. In those last days, the daughter shared that she WAS weak, but that Christ was strong. Suddenly, the mom realized that as she was near death, she too was weak, and maybe she too might need Christ to be strong for her. In being willing to see herself as weak, and realizing that Christ was there for her, even after all these years of rejecting Him, she finally gave her life to Christ.

Do you think that daughter was able to give thanks to God for her mom’s cancer? Maybe not for the cancer itself, but for the fact that it led her mother to a realization that she needed Christ, and her eternity was changed from that time onward. You bet there was thankfulness there in the midst of that situation.

When we let the Spirit of God fill us, we are able to give thanks in everything, and this has a positive effect on our lives.

Thankfulness leads to uncommon peace in our lives.

Philippians 4:4-7

Philippians 4:4–7 NLT

4 Always be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again—rejoice! 5 Let everyone see that you are considerate in all you do. Remember, the Lord is coming soon. 6 Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. 7 Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

Don’t worry about anything. That’s hard to do. I might be able to pull it off for a little while, maybe even a few days, but when my focus shifts to all the different things going on around me, all the demands and responsibilities, all the possible problems ahead, worry can easily creep back into my life. That’s why Paul writes that we should remember that the Lord is coming soon. When Christ returns, all the petty little troubles of this world will not matter in the grand scheme of things. When Christ returns is when our eternity begins. And when eternity with Christ begins, everything changes.

In the meantime, though, Paul tells us to pray about everything and to tell God what we need, and to thank Him for what He has done. Notice that Paul doesn’t tell us to wait until God answers our prayers, and then don’t forget to thank God for what He has done, we are told to thank God right after we pray. And we aren’t thanking God for what He WILL do (hopefully answer our prayers), but for what He HAS DONE. The reason we experience God’s uncommon peace isn’t because He guarantees that we will always get what we pray for. NO! We receive uncommon peace when we recognize that no matter what God does in response to our prayers, He has already done so much for us that He has proven Himself to be a good, and loving, and faithful God. So whether God answers our prayers how we want Him to or in a different way, it does not change God’s goodness and love for us, and our peace comes from Who God IS, not what He does for us.

As a result, God’s peace guards our hearts and minds. We don’t have to worry, to wonder, to stress out about the things we need, because God is who He is, and He will take care of us. The devil can throw all kinds of lies and accusations at us, trying to get us to worry and doubt, but as long as we keep our eyes on God and on the many things He has already done for us - He sent His son to die for us, He freed us from slavery to sin, He transforms our hearts and our minds so that we become more and more like Jesus over time, he has promised us eternal life and adoption as His children, He has given us the Holy Spirit as a guarantee of our heavenly inheritance, and so much more! - Satan’s attacks will have no power because we are focused on who God is.

So as you go into this Thanksgiving week, I encourage you to spend time thinking about the things that God has done for you in your life. Think about who God is, based on what He tells us about Himself in the Bible, and think about who you are in relation to Him. Choose to spend time in God’s word this week and remind yourself of the truths that we can use to counteract the devil’s attacks on us, and spend time thanking God for the many ways He has blessed you and shown you His love.

Let’s pray.

Hebrews 13:20–21 CSB

20 Now may the God of peace, who brought up from the dead our Lord Jesus—the great Shepherd of the sheep—through the blood of the everlasting covenant, 21 equip you with everything good to do his will, working in us what is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.