How to Be Thankful When You’re Not
With Thanksgiving coming this week, I’ve imagined myself being “one” with pastors all over the country who were doing the same thing I’ve been doing all week—praying that we can encourage our congregations and ourselves to grow bigger hearts of thankfulness beginning this Sunday. Probably every church in America is exploring some of the Scriptures we’ve already read this morning, like Eph. 5, where the Apostle Paul commands his readers to walk in the Spirit by always giving thanks to God for everything. That’s one of the things Paul says proves we are walking in the Spirit.
November 23, 2014
1 Thess 5:16-19, How to Be Thankful When You’re Not
Pastor Patti Ricotta, Brewster Baptist Church
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In a second I’m going to read another passage written by Paul that has a similar command. But before I do, I want to ask you to turn your bulletin over, and take out a pencil or a pen, if you have one. And as I read the next passage, jot down, or make a mental note of the things that come to mind about your own spiritual walk as I’m reading.
It’s a short passage; you only have a few seconds, so don’t try to edit your thoughts. Don’t try to write what you think you should be thinking. Just put down the first thoughts that come into your mind about the passage, whether positive or negative. Oh, and just to reiterate, each of the four statements I’m about to read are written as commands for every Believer. They are not optional. I’ll read first from the NIV. Then I’ll read the same passage again in The Message to give you a slightly different way of hearing it. Are you ready?
1st Thess. 5:16-19 says, “16 Rejoice always, 17 pray continually, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. 19 Do not quench the Spirit.”
And The Message says, “Be cheerful no matter what; pray all the time; thank God no matter what happens. This is the way God wants you who belong to Christ Jesus to live. Don’t suppress the Spirit.”
What came up for you when you listened to those words? Did they give you positive thoughts or negative ones? Did you feel great, like, “Wow, I’m really walking in the Spirit because I am always cheerful? I pray without ceasing. My knees have callouses from spending so much time in prayer on them. There’s no way I’m quenching the Spirit!”
Yesterday, Katelyn, my son’s friend came over for a visit. She is home from college for Thanksgiving break. In her own words Katelyn says that she’s not very “religious,” but she politely asked me what my sermon was about. So, I recited this passage to her, and as I spoke, I watched the smile drop from her face, and then I saw her face scrunch up.
I said, “What are you thinking? What does that passage bring up for you?” She said, “Man, I gotta buck up!” I said, “What do you mean?” She said, “I gotta buck up. I’m always so stressed out with school and family and stuff. I’m always so negative. I’m a big brat. I really gotta buck up!”
Do you sometimes feel like Katelyn when you read scriptures like this? Do you feel like, “Oh brother, there’s something else I’m not doing well. And besides, what’s the point of always rejoicing. Some things are truly sad. And if I’m are praying all the time, when am I supposed to concentrate on work, or have meaningful conversations with other people. And how in the world am I supposed to be thankful to God for the really horrific things that have happen in my life and in the world?”
“How am I supposed to be thankful when I’m not?”
Because these are commands, we can’t just ignore them or say they are impossible, and give up. We have to try to understand the deeper meaning. God would never give us a bunch of rules and regulations just to make our life difficult.
So, why would God want us to always be joyful, pray all the time, and be thankful in every situation? One of the reasons is because that is how God wired us to thrive. Joyfulness, prayer and gratitude recalibrate our souls. God knows that to live is to suffer. To deny that life has its share of disappointments, failures, losses, hurts, setbacks, and real anguish would be unrealistic and indefensible. No amount of positive thinking will change that truth. But, it is far too easy to get mired down in negative thinking and resentments. We replay in our minds, over and over, the bad things that have happened, and them we get stuck there. Eventually, pessimism becomes our default way of life. Do you know anyone like that?
But, according to the Bible, and to a vast body of research, like the work done by Dr. Robert Emmons, Professor of Psychology at UC Davis, “It’s easy to feel grateful when life is good. But when disaster strikes, gratitude is worth the effort,” Dr. Emmons says. “Processing a life experience through a grateful lens does not mean denying negativity. It is not a form of superficial ‘happiology.’ Instead, it means realizing the power you have to transform an obstacle into an opportunity. It means reframing a loss into a potential gain, recasting negativity into positive channels for gratitude.”
I know a Christian couple who went to a parent/teacher conference for their second grade son, Sammy. The teacher told the parents that she loved having Sammy in her class because he was always positive and always grateful, and that the children in the class fed off of his positivity. For example, she said it had been raining for 9 days straight and the kids had to go to the gym every day for recess. “There are just so many times you can play kickball in the gym without going stir crazy,” she said.
On the 10th day, it looked like it was going to be sunny and the kids were ecstatic about finally getting to go outside. But then, just as they were putting their coats on, there was a cloud burst and the rain came pouring down. The teacher said, “As soon as I told the class we couldn’t go outside, all the kids instinctively looked at Sammy to see how he was going to respond, because however Sammy felt about it, that’s was how they were going to feel about it, too.
Sammy perked right up and said, ‘That’s ok, we can go to the gym and play kick ball!’ Everyone cheered and lined up to go to the gym for the 10th day straight. But, because Sammy was positive, in spite of the rain, and grateful for kickball, they were too.” Now, was the teacher totally correct that Sammy was always positive and always grateful? No, of course not, but he was joyful and thankful far more than he was negative and unappreciative. So it seemed that the word “always” applied. I think that is what Paul is getting at when he used the command to always be joyful, prayerful and grateful.
People need “Sammy’s” in their lives. Grateful people help others frame the way they could interpret life in more positive ways. Joy and gratitude are contagious! As Christians, we’re the ones with the Holy Spirit living inside. And, the Spirit is just waiting to empower us with joy, through prayer and gratitude. Because, as Paul said, this is God’s will for us in Christ Jesus, we get to have joyfulness, prayerfulness and thankfulness as our default mode of being…if we do not quench the Spirit.
It’s a matter of emphasis. Where are we going to fasten our attention? On the things that bring us joy or the things that keep us locked in resentment? Are we going to pray only when we want or need something or are we going to keep and open conversation going with God throughout our day so that he can help us discover the barriers to our joy and gratitude? Are we going to smolder about the things we don’t have, or cherish the things we do have.
But, what about the really, truly difficult or painful situations that we go through? How can we be thankful then?
If we try to be grateful when it is hard too be, God will be pleased and he can use our gratitude in ways we might never expect.
There aren’t many situations worse than a Nazi prison camp, would you say? In her book, The Hiding Place, Corrie Ten Boom relates an incident that taught her to be grateful for things we normally wouldn’t be thankful for. She and her sister, Betsy, had just been transferred to the worst Nazi prison camp they had seen yet, Ravensbruck. When they go to their barracks, they found the place extremely overcrowded and infested with fleas.
They had a smuggled Bible and that morning they were in 1 Thessalonians 5, like we are today.
They were reminded to rejoice always, pray constantly, and give thanks in all circumstances. Betsy told Corrie to stop and thank the Lord for every detail of their new living quarters.
At first, Corrie flatly refused to give thanks for the fleas, but Betsy persisted. Corrie finally agreed to somehow thank God even for the fleas. During the months spent at that camp, they were surprised to find how openly they could hold Bible study and prayer meetings in their barrack without guard interference. Several months later they learned that the guards would not enter the barracks because of the fleas.
Not everything that happens to us is good, but God has an uncanny way, even miraculous ways of using everything that happens to work out for our good. Rom. 8:28 says, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” Every one of us who love Jesus, are called with a purpose.
And every one of the things that have happened in our lives are things that God will use to make that purpose come alive and make it richer, if we will only refrain from quenching the Spirit’s power in us by living in bitterness instead of joy, by having a skimpy prayer life, and by lacking gratitude.
Do you ever think about the times Jesus prayed with gratitude to God the Father? There are only 3 or 4 different situations that are recorded in which Jesus prays in thanks to God. All of them were in unimaginably difficult or painful circumstances. They are when he needed to feed thousands of people with only one meal, at the death of his friend Lazarus, and at the Last Supper. We are so used to the stories and their positive outcome that we can miss how truly difficult these situations were and we can miss that they prompted Jesus to pray prayers of gratitude.
We only have time to look at one these situations. Remember when Jesus fed 5000 people with nothing more than a few little buns and some small fish? Think about how impossibly difficult that situation was. 5,000 famished men (plus women and children), and only enough food for one person to eat and be satisfied.
Looking at that story with human eyes, we might say Jesus needed to figure out which lucky person would get to eat (maybe him), and he needed to figure out what he was going to do about the other 4,999 hungry people.
Do you sometimes feel that you are facing those kinds of odds? Maybe you have enough money for one bill, but there are many other creditors, hungry to be paid, and you need thousands of dollars to satisfy them.
What did Jesus do in that situation? The account in Matt. 14 says, “Taking the five loaves and two fish, and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks…” Jesus reached out to God with an offering of all that he had and with a grateful heart. And that made all the difference.
Jesus didn’t thank God for the difficult circumstance itself. He didn’t say, “Thank you God that there are so many starving people. And thank you that I don’t have enough food to feed them.” He looked up to heaven and thanked God for what he did have, and he trusted God with the outcome.
Now, I can think of many times I’ve realized God intervened in a situation and I thanked him after I saw my prayer answered. But, Jesus didn’t wait to thank God until after God did something miraculous. Jesus thanked God in advance, and trusted God to be moved by his tiny offering, and his gratitude.
Two more important points about this event: Jesus used all the skills, gifts and resources God had already provided him to do what needed to be done. He didn’t sit back and do nothing. His disciples scour the crowd to see how much food they could find. We need to do that too, when we are faced with challenges.
Also, once he had done everything he could, and came up with just enough food for only one person, he didn’t take advantage of his position and eat the food himself. He didn’t rationalize that he was the most in need of the food since he was on a mission. Instead, he offered it all to God with thanksgiving, and God blessed his grateful offer. As a result, all were feed.
What great lessons for all of us. Do what we can with everything we already have, offer all we have to God, even if it is very little, thank God in advance of his answer, and trust him completely for the outcome.
You know, we can always find something to be grateful for, and if we are not thankful for everything we have, we won’t be grateful for what we don’t have yet! Difficult situations, pain and suffering are always direction turners. They will either turn us in the direction of gratitude or bitterness. Every encounter can either make us bitter or better.
Think about the things you wrote on the back of your bulletin at the beginning of the sermon. We have so much in Christ that if we latch our attention onto him and start thinking about all the good things we have in Christ, soon we will see the power that comes from always rejoicing, constantly praying and offering all we have in gratitude to God. It will become part of our second nature—effortless, Like Sammy. And rather than quenching the Spirit, we will be giving tremendous fuel for the Spirit’s fire in our lives so that we become brighter lights for Christ in the World.
In closing: There couldn’t be a better sermon topic for my last sermon on the pastoral staff of BBC. My heart is full to overflowing with gratitude to God for my time as one of your pastors. I am so grateful for Pastor Doug, who hired me for a 3 MONTH internship that somehow turned into a 3 YEARS and 7 month staff position. I’ve learned so much from you, Doug, more than you will ever know. Thank you.
I’m grateful to all the staff I’ve worked with over the years. Thank you Pastor Mary, and Jane Wallbrown for giving me space in your day and in your hearts to teach me what I needed to learn to be a better minister. I’m grateful for Chris Morris and his music, for Sandy Light and Cindy Caldwell, and now Sharon Kautz and Carol Zavesky; I’m thankful for Joanne Bassett, Chuck Hilton, Jerry Sullivan, Rob Hooper and now Dwight Ritter. And it’s been a privilege to work with David Pranga and Barbara Burill for these last few months.
But I am deeply gratitude is for all of you, dear brothers and sisters! I’m grateful for the sisterhood of Nancy Smith and all the women who have ever attended the Women’s Bible Study.
I’m grateful for every person I’ve ever visited, thank you for letting me pray for you and care for you. I’m grateful for Ann Wolf and Bob Linnell, my every-Monday-morning Caring ministry team members, and to all the dear shut-in BBC members who have taught me so much about what really matters in life.
You all have given me more joy than one person deserves. Thank you!
Please pray with me:
Lord God,
Thank you for being a God who understands that our lives are sometimes very hard, making it is very difficult to be positive and grateful. And thank you also for wiring us in such a way that when we are filled with the Holy Spirit we can become more and more joyful, more and more prayerful, and more and more thankful. May today be the day that we stop thinking about the commands to be thankful in every situation as one more difficult thing we have to live up to, and replace that thought with the truth that, because this is your will for us in Christ Jesus, you have every intention of empowering us to do it. Give us all the ability to look at life through gratitude lenses. And may our new, Holy Spirit inspired ways of thinking create a turning point in our relationships with you, our loved ones and ourselves this Thanksgiving. Amen.
Blessing: May today be the time when people begin to say of you, “That person is outrageously joyful, abnormally prayerful and shockingly thankful!” Amen.