Chapter Fourteen: Giving Thanks Always
GIVING THANKS ALWAYS
Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
1 THESSALONIANS 5:18
Because God is sovereign, wise, and good, we can trust Him. If we are to honor Him in our times of adversity, we must trust Him. In our trusting God, there is more at stake than experiencing peace in the midst of difficulties or even deliverance from them. The honor of God should be our chief concern. Therefore, our primary response to the trustworthiness of God should be, “I will trust God.” But there are some corollary responses to trusting God that are also important. They provide tangible evidence that we are in fact trusting God.
THANKSGIVING
In our chapter text Paul said to “give thanks in all circumstances.” We are to be thankful in bad times and good times, for adversities as well as for blessings. All circumstances whether favorable or unfavorable to our desires are to be occasions for thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving is not a natural virtue; it is a fruit of the Spirit, given by Him. The unbeliever is not inclined to give thanks. He may welcome circumstances that are in accord with his wishes and complain about those that are not, but it never occurs to him in either case to give thanks. If he sees life as anything beyond chance, he may congratulate himself for his successes and blame others for his failures, but he never sees the hand of God in his life. One of the most indicting statements in the Bible about natural man is Paul’s charge that “although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him” (Romans 1:21).
Thanksgiving is an admission of dependence. Through it we recognize that in the physical realm God “gives [us] life and breath and everything else” (Acts 17:25), and that in the spiritual realm, it is God who made us alive in Christ Jesus when we were dead in our transgressions and sins. Everything we are and have we owe to His bountiful grace. “For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive?” (1 Corinthians 4:7).
As God’s children we are to give Him thanks in all circumstances, both the good and the bad. In his gospel, Luke tells the story of ten lepers who were healed by Christ (see Luke 17:11-19). All ten cried out to be healed, all ten actually experienced Christ’s healing power, but only one came back to Jesus to thank Him. How prone we are to be as the other nine, quick to ask for God’s help but forgetful to give Him thanks. In fact, our problem is far deeper than mere forgetfulness. We are imbued with a spirit of ingratitude because of our sinful nature. We must cultivate a new spirit, the spirit of gratitude, which the Holy Spirit has implanted within us at our salvation.
Now we all can see the logic in the story of the ten lepers: They all should have returned to give Jesus thanks. We may even acknowledge that many times we have been like the nine forgetful men, when we should have been like the one. We have no trouble with the theology of the story, even if we often fail in the application. In this sense, we have no problem accepting Paul’s directive to give thanks in all circumstances.
The time when we have difficulty accepting Paul’s instruction to give thanks in all circumstances is when those circumstances are bad. Suppose one person is healed from a dreadful disease while another contracts one. Paul’s theology is that both, as believers, should give thanks to God.
The basis for giving thanks in the difficult circumstances is all that we have been learning about God in this book: His sovereignty, wisdom, and love, as they are brought to bear upon all the unexpected and sudden shifts and turns in our lives. In short, it is the firm belief that God is at work in all things—all our circumstances—for our good. It is the willingness to accept this truth from God’s Word and rely upon it without having to know just how He is working for our good.
We can see a very close connection between the promise of Romans 8:28 and the command of 1 Thessalonians 5:18, when we understand that the literal translation of the words in all circumstances is “in everything.” In the Greek, as in the English language, the words and meanings are very, very close. We are to give thanks in everything because we know that in all things God is at work for our good.[1]
To derive the fullest comfort and encouragement from Romans 8:28—and thus to give thanks in all circumstances—we must realize that God is at work in a preactive, not reactive, fashion. That is, God does not just respond to an adversity in our lives to make the best of a bad situation. He knows before He initiates or permits the adversity exactly how He will use it for our good. God knew exactly what He was doing before He allowed Joseph’s brothers to sell him into slavery. Joseph recognized this when he said to his brothers, “So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God. . . . You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good” (Genesis 45:8; 50:20).
Therefore, Paul commands us to “give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (emphasis added). Once before in his first letter to the Thessalonian church, Paul had spoken of God’s will. In chapter 4, verse 3, he says, “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality.” We all recognize the moral imperative in this verse. God commands that we be holy, and holiness includes sexual purity. The imperative is no less strong in chapter 5, verse 18. Giving thanks in all circumstances is as much a part of the moral will of God as is abstaining from sexual immorality. This is not to say that failure to give thanks and indulging in sexual immorality are equally sinful in God’s sight. But it is to say that giving thanks in all circumstances is part of God’s moral will for us, and thus is not an option to the one seeking to please and honor Him.
Thanksgiving in all circumstances, whether favorable or unfavorable, then, is another response to the trustworthiness of God. If we trust Him to work in all our circumstances for our good, then we should give Him thanks in all those circumstances—not thanksgiving for the evil considered in itself, but for the good that He will bring out of that evil through His sovereign wisdom and love.
WORSHIP
Another response to the trustworthiness of God is to worship Him in times of adversity. When the initial disaster struck Job, the Scripture says,
He fell to the ground in worship and said:
“Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
and naked I will depart.
The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away;
may the name of the LORD be praised.”
JOB 1:20-21
Instead of reacting against God in the time of his calamity, Job worshiped Him. Instead of raising his fist in the face of God, he fell down before Him. Instead of defiance, there was a humble recognition of God’s sovereignty–God in His sovereignty had given and God in His sovereignty had a right to take away.
Worship involves a two-directional view. Looking upward we see God in all His majesty, power, glory, and sovereignty as well as His mercy, goodness, and grace. Looking at ourselves we recognize our dependence upon God and our sinfulness before Him. We see God as the sovereign Creator, worthy to be worshiped, served, and obeyed, and we see ourselves as mere creatures, unworthy sinners who have failed to worship, serve, and obey Him as we should.
We deserve nothing from God but eternal judgment. We are continuous debtors, not only for His sovereign mercy in saving us, but for every breath we draw, every bite of food we eat. We have no rights before God. Everything is of His grace. Everything in heaven and earth belongs to Him, and He says to us in the words of the landowner to the workers in his vineyard, “Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money?” (Matthew 20:15).
This is another dimension of God’s sovereignty. We saw earlier that God’s sovereignty involves His absolute power to do whatever pleases Him and His absolute control over the actions of all His creatures. But God’s sovereignty also includes His absolute right to do as He pleases with us. That He has chosen to redeem us and to send His Son to die for us, instead of sending us to hell, is not due to any obligation toward us on His part. It is solely due to His sovereign mercy and grace. As He said to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion” (Exodus 33:19). By that statement God was saying, “I am under obligation to no one.”
Worship from the heart in times of adversity implies an attitude of humble acceptance on our part of God’s right to do as He pleases in our lives. It is a frank acknowledgment that whatever we have at any given moment—health, position, wealth, or anything else we may cherish—is a gift from God’s sovereign grace and may be taken away at His pleasure.
But God does not act toward us in bare sovereignty, wielding His power oppressively or tyrannically. God has already acted toward us in love, mercy, and grace, and He continues to act that way toward us as He works to conform us to the likeness of Christ.
As we bow in worship before His almighty power, we can also bow in confidence that He exercises that power for us, not against us. So we should bow in an attitude of humility, accepting His dealings in our lives, but we can also bow in love, knowing that those dealings, however severe and painful they may be, come from a wise and loving heavenly Father.
HUMILITY
The immediate connection of the thoughts in 1 Peter 5:6-7 should be encouraging to us in times of adversity. The two verses say:
Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.
On the one hand we are to humble ourselves under God’s mighty hand—an expression equivalent to submitting with a spirit of humility to God’s sovereign dealings with you. And on the other hand, we are to cast our anxieties on Him knowing that He cares for us. The anxieties, of course, arise out of the adversities that God’s mighty hand brings into our lives. We are to accept the adversities but not the anxieties.
Our tendency is just opposite. We seek to escape from or resist the adversities but all the while cling to the anxieties that they produce. The way to cast our anxieties on the Lord is through humbling ourselves under His sovereignty and then trusting Him in His wisdom and love.
Humility should be both a response to adversity and a fruit of it. The apostle Paul was very clear that the primary purpose of his thorn in the flesh was to curb any tendency of pride in him. He said, “To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me” (2 Corinthians 12:7). If Paul had a tendency to pride, surely we do also. Therefore, we can put it down as a principle: Whenever God blesses us in any way that might engender pride in us, He will along with the blessings give us a “thorn in the flesh” to oppose and undermine that pride. We will be made weak in some way through one or more adversities in order that we might recognize that our strength is in Him, not in ourselves.
We can choose how we will respond to such a thorn in the flesh. We can chafe under it, often for months or even years, or we can accept it from God, humbling ourselves under His mighty hand. When we truly humble ourselves before Him, we will in due time experience the sufficiency of His grace, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6).
FORGIVENESS
Adversity often comes to us through the actions of other people. Sometimes those hurtful actions are deliberately directed at us. At other times we may be the victim of another person’s irresponsible actions that, though not deliberately aimed at us, nevertheless affect us seriously. How are we to respond to those who are the instruments of our adversity? The answer, of course, is with love and forgiveness.
Our tendency is to blame the other person, to harbor resentment, and to even desire revenge. I have found that two truths help me forgive others. First, I myself am a sinner, forgiven by the grace of God and the shed blood of His Son. I have hurt others, perhaps not so often deliberately but unconsciously through an uncaring spirit or selfish actions.
Ecclesiastes 7:21-22 says, “Do not pay attention to every word people say, or you may hear your servant cursing you—for you know in your heart that many times you yourself have cursed others.” While there is a rich direct application in this passage, there is also a broader principle that speaks to the subject of forgiveness. We can see it by restating the idea of the passage as follows: “Do not resent other people who are the instruments of adversity in your life, for you know in your heart that you have sometimes been the instrument of adversity in the lives of others.”
God tells us to forgive each other, just as in Christ He forgave us (see Ephesians 4:32). If I want God to forgive me when I have hurt others, then I must be willing to forgive those who are instruments of pain in my life.
Second, I seek to look beyond the person who is only the instrument to see God who has purposed this adversity for me. “Who can speak and have it happen if the Lord has not decreed it?” (Lamentations 3:37). If God has ordained to allow this trial in my life, it is because He has in His infinite wisdom deemed it to be good for me. Through the adversity, wrought by the other person, God is doing His work in my life. One part of humbling myself under His mighty hand is to resist any tendency of bitterness or resentment in my heart toward the other person. Though his actions may be sinful in themselves, God is using those actions in my life for my good.
PRAYER FOR DELIVERANCE
A spirit of humble acceptance toward God or forgiveness toward others does not mean we should not pray for deliverance from the adversities that come upon us. Scripture teaches just the opposite. A number of the psalms, for example, contain very fervent prayers for deliverance from troubles of various sorts. Most of all, we have the example of the Lord Jesus Himself, who prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39).
As long as the ultimate outcome of an adversity is in doubt (for example, in the case of sickness or a spiritually rebellious child), we should continue to pray, asking God to change the situation. But we should pray this in the same spirit as Jesus did—not as we will but as God wills. We certainly must never demand of God that He will change the situation.
We should also pray for deliverance from the attacks of Satan. As we have already seen, Satan’s attacks, like the injuries of other people or the calamitous events of nature, are under the sovereign control of God. Satan cannot attack us without the permission of God or go beyond the limits that God has set (see Job 1:12; 2:6; Luke 22:31). We do not know why, in a specific instance, God allows Satan to attack us. But sometimes the reason is that we may engage in spiritual warfare—that we may “resist the devil” (James 4:7).
We should pray for deliverance, and we should learn to resist the attacks of Satan in the power of Jesus Christ. But we should always pray in an attitude of humble acceptance of that which is God’s will. Sometimes God’s will is deliverance from the adversity; sometimes it is the provision of grace to accept the adversity. Trusting God for the grace to accept adversity is as much an act of faith as is trusting Him for deliverance from it.
SEEKING GOD’S GLORY
Above all else, our response to adversity should be to seek God’s glory. We see this attitude illustrated in the life of the apostle Paul during his imprisonment in Rome. Not only was he imprisoned, but there were men, supposedly fellow ministers of the gospel, who were actually trying to add to his troubles by their preaching (see Philippians 1:14-17).
What was Paul’s response? He said, “But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice” (Philippians 1:18). Essentially Paul said, “It really doesn’t matter what happens to me or how I am affected by all of this, the important thing is what happens to the gospel.”
Most of us have probably not progressed that far in our Christian maturity. We have not attained to the degree of selfless spirit that Paul had. It still does matter what happens to us. But this should be our goal, and if we watch for opportunities to grow in that direction, we will see them.
Perhaps you have a certain position of responsibility in your church or a ministry organization. What if someone comes along who is more gifted than you, and you are asked (perhaps not very graciously) to step aside in favor of that person? How will you respond? Here is your opportunity to grow in the direction of being concerned only for God’s glory. If you will respond to God in this and humble yourself under His mighty hand, you will experience His grace enabling you to be concerned primarily—if not entirely—with His glory. You will have grown more into the likeness of Jesus, who laid aside His glory to die for you.
Above all, you must see the hand of God in this event, knowing that He, who does all things well, intends this only for your good.
One last quotation from the pen of Alexander Carson will help us to not only see this typical event in its proper perspective, but also to draw together all the gracious truths we have learned in these studies:
Nothing can be more consoling to the man of God, than the conviction that the Lord who made the world governs the world; and that every event, great and small, prosperous and adverse, is under the absolute disposal of him who doth all things well, and who regulates all things for the good of his people. . . . The Christian will be confident and courageous in duty, in proportion as he views God in his Providence as ruling in the midst of his enemies; and acting for the good of his people, as well as for his own glory, even in the persecution of the Gospel.[2]
CAN YOU TRUST GOD?
We have seen that God is trustworthy. He is absolutely sovereign over every event in the universe, and He exercises that sovereignty in an infinitely wise and loving way for our good. In that sense we have answered the main question raised by this book. You can trust God. He will never fail you nor forsake you.
But what about the second way we can ask that question? Can you trust God? Is your total relationship with God one on which you can build a bulwark of trust against the attacks of adversity? You cannot trust God in isolation from all other areas of your life. To grow in your ability to trust God in times of adversity, you must first lay a solid foundation of a daily personal relationship with Him. Only as you know Him intimately and seek to obey Him completely will you be able to establish a trust relationship with God.
And then, to that foundation of a life lived in communion with God, we must add what we have learned about God in this book—about His sovereignty, wisdom, and love. We must lay hold of these great truths in the little trials as well as the major calamities of life. As we do this in dependence upon the enabling power of His Holy Spirit, we will be able more and more to say, “I can trust God.”