This
Thursday, it will be Thanksgiving. I
hope all of us will be able to have a wonderful time with family and
friends. I hope all of us will be able
to take some time to watch some football, to eat, to watch some more football,
to take a nap, to eat some more, to watch some more football, to catch up with
loved ones, and to watch some more football.
And to eat some more, too.
I also hope, in the midst of all
that, that all of us are able to take some time to truly give thanks to
God. I know, though, that some of us
are going through some pretty serious things in our lives. And so, I know that some of us are going to
have a hard time feeling thankful this Thursday, or any other time for that
matter.
Last week, we talked about how
being thankful in all circumstances can give us the peace of God in our hearts
and in our lives. That’s something I
think we all probably want. Here’s the
thing, though. How, in real life, can
we actually do that?
I mean, we know that’s what we’re
supposed to do. And in fact, I suspect
most of us would like to be able to do it.
But it’s hard, you know? There
are a lot of circumstances that we’re not very thankful for. You know the obvious ones: when we’ve lost a loved one, when we’ve got
serious health problems, when we lose a job.
But there are a lot of other circumstances we’re not very thankful for,
too. When we plant a crop and it does
not rain, when we have a hundred things to do and the machinery breaks down or
the computer goes on the fritz, when we’re feeling exhausted and the kids start
crying in the middle of the night.
These and a hundred other things happen in our lives, and when they do,
we don’t feel very thankful.
Maybe we wish we could—after all,
it’s at these times we need to feel the peace of God more than ever. But we don’t. We don’t feel thankful, and we don’t know how to make ourselves
feel thankful. In fact, in those
moments, the whole idea of feeling thankful sounds ridiculous.
It’s not an easy thing. You’ve heard some of the things people will
say. They’ll tell us to be thankful
because after all, things could be worse.
That’s a reason to be thankful?
Things could be worse?
Whoopee. “You lost your job? Well, at least your house didn’t burn
down. Hooray!” That’s like telling a football coach who
just lost by four touchdowns to be thankful he didn’t lose by five. It may be true that things could be worse,
but it’s not much help in feeling thankful.
We’ll be told, well, think of all
the people who are worse off than you.
Again, it may be true, but what good is it? “I just realized that life stinks even worse for you than it does
for me. Boy, does that make me feel
good!” What sense does that make?
The fact is that while being
thankful in all circumstances may be good advice, and it’s certainly a good
goal to strive for, it’s not possible.
It’s not possible for the same reason living a sinless life is not
possible: because we’re human. We’re human, and there are going to be times
when everything goes wrong, and we simply are not capable of making ourselves
feel thankful, even if we try.
That’s okay. God understands that. There are circumstances in which we simply
cannot feel thankful until we’re ready, and we cannot force ourselves to be
ready. Trying to force ourselves to be
thankful before we’re ready only leads to guilt and frustration. We talked about that last week. This stuff about being thankful is not in
the Bible to make us feel guilty when we don’t.
So, if you’re in a situation right
now where you don’t feel very thankful, it’s all right. God is not upset with you for that. God understands it. But God wants to help you through it. That’s what our reading from First
Thessalonians today is about.
Paul writes that we should “give
thanks in all circumstances”, and we hear that quoted all the time, but too
often we skip what Paul said before that and what Paul said after that. We’ll deal with what Paul said before it
first. It’s two words, but they’re two
incredibly important words. Here they
are: pray continually.
“Pray continually.” That’s really the key to getting through
these tough times. Prayer keeps us
close to God, and the closer we are to God, the more God can help us through circumstances
that are not good.
A lot of times, when things are
bad, we don’t feel like praying. Maybe
we feel like God’s not going to do anything.
Maybe we feel like we’ve been praying already, and nothing has
happened. Maybe we feel like God has
abandoned us. There are lots of
reasons, when things are bad, why we don’t feel like praying.
That’s understandable, but we need
to pray anyway. Even if we don’t feel
like God hears us, even if we feel like God has abandoned us, we need to
pray. We need to pray even if we don’t
really expect anything to happen. We
need to pray for the same reason Peter said the disciples would not leave
Jesus. We need to pray because there’s
no one else we can turn to.
What should we pray? Well, there are all kinds of people who’ll
tell you what to pray in these situations, but here’s the thing: it really doesn’t matter. It does not matter what we pray or how we
pray. We can be upset with God, we can
be angry with God, we can be frustrated with God. We can yell and scream at God, we can beg and plead with God, we
can cry to God. God already knows how
we feel anyway. It really does not
matter what we say to God, as long as we just say something.
This is where those words that come
after “give thanks in all circumstances” come into it. It’s seven words this time, and they’re very
important, too. Here they are: “do not put out the Spirit’s fire.”
When we don’t pray, when we move
away from God, we put out the Spirit’s fire.
God is still willing to help us, but as we’ve said before, God gives us
free will. That means God gives us the
right to make choices, and God respects that right. God’s help is not forced on us when we choose to reject it. God allows us to choose to “put out the
Spirit’s fire” if that’s what we choose to do.
That’s why it’s so important for us
to pray, and to keep praying, no matter what.
That’s true even if we don’t know what to say. That’s where the verses from Romans come in. If we just open our hearts to God, we don’t
even need to consciously say anything.
As Paul says, the Holy Spirit intercedes for us. The Holy Spirit prays for us through our
wordless groans.
In those times when we feel so bad,
or so sad, or so hopeless, that we don’t know what to say, when we cannot even
say anything, when all we can do is let out a wordless groan, God still
understands. God understands how we
feel. God understands what we’re going
through. And God will make sense of it
all, and will help us. All we need to
do is just sincerely open our hearts to God.
We need to do that, and we need to
keep doing it. That’s why Paul said to
pray continually. This is not
something where we can say a quick, one-time prayer and think that’s going to
do the job. We need to pray
continually. Over and over again. Keep working with God. Let God keep working with us. Keep opening our hearts to God. Keep letting God know exactly how we feel.
And then, eventually, after we’ve
emptied our hearts to God, after we’ve screamed or begged or cried or groaned
or done whatever it is we needed to do, we’ll be able to listen. We’ll be able to listen, and we’ll be able
to hear. And God will be there, and God
will respond, and God will help us through.
It’s not easy. I’m not trying to say it is. It’s hard to feel thankful in all circumstances. Sometimes, life takes us down into some
pretty deep, dark valleys, so deep and dark that we cannot see the way
out. But, as psalm twenty-three tells
us, God is with us even in the darkest valleys. God is with us, and God leads us through those valleys and out
into the light.
So if, in this Thanksgiving week,
you’re not feeling very thankful, it’s okay.
Don’t beat yourself up for that.
Feel what you feel. Don’t give
yourself guilt on top of everything else.
But know that you are not alone. You have a church that loves you. You have a pastor you can call any hour of
the day or night. You have a pastor’s
wife who’ll be there for you, too. Most
importantly, you have God. God will be
there for you at all times.
If we turn to God, God will help us
through whatever we’re going through right now. With God’s help, we will be able to feel thankful again. Then, we will be able to feel the peace of
God in our hearts and in our lives.
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