November 6,
2005
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The
Gift of Thankfulness
We are entering the time of year when we all begin to think about the
people and the things we are thankful for.
This time of year ushers in a season of thanksgiving.
We focus on the evidence of God’s blessing and his gracious favor in
our lives. We count our blessings
and name them one by one. Sometimes
this exercise in expressing thanks becomes trite and superficial.
We thank
God for the people and things we can see and touch, and we should be thankful
for them. Often this is done more
out of habit or because it is the polite thing to do than out of sincerity of
heart. This morning we are going to
look at thankfulness from another angle. We
are going to see how thankfulness is a character-shaping gift of grace.
Real thankfulness goes beyond a mere expression of gratitude for the
material blessings we enjoy. It is
an attitude of the heart shaped in us by the Holy Spirit.
Real thankfulness is formed in us through character building experiences
that break us of our dependence on self. We
all know this to be true: when life is going well it’s easy to be thankful.
We’re cruising through life and things seem to come pretty easy.
Before long we find ourselves in a pattern of living that doesn’t
really require us to depend on God much at all.
Allow me to suggest that thankfulness of this kind is easy because our
character is not being put to the test. The
real challenge of thankfulness is learning to be thankful when life hurts.
In those seasons of life when nothing seems to go right and we’re
immersed in difficulty it’s hard to be thankful.
The temptation is to find someone or something to blame for our troubles.
Why should we be thankful
when our relationships fall apart, when our children make destructive choices,
when people we love get sick, when our spouse suddenly dies of a rare form of
cancer, when we lose our jobs, when life just hurts?
Good question. Can we be
thankful? Should we be thankful?
As long as thankfulness is viewed as something we do to be polite when we
get a gift we don’t really like, we’ll continue to miss the point.
You would be crazy to be thankful for your trials unless you begin to see
thankfulness as a gift that is shaped in us by God’s Spirit working through
the difficult circumstances of life.
Real thankfulness is born out of difficulty.
Not because God can’t teach us thankfulness when life is good, but
because we tend to be more receptive to learning when faced with difficulty.
In our opening text this morning, James re-iterates this truth.
If we stand the test and learn to persevere under the difficult
circumstances we face we will discover the secret to real thankfulness.
James says we will be called blessed.
This blessedness refers to an internal quality of joy formed in our
hearts by the Holy Spirit of God, born out of suffering.
The word James uses for “blessed” is the NT Greek word, “makarios.”
Makarios was commonly used to describe the happiness of a carefree life.
It startles us to see James use this word in the context of enduring
trials and tests. He is not
advocating that we put a happy face on our suffering.
He is not saying that we should enjoy pain or claim that our trials are
fun. His point is simply this: the
trials we face can serve a purpose. He
knows that pain is a teacher and the lessons we learn from painful circumstances
won’t be wasted. If we are
willing to learn from these experiences our faithful dependence on God will
improve and we will cultivate an attitude of joy.
In this way, James’ words are bursting with hope.
The believer who endures trials by trusting God will have a life that is
truly abundant, joyful, and victorious. Standing
the tests of life whets our appetite for eternity.
We can be confident that the trials we face today prepare us for eternal
life. The crown of life is the
promise of being in the glorious presence of God forever.
So in that sense we can be thankful for the trials we face because we
know those things accomplish in us God’s long-term goal for our lives-
maturity and completeness.
So we can consider ourselves truly blessed, no matter what circumstances
we’re facing because we have been promised the crown of life. God helps us to rest and trust in him when we’re facing
pain. Not only our faith, but also
our love for God will deepen as we endure life’s trials.
As we love God, his promises become ours.
This morning we will look closely at the importance of cultivating the
gift of thankfulness in our lives. The
Bible says, “give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for
you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thess. 5:18, NIV).
So how do we do this? First,
cultivating a thankful heart requires us to focus beyond our immediate struggle
to the presence of God through the struggle. This is a lot like driving through the fog.
You have to shift your focus from the fog surrounding you everywhere and
focus you attention on the road. You
have to follow the painted lines in the road trusting that they will indicate
which way to turn as you travel along. You
can’t drive fast in the fog or you’re certain to wind up in a ditch.
You have to go slow, you must be patient, and stay focused on the lines.
They will guide you to your destination.
This is exactly what we must do
through the difficult struggles of life. If
we focus only on the pain of the situation we will lose direction and wind up in
the ditch. But if we keep our focus
on Jesus, he will lovingly and patiently guide us through the struggle to the
destination he has in mind for us. God
is faithful to be with us and he will use our painful experiences to shape our
character. In the same way fog
doesn’t always lift before we get where we’re going, Jesus doesn’t always
promise to remove our pain. But he
will work through the pain to cultivate a thankfulness and joy we otherwise
wouldn’t have known.
Rabbit
Proof Fence is an Australian
film telling the true story of three Aboriginal girls removed from their home in
Jigalong, Western Australia, in 1931. Sisters Molly and Daisy, along with their
cousin Gracie were "half-castes," children of white fathers and
Aboriginal mothers. The Aborigine Act of the day allowed the removal of
half-caste children from anywhere in the state to place them in residential
schools. The fairer skinned ones would be educated and married off to white
husbands. The grandchildren of these unions would be seen as white, eliminating
this unwanted third race.
These three girls were literally ripped from their
mother and grandmother's arms and transported by truck and train, sometimes
caged, to the school at Moore River. Here they were placed in a dorm with dozens
of other half-caste girls and began to experience the regimented
prison-camp-like conditions of the school. Half-castes who tried to escape were
caught by the Aboriginal tracker Moodoo and punished severely.
One day,
with a storm on the horizon, Molly decides to run away with her sister and
cousin, hoping that the rain will obscure their tracks. The girls must not only
evade capture but find the resources and directions needed to return home. A key
to their success is the rabbit proof fence, a 1500-mile structure, the longest
fence in the world, built to keep the plague of rabbits separated from good
farmland. One line of the fence runs right through Jigalong, the girls' home.
Upon finding the fence they follow it doggedly, trying to elude the tracker,
police, and others who have been enlisted to catch them. Gracie is captured and
returned to Moore River. The two sisters continue on for several more weeks
through desolate wilderness and into a desert where they nearly perish.
Following the fence, they are joyfully reunited with their mother and
grandmother, who take them to hide in the desert.
In their amazing journey home, the girls walked
for nine weeks and covered approximately 1200 miles. Incredibly, years later
Molly was again taken to Moore River, this time with her own children. Again she
escaped and made the same journey home while carrying a baby. The movie closes
with a shot of Daisy and Molly, now very old women, still at Jigalong, vowing
never to leave home again. We will
do almost anything, suffer almost any hardship, travel almost any distance, to
get where we all eventually want to be: home.
It takes perseverance to drive through the fog and safely arrive at your
destination. It took Molly, Daisy,
and Gracie perseverance and determination to get to the place they longed to be:
home. Our struggles and
difficulties teach us perseverance. They
give us an insatiable hunger for our true home: God’s embrace. The Bible says, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, when
you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith
develops perseverance. Perseverance
must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking
anything” (James 1:2-4).
Next we see that cultivating a
thankful heart strips us of self and deepens our dependence on God.
In his book The Unnecessary Pastor, Eugene
Peterson writes: My two sons are both rock climbers, and I have listened to them
plan their ascents. They spend as much or more time planning their climbs as in
the actual climbing. They meticulously plot their route and then, as they climb,
put in what they call "protection"—pitons hammered into small
crevices in the rock face, with attached ropes that will arrest a quick descent
to death. Rock climbers who fail to put in protection have short climbing
careers.
Our pitons or
"protection" come as we remember and hold on to those times when we
have experienced God's faithfulness in our lives. Every answered prayer, every
victory, every storm that has been calmed by his presence is a piton which keeps
us from falling, losing hope, or worse yet, losing our faith. Every piton in our
life is an example of God's faithfulness to us…. As we ascend in the kingdom
of God, we also realize that each experience, each victory is only a piton—a
stepping stone toward our ultimate goal of finishing the race and receiving the
crown of glory (Eugene
Peterson, The Unnecessary Pastor, Rediscovering the Call (Eerdmans, 2000),
p.12).
Every good rock climber knows you must have your protection in place to
make a successful climb. Climbers
depend on their protection; they trust that it won’t fail them. They surrender themselves to it and count on it to come
through for them. A self-assured
climber is a foolish climber.
Learning to depend on God
protects us from a self-assured approach to life. As we surrender ourselves to God’s care and protection we
will discover that we can be certain, not in our own ability to overcome trials,
but in God’s faithful presence securing for and leading us on to victory.
When we depend on God we become over-comers because we learn to see our
trials as opportunities to make God’s greatness known.
The Bible says, “Praise be to
you, O LORD, God of our father Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. 11
Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and
the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours.
Yours, O LORD, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all. 12
Wealth and honor come from you; you are the ruler of all things. In your hands
are strength and power to exalt and give strength to all. 13 Now, our
God, we give you thanks, and praise your glorious name” (1 Chronicles 29:10b.
–13).
Acknowledging God’s greatness
is at the same time a personal confession of weakness and need.
Realizing just how much we need God helps us learn to depend on him.
This confession crucifies the self-assuredness that often keeps God from
becoming great in us. Our
recognition of need is an invitation for God to become Lord.
When Jesus becomes Lord of our hearts our dependence on him will grow.
God alone is our source of strength and as we surrender to his lordship
in our lives we can be truly thankful that his love and purpose for us never
change.
Are you depending on your
own limited strength and abilities to empower you to scale the walls of
adversity in your life? Are you
trying to make it on your own? What’s
keeping the feet of your faith from falling into despair?
On whom or what are you depending? Thankfully,
we don’t have to climb alone. We
have a God who provides a solid place for our feet to stand even in the face of
life’s fiercest storms.
Finally, cultivating a thankful heart results in true humility.
When we realize nothing we have originates with us, but comes to us out
of the generous heart of God humility will result.
God delights in blessing us. We
are his beloved children, his precious treasure.
When we come to the realization that God is good and his intentions
toward us are good, even in the face of tremendous suffering, we can reap a
harvest of joy.
Humility is one of the gifts of
thankfulness. Humility increases
our appreciation for God. A right attitude toward God emerges as we consider our lives
in comparison with his greatness. He
is God and we are not. Everything
we have- money, friends, homes, cars, jobs, even life itself- is a gift from
God’s hand. Humility means that
we rightly respect and honor God for who he is.
Humility is not a call to self-depreciation. It is simply understanding who God is and who we are.
Author John
Ortberg writes: Not
long ago, there was a CEO of a Fortune 500 company who pulled into a service
station to get gas. He went inside to pay, and when he came out he noticed his
wife engaged in a deep discussion with the service station attendant. It turned
out that she knew him. In fact back in high school before she met her eventual
husband, she used to date this man.
The
CEO got in the car, and the two drove in silence. He was feeling pretty good
about himself when he finally spoke: "I bet I know what you were thinking.
I bet you were thinking you're glad you married me, a Fortune 500 CEO, and not
him, a service station attendant." "No,
I was thinking if I'd married him, he'd be a Fortune 500 CEO and you'd be a
service station attendant” (John
Ortberg in Love Beyond Reason (Zondervan, 1998), pp. 142-43).
There are no self-made people. As
soon as we take credit for anything we are proving the pride in our hearts.
The Bible says, “For
everyone who exalts himself with be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be
exalted” (Luke 14:11). Jesus is
our example of true humility. He
shows us what humility looks like. You
can’t try to be humble. Any
attempt at proving one’s humility is a lesson in missing the point. Humility is an attitude shaped in our hearts when the Holy
Spirit is alive in us. Humility
doesn’t mean putting yourself down. It
means realizing your limitations and being honest in your evaluation of your
heart.
Jesus modeled humility in the context of serving others.
Nothing was below him. If
the God of the universe willingly served others who are we to think ourselves
above it? Our service to others,
following the example of Christ, will be strong evidence that his character is
being formed in us.
The gift of thankfulness is a joy filled life, a life blessed with the
presence of a good and loving God. Will
trials and difficulties come? Of
course! But if we are willing to
learn the lessons of real thankfulness we will experience a transformation of
character and heart and our lives will start looking more like Jesus. And the song of the thankful will be on our lips, “Give
thanks to the Lord, call on his name; make known among the nations what he has
done. Give thanks to the Lord, for
he is good; his love endures forever” (1 Chronicles 16:8 & 34).
Thanks be to God, let us pray.
Eli Dorman
eli.dorman@mulberrryumc.org
Mulberry
Street United Methodist Church