Thanking God through Thick and Thin

What a difference a year makes! If you will remember, last Thanksgiving found the world in a state of euphoria. The Berlin Wall had been breached, the countries of Eastern Europe were well on their way to overthrowing Communism, and the Cold War, for all intents and purposes, was over. After forty years of confrontation and crisis, the Western Democracies, led by the United States, had won. The bells of freedom rang out in the great cities of the world, as people heralded a new age of world peace dawning. Even the Soviet Union opened up her society to an extent once thought impossible as missionaries bearing the truth of the Bible were welcomed in.

No longer would NATO need to maintain huge armies in Western Europe to counter the Soviet threat. American servicemen and women and their families looked forward to coming home. Politicians began planning how they would use the peace dividend that would come from drastic cutbacks in defence spending. Riding the crest of this wave of change, the President saw his approval rating among the American people soar into the stratosphere.

And on the home front, the economy was rolling right along. The Dow Jones Industrial Average began to approach the magic 3,000 mark. American companies drew up aggressive plans to expand into the Eastern bloc countries that were now opening up their economies to the west. We were treated to the unbelievable sight of a McDonalds restaurant on Red Square. The lines in front of Lenin’s tomb were eclipsed by the lines of Russians waiting to taste a Big Mac. A whole new market was ready to be tapped. And in Western Europe, everyone was talking about 1992, when the nations of Europe would enter into a free trade agreement that would link their economies together and create an economic superpower that would rival that of the United States and Japan.

As 1989 came to a close, all around the world, business was good, and peoples spirits were up. But then came 1990. The Savings and Loan scandal. The economic slowdown that soon became a recession. Massive layoffs in the banking industry. Real estate prices plummeting. The federal budget deficit. In Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, people woke up from their euphoria over their newfound freedom to find that their economy was on the verge of collapse. Today in the Soviet Union, as they face the onset of winter, people are talking about famine.

And to top it all off, in August, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. That touched off an international crisis. Western hostages were taken by a power-mad dictator and held as a human shield. American troops, instead of coming home from Europe, were rushed to the deserts of Saudi Arabia in the hundreds of thousands. The peace dividend was long gone as costs for this new commitment soared into the billions. At home, an economy that was already in reverse was jolted by the impact of oil prices that doubled overnight. More layoffs. More people out of jobs.

And as we face Thanksgiving 1990, in homes all across the nation, there will be many empty places at the dinner table. American families will be praying for the safety of their loved ones who stand alone in the desert on the brink of war. In many other homes, there will be worried faces at the prospect of being unemployed in an already tight job market.

I wonder what kind of Thanksgiving we will be having this year? How thankful will we be? In churches all across America, will there be people giving thanks?

The Bible speaks of the importance of giving thanks in the bad times as well as the good. In fact, the bad times are every bit as appropriate a time to give thanks as the good times. Paul addressed these words to people who are not carefree, but concerned when he wrote:

Philippians 4:6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

Why is it important that he included the words “with thanksgiving”? Because without the element of thanksgiving in our prayers, we would soon forget who it is we are praying to. God wants us to remember that He loves us. And that love doesn’t change, even though our earthly circumstances may change. God loves us just as much during the bad times as during the good. And we especially need to remember that when we’re going through the bad times.

Even though we may be out of a job, or concerned for a child who’s in danger, or perhaps even mourning the loss of some loved one, we need to remember that God loves us. He has given us salvation by giving up His Son for us. That is the ultimate proof of His love for us. But we cannot truly apprehend that unless we thank God for it.

Have you ever taken lessons in a sport or in a musical instrument? Usually the first few lessons have to do with the fundamentals. You need to first learn how to physically position yourself to play. If you are a baseball infielder, you need to adopt the ready position - up on the balls of your feet, bent over at the waist, arms dangling with your hands down close to the ground. If you are a pianist, you need to have back straight, arms level with the keyboard, hands cupped and relaxed. You shouldn’t drop your arms.

Now you’ve probably discovered that the fundamental posture required for the particular skill you are learning does not come automatically. Perhaps at first it is even uncomfortable to you - not the way you’d want to do it if left to your own devices. But the people who have achieved mastery of the skill that you are trying to learn have found that you must do it this certain way in order to be successful. Your posture is important before you even begin to play.

In the same way, we should think of giving thanks as one of the fundamentals in our relationship with God. Thanksgiving puts us in the proper posture for talking to God. Thanksgiving makes us ready to pray intelligently. Without the element of gratitude, our prayers would not be proper prayers - they would be nothing more than the selfish demands of people who have come to believe that God is their servant rather than the other way ‘round.

Philippians 4:7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

When we thank God in the hard times as well as the good, something else happens. We gain inner peace. Because thanksgiving reminds us that, with God as our heavenly father, no matter how bad things look from our point of view, everything is going to be alright in the end. That doesn’t mean that we won’t feel pain, or suffer loss. But the peace of God will be with us through it all.

Such was the experience of a lady named Nien Cheng, a Chinese Christian who was jailed during the Cultural Revolution in the 60’s. She suffered unimaginable things for many years of imprisonment in solitary confinement. She was tortured. She was starved. Her only daughter was killed by the Red Guards. Yet she never lost her faith in God, and she never stopped giving thanks. And God’s peace was with her throughout her ordeal. You can read about it in her book called Life and Death in Shanghai.

I want to give you three biblical examples of people who learned to thank God in the bad times as well as the good.

You all remember the story of Daniel in the lion’s den, but do you remember how he got there? The story is told in Daniel 6.

Daniel was serving as one of the top administrators of the Persian government under King Darius. Some of the other officials became jealous of Daniel’s position. They succeeded in persuading Darius to issue a decree that for thirty days, anyone who prayed to any god or man other than King Darius would be thrown to the lions. When Daniel heard about this new law, what did he do?

Daniel 6:10 Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before.

Now if you or I had prayed at all in that situation, I’m sure that we would have been pleading with God for deliverance. No doubt Daniel did pray for deliverance, but he also gave thanks. He knew that his situation was never so desperate that it was not appropriate to give thanks to God. And God honored his prayers. Notice that God did not deliver Daniel from the lions’ den. He was put in there. And that was not the most pleasant place to spend a night. But God did deliver Daniel from the lions’ mouths. Daniel’s thanksgiving in prayer put him in the proper spiritual posture to go through that ordeal.

In the book of Acts, chapter 4, when the early church was threatened with persecution, and the apostles had been given a gag order by the Sanhedrin, the church held a prayer meeting. In their prayer, they reviewed the mighty acts of God, and they acknowledged God’s sovereignty. That is the essence of thanksgiving. Then they simply prayed that God would give them boldness to go ahead and continue to speak in these difficult circumstances. The fact that they reviewed who God was and what He had done for them in the past prepared them to make a request that was proper and appropriate to that situation. Thanksgiving put them in the right posture toward God.

Finally, the prophet Habakkuk is an example of someone who learned to give praise to God in the bad times. Habakkuk lived at a time when Israel was sinning against the Lord. God showed Habakkuk how He was going to use the nation of Babylon as an instrument of His judgment. He was going to bring the Babylonians down on Israel to conquer her and take her people captive. And it was in the face of that prospect, and at the very end of his book of prophecy that Habakkuk wrote these words:

Habakkuk 3:17-19 Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign LORD is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights.

There is a very good verse in Psalm 50…

Psalm 50:15 …call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will honor me.

but it is preceded by a verse which reads…

Psalm 50:14 Sacrifice thank offerings to God, fulfill your vows to the Most High

In the “day of trouble”, it may indeed be a sacrifice for you to offer thanks. But without the act of giving thanks, you cannot know the fullest blessing of God on your life.

As Christians, we are told in Colossians 2:7 that we are to be a people who “overflowing with thanks to God”. If we are to be people like that, it will mean that we thank Him in the bad times as well as in the good.

How do you find your circumstances this Thanksgiving? Are they thick with the blessing of God on your life? Give thanks to God. Are they thin, with pain and heartache and trial? Give thanks to God. Only thanksgiving can enable you to properly respond to the situation you find yourself in. Because thanksgiving helps us keep the right posture in relationship to God.