The Power of Thanksgiving

 

Text: Philippians 4:4-7

Focus: Thanksgiving

Function: to help us worship on Thanksgiving day

⁴Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. ⁵Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. ⁶Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. ⁷And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

I don’t know about you, but Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. Maybe because it marks the beginning of the Holiday Season and Advent starts the next Sunday and we take a month to remember to be good to each other.

Or maybe it is because our hearts are filled with nostalgia at Thanksgiving celebrations in the past and the wonder and joy of communing with family and friends.

I love it because it is a true celebration of what God has done for us.

For some, it is the feast and the chance to eat such a wonderful meal.

I love the idea of a feast. A feast is a celebration in the face of whatever we are experiencing, whether times are good or times are bad, it is a celebration to the fact that we are trusting God to provide for us.

You all love Psalms 23. He says, “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies…” and “...my cup runs over.” I love the comforting thought that brings. Even in the middle of my battles in life, you give me time for a feast.

And this passage in Philippians is a call to Thanksgiving. It starts out with a direct command to us, an action verb that we can choose to follow or we can choose to ignore. The verb, the action that we are called to, and he says it twice, is this: Rejoice!

Be happy in the Lord. It is okay to be happy.

Psychologists have been saying what this scripture has implied for two millennia, happiness is a choice.

We can choose to be happy. We read about a choice to be miserable when we read about Jacob mourning the loss of Joseph. He makes the promise to go down to the grave in sorrow over the loss of his son. He chooses sorrow over happiness thinking that somehow that will honor the memory of his son.

I wonder if his son would want him to be miserable or happy as a way to love him and show his love for him?

A person who truly cares for another cares for their happiness and joy.

And God cares for us. God wants us to live an abundant life. That does not mean that we will never suffer. What it means is that God is with us in the midst of suffering and we can choose to be happy or not.

He goes on to explain it in verse 5. Let you gentleness be known to all, the Lord is at hand.

I like the wording in the King James and NASB, it says, Let your forbearance be known to all, the Lord is at hand.

Let us unpack that a little bit as it relates to either good times or bad. He is telling us to rest in the provision of God because God is in control. Have faith and walk by faith. Trust God to work out God’s loving will in our lives.

God is able, that is the hope that we have when we live by faith.

I believe this verse is the reason why Christians have made a prohibition against cursing. Well, the Bible says let no unwholesome word leave our lips, and that our speech must be filled with grace toward those who hear it, but beyond that. this verse means that we do not need to curse because we trust that God is in control of our lives. The thought being that the person who is cursing is obviously not living by faith with the trust the God is in control.

Of course, that is taking it too far and trying to justify ourselves by our works. We certainly cannot lie to God about what we are feeling and how we are feeling. God knows our heart.

So, let your peace, your forbearance, your gentleness be obvious as a result of living by faith in the one who promises to keep you as the apple of His eye.

Then the Apostle gets real personal in the face of adversity. He says, don’t worry about anything. Don’t worry. Don’t fret. Trust God. Rest in God.

That does not mean don’t give a care. That does not mean forget about what the problem is. If there is a problem, then bring it to God in prayer. He says, prayer and supplication. Supplication means that we take the prayer to the extreme, as if we are begging God for an answer.

I have always wondered about that. Why beg? Doesn’t God hear us the first time? Didn’t Jesus tell us not to use vain repetition in prayer?

Again, it is a question of faith. I find that in the process of begging, asking over and over again for something, that something else happens inside of me. The desired outcome I am looking for seems to change as I pray, ponder the situation in light of God’s loving mercy, and ask God for help. My desire gets more aligned with the will of God.

He is talking about a sort of conversation, or give and take, with God in our thought lives and prayer as we present ourselves to God for a solution to what is nagging at us.

I remember being a very dedicated youth. And they told us that real Christians had a list of people that they prayed for every day, and several times a day. I remember I was instructed to make a list, which I did, of people that I cared for and stuff and I always included my heroes, the missionaries who were spreading the gospel in foreign lands.

However, the list got tedious and I reckoned that God knew who they were anyway, so I could have just said, bless everyone on my list, but instead, I decided to limit their names to the first letter. So, I would pray, God bless, “tmno….” Whatever that list was. I got to the point where I could say my prayers in less than three seconds. What a blessing that seemed to me to listen to this, to not have to waste my time with my prayers. Of course, I justified it by praying that list several times an hour. I was indeed a religious boy. And I was practicing my religion well.

God isn’t so concerned about religious action as God is concerned with living by faith. It was wonderful that I was thinking of God and praying literally several times an hour, that was good, but I didn’t develop what he was talking about here with supplication. Wrestling with God in prayer to seek an outcome. Sometimes prayer can be a hard and arduous task as we strive to see the face of God in the midst of difficulty.

Prayer, supplication and thanksgiving. I titled the sermon the power of thanksgiving. Not the power of the holiday. But the power of a grateful heart as we approach God in prayer and supplication.

I consider it to be part of the humbling process that God speaks of when God commands us to walk humbly before God.

With thanksgiving we acknowledge that we live by faith and that we are indeed trusting God to be in control. I love the story of Paul and Silas in Acts 16 in the prison, beaten and sore, they began to praise God and the prison doors were opened, it seems, by the power of their thanksgiving in worship.

In the midst of their trial they acknowledged the sovereignty and will of God for them. Their faith was so amazing that although the doors were opened, the prisoners stayed and many that night were converted to Christ, including the jailer himself.

That is the power of our gratitude. It brings us back to the place of remembering that God is in control and God wants to care for us.

So, enjoy the feast this Thanksgiving as it demonstrates our hope in God.