Praise and Thanksgiving

by Maurice Pujol
Published November 3, 2006

I jumped the gun on Thanksgiving last month because I had such a wonderful praise report concerning my wife Brenda’s healing from cancer. I just couldn’t wait until November to give thanks, though this is the month we in America set aside for a national day of Thanksgiving.

Though the idea behind this holiday is a good one, it also poses a problem. Anyone who attends church regularly has heard it more than once -- we should give thanks in all things every day of our lives.

Apostle Paul puts it this way: In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. (I Thessalonians 5:18)

In the best times of our lives, most of us have no trouble agreeing with Paul on this one. “Things are going so great, I just want to thank God for His blessings,” the faithful always say.

But Paul doesn’t say to thank God just in the good times, or just for all the great blessings that He bestows on us. “In every thing,” Paul says. That means we should thank him in the bad times as well as the good, times when it’s not so easy to feel grateful. We all know that life is a series of mountains and valleys, joys and sorrows, good times and bad times.

As believers, we should not only give thanks in all these things, but we are also expected to do so. Paul says this is not an optional act of piety that puts another jewel in our crown -- it’s “the will of God.” In other words, it’s a command. It’s an expectation that God has of His people. We don’t get any special prizes for giving thanks; it’s what we’re supposed to do.

Of course, this is easier said than done. Things happen in life that can devastate us so much that it’s difficult to put a coherent thought together, much less remember to give thanks to God. As I said last month, I remember the awful sinking feeling as I watched Brenda interrogate the nurse who called from the doctor’s office last December. I could hear only her side of the conversation, but as I saw her expression change and the tears start to fall, I knew the news was bad.

I had been focused on wrapping things up at work for the week in preparation for a three-day weekend over the New Year holiday. I was planning all I had to do the next day to get finished -- for the year -- and thinking about what we could do for the weekend.

When I realized Brenda was getting a bad report, all my thoughts instantly evaporated. Concerns about work deadlines disappeared. Anticipation of a holiday weekend was replaced by a wordless, sinking feeling that can imperfectly be described in two words: “Oh, no.”

I felt powerless, helpless, sick inside and out. But just as suddenly as this great emotional holocaust struck me, it was lifted from me. I felt very keenly the presence of God in our lives, and my first impulse was to give thanks.

No, I wasn’t giving thanks for cancer, which I believe is a disease conceived in the pit of hell. I started thanking God for drawing us close to Him years earlier, changing us, making us part of His family. I thanked Him for the presence of His Spirit in our crisis and for all the promises in His Word about comfort, strength, wholeness and healing.

After the emotional storm passed, faith kicked in. This faith is a marvelous gift from God for which I will be forever grateful. I understood exactly what Paul meant when he exhorted us to give thanks “in all things.”

So why does God command us to be thankful, no matter what our circumstances may be? Thanksgiving is important not in what it can do for God, but what it can do for us. That’s why God expects it of us; it makes us better people. When we give thanks and offer our praises to God, we receive great spiritual power. We open up a great lifeline to all of God’s blessings, one that no force on earth, no disease, no crisis can break.

God uses our crises and traumas to change us for the better, if only we will let Him. Of course, this doesn’t mean we should go around seeking out tribulation in order to increase our holiness. This would be akin to a fisherman who happened to make a good catch during a storm deciding that he would go fishing in the future only during bad weather.

God uses our crises and traumas to draw us closer to Him, if only we will give thanks. Then again, it’s really not difficult for anyone to get closer to God during life’s storms. I have seen lots of people do it. What happens in most cases, though, is that God is returned to the back burner as soon as the crisis passes.

I’ve seen this happen many times. I’ve heard people talk about their prayers during a crisis as though they’re in some cosmic bartering session with the Creator of the universe. “I promise that if you fix this I’ll never do such and such again,” or “I promise that if you heal me (or my daughter or my sister or my husband) I’ll go to church every Sunday and do more of the things you want me to do.”

Of course, our loving Father quite often answers these prayers, knowing full well that most of the people who offer them won’t keep these promises beyond the next full moon.

“Oh, I said I would go to church more, but I’ve just been so busy.”

“Did I say I’d never do that again? Oh, I’m just so weak sometimes. After all, I’m only human.”

God does have a lot of patience with us. That’s my only explanation.

However, as Pastor John Hagee is fond of saying, God doesn’t say in His Word, “Let’s make a deal.” God says, “This is the deal.” God doesn’t want us to haggle with Him to gain His favor, as though we’re trying to get a better deal at some spiritual flea market.

God would like to use our troubles to change us, and change us for the better. Just as irritation from invading grains of sand cause an oyster to produce a beautiful pearl, so the intrusions of traumatic events in our lives can produce beautiful people -- in the long run, and with God’s help.

The entire purpose of giving thanks and offering our praise is to allow God to continue changing us into the creatures He intends for us to be. We shouldn’t offer our promises to Him as though we aren’t going to fulfill them if He doesn’t answer our prayers. We should just welcome Him into our situation and thank Him for being with us in the storm. And we trust that somehow He will take care of the situation and make us better believers in the process.

Years ago, I did a word study on the word “thanksgiving” in conjunction with a Thanksgiving holiday sermon I was asked to give. Going back in the concordance, I learned some interesting things about this word.

First of all, in Hebrew, the words “thanks” and “thanksgiving” are closely related to the word “praise.” Just as we use the words in tandem today, so they have always been used. Giving our thanks and offering our praise go hand in hand, and they bring us to higher levels of spiritual power in every situation.

Next, these words in their original form describe a specific act, an extension or raising of a hand as a gesture of tribute or worship. The person giving thanks or offering praise, according to this original meaning, is actually extending a hand to someone superior as an act of appreciation and supplication.

So, when today’s believers raise their hands in church as a gesture of praise, they are actually following an ancient pattern. Raising our hands to God is a gesture of respect, admiration and humility. When we do this, we acknowledge our total dependence on Him and humbly ask for His continued favor.
Raising our hands in praise is a salute to the King of kings and Lord of lords. But this is the only type of salute we’ll ever give that does more for us than for the one we’re honoring. Our praise is our power, and our power is in our praise.

So, everything Paul says on the subject makes a lot more sense when we realize these things. Thanksgiving isn’t something we should do once a year, or once a week, or really according to any predetermined schedule. Thanksgiving should be for us a continual state of mind, an attitude of praise a continual state of being.

This is a recurring theme in the Psalms, where the words “thanks” or “thanksgiving” are mentioned at least 30 times. Many of these are songs of praise to God, upon Whom we depend for life and all that is good in life.

Giving thanks is also the foundation for the Lord’s Supper, a rite that has lost its significance for some churches. The traditional Greek word for it, eucharisteo, means to give thanks. There is great power in the Lord’s Supper, special graces to be received when we follow Jesus’ command to “do this in remembrance of me.”

When people partake of Communion, the Holy Spirit touches them in a unique way. There is power in this touch, healing power for body, soul and spirit. When first-century believers gathered, part of their worship service was a Communion meal, a combination of today’s church fellowship meal and sacramental observance of the Lord’s Supper.

The sacrificial death and victorious resurrection of Jesus were the core doctrines of early believers, and the Communion meal was a time to commemorate the atonement Jesus won for us on Calvary. Giving thanks was the basis for this ritual. Over and over again in the New Testament, we read that believers broke bread and “gave thanks” when they gathered, in imitation of Jesus Christ.

In many instances, this was more than just “saying grace” or “asking a blessing” before eating. It was a celebration of the Lord’s Supper, an early form of what some churches call Communion, or the Eucharist.

The importance of the Lord’s Supper and the reverence that should be attached to it were two bones of contention in Paul’s scolding of the church at Corinth. We learn in First Corinthians that the church there had apparently lost sight of the sacramental nature of Communion.

Some Corinthian believers were apparently getting to their place of worship before others and gobbling up all the food. Paul chastised them for their greed and basically advised that they shouldn’t come to church so famished. He more or less said, “If you come to church that hungry, why don’t you eat something at home beforehand?”
Even worse, under the influence of the pagan culture in which they lived, they were turning the Lord’s Supper into a drunken party. A careful reading of Paul’s words to them on this subject conveys a sense of the controlled outrage he felt upon getting this news from Corinth.

When Paul told them he planned to visit and stay a while, his tone strikes me as one of an angry teacher saying to a group of misbehaving students, “Well, you just wait until I get there. . .”

These excesses of eating and drinking during what should be a solemn event put this group of Christians in serious spiritual danger, and Paul realized this. They were not only missing the blessings they should have received, but they were also blaspheming God.

The Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist, a solemn ritual of “giving thanks,” also evokes memory of the time when the Israelites were wandering in the desert. They received a daily portion of manna from heaven, except for the two-day supply just before the Sabbath, so they wouldn’t have to gather it on the Sabbath. Not only did this miraculous food sustain their lives, but none of them ever got sick during this period.

This is a foreshadowing of the healing and sustaining power that would be made available to God’s people through the Lord’s Supper.

(The story was quite different when the Israelites begged Moses to ask God to send them something else to eat. The ensuing deluge of quail made them really sick.)

What else sustained them? The water that miraculously flowed from whatever rock God instructed Moses to strike -- until the end, when God told Moses to speak to a rock to obtain water and Moses, in his anger at the people, struck it anyway. This act of disobedience kept Moses from entering the Promised Land.

Then, centuries later, along comes Jesus and tells the woman at the well that He is the Living Water that will quench her thirst forever. He is also the Rock of our salvation, the cornerstone rejected by the builders.

Get the connections? As with the ancient concepts of “thanks” and “praise,” God prepared us for the life, death and resurrection of Jesus in many ways over many centuries. Jesus is the fulfillment of all the promises of God, made from the very first time man ever sinned.

And ever since man first started worshipping his Creator, those who made giving thanks and offering praise an integral part of their daily lifestyle have been blessed beyond measure.

Given these centuries of experience, along with the millions of lives who have proven the truth of this statement, how can we believers today do any less? Sure, we will gather together as other families will this month, joined at a holiday table and giving thanks for all the good in our lives.

For us, though, this should be just one among 365 days that we do this. For us, giving thanks is important, whether we sit at a sumptuous meal or a routine dinner after a hard day at work. For us, giving thanks should be what we do in our happiest of times and what we do in the saddest. All we have, all we do and all we may become depends on the will of God and, more importantly, on the love of God.

For this, our thanksgiving should never end.

It’s not hard to get into the habit of continual thanksgiving. Remind yourself to do so whenever your child comes home safely from school or when your spouse arrives from work. Thank God that they had a good day and that nothing happened to them on the way home. Similarly, when you or your family leave to go somewhere, thank God in advance for a safe and happy trip.

When you get a raise or promotion at work, or your business prospers, don’t start patting yourself on the back. Thank God for these blessings. It is God who gave you the ability to succeed. It is God who sent those customers to your business. Of course, He’s blessing you in these ways so that you will have the ability to bless others -- never forget that.

God doesn’t give prosperity to believers just so they can live fat and happy in this life. He expects us to share our largesse with others, and our best giving is done when it is done “in secret.” As Jesus said, if we give to get recognition from other men, we already have our reward for our efforts. But when we give with no expectation or even possibility of earthly honors, our rewards await us in heaven.

Thanksgiving is a wonderful habit to develop. As with all habits, the more you do it, the less you have to remind yourself to do it. It starts becoming automatic. You eventually find yourself in a perpetual state of thanksgiving, with the wonderful by-product of staying in constant communication with God. Your interior life becomes one of silent prayer, even when you are busy with other activities.

That’s why, I must confess, I don’t always set aside a time of specific prayer before meals. When I sit down to eat, I have been thanking God all day anyway, and I thank Him for that food, silently and humbly, when I begin. I hope no one will think the less of me for confessing this because I believe a time of prayer before meals, even in public places, is a wonderful thing. It evokes, even though in a faint way, that great Lord’s Supper which paved the way for us to inherit eternal life.

Since this is “Thanksgiving month” in America, though, this is an ideal season for each of us to reflect on the blessings God has given us. Take an inventory this month. Think about what God has done for you during the past year.

Some people reading this may say they don’t have much to be thankful for, since 2006 was the worst year in their lives. I suppose I could say that, if I wanted to look at everything from its underside.

But that’s the way the devil wants us to look at things. He is the father of lies and the author of despair. We can choose to accept his propaganda, or we can choose to stand on the thousands of promises God gives us in His Word, the Bible.

We can choose life, or we can choose death. We can choose blessing or cursing. We can choose to live in power, or we can choose to be blown about by every storm hell sends our way.

In my case, I could say that 2006 was just a year of trauma and crisis. I could wail and moan about how a good person such as Brenda didn’t deserve the trials she had to face. I could easily fall into the trap that was laid for us late last year.

Or I could look at it all from God’s viewpoint and realize it was a year of great spiritual victory, victory over disease, a victory that resulted in greater spiritual maturity and deeper faith in a loving God -- not just for Brenda, but for our entire family and many of our friends.

There are many years in my life for which I could do the same, starting when I was four years old. Over the years, bad things -- awful things -- happened, clearly designed to steal joy, to take life and to destroy happiness -- all marks of the devil’s work. Not one succeeded, though, because of a faith legacy passed down to me. Even when I was trying to run from this, to run from God, He was always with me, His blessings crushing the devil’s curses, His graces far outpacing any forces that were turned against me.

When I take my own inventory, I am overwhelmed by the conviction that my ongoing thanksgiving is a feeble and paltry gesture in return for all that God has done for me. Thank God that His grace is free, for none of us could ever earn it. Thank God that His grace is all powerful, able to destroy all those spiritual strongholds of the enemy.

So, take a look at your own life. Do you see the glass as half empty or half full? Or can you see, with the eyes of faith, that God has your glass scheduled for an overflowing of blessings that will pour out upon others?

That’s the way I like to do it. I’m not going to settle for that “half full” earthly brand of optimism, or mere positive thinking. God has promised us the whole enchilada, the fullness of all His grace, if only we will do things His way in this life.

During the upcoming holiday season, take an inventory of your own life. Did you remember to praise God from the mountaintops with the same intensity your petitions had when you were in the valleys? Are you thanking Him properly for delivering you from whatever it was you were facing?

You see, we don’t thank God one time, or 10 times, or 100 times, for His blessings. We should thank Him continually, and our thanksgiving should consist of more than just words.

We thank God in the right way when we offer our lives, our actions, our words, to Him 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

It’s not impossible. People do it all the time. You just have to get yourself in the habit, the habit of thanksgiving and the addiction to praise.

Viewed 436 times