‘Give thanks in all circumstances’

There is a part of me that is just a little envious of you Americans. On November 27, most if not all of you will sit down with your families to feast together and celebrate Thanksgiving. Here in Britain we have no such custom, so on November 27, I will be working as per normal. Don’t get me wrong, I will be thankful on that day for a good many things, but if you were to give me the choice between a day of work in front of the computer, or good company with plenty to eat around a roaring fire on a day filled with thanking the Living God for what He has given us, I’d take the latter.

The idea of a day of Thanksgiving, where we gather with our families and with those who perhaps have no family, in order to feast on glorious food and drink, and give thanks to God for His abundant goodness, is most excellent and very Scriptural (see Deuteronomy 14:22-27). But it is important that we don’t lose sight of the purpose of such days.

For the Israelites, their week of Thanksgiving (Leviticus 23:33) was not so much that they would have one focal point of thankfulness, but rather that they “may learn to fear the Lord your God always” (verse 23). In other words, the abundant feasting was meant to stir them up to love God, serve God, and thank God continually.

This should really be the ultimate purpose of a day of Thanksgiving in modern times. Not just an annual day of giving thanks, but rather stirring us up to renewed thankfulness to God throughout the entire year, which is what Paul exhorts us to in his “rapid fire” list of instructions at the end of his first letter to the Thessalonians: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

Of course, giving thanks in all circumstances sounds a bit harder than giving thanks when a big juicy turkey and roast potatoes are sitting in front of you, doesn’t it? Yes it does, but that is what we are called to do, so here are a few brief points which I hope may be of help.

Thanksgiving is a work of faith

The backbone of 1 Thessalonians is in chapter 1, where Paul thanks God for the Thessalonians’ “work of faith,” their “labor of love,” and their “steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” These three themes are found throughout the epistle. For example, in chapter 5 (verses 12-15), he gives some brief exhortations on what love looks like, followed by an emphasis on their faith (verses 16-22), before going on to the theme of hope (verses 23-24).

The section on giving thanks falls into what Paul describes as a “work of faith.” This means that to truly be thankful to God, we need faith, and by extension, the measure of our thankfulness will be to a large extent directly proportional to the measure of our faith. Quite simply, the greater our faith, the greater our thankfulness.

Thanksgiving increases our faith

But not only is thankfulness dependent on and proportional to our faith, it actually serves to increase our faith.

In my own church, our pastor has introduced a practice which I think is very helpful. In our prayer meetings, we divide our prayers into different subjects, such as the needs of our church, the needs of other churches, prayers for those in authority etc. But without fail, the first item on the list each week is “Give Thanks.”

The idea of course is to praise and thank God for His goodness to us, but it is also a “building-up exercise.” The more we practice simply giving thanks, the more we cultivate a spirit of thankfulness. And the more we have a spirit of thankfulness, the closer we come to God. Faith and thankfulness therefore cut both ways: The more faith we have, the more thankful we’ll be; the more thankfulness we cultivate, the more our faith will grow.

Thanksgiving does not come naturally

The fact that true thanksgiving is a “work of faith” tells us an uncomfortable truth about ourselves: By nature we are unthankful creatures. This probably won’t come as a great revelation to anyone who has children. Getting children to say “thank you” can be a frustrating and—if you’ll pardon the pun—often thankless task. Children want the stuff we give them, but they do not come with a natural propensity to return thanks after they have received it. In fact, it usually takes a lot of time and patience before they get to saying “thank you” without being told.

This is true with children and parents, but how much more with us and God? We are, by nature, alienated from God, so the Christian life is a lifelong process whereby we learn to thank our Father for all that He gives us.

Thanksgiving is hard

To give thanks when we are sitting around a table confronted with a feast is not that hard, but Paul says we should “give thanks in all circumstances.” Now we should notice what he is not saying. He isn’t saying that we should give thanks for all things that happen to us, but rather that we are to give thanks in whatever circumstances we are in. There is a difference.

We are not called upon to be thankful for sin or for evils that may come upon us. For example, we don’t have to pray, “I thank you God that I have cancer,” but we can pray, “I thank You God that despite the afflictions that have come upon me, You are sovereign, and all this is being done according to Your inscrutable will, by Your perfect wisdom, and for Your ultimate glory.” This of course is very hard and totally contrary to our nature and to our sight. As mentioned above, it takes great faith to give thanks in such circumstances, but it also strengthens our faith when we do.

Thanksgiving is the antidote to covetousness

When Paul says “Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need” (Ephesians 4:28), I don’t think he intends his point to be confined to issues related to the Eighth Commandment. Rather, he is giving a principle that we are meant to apply to all the commandments, where we work out not just what we shouldn’t be doing, but rather what we should positively be doing. So for example, fulfilling the Seventh Commandment does not only mean “abstaining from adultery,” but rather also “let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband” (Ephesians 5:33). In other words, we do not fulfill the Law by just abstaining from what it forbids; we fulfill it by replacing the sin with the opposite positive action.

In the case of the Tenth Commandment, which forbids covetousness, the opposite positive virtue is essentially thankfulness. If we are truly thankful for the house we have, for the spouse we have, for the children we have, for the water we drink, for the job we have, and everything else we have, we will guard ourselves against the sin of covetousness and the discontentment that comes with it.

Covetousness is essentially a state of unthankfulness, where instead of being profoundly grateful for what we do have, we become profoundly ungrateful for what we don’t have. Cultivating thankfulness to God for even the smallest things in life is the only way to avoid coveting and to attain contentment.

Thanksgiving is an antidote to depression

In the U.S., antidepressants are now the most commonly prescribed medicines. In the U.K., the number of antidepressants almost doubled from 1999 to 2009, with the numbers of prescriptions reaching 39.1 million in the latter year. According to the Wikipedia entry on antidepressants, health authorities believe the increase was partly linked to the recession. There is a truth in this, but it is only a surface reason and not the underlying cause. I am convinced that the underlying cause of most cases of depression is simply unthankfulness.

I am not saying here that there is a “one-size-fits-all” approach that can be taken, or that there are no other causes, or that any of this is easy. But I can’t help noting that scripturally speaking, there is an undeniable connection between joy and thankfulness. Paul ties these things together in the passage from 1 Thessalonians: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” According to Paul, the antidote to anxiety is not Prozac or Celexa, but rather, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Philippians 4:6).

In our kowtowing to the juggernaut of modern secular psychology and science, we can be tempted to doubt the Apostle’s words, thinking that they sound simplistic and idealistic. “That’s the cure for depression, Paul? Just give thanks?”

But if Paul is to be believed, this is indeed the route out of depression for many, if not most people.

If anyone had reason to fall into depression, it was Paul, given some of the circumstances that he faced. Yet what does he say: “Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through Him Who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:11-13).

Modern science, by contrast, with its plethora of pills, cannot do this. It can patch up and it can hide, but it cannot bring about the contentedness Paul describes. Only deep faith, and “giving thanks in all circumstances,” can do this.

As you sit down to your meal with your family on November 27, give thanks and enjoy. But then remember to give thanks in all the circumstances that God puts you in.

Rob Slane lives with his wife and five home-educated children in Salisbury, England. He is the author of The God Reality: A Critique of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, contributes to the Canadian magazine Reformed Perspective, and blogs on cultural issues from a Biblical perspective at www.theblogmire.com.