Are you giving thanks in your circumstances, or only for them? /// Prayer: Part 5

We're so glad you've chosen to listen to our online experience! Here at Plum Creek, we’re all about changed lives, changing lives; and what that simply means is that what Christ has done in us is not just for us, but it’s for us to share with others in our community and around the world.

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If you're using this teaching for a Home Groups setting, we've included discussion prompts to help guide your conversation:

1. Where do you notice your gratitude rising and falling with your circumstances, and what would it look like for Thanksgiving to become more steady in your life?

2. Read 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 and discuss the difference between giving thanks in all circumstances and giving thanks for all circumstances.

3. Think back over a hard season you have already survived. What evidence of God’s faithfulness can you see now that may have been hard to notice at the time? 

4. The teaching invited people to remember, celebrate, and anticipate. Which of those three practices feels most needed in your prayer life right now, and why?

5. How might seeing communion as a Thanksgiving table change the way you remember Jesus, celebrate his presence, and anticipate his return? 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to the Plum Creek Church Podcast. We're so thankful that you're listening along with us in this way. Now, if you're a returning listener, welcome back. But if you're new or newish, we'd love to become part of your listening rotation. So be sure to subscribe and follow to be notified when new episodes are available. Now, before we get into the message, we want to remind you of one thing. Plum Creek Church, we are all about changed lives, changing lives. We really believe that if Jesus is right about God, about life, about the soul, then it only makes sense to rearrange our lives around what he says is true. Because if you choose to follow Jesus like that, it really does change everything, including the lives around you. Okay. Let's posture our hearts for what God has in store, this message.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

Good morning, my friends. I am goodness, I'm just so glad to see all of your faces. I'm thrilled that you're here today. For those of you joining us online, I'm just so honored that you have decided to be with us today. So happy Mother's Day. Okay, it sounds like somebody didn't get breakfast in bed. So whoever that was that wasn't super excited about today, they need to have breakfast in bed when you get home, okay? So for the record, I just want to make sure y'all know that I have been a biological mom, a single mom, a step mom, and a foster adopt mom. And someday, someday, someday, I hope to be an M Kness mom. Jesus, may it be so. All I have to say, uh, I just wanted to make it clear that I have some experience around the complexity of motherhood. Uh, I think this day on the calendar can often be uh loaded. I'll just say that. And so, based on my experience, motherhood comes in all shapes and sizes and stories. There have been times I have mothered people who were not part of my family at all, way, shape, or form. And there are people in this room that have never had biological step, foster, any kind of kids, and yet they are mothers in the way that they operate. So today I typically like to celebrate all women who are mothering. Right? And if your motherhood story is complicated, um, I get it. And I simply want to say for all of you in here who pour yourselves out for others, um, what you do matters. And thank you so much. Yes. Today is week four of our series on prayer. Now, we are doing this series on prayer for one reason. Uh, prayer was important to Jesus, so it needs to be important to us. But then, in addition to that, I would say part of our um focus on prayer is the fact that no matter how much experience we have with prayer, no many years you have prayed, uh, it is one of those practices that uh I still feel such a deep need for additional growth. Like I've been following Jesus since I was little. And yet if there is one area in my life, spiritually speaking, that I feel like I still need to grow in, it's in the practice of prayer. It's not because I don't do it, but like I feel like I've barely touched the surface. So we've been intentionally talking about the practice of prayer and it's different facets. Uh on one week, on week one, pardon me, uh, Pastor Doug talked about the practice of adoration in prayer. And he reminded us that adoration lifts our eyes, it helps to cure us of our self-preoccupation, and it gives us a much better view. God Himself. Adoration is a way for us to strengthen our prayers because the strongest prayers don't start with panic, but perspective. Then in week two, Doug talked about the practice of confession. Now, confession is usually not like a great party conversation starter, right? We don't sit and want to brag about confession. It seems like uncomfortable because that's where we're supposed to confess the realities that are hidden. But we learned in the week two on the practice of confession that confession lifts the weights. You see, what we hide and carry around inside, whatever remains hidden, remains heavy. Thus, the practice of confession is actually an invitation to freedom. This is why I've learned over the years to actually enjoy the practice of confession, because on the other side of it, uh I experience healing. Then last week Eric talked about the practice of lament. The practice of lament tells the truth. Now, for a long time in my spiritual life, I thought giving voice to my grief, like expressing my complaints and frustrations and pain and all of that, was actually the opposite of faith. It was a lack of faith. I have come to learn quite the contrary. Lament is telling the truth about our grief, but we're doing it, the practice of lent, we're doing it in the presence of the only one who has the authority, the sovereignty, and the power to do anything about it. Thus, the practice of lament is honest faith. And that brings us to today, the practice of Thanksgiving. Now, Thanksgiving is relatively self-explanatory. I'm guessing if I gave you a test right now on what Thanksgiving is all about, all of you would pass. We know what the practice of Thanksgiving is. In fact, there is an abundance of science out there talking about the benefits of gratitude and Thanksgiving. Like it's not hard for you to go home and do a Google search on the benefits of gratitude or the benefits of Thanksgiving, and all kinds of research is going to pop up. I could spend a whole message talking about that, but I'm not going to. But let me give you a little highlight of some of the physiological benefits for Thanksgiving and gratitude. Uh it lowers stress and stress hormones, it promotes emotional well-being, it delivers a sense of calmness, it strengthens relationships. This is like all scientifically proven, right? It improves sleep, cognitive function, and slows aging. Yes, please, I'll take 12. Like, there's no secret about the fact that the practice of gratitude is good for us. And yet, the practice of Thanksgiving purely for the scientific benefits is not enough. Sooner or later, the benefits of Thanksgiving are not going to be powerful enough, strong enough for us to actually practice it. And here's how I know Thanksgiving has long been my favorite holiday. Like I grew up in a home where Thanksgiving was one of the, if not the biggest day of the year. My brother loved Christmas, it was all about the presence. I love Thanksgiving because it was about people and food. Right? We didn't have really close relationships with our extended family. So our house became the house that people went to when they had nowhere else to go. So every single year on Thanksgiving, our house was bursting at the seams with people, always different faces, some the same every year, some new. And my mom was a great cook. And every Thanksgiving morning, I would get up early with her, and we would cook our little brains out all day long. It was the best. Still to this day, when I think of Thanksgiving, I think of making pecan pies with my mom as well as everything else. However, my experience of Thanksgiving changed a little bit, quite a bit, in 2010, when two days before Thanksgiving, I was diagnosed with cancer for the first time. It was squamous cell carcinoma of the tongue, cancer of the tongue. Now, some of you already know my story. I'm not going to spend very much time going into it today. However, what I want you to know is that particular Thanksgiving, two days after I got a diagnosis of cancer at the age of 39, my experience of Thanksgiving shifted. The fear and the uncertainty at Thanksgiving that year was palpable. Like a whole nother person in the room. The same thing happened again four years later when in 2014 I got a third diagnosis of cancer. Yes, it had come back two times. And on Thanksgiving that year, I was in the hospital in the ICU, having gone through a nine-hour surgery where they removed two-thirds of my tongue. Do not recommend. So here I am in the ICU on Thanksgiving Day, my favorite holiday. And I could smell the Thanksgiving turkey and mashed potatoes and gravy that were being cooked for patients throughout the hospital, and I could have none of it. Now, for the record, like nobody sits around at home and says, I have a craving for hospital turkey. Like that just doesn't happen. But that day, I had a craving for hospital turkey. And there was nothing I could do about it. In fact, because of the kind of drastic surgery they did, I couldn't even have a sip of water or an ice chip for two weeks. Yeah. You know those days when you have an outpatient surgery or whatever, and they tell you you can't have anything by mouth until noon, and you think you're going to die? Two weeks without any water at all. I have never been so thirsty in my entire life. Body and soul. Ask me how valuable those scientific benefits of gratitude and thanksgiving were to me that day in the ICEA. Do you think I cared in the least about gratitude's ability to help my cognitive functioning? I just wanted to live. And this is the rub. This is the challenge with the practice of Thanksgiving. When the reality of our life circumstances are such that they are worth anything but gratitude and thanksgiving. How do we practice Thanksgiving in those places? Gratitude didn't even feel possible for me or appropriate. It felt like if I had practiced Thanksgiving, I would be the most disingenuous of persons. And yet, as someone who follows Jesus, Thanksgiving is not optional. Let me give you an example. This is 1 Thessalonians 5. If you have your Bible, pull it out. 1 Thessalonians 5, beginning at verse 16. If you don't have a Bible, it will be on the screen. Very short and very powerful. Paul writes this rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances. For this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. Pretty black and white, right? In fact, there are three commands in that tiny little section of words. Three commands. Rejoice, pray, give thanks. And just in case we're not clear, Paul qualifies it for when? He says, always, continually, all circumstances. Did you hear that? There's like no wiggle room. For those of us who would like to get like a get out of Thanksgiving free card, there's no wiggle room for us not to practice Thanksgiving. Rejoice, pray, give thanks, always, continually, in all circumstances. And honestly, there have been times in my life, the reality of what that said to me made me mad. That's not fair. I shouldn't have to give thanks. There's nothing to be thankful for. Let me illustrate it. So uh if you would look at a timeline of my life based on circumstances, it would look a little something like this. You see that? I'm guessing your life has looked a little bit like that too. Like lots of ups and downs. Good days, bad days, good seasons, bad seasons, right? That's how life follows. And if I looked at my historical practice of Thanksgiving, it would follow that line, right? I'm super thankful when things are going really well. I mean, I am just an abundance of gratitude when life is good. But then when life is hard, my gratitude slips. My practice of Thanksgiving was following my circumstances. And yet, in 1 Thessalonians 5, there is no room for that. In fact, what Paul is saying is that as followers of Jesus, our Thanksgiving needs to look not like an erratic line, but like this. See that? A solid, straight, consistent line of gratitude, regardless of what's happening. You see, that first erratic line is thanksgiving, but it's circumstantial. Let's go back to the verse and see what it says. And this time when I read it, I want us to pay careful attention to every single word. Verse 16. Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. Look at that little tiny two-letter word, N. It says, give thanks in all circumstances, not give thanks for all circumstances. Did you see it? Give thanks in all circumstances, not give thanks for all circumstances. God did not expect me to give thanks for suffering and cancer. God does not expect you to give thanks for the horrific experiences that you've had. We aren't supposed to give thanks for sex trafficking and child abuse. We're not supposed to give thanks for death when it's not what we want or need or desire. That's not what it is. It is giving thanks in all circumstances. Why? Because thanksgiving isn't about gifts, outcomes, or results. It's about God and believing that He is who He said He is. Thanksgiving is not about gifts or outcomes or results. It's about God Himself and believing, believing, believing that He is who He said He is. Think of it this way: Thanksgiving sourced in circumstance is like a pond. And if you have weather like we did this winter until recently, what's gonna happen to that pond over time when there's absolutely no moisture? It's gonna dry up. And then we will have circumstantial Thanksgiving, and our well of gratitude is going to go bone dry. However, Thanksgiving sourced in who God is becomes a river sourced by never-ending springs of water. Do you see that? Jesus said it this way. Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Do you know what it's like to be thirsty? Like me? Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them. Oh, my friends, that's who I want to be. I want to be someone who has fountains of living water flowing up through me at all times, regardless of what's happening. However, I have to be drawing from the right source. I have to have a better well than all the lesser wells I have pulled water from in the past. Today I'm gonna give you three sources of thanksgiving. Three sources of thanksgiving that won't dry up. One, to remember. To remember. Remember God's faithfulness in the past. I wish I could do a whole survey of the Old Testament. I can't, so I'm just gonna give you a little peek. But in the Old Testament, we see the Israelites practicing all kinds of sacrifices and offerings and feasts and festivals. These were things that God instituted for the Israelites to practice. However, what's behind this whole sacrificial system was the practice of Thanksgiving. Now, we look at the sacrifice system when we read the Old Testament with our modern lenses, our contemporary lenses, all we see is an archaic, violent, and bloody process. Like it doesn't make any sense to us. However, if you lived back in the ancient Near East, thousands of years ago, you would understand that the Israelites saw this whole system of sacrifice and offering as a celebration of relationship with a God who loved them. That's what it was all about. Here are some examples. That's what they celebrated and remembered. The annual feast of Passover was all about remembering God's deliverance of them from slavery in Egypt. They spent the Feast of Passover simply saying, God saved us, God rescued us, God delivered us. It was Thanksgiving. And then there was an offering called the fellowship offering or Thanksgiving offering. Now, this particular offering was an offering of grain. They would bring four different kinds of bread and present it to the priest. But this particular offering is unique because it was Thanksgiving on top of Thanksgiving. It was their way of honoring God and giving something back to God when they felt especially grateful and thankful for God's provision. It's interesting because this Thanksgiving offering was also sometimes called a peace offering. The reason it was called a peace offering is because it was a celebration of two key aspects of God's character within the context of covenantal relationship with them. The first aspect of his character was his hesed. Let me say that again. By the way, you try saying that with a full tongue. I'm doing it with only a third of a tongue, so I feel like I'm winning. God's Hesed. That word, that Hebrew word, is God's enduring, never-ending, never-failing, covenantal love and steadfast loyalty. This one word, like if you know no other words, this one word is absolutely essential for you to understand the heart of God. His Hassed is who he is. And when they celebrated the peace offering, the Thanksgiving offering, they were remembering his Hassed. And they were remembering another aspect of his character, and that's shalom. Shalom is a word that we translate as peace, and peace doesn't even quite cover it. Shalom is a sense of wholeness and completeness and fullness that lacks nothing. And that's what God gave his people, including us. His Hassad and His Shalom. And you know what this means? Thanksgiving and peace have always gone together. They go together. The practice of thanksgiving comes with peace when God is our source. So how do we remember God's past faithfulness? How do we do that? One way that Idea that's very simple is when I'm reading the Bible, I will add dates and names to different passages. If you look at 1 Thessalonians 5, right here in my Bible, it says January 2013, February 2012, and February 2026. And within the next couple years, I'm sure there will be more dates in my Bible. These stand, these little pin marks of dates, stand as altars of remembrance of God's goodness in my life. A very simple way. You could also do a life timeline. Get a piece of paper, scrap piece of paper, doesn't matter. Make a timeline of your life. Just spend a short amount of time thinking about your life from birth till now, including the highs and the lows, and intentionally look for evidence of God's faithfulness in those places. I got a secret for you. Whatever that hard thing was 12 years ago that you thought you would not get through, guess what? You're still here. Somebody carried you. I know who. Another way you can look and remember God's faithfulness is scanning your calendar over the last several years or looking through the photos on your phone. Right now, I have 45,000 photos on my phone. I know, it's pretty incredible, isn't it? 45,000 over the course of the last, I don't know how many years. All I have to do is take about 15 minutes to scan those photos to find abundant evidence of God's goodness in the middle of my life. That's how we remember. Those are simple ways to go back and remember God's goodness and faithfulness. But the second source of thanksgiving is equally as important, and it's to celebrate. To celebrate what God is doing in the present. Now, here are some ways that we can celebrate God's reality in the present, even if it feels like the bottom's falling out of your life. First of all, in case you didn't know, when you woke up this morning, you woke up in Colorado. Just be really, really thankful you don't live in a lesser state. This is a great place for you to practice Thanksgiving. My friends, it's not that hard. Go outside, take a walk. Even if you live in a different state, watch the sunrise, listen to a bird sing. I went for a walk this week and saw a mountain bluebird that flew right in front of me that was so vivid and vibrant that I stopped walking just to appreciate it. Guess what? Thanksgiving. That's what it was. It was the practice of Thanksgiving. Psalm 19 says, the heavens declare the glory of God. The skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech. Night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words, no sound is heard from them, and yet creation's voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the end of the world. The entire creation testifies to the goodness of God. Notice it. Use it to celebrate God's faithfulness right here, right now. And if creation doesn't do it for you, take a moment to consider the miracle that is your body. Now my body is a little bit cut up and broken. It's not working quite like it used to. But do you know what a miracle it is that any of us are sitting in this room right now without keeling over? Like in the course of this message, relatively short, your heart will beat somewhere between 1,800 and 3,000 times without any help from you. Like you are doing nothing, nothing consciously to make that happen. The moment it stops, so do you. And yet it is just doing what God made it to do. Pumping oxygenated blood throughout your whole body, making sure that your lungs can fill with air, that your eyes can see, that your ears can hear, and that your brain can process what you're hearing. It is an absolute miracle. It is evidence of God's goodness and faithfulness right here, right now. Notice it. Celebrate it. Creation, your body, your home. Later today, do a short tour of your home, even if it's only like a 300 square foot apartment. Do a tour. Because I can guarantee you that you can probably go to your faucet and get some clean water. Chances are you have a toilet that flushes, unless, of course, your preschooler flushed something unexpected. You have a roof over your heads last night when it rained. You had a furnace that kept you warm this week when it snowed. My friends, all of that is a gift. Even if it's not quite what you want it to be. It is God's faithfulness and provision today. So, how do we do this in reality on a daily basis? One thing I always recommend, something that is really helpful to me, is to do a gratitude journal. You don't have to buy anything expensive or fancy, get a spiral notebook, it doesn't matter. But simply notice and record evidence of God's faithfulness. If you have children or you live with roommates or whatever your living situation is, get a jar and make a gratitude jar. Put a stack of post-it notes next to it. And every time you recognize some evidence of God's goodness, write it down, put it in the jar, and at the end of the month, bring that jar to the dinner table and celebrate God's faithfulness in the present as a family. Or simply adopt a practice that when you go to bed every night, as you crawl into bed, you simply say, God, thank you for being present with me today. It's enough. So we remember we celebrate, but the third source of Thanksgiving is to anticipate. Oh, this is so important, my friends. This is so important. This was literally life-saving for me. You see, we need to anticipate the fulfillment of God's plans and purposes and promises in the future. True Thanksgiving does not deny current reality. True Thanksgiving is not toxic posity. That's not what this is about. True Thanksgiving sees reality, but also knows and believes that a better reality is yet to come. That this is not all there is. That even though this is hard and this is big and this is consuming my day today, that the kingdom of God is bigger and better than anything we can imagine. And that there is a God of Hestead and a God of Shalom that is working all things. And that there will come a day that all things will be restored and renewed. This is anticipation. And you and I need to practice developing a vision for what is yet to come as well. It's remembering God's past faithfulness, it's acknowledging God's present faithfulness, and it's trusting and believing God's future faithfulness. It's knowing that the God who saved me then will one day save me again. One prayer that I pray when it's really tough, when I need help with the practice of anticipation, is Psalms 24. Psalm 24, I'm sorry, Psalm 27, verses 13 through 14. The psalmist says, I remain confident of this. I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord. Be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord. You see, I don't think that there really is a problem of a lack of God's faithfulness. I think our problem with Thanksgiving has nothing to do with a lack of evidence of God's goodness and faithful. I think our problem with Thanksgiving is that we forget and we don't celebrate, and we fail to anticipate. This week, as you practice Thanksgiving, in whatever way, shape, or form you do it, here are three prayer prompts that can help you in your prayer time. One, remember, Lord, I remember your love and faithfulness in my life. Two, celebrate. Lord, I see evidence of your love and faithfulness today. And three, anticipate. Lord, I trust your love and faithfulness in the future. Back in 2014, when I was in the ICU on Thanksgiving, a friend gave me a journal. Now, let me tell you, I was not super thrilled at the gift. I didn't need anything to do. I had plenty going on in my life. And yet it didn't take me long to realize the wisdom of her gift. It was just a black journal with blank pages. That's it. But she challenged me to look for God every day. And so this is what I did. At the beginning of every day, as I was going through recovery from surgery and in months of horrific treatment, radiation, chemotherapy, every day I would take one page and I'd write the date at the top of the page. And then I would carry that journal around with me, intentionally trying to find God's reality in the middle of it. Some days were hard. Man, I didn't want to do it. Other days were a little bit easier, but every day, the date and looking for evidence of God's goodness. Well, this past week I pulled it out. I still have it. And I spent over an hour going through the pages of this journal. And you can't, I mean, I wish I could show you all here all these pages. There are so many pages. Like here's an example of some of us. My kids would write down evidence of God's goodness because they were suffering too. My husband would write it down, my mom would write it down, I would write it down. Mostly it's my. Over there. Keep your hand up until they bring you a cup. Okay? So we're gonna do something called self-led communion. So in a moment, I'm going to pray. All I want you to do is I want you to picture yourself sitting at the communion table and seeing it as a way to remember, celebrate, and anticipate. That's it. Now we practice open communion here, which means anyone is invited to do it. We simply ask that you have a relationship with Jesus because the communion table is all about him. Okay? Remember, celebrate, anticipate. Father, we come to you at this time of communion, and our hearts are fountains overflowing with thanksgiving. We remember Jesus' death on the cross, which brought us forgiveness. We celebrate his resurrection, which delivered new life to us even today. And oh Lord, we anticipate the day when you return and promise to make all things new, including us. God, this is why we give you thanks. We are forever grateful in Jesus' name. Amen.

SPEAKER_00 37:38

Thanks again for listening. Our prayer is that this message encouraged and challenged you in your journey to follow Jesus. If you'd like to learn more about our church, please check us out online at plumcreek.church or if you find yourself within driving distance of Castle Rock, Colorado, we would be honored to see you in person on a weekend. So until next time, grace and peace in the name of Jesus.