I was a young married—yes, that was a very long time ago—when we had a minister over our age group who was intent on teaching us scripture like we had never known it before.
One of the first verses he insisted we learn was this one: Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you— I Thessalonians 5:18.
It sounded lovely except for the “all things” part. I could not begin to do that at the time. As years passed and with our mentor’s persistence, we all learned that there was a sense of blessing and freedom that came with obeying the command.
I used to tell my son and daughter, “You can’t always control your circumstances, but you can control the way you respond to them.”
As much as I believe that, my response quotient has been better at some times than at others.
The thought of giving thanks in all circumstances is presented in scripture as a command rather than an option.
Therefore, I do not see any wiggle room. It may just be the most difficult command there is.
There was a very popular book back in the 1970s called The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck.
The most quoted sentence in the entire book was the first one, “Life is difficult.”
That is a timeless and profound statement.
The book went on to give great advice about avoiding rigidity and giving grace in your relationships.
It fell short in its approach to “spirituality,” leaning into a relative approach that basically encouraged the reader to embrace whatever works for you.
From the time we are very small, and if we are fortunate enough to have parents who teach us to say our prayers at night, we thank God for many blessings—our mothers, fathers, family, friends, pets…and on and on.
It is not hard to say thank you for what makes us happy.
It is indeed a blessing in itself to have parents who take the time to teach us the art of being grateful. But, if we live in reasonable comfort—as most of us do— without having a huge unmet need, we can certainly begin to take our blessings for granted.
A trip outside our comfort zone to another zip code or another country can frequently awaken our sense of gratitude with a shock of reality. Suddenly our everyday “normal” looks like mountains of gold beside someone else’s “normal.”
Running water and a refrigerator stocked with an abundance of food escapes our notice until we meet someone without clean drinking water or a regular food supply. We find that our taken for granted necessities are someone else’s unimagined luxuries.
This verse in I Thessalonians becomes very uncomfortable when you stop to think about that word, “all,” because “all circumstances” can include deprivation and poverty as well as first world problems like divorce and cancer and addiction and not getting accepted to the college you had so hung your hopes on.
Not getting something we thought we really really needed is just part of living in a fallen world. But it still hurts, doesn’t it?
Personally, it would be okay with me to never have to deal with the death of a loved one, even a pet. It would be okay with me to never have to deal with cancer, weeds in the flower bed, traffic jams, taxes, natural disasters, or angry people who shout at other people on Twitter. I Thessalonians 5:18 not only forces us to consider dealing with situations we would rather avoid, it tells us to give thanks in those very places.
I think back to that first sentence in The Road Less Traveled. That simple truth that “Life is difficult,” is like the proverbial fly in the ointment. If we were guaranteed a bit more “yeses” to our prayer requests, it would be so much easier to give thanks in all circumstances, wouldn’t it? It is precisely that we get a lot of “no’s” in life that makes trying to be thankful in all circumstances so hard.
But God’s word says to give thanks in all…all circumstances.
Who believes that?
No wonder contemporary culture thinks Believers are a bit daft—almost anyone can tell you the world just does not operate that way, thanking God in the middle of discomfort. Of course it doesn’t, and that is often the very point God means to make. God intends for His people to be different.
He wants that so much that He doesn’t leave it up to us to try to manufacture the appearance of being different in our own strength.
We have already said that giving thanks in all things does not come naturally. God has not simply made a new etiquette rule, something we just force ourselves to grin and do as well-mannered children.
As usual, God is interested in our hearts, the core of our being. He not only wants us to do it, but He wants us to mean it at the same time. He likes real and authentic.
If we surrender our hearts to God by inviting Jesus Christ to be our Lord and Savior, the Holy Spirit begins a lifelong process inside of us. It is as though the Holy Spirit gives us a new set of eyes.
We learn to see in ways we did not see before, and it’s not our determined will power that turns us into kind, loving, grateful people who treat our families and friends and even strangers better that before.
Seeing in that new way, however, causes us to do things we may not have done before. Our behavior is different because our heart is different. One of those most notable parts of the transformation of our hearts is a grateful spirit in the face of whatever life throws our way.
God is the absolute opposite of the good Southern mama who insists that we have the best manners at all costs. He is so not into faking it.
When the wheels come off and we face disappointment or sorrow and the tears fall and the world sees, we don’t have a God who says, “Put on a happy face.” Aren’t you glad?
But there is a strange gratitude that wells up inside a child of God, one who has steeped himself or herself in His word, and it is indeed possible to have gratitude.
It is the truth of God’s word that gives us stability in every circumstance. It is the very knowledge of that same truth that gives us hope, security, and even joy in the hard places.
To know that there is nothing in this world or in the world to come that can ever separate us from the love and care of our heavenly Father ——These are the reasons we can give thanks in all our circumstances. His presence and provision is a sure and joyous thing.
