Thanksgiving to Thanksliving
2 Corinthians 9:6-15
November 23, 2008
Well, here we are for another Thanksgiving and our Thanksgiving service with our Thanksgiving dinner afterwards. I truly hope that you will stay and be a part of this special time of fellowship. I saw this cartoon that was cute about a Thanksgiving giving service. It says, “No, I clearly said, Thanks-giving service.”
And speaking of giving thanks, here is a classic story.
An atheist was walking through the woods, admiring all the "accidents" that evolution had created. "What majestic trees! What powerful rivers! What beautiful animals!" he said to himself.
As he was walking alongside the river, he heard a rustling in the bushes behind him. Turning to look, he saw a 7-foot grizzly bear charge towards him. He ran away as fast as he could up the path.
He looked over his shoulder and saw the grizzly was closing. Somehow he ran even faster, so scared that tears came to his eyes. He looked again, and the bear was even closer. His heart was pounding, and he tried to run faster. He tripped and fell to the ground. He rolled over to pick himself up, but the bear was right over him, reaching for him with its left paw and raising its right paw to strike him.
At that instant the atheist cried, "Oh my God!"
Time stopped. The bear froze. The forest was silent. Even the river stopped moving.
As a bright light shone upon the man, a voice came out of the sky, "You deny my existence for all these years, teach others that I don’t exist, and even credit creation to a cosmic accident. Do you expect me to help you out of this predicament? Am I to count you as a believer?"
The atheist looked directly into the light and said, "I would feel like a hypocrite to become a Christian after all these years, but perhaps you could make the bear a Christian?"
"Very well," said the voice.
The light went out. The river ran. The sounds of the forest resumed. Then the bear dropped his right paw, brought both paws together, bowed its head, and spoke: "Lord, for this food which I am about to receive, I am truly thankful."
What is thanksgiving about? Black Friday deals? Turkey? Football? Family? I’ve heard someone say that every addict has his holiday. The fourth of July is for the pyro. Labor Day for the sluggard. New Year’s is for the alcoholic. Christmas is for the shopaholic. And Thanksgiving is for the overeaters.
When I looked in the bible about giving thanks, being thankful, and thank offerings and giving thanks to the Lord, I noticed an interesting pattern. I saw that being grateful and thanking God for his blessings and giving thanks was not just a perfunctory duty or polite obligation or even just a good thing. It seems to be intended by God to be a way of living. It is a lifestyle. And specific as we follow Jesus and think about the great sacrifice that he made for us, it is moving from just giving thanks to living it out. It is moving from Thanksgiving to Thanksliving.
Thanksgiving to Thanksliving
We heard from 2 Cor. 9 earlier. We saw the importance of being thankful not just as a prayer and not just as being polite but as a way of life. And as we think about what this holiday should mean to us, I hope we will consider several ideas.
• Attitude of Gratitude
God loves a cheerful giver. God will make you rich if you are generous in every occasion. Somehow I think that God sees this richness in more than just money and material possessions. Don’t you? And generosity results in a thankful attitude and even a cheerful attitude.
You’ve probably heard this saying. Some of us are helped by these sayings. It helps us remember the principle—in this case the principle of being grateful for all that we have and being grateful for those things that we don’t have. What kind of things could we be grateful for, which we don’t have and probably don’t want?
This all points to our attitude. How think about things? What we dwell on? How we approach life…
• Serving others as Gratitude
Serving others and supplying needs is a way of expressing our gratitude as least in God’s scheme of things. In this sense, simply praying a prayer for forgiveness of our sins is really on a very beginning that scratches the surface of what following Jesus means.
If we are truly full of thanks for what God has done for us and we are truly grateful for the things that God has done which we could not have done for ourselves, then the result is a love for others and a desire to serve others. If our attitude is truly changed, then giving to others and meeting their needs becomes a new way of life.
Our focus in life becomes not about meeting our own needs or being entertained or having fun but what can I do to help someone else. What can I do to make someone’s life a little better? How can I help others? How can I serve them without getting anything in return?
Helping out at the Upper Room has really been an awesome time. One of the things that the Upper Room does is distribute clean socks and blankets and even clothes. Sure you get people in that just seem to take and take and seem to think that they deserve anything and everything without making a contribution. But there are many, many others that are extremely grateful. And they express that by helping clean up and picking things up and even encouraging the less grateful to pull their own weight.
Someone on our midst felt led to supply some blankets prior to the recent Blizzard of Blankets. There wasn’t much in terms of blankets. But these blankets that were given by someone led by God made a big difference in the lives of several people who really needed something to wrap up in and had no other resources.
• Worship as Gratitude
Men will praise God because of your generosity. Paul talks about the prayers that are prayed because of generosity and then he says in a great climax, “Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!” What an amazing expression of worship! He is so excited and so grateful he can’t contain it.
Elsewhere in the bible, there are many instances of how gratitude influences our worship. Songs of thanksgiving. The Psalms even talk about giving thanks in the throngs (not thongs) of people. I think the idea is that when we are too shy or don’t want to draw attention to ourselves when we should be thanking God and proclaiming his wondrous deeds, then we are in a sense robbing God. Just like when we withhold our tithe, we rob God. When we withhold our praises and our thanksgiving and refuse to publicly express them, then we rob God. How else will people praise God?
Paul said in verse 13 that obedience accompanies confession. So we are to live thankfully by serving others, by giving to others, by giving to God, and we are to confess. Literally the Greek word means with out mouths open. Attitude might determine an open heart. But an open mouth of praise and thanksgiving is the mark of someone who overflows with thanksgiving as well as thanksliving.
• Generosity as Gratitude
Lastly, thanksliving as already mentioned but needs specifically pointed is about generosity not only in supplying needs but in expressions of thanks to God. Sharing with those in need and everyone else. It is an act that says I know who provides.
Did you know that you cannot out give God? Think about it! Out give God. Try it! I dare you!! You won’t be able to do it. Not if you have the right attitude and your desire is to see God glorified. It won’t happen.
Give of your time. Your money. Your stuff. Your home. Your car. Your self. If we are truly grateful and living out our thanks, we will give generously.
Last week I shared with you a story about a young man with bi-polar that died while I was a chaplain. For those of you who were with us, do you remember that? How the parents stayed with him and were there for him even though he put them through so much hell. They were there for him at the end.
Well, later that week I came into the ICU (this young man had died a couple of days earlier) and there was a young woman who had come in during the night. I talked to a nurse who said that no family had been in to see her and that maybe I should talk to her nurse outside.
When I approached her nurse, she was on the phone finishing up a call. At the end she said goodbye pushed the disconnect button and slammed the receiver down letting out a frustrated groan. As it turned out, she was talking with this young lady’s family and was totally frustrated by their reaction. They apparently did not care to hear anything about her. They weren’t coming in to see and were not concerned that she was probably going to die. They were not really interested in hearing from the hospital if and when she died.
I don’t know the family’s story but apparently they were very involved in their church. We gathered from the state of her body that she was involved in prostitution and heavy drug abuse including track marks all over her arms and old burns on her hands. Evidently she had put her family through hell with her choices. She had embraced a lifestyle that was destroyed her and was completely opposite to the way she had been raised.
It seems in her family’s eyes that she was already dead. And they treated her as such. She was disowned.
I don’t judge or blame the family. I never got a chance to hear their story. She may have done some atrocious things. But the very fact that I had a chance to be there for two people in very similar circumstances and see two families completely opposite reactions has filled me with so much gratitude especially for the parents of the young man that I talked about last week.
Even now as I think about it, I am filled with so much gratitude for my own family that I just can’t express. Stories like these remind me of what my focus should be. They remind me of what giving thanks is all about. They remind me of my call to thanksliving.
