SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/27/2019
10:03 AM
My Worship Time Focus: When are we to be Thankful?
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Eph. 5:20
Message of the verse: “20 giving thanks
always for all things unto God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,”
(KJ21).
The
answer to the “focus” question is “always,” as our verse tells us that we are
to “give thanks always.” John MacArthur
writes “To be thankful always is to recognize God’s control of our lives in
every detail as He seeks to conform us to the image of His Son. To be thankless is to disregard God’s
control, Christ’s lordship, and the Holy Spirit’s filling. Nothing must grieve the Holy Spirit so much
as the believer who does not give thanks.
In King Lear (I.ii.283, 312)
Shakespeare wrote, ‘Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted friend!...How sharper than
a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!’ When God brings trials and difficulties into
our lives and we complain and grumble, we question His wisdom and love as well
as His sovereignty.”
We
have just looked at three attitudes toward thanksgiving and now we want to look
at three levels of thankfulness. The
first is that we are thankful when all things are going our way, when we are
blessed. Perhaps we have an answered
prayer from God over getting a new job, or perhaps getting over an illness, and
then we are thankful.
An
example from the Old Testament comes from Exodus 15:1-21 when the children of
Israel sang a song to the Lord over the destruction of the Egyptian army being
drowned in the Red Sea after chasing them through the dry land that God had
made for Israel to go through, but not for Egypt to go through. Exodus 15:1-21 is a song sung to the Lord, a
song of thankfulness.
The
second level of thankfulness is that of being grateful for the hope of blessing
and victory yet to come. We see that the
first level is after the fact, while this second level is anticipation of the
fact. This is more difficult than the
first level, and this requires more faith and spiritual maturity. MacArthur writes “This second level is where
faith and hope begin, because it involves the unseen and the yet
unexperienced. As He stood over the tomb
of Lazarus, Jesus prayed, ‘Father, I thank Thee that Thou hearest Me. An I knew
that Thou hearest Me always; but because of the people standing around I said
it, that they may believe that Thou didst send Me’ (John 11:41-42). Because He knew His heavenly Father always
heard and answered His prayers, in total confidence He thanked Him in advance
for what He knew would be done.”
I
think that one of the things that believers can do to show their faith in the
Lord before things happen can concern death, the death of the believer or
perhaps the death of a loved one as we believe the promise of the Lord that one
day we will be with Him. Paul wrote “to
be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.” Romans 8:37 gives us another example “But in
all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.”
In
the OT when Judah was about to be attacked by a more powerful Moabite and
Ammonite armies their king “Jehoshaphat” proclaimed a fast and prayed before all
the people, earnestly proclaiming the Lord’s power and goodness. We see his prayer in 2 Chronicles 20:1-12,
but I will not quote it at this time. At
any rate God gave a great victory to Judah just as Jehoshaphat asked and
believed that He would.
We
will look at the third level of thankfulness, Lord willing in our next SD
seeing how it is a Sunday, a busy day for me.
The verse that goes along with Spurgeon’s
quote is from 1 Peter 5:10 “But may the God of all grace, who called us to His
eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, perfect,
establish, strengthen, and settle you.”
7/27/2019 10:45 AM
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