Giving Thanks in the Midst of Struggle (Church Intention #3)

If I am completely honest with you, this past week was a hard one.

Sunday night I woke up and my throat was screaming. I could not swallow without tears coming to my eyes. The pain was bad enough that I could not sleep, and I could barely get water down.

I have had a lot of sore throats in my life — whenever I get sick, it always seems to settle right here. This was by far the worst I have ever had.

So Monday morning I headed to the walk-in clinic, convinced I had the virus. Instead I found out I had strep. Forty-seven years of life and I had never had strep before. I now have a great deal more sympathy for everyone who has. They gave me a shot, told me the antibiotic would have me feeling much better within twenty-four hours, and sent me on my way to get on with my week.

Forty-eight hours later I was in as much pain as I had been on Monday. Discouraged. Could not eat. Could not drink. Could not sleep. So I went back in. (Incidentally, because I could not eat, I lost about five pounds in three days. If you are looking for a weight loss program, apparently strep works.)

They looked at me like, why are you back? Because I still feel horrible. The pain is still an eight or a nine and I do not know how much longer I can do this. So they ran a mono test — negative. Ran a test for the virus — negative. And they put me on a second antibiotic.

About twenty-four hours after that I could finally eat something. My throat still hurt, but I could get fluids in without crying, and I started sleeping again.

Monday through Thursday was rough.

But here is what I kept realizing: what was my Monday through Thursday has been somebody else’s March through November.

For a lot of people this year has been genuinely brutal. Because of the pandemic. Because of finances. Because of a personal crisis. Because of everything churning through our politics and our culture. Whatever the cause, this has been a hard year for an enormous number of people.

And Yet Here We Are at Thanksgiving

Every year we hold a Thanksgiving worship gathering. It has become one of our little traditions: we put a microphone out front, and people come up and give their thanks to God out loud.

And some of you, right now, in your heart, are thinking: yeah, right. The only thing I am going to be thankful for is when this year is finally over. What exactly am I supposed to be grateful for in the middle of all this?

So listen to 1 Thessalonians 5:16–18.

“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

Some of you have been around American Christian culture long enough that you have seen these words a hundred times. On social media with a pretty photograph behind them. On a T-shirt. On a coffee mug. And because they are so familiar, you find a kind of comfort in them.

But if you actually look at them, they are not comforting. They are frustrating.

“Rejoice always.”

Always. Rejoice when your football team gets embarrassed by a team they should have handled. Rejoice when they tell you it is strep and you cannot swallow. Rejoice when someone you love catches this virus and develops complications. Rejoice when you lose your job. Rejoice when she leaves you. Rejoice when things go the exact opposite of everything you have been praying for.

“Pray without ceasing.”

Kids, “ceasing” means stopping. So: pray without stopping. Pray all the time.

And if you are like me you immediately think — pray while I am watching a show? Pray in the middle of a conversation with someone? Pray while I am asleep? This is impossible.

“Give thanks in all circumstances.”

And Paul is not finished. Not some circumstances. Not most. All.

So — I was supposed to be giving thanks that I had strep? Yes. I am supposed to give thanks when someone I love gets sick and it goes badly? Yes. I am supposed to be thankful when my boss fires me? Yes.

At this point you may be thinking Paul must be joking. Or that this is really just the power of positive thinking dressed up in Scripture — rejoice always, how inspiring.

No. This is not positive thinking. This is a command. Look at the last phrase: “for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

This is the will of God. If you claim to follow Jesus, this is what He wants of you — and what He commands. Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. And, maybe hardest of all, give thanks in every circumstance.

How? How in the world do you give thanks in the middle of the struggle?

That is the tension. And I think we get through it by looking in three directions.

1. Look Around

Too often when we are in pain, the difficulty is all we can see.

On Monday, all I could see — more accurately, all I could feel — was my throat. It crowded out everything else.

I had been texting our elders to keep them updated, and I let them know I was heading to the clinic and asked them to pray, because at that point I assumed it was the virus. When I came out I texted again: “The good news” — I put good in quotation marks — “is that it is strep.”

And one of them texted back: “Only in 2020 can strep be considered good news.”

That joke actually did something for me. It made me look around. Because I remembered that the previous Sunday I had preached without my mask on — my glasses kept fogging — and my stomach dropped. What if I had been contagious with something far worse? What if I had spread it through this room?

And then it landed: no. It was strep. And that was genuinely something to be thankful for.

We stare straight at our circumstances and see nothing but the pain. Sometimes we simply need to stop and look around — and when we do, we start noticing things we can actually be thankful for.

2. Look Back

Some of you have been following Jesus long enough that you can look back and see exactly where God was at work.

You can look back at the time He provided financially when there was no visible way it was going to happen. You can look back and see how He brought the precise right person into your life — someone to counsel you, or someone to make you feel loved — and you knew that was God’s doing.

Some of you remember a situation so hard you were certain there was no way through it. The job was not coming. The person you love was fighting cancer. And then there was a breakthrough, and you remember the joy of it.

Looking back at what God has already done gives you hope. Because you realize: if He could do that then, He can do it now. And so looking back lets you thank God for what He has already done — and gives you hope for what He is going to do.

But I do not think looking back into your own past goes deep enough.

3. Look Deeper

You need to look further back than your own history. You need to look at the cross.

Let me tell you a story I heard from a pastor whose teaching I have followed for years.

He was at the pool with his family, tossing a ball around with one of his kids, when another dad — a complete stranger — struck up a conversation. After a while the man asked him, “How long do you think you can hold your breath?”

Odd question. But this pastor is deeply competitive — works out every day, was an athlete in college — so his brain immediately went to competition. “I could probably do a minute.”

“All right, let’s see.”

The man starts a stopwatch. He goes under. After a while his lungs are screaming and he is sure it has been well over a minute, so he pops up. The man stops the watch: “Wow — one minute, ten seconds. That’s impressive.”

Feeling good about himself, he says, “Beat that.”

The man says, “Well, actually — I can do about two and a half minutes.”

He had been set up. But then the man offered him some help. “I bet you can go a lot farther than you think. Here is the trick.

“First, when you are under, stay calm. Any movement, any thrashing, burns oxygen. Keep everything to a minimum.

“Second, there will come a moment when your lungs say I want more, now. You can actually go longer than that. And when they get truly insistent, breathe out just a little.

“But the single most effective thing is this: put your mind somewhere else. Travel there. Go to a place, go to a person, and focus on that. You will find you can hold your breath far longer.”

So once he had recovered, they tried again. The watch started. He went under. He stayed calm — nothing was going to rattle him. When his lungs started screaming, he let out just a little air. And then he thought: focus somewhere else.

So in his mind he traveled up to the edge of the pool, where his wife and one of his kids were sitting. He imagined what they were talking about. What was going on up there. He put himself in that conversation.

Until finally his lungs cut in: you are not up there. You are down here. I need air now.

He surfaced. The man stopped the watch. Just like that, he had added a solid thirty or forty seconds.

Some of you — this whole year has been holding your breath and wondering how much longer you can last.

Stay calm. Breathe out. And then put your focus somewhere else. Look deeper. Go to the cross.

Because when you go to the cross and see that Jesus died there for the forgiveness of your sins, you realize He has already given you everything you actually need. Which means that even if this particular circumstance never changes — even if this struggle runs to the end of your days — your sins are forgiven, you have eternity with God, and you already possess everything you need.

That is how you rejoice always, and pray without ceasing, and give thanks in all circumstances. Not because the circumstances are good, but because you already have everything you could possibly need.

And when you see what Jesus did for you at that cross, you can hold your breath a little longer. You can go one more day. Take one more step. Hold on, keep faith — and even give thanks.

Why God Commands It

You need to do this. God commands it. But He does not command it to force you into something hard and awkward for its own sake. He commands it because He knows it is genuinely good for you.

Because in the middle of the struggle, in the middle of the tension, when you still stand up and say I give thanks to God, something lightens in your soul. The weight you have been carrying gets a little less heavy. It stops feeling quite so unbearable.

And it does something else, too. It helps the people around you.

Some of us need to speak our thanks out loud — not only as worship to God, but because there are people nearby who need to hear it. A lot of us have been struggling this year. And when you say publicly what you are grateful for, your words lighten someone else’s soul. They give hope. They remind us that God is good, that He is with us, that He is in control. They send people out the door feeling a little better about life.

So do it. Because God commands it. Because it is good for you. Because it will help someone else.

And if you are struggling to come up with anything to say — look around, look back, and look deeper.

Father, for the person whose week, or month, or entire year has been brutal — put Your praise and Your thanks on their lips anyway, so they can speak it and it can be a blessing to everyone who hears it. Use this as worship. Let us hear what You have been doing in our lives. Be glorified in it as You lighten our souls and carry us.

Help us right now to give thanks in all circumstances — to look around, to look back, and to look deeper — and to see what You have been doing, what You are doing, and what You will do. Amen.