Welcome to the InTouch podcast with Charles Stanley for Thursday, November 27th. When the world is full of chaos and turmoil, the last thing you might think to do is say thank you. But that all depends on what you are grateful for. Here’s more on Thanksgiving in the midst of adversity. It’s one thing to be grateful when everything is going your way, but when everything is not going your way, what is your response? And sometimes we justify our wrong attitude, our ugly attitude, our ungrateful spirit by saying, “Well, God
shouldn’t allow these things to happen to me.” Or, “If God is who he says he is, he wouldn’t allow this to happen.” And they may look in the Bible and tell you, “Well, uh, there’s some parts of the Bible I don’t understand.” And so instead of rejoicing and praising God and thanking him for who he is and what he has done for you, sometimes we let doubts sort of scatter our thoughts of thanksgiving.
But today I want you to listen very carefully because I want to talk to you about why you should be a very grateful person. what God is doing in your life and the consequences of what he’s doing in your life. And I want you to turn, if you will, to first Thessalonians. And uh Paul in First Thessalonians in the fifth chapter, he’s ending up this epistle and he comes to these latter verses and he says a great deal in verse after verse.
But when you come to the 16th verse, there’s sort of a triad here and he says three things. He says number one, rejoice always. Is that easy? No, it’s not. Then he says, pray without ceasing. Is that easy? Not really. Then he says, in everything give thanks, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
Is that easy? No, it’s not. Now listen carefully. He says, in everything give thanks. That is in every circumstance I can give thanks for what? That he’s my savior, my lord, my master, my god. Lord, I don’t understand why you allow this to happen. But in the midst of this, I’m going to give you thanks because I know that you’ll help me to survive.
You’ll help me to be able to bear the pain, to get through the sorrow and the heartache and the loss and all the adversity I feel in my heart. I’m going to thank you that you’ll be with me in it. But I’m not thanking God for what happened. Anything that is inconsistent with who God is. We don’t we don’t thank him for that.
That’s not what Paul’s thinking about. He’s thinking about our relationship to him and that we can give thanks for whatever God allows in our life because we’re giving thanks to him. Listen, because of who Christ is within us. Whatever he allows in our life, he will turn it for good. Because we read what else Paul said when he said, “God causes all things to work together for good.
” Watch this. To those who love him, to those who called according his purpose, even the most difficult, trying, heartbreaking things, he will turn for our good. Do we always understand that? No. He didn’t say, “I had to understand it.” In fact, there’s an old gospel hymn. We’ll understand it better. by and by and by not necessarily now but now what Paul is referring to now in the midst of all of this we can be grateful to God so when I think about that and think about things that people go through and I I hear about them probably
most days something somebody’s going through and look at this verse he says in everything give thanks for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus What is God’s will? That I give thanks. Now, so what I want to do is I want us to think about why should we be grateful to God in everything.
Number one, and I’m going to give you a list here. It keeps us continually aware that we are walking in his presence, which contributes to a godly life by thanking him and everything. I’m being continually reminded that I’m walking in his presence. I’m not walking alone. So whatever I may hurt over, whatever I may weep over, whatever I may suffer loss about, I know this that I’m walking in his presence that I’m not doing it alone.
