“Give Thanks In All Circumstances”

Tuesday, November 27, 2018

The Thanksgiving holiday is a special one for Christians. Historically, it looks back to a time when a group of believers who were making serious efforts to follow only the teachings of Scripture gave thanks to God for the help he had given them in finding a new land in which to practice Christianity as they understood it. But theologically, it looks back way further than that.

When God created the first humans in his image and placed them in the Garden of Eden, God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food." (Gen. 2:29) So why did Adam and Eve eat the one kind of fruit that God had forbidden when they had every other kind of fruit available to them? The simple answer: ingratitude.

While it is certainly true that the underlying cause of every willful sin is pride (when we think our own way is a better choice than God's way), a case can be made that another underlying cause of every sin is ingratitude—a dissatisfaction with the rightful & wonderful blessings God has given us. Ingratitude leads to discontentment, discontentment leads to entitlement, and entitlement leads to arrogance, which gets us right back to the problem of pride that causes us to sin.

What do we do about this? We remember that Paul's encouragement to the Thessalonians is more than a cheap platitude—it is a divine command with the potential to increase our faithfulness and bring us eternal joy. "Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you."  (1 Thess. 5:16-18)

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