Paul's Prayers - For Others

Preached on January 14-2018 

Scripture readings: Psalm 133; 1 Thessalonians 3:6-13

I served a church which had an ushers’ bench, an usher’s pew, right up against the back wall; you know, so that they could march together down the aisle to pick up the offering plates. (Church used to be so dignified, until I grew up.)

Sunset, Desert Aire/Mattawa WA November 2017

Well they had this old story, from the 1940’s and 1950’s, and maybe earlier. It was always the same four guys, every Sunday, and they always sat in the same order in the ushers’ pew. They did this together year after year, decade after decade. In the end, one of them died. It was so sad that the four would never be the same.

It also presented that church with a difficulty, because it meant that they had to find a guy of the exact same height as the one who had passed, so that he could hide the grease spot that the deceased usher had left on the back wall above the pew.

You know that the kids today have no idea what that greasy kid’s stuff was? You just ask them! And I doubt that any of them use Vitalis.

The perfumed olive oil mentioned in Psalm 133 reminded me of this. It was the greasy kid’s stuff of its long day. There’s a Hebrew word used here that means olive oil and (even more interestingly) it means richness, but the primary meaning of this word describes something that’s greasy and gross.

 A Series of Photos on a Foggy Day: Desert Aire/Mattawa, WA
January 2018

In the Psalm, Aaron refers to the first high priest, the brother of Moses. Moses set Aaron apart for this work of being the High Priest by pouring perfumed olive oil on his head. But there’s no story about Moses, or anyone else, pouring so much oil on any priest so that it ran down his face, and beard, and neck, and collar, and chest, and legs, and soaked his robes down to his hem and his feet.

That’s greasy and gross for sure. That’s like spreading tubes and tubes of Brylcreem all over someone’s body and clothes. But just think of all the richness and the sweetness that would come from doing that; or having it done to you. Wouldn’t that be great; having it done to you? Can’t you feel it? What a good way to think about this excessively wonderful thing.

Psalm 133 is only three verses long, but it manages to be completely excessive: the oil running down from head to toe; the dew from Mount Hermon falling on Mount Zion at Jerusalem that would be like the dew from the Olympic Mountains falling on the desert of Mattawa and Desert Aire. And this rainforest dew really refers to the whole climate that makes plants grow: the whole climate becoming like a rainforest.

When I lived on the South Coast of Oregon, the first year I was there, we got nearly one hundred inches of rain. The natives liked to tease me about coming from California, and so they began to ask me if I was sick of the rain.

I answered their question with a question of my own. When they asked if I was sick of the rain, I simply asked them, “Are you?”

What is all the excess in this tiny psalm about? It’s about love: Brothers living together in unity. (Brothers, here, refers to all the people of all the tribes of Israel.) They were always fighting and destroying each other. Compared with that, living side by side, with hearts beating as one, would be excessively different. It would be the exact opposite of real life, and opposites tend to be excessive.

The nation of Israel was called to be the opposite of the whole world: a whole nation totally dedicated to God’s purpose. God’s calling of the tribes of Abraham was for them was to be a blessing to every other nation on earth.

They were called to be a “kingdom of priests” mediating and reconciling the world to God. Which is what a priest is for.

Being priests meant praying for the world. In such a life of prayer, the power of prayer, in the hands of God, would make this stinking world smell sweet for the first time since the beginning.

Soap is only mentioned twice in the whole Bible. That’s because the people of Israel usually washed themselves with olive oil. Some people might call this greasy and gross, but they pictured olive oil as having a richness to it. Prayer for others would be like olive oil that made it possible to wipe away all the dirt and make the world squeaky clean and fresh as new.

  On hot and dry Mount Zion, the priest, washed with oil, would enter the dim and silent world of the Temple. They would enter God’s House, with the sweetness of prayer for others, or with the sprinkled blood of sacrifices that brought a sweet smell of forgiveness, and grace, and healing to God’s people, and to the earth.

We have been washed with the Oil of God. This oil is the love of the Creator Father, the love of the self-sacrificing Son, the love of the Holy Spirit full of God’s growth-giving richness, full of the sweetness of God’s power and love. We have had this oil poured out on us with all the excess of God.

Now, by faith and prayer, we go into Christ, the living temple of God and creation. Entering into Jesus leads us to bring the world, and our neighbors, and each other, with us into the sanctuary, into the holy and safe place of God.

We are to be like Jesus in this world. As he poured out himself for the creation, and for our brothers and sisters, in all times and places; in the same way, we (like him) pour out ourselves for our brothers and sisters, and for every good thing of God. In Christ, we do this with our lives and with our prayers.

Paul says it: “May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else.” That’s the excess of God, once again. Only, now, it’s at work in us and through us, for others.

Paul, in most of his letters, reminds his people (his friends, and brothers and sisters) that they have seen this excess at work in him, for their sake, and just as much for the sake of the whole world that needs God so much. I think Paul must have been excessive about everything.

I often fail to be excessive, except for the fact that I seem to be obsessive. Could those be the same thing: obsessive and excessive? But here we’re talking about being excessive in love.

That leads us to another part of this excess. Paul has been modeling, for his friends, the life of excessive prayer. Paul says this, here: “Night and day we pray excessively that we may see you again and supply what is needed in your faith.” (1 Thessalonians 3:10)

I retranslated two words here. The New International Version says: “We pray for you earnestly.” The King James Version says: “praying exceedingly.” Earnestness is an intensity in prayer. Exceedingly is literally a lot like excessively. These words translate a Greek word that includes all of this excess.

This excess of love and prayer build each other up, and intensify our lives. It tends to mean that we get absent-minded about ourselves because we do obsess, lovingly, about others.

This doesn’t mean exhausting yourself into a state of frazzlement. It doesn’t mean seeing yourself negatively, or as being unworthy. God has made you worthy, through the blood, and the grace, and the power that comes through him, as we meet him and know him in Jesus, and in the Holy Spirit.

This excess of love is nurtured by this excess of prayer. This excess overcomes the world. It makes us strong in our weakness. Paul will tell his friends in Thessalonica that they need this. They need Paul, and they need each other, because they are like Paul, and they are like the Christians in the Holy Land, in a terrible and difficult way. They are all being persecuted excessively; almost mercilessly.

It really was merciless. It was meant to put an end to them. When Paul was talking about his desire to supply what was lacking in their faith, their lack wasn’t immaturity. It wasn’t a lack of knowledge and understanding of the teachings of Jesus, or a lack of knowledge about the good news. Paul wasn’t talking about a lack of faith on their part, but about a strong need within their faith, because of their difficulties.

All of the negative and destructive energy directed against them, threatened to empty them, and make them feel lacking. It was a lack that was actually a need. This need came from the injuries of being hated, and reviled, and abused.

Perhaps some of them were being imprisoned, tortured, and killed for their trust and their love of Jesus. There are wounds and scars of faith that need to be healed, or that create a need for gentle, persistent therapy.

Paul had enough experience of his own in what they were going through, so that he had a good idea of what they needed or lacked. They may have been questioning the strength of their own faith, and blaming themselves for what was happening to them.

Paul, in his letters, doesn’t very much pray for himself. He, almost without exception, makes excessive prayers for others. He asks for their prayers, and he promises that he prays for them, because that is what the best prayer is about. Prayer, at its best, prays for others. Prayer in Christ created, in them, a new world. That new world, growing from their prayers for others, was building within them a world much like the new world that will come with Jesus when he returns.

Prayer opens up the lid of a jar full of the sweet tasting preserve of the beginning of the world, as God designed and created it to be. Prayer, when God speaks to us, tells us of a great goodness that belongs to us, but has been lost.

Prayer looks, even more, into the future. Prayer creates a foretaste of the new heaven and the new earth that will come with Jesus. You see, prayer creates readiness for that new world by creating that world, ahead of time, in those who hunger and wait for it.

As others were Paul’s greatest joy, prayer makes others our greatest joy. As the faithfulness of others was Paul’s greatest source of encouragement, prayer makes the faithfulness of others our own source of encouragement. When Paul’s love overflowed to others, then the love they gave to others (through Jesus) was Paul’s greatest reward.

I do love to see other people loving each other. That’s why weddings can be so much fun (as long as the kinfolk don’t tell me how to do my job). The couples are usually too much in love to care about what happens in the wedding.

The truth is that, as strong as Paul’s obsessive prayer was (for his friends’ love to overflow to each other and to everyone else), Paul found love flowing back to him, from his friends, and from Jesus. But the success came because, as Paul was excessively praying for his friends’ overflowing love, Paul’s prayer changed him.

Praying for others made him into a sort of cheerleader for their own prayers for loving others. Paul’s prayers for others loving others made him into the sort of person who embarrasses you by telling you over and over again that they love you, or what a good friend they see in you, and how great your humble qualities are.

Even saying thank-you, excessively, could have the power, in the long run, to change everyone you know, especially your brothers and sisters in Christ. Then, together, you become the family of people who show the world how to love.

The Lord’s Supper is a kind of prayer for others. At the Lord’s Table, we gather together to meet, in person, the prayer of Jesus for us, which we hear the prayer of the cross: “Forgive them.” Jesus, in his prayer, is so full of us that he becomes as self-forgetting as a pinch of bread and a sip of wine.

His sacrifice was not a way of despising himself, but a way of loving others. He makes us so loved that we can forget about ourselves in just that powerful, loving way that he loves us, and the whole world around us.

The cross and the resurrection are a kind of infinite prayer that makes us a new creation. Jesus’ prayer makes us ready for the new heaven and the new earth that are coming.

The power within us comes from his praying for others; his praying for us. This way of prayer, as Paul teaches us, changes us excessively, so that our own prayers become the heart of a life devoted to a passionate and excessive love for others, and for God’s world.

Pastor's Letter, November 2017 - Let's All Be Thanksgiving Babies

PASTOR’S LETTER - November 2017

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

I was almost a Thanksgiving Baby. That’s the earliest story of my life. At least it has always been my mother's interpretation of the events of those days, as she told them to me me any number of times, since when I was a child.

Me and My Parents, 1951-1952

The story is that my mom began having labor pains Thanksgiving afternoon, November 22, 1951. My dad took her straight to the hospital. She missed Thanksgiving dinner because of me. Her obstetrician was sent for. He sent instructions that the nurses administer a drug to slow down my mother’s labor. And so, I was born on November 24. It has always been my mom’s interpretation that her doctor gave her (and me) that drug to prevent the interruption of his Thanksgiving vacation. But for that medical malpractice, I should have been a Thanksgiving Baby.

I became one anyway. To have uncles, aunts, grandparent, cousins, to be part of my birthdays, my birthdays were celebrated on Thanksgiving. Turkey dinner became my birthday feast. My mom would bake me a birthday cake, but I conspired with the Day, because I loved pumpkin pie. A lot of my early birthday pictures show me blowing out candles on a pumpkin pie. So, I am a Thanksgiving Baby whether I was born on the Day, or not.

Turkey Looking into a Church Basement, 2010

In a way, perhaps, we should all become Thanksgiving Babies. Our best life comes from the love, and grace, and gifts, and sacrifice of God, in Christ. Our best life comes from the birth of Jesus, his shouldering of our own sins and death, and his defeating of death in the resurrection. We are infinitely loved. Everything has become a gift: every day, every place, every one we love, or know, or meet.

Paul wrote: “Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18) That’s the best life for you and for me. Thanksgiving is the way to life, to joy, to peace, to faith and hope. Thanksgiving is the way to love. Let’s all become Thanksgiving Babies.

Grace and peace,

Dennis Evans

Thanksgiving Is Not an Option

Preached on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, November 20, 2016

Scripture readings: 1 Thessalonians 5:12-24

A father just got back from helping on his son’s Boy Scout back-packing trip. He was still pretty excited when he told his friends the highlights.

Along Lower Crab Creek
North of Matttawa/Desert Aire, WA
November 2016

They had taken a pack-horse with them. “And, boy, am I glad we had that horse!” he said, “After one of the boys got hurt, we used the horse to carry him out.”

“How was the boy hurt?”

“Well, the horse stepped on him.”

The apostle Paul says, “In everything give thanks,” or “give thanks in all circumstances.” And then Paul writes, “Do not quench the Spirit,” or, “Do not put out the Spirit’s fire.”

From what I know, I think Paul was pretty unquenchable himself. I think he was as full of fire as he was full of thanks, and that the two went together, and that they played a part in making Paul a person who was really, really alive.

Now, when Paul says, “Give thanks in all circumstances,” it sounds almost like a command. In a way, it is. Thanksgiving really is not an elective. It’s not an option. Thanksgiving is needed. It’s required because it’s needed. It’s required for our happiness right now. It’s required for our everlasting happiness.

In a way, thankfulness is as important as patience. It’s hard to learn patience. You learn patience by having all the things happen to you that make you impatient.

But the people who have learned patience are the people who give us peace. We can relax with them. Patient people make the hard things easier for us. They give us confidence, and they help us to live abundantly.

Then, when you find someone who is actually thankful for you (for you, of all people!): why, that is the gift of life itself! But it’s as hard to learn to be thankful as it is to be patient. You only learn to be thankful by learning the alternatives. And the alternatives to being thankful are dark, and bitter, and bleak.

If the patient and thankful people are the source of life to you, aren’t you glad they learned (the hard way) those lessons that God wants every human being to know? Then (when the Lord says, “You! You be thankful too!”) you can begin to understand why it’s so important. The command to be thankful is just as important as God’s command to love.

Jesus said, “I came that you might have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10) The people who are truly alive around us, the people who make our lives full, have these qualities: thankfulness, patience, love, forgiveness, peace. They make life worth living now. They will make heaven truly heavenly. They create just a little bit of heaven on earth right now.

All of these gifts come from God himself, and it is God who makes heaven heavenly. Heaven is heavenly not only because God is full of glory, but because God himself is full of thanks.

There is something essential to God (as we see him in Jesus) that looks at us and longs to say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” (Matthew 25:12) That’s just one example of the thankfulness of God.

God created us so that, in the end, he might rejoice over us. (Zephaniah 3:17) Thanks has its origins with the God who rules heaven and earth. If we want life with God, sooner or later we must give thanks.

The more we read, in the New Testament, about Paul (in his letters, and in the stories of his life in the Book of Acts) we realize that being thankful can’t mean a self-generated feeling of thanks. We have the responsibility to decide in favor of being thankful, but we also have to want it: really want it. The commandment to be thankful is not a command to pretend, or to conform to some sort of rule.

Paul explains that thanksgiving is part of receiving the peace of God that goes beyond our understanding, “Do not be anxious about anything; but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God, and the peace of God, which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:6-7)

Peace doesn’t mean that all conflict and struggle go away. Peace is a kind of inner harmony.

It doesn’t mean that everything is harmonious toward you. It doesn’t mean that everything is quiet and easy. It means that you have your footing; you have your foundation in God, who is peace.

So, people and circumstances may seem to be coming at you the wrong way, but you can come at them the right way. You can do what it takes to meet those things, and deal with them, because the peace that passes understanding is in you.

I think it’s called the peace that passes understanding for two reasons: for one thing, we don’t quite understand it. The other reason is that nobody else understands it either.

If anyone has the right to tell us to be thankful, it’s Paul. In his second letter to the Corinthians (2 Cor. 11:23ff) he wrote about some of the hardships he had gone through since he became a Christian. He wrote: “I have worked hard, been in prison, been flogged, and been exposed to death, again and again. Five times I have received the forty lashes minus one. Three times I have been beaten with clubs. Once they tried to stone me to death. Three times I was shipwrecked, and spent a night and a day in the open sea.” And the list goes on.

Earlier in that same letter (4:8ff) he wrote, “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed, perplexed but not driven to despair, persecuted but not abandoned, struck down but not destroyed…” It is in the middle of a life like that that Paul encouraged us to, “give thanks in all circumstances.” Paul gave thanks as an experienced and sensitive human being, not as some kind of thanksgiving robot.

He wrote (Rom. 12:15), “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” After a friend recovered from a nearly fatal illness Paul wrote, “But God had mercy upon him, and not only upon him, but on me also, to spare me sorrow upon sorrow.” (Philippians 2:27) A thankful heart is a feeling heart, a vulnerable heart, a caring heart, a breakable heart that has its footing and foundation in God.

What do you say, when someone asks, “How are you?” Some people have a stock answer to that, besides saying, “Fine!” They might say: “Can’t complain!” And they are always waiting to add: “It wouldn’t do any good!”

These are people who could give, if they chose, a long, long list of reasons why they could complain. But they have made their choice to be easy on you, and on themselves, by not reciting that list.

More than that, they know there’s more to their life than their list of pains and struggles. No matter how long that list grows, they are thankful for their life, and they do have another list up their sleeve. It’s the list of God’s blessings. They have learned that you can have an abundant life, a full life, and a happy life by keeping the right list up your sleeve.

Thanksgiving is not an option. It’s the foundation of life. We are made for thanks. We are made to receive thanks. According to Jesus, one of the great experiences we are created for is the future day when we come into his presence, and he will laugh and say, “Well done, good and faithful servant, you have been faithful over a little, I will set you over much, enter into the joy of your Master!” (Matthew 25:21) We will give thanks to hear the Lord’s own “thank you.”

We are created to give thanks, because giving thanks is part of love. Think how quick thankful children are to show their thanks and love by making presents, and cards, and pictures for those who love them, or for those whose love they long for.

Thanksgiving is only a stifled instinct in us. It is a lost habit waiting to be regained.

I could do so much better at being thankful. I think it would help if I started by learning to give thanks for little things. That is part of the reason for giving thanks when we eat.

I often forget to give thanks before my meals. I didn’t grow up in a home where this was normal. Sometimes I remember to give thanks in the middle of my meal, or after it is over.

I’m not a bad cook, for the things I do cook, but I find that giving thanks makes the meal better. Not that it changes the taste, or the amount of nutrition I get from it. Giving thanks changes a meal from being a thing into being a gift. It gives life to the meal. If my meal wasn’t all that good, then giving thanks gives me a sense of humor. That makes a big difference.

Giving thanks changes everything that way. People are changed, circumstances are changed, pains are changed, struggles are changed, and failures are changed. They don’t look any different. They don’t act any different. They don’t feel any different. But you are changed, because you have gotten your footing in God, and everything else becomes a calling, or a cause, or an opportunity, or a gift, or a challenge. That makes a big difference.

You know if you need reminders to give thanks. Get a reminder, or make something, to remind you to give thanks. Maybe you have someone at home who helps you be thankful. Put a note on your mirror. Have a picture, or a poster, or put a gift from someone out where you can see it and remember to give thanks.

Patiently ask the Lord to show you how, and where, and when to be thankful. God will teach you.

Sometimes, by giving thanks you will find healing. By saying thanks, you will feel that you have dropped a burden into God’s hands, or you will see how you should have given thanks a long time ago. You will see the Lord’s gifts better than you ever saw them before.

Saying “thank you” sharpens your senses. It helps you see the difference between the good and the bad things. This is important because it can be risky to actually thank God for something we feel is bad, because God doesn’t do the bad things. Thanking him for the bad may lead you to blame him for it. But if you thank the Lord, in spite of the bad thing, your eyes may be opened, so that you can say, “Here was the evil that happened. I can see now that God didn’t do that thing, yet he was there with me in the middle of it all. He has helped me, taught me, guided me, and changed me, as a result of it. God has brought me through, and I am glad to see how he has done it.” “Thanks” can be hard work: but “thanks” has this reward.

Now, when Paul says that “thanks” is God’s will for you he means not only that it’s necessary for you, but it’s the thing that God is working for in your life. “Thanks” is the shape of your soul in God’s blueprint for your life. “Thanks” is your destiny.

God became human, in Jesus, to live a perfect life for you that you could never live on your own power. You have a good life in Christ.

God came in Jesus to die a perfect death for you that you could not die, yourself. You have a perfect ending and a perfect new beginning. In Jesus, God died for you; for your forgiveness, for your healing, for your peace, for your everlasting joy.

When we know the Lord, when we know God in Christ; our life is built upon this gift of love, our life is built on thanks for this love. And when you know his love, you also know that God is thankful for you. You are the child that God has won for himself. Real life is thanks, from beginning to end, from everlasting to everlasting.

The Need for Thanks

Preached on Sunday, November 24, 2013

Scripture readings: 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 10:1-11

A father just got back from helping on his son’s Boy Scout back-packing trip. He was still pretty excited when he told his friends the highlights.

September 2013: scenes around the Palouse River

They had taken a pack-horse with them. “And, boy, am I glad we had that horse!” he said, “After one of the boys got hurt, we used the horse to carry him out.”

“How was the boy hurt?”

“Well, the horse stepped on him.”

The apostle Paul says, “In everything give thanks,” or “give thanks in all circumstances.” And then Paul writes, “Do not quench the Spirit,” or, “Do not put out the Spirit’s fire.” From what I can tell, Paul was pretty unquenchable himself. I think he was as full of fire as he was full of thanks, and that the two went together, and that they played a part in making Paul a person who was really, abundantly alive.

Now, when Paul says, “Give thanks in all circumstances,” it sounds almost like a command. In a way, it is. Thanksgiving is not an elective. It is not an option. Thanksgiving is needed. It is required. It is required for our happiness right now. It is required for our everlasting happiness.

In a way, thankfulness is as important as patience. It is hard to learn patience. You learn patience by having all the things happen to you that make you impatient.

But the people who have learned patience are the people who make our lives better. Patient people make the hard things easier for us. They give us confidence, and they help us to live abundantly.

Then, when you find someone who is actually thankful for you (for you!): why, that is the gift of life itself! But it is just as hard to learn to be thankful as it is to be patient. You only learn to be thankful by learning the alternatives. And the alternatives to being thankful are dark and bitter things.

But if the patient and thankful people are the source of life to you, aren’t you glad they learned, the hard way, those lessons that God wants every human being to know? So, when the Lord says, “Hey you! You be thankful too!” you can begin to understand why it is so important. The command to be thankful is as important as God’s command to love.

Jesus said, “I came that you might have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10) The people who are abundantly alive around us (the people who make our lives full) have these qualities: thankfulness, patience, love, forgiveness, peace. They make life worth living now. And they are what will make heaven truly heavenly.

All these gifts come from God himself, and it is God who makes heaven so heavenly. This is because, as strange as it sounds, God himself is full of thanks.

There is something essential to God (as we see and hear him in Jesus) that looks at us and longs to say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” (Matthew 25:12) That is thanksgiving in the heart of God. God created us so that, in the end, he might rejoice over us. (Zephaniah 3:17) Thank has its origins with God who rules heaven and earth. Sooner or later, if we want to be at home with God, we must give thanks.

The more we read about Paul (in his letters, and in the stories of his life in the Book of Acts) we realize that being thankful cannot mean a self-generated feeling of thanks. The commandment to be thankful is not a command to pretend, or to put on an act.

Paul explains that thanksgiving is part of receiving the peace of God that goes beyond understanding, “Do not be anxious about anything; but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God, and the peace of God, which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:6-7)

For me, that kind of peace does not mean that all conflict and struggle will go away. Peace is a kind of harmony. But it doesn’t mean that everything is harmonious toward you. It means that you have your footing. You have your foundation in God who is peace.

So people and circumstances may seem to be coming at you in the wrong way, but you can come at them in the right way. You can do what it takes to meet those things, and deal with them, because the peace that passes understanding is in you. I think it is called the peace that passes understanding for two reasons: first, we don’t quite understand it ourselves, and (secondly) nobody else does either.

I’ve told you my “peace that passes understanding” story before. It comes from the time when I drowned. I was seventeen and my senior class on an outing in the foothills. I was swimming in a lake with my friend Danny.

We were out pretty far from the shore for my level of skill. I got tired, and went under, and I couldn’t get back to the surface. I felt as though God were with me and saying, “Trust me”. But he didn’t tell me that I was going to live. The silent voice left me just afraid as anybody could be who was struggling not to die.

At the same time, I felt as though I was calmly watching and waiting for whatever came. I felt both fear and calm at the same time. This seemed to go on and on, for a long time. Time slowed down, full of fear and calm. Finally, I couldn’t hold my breath any longer and so I breathed my last breath, and everything went black.

Next thing I knew, I found myself without a body, flying incredibly fast through nothing but brightness. Then I woke up choking up water on the beach. One of the teachers had given me mouth to mouth resuscitation. My friend Steve told me that I had not been breathing, and that I was purple when they got me to shore. My strange experience of absolute terror and calm define for me that peace that passes understanding.

If anyone has the right to tell us to be thankful, it is Paul. In his second letter to the Corinthians he wrote about some of the hardships he had gone through since he became a Christian. He wrote: “I have worked hard, been in prison, been flogged, and been exposed to death again and again. Five times I have received the forty lashes minus one. Three times I have been beaten with clubs. Once they tried to stone me to death. Three times I was shipwrecked, and spent a night and a day in the open sea.” (2 Corinthians 11:23ff) And the list goes on.

Earlier in that same letter he wrote, “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed, perplexed but not driven to despair, persecuted but not abandoned, struck down but not destroyed…” (2 Corinthians 4:8ff) It is in the middle of a life like that that Paul encouraged us to, “give thanks in all circumstances.” Paul gave thanks as an experienced and sensitive human being, not as some kind of thanksgiving robot.

He wrote, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” (Romans 12:15) Paul was able to feel deeply for others, and for himself. After a friend recovered from a nearly fatal illness Paul wrote, “But God had mercy upon him, and not only upon him, but on me also, to spare me sorrow upon sorrow.” (Philippians 2:27) A thankful heart is a feeling heart, a vulnerable heart, a caring heart that has its footing and foundation in God.

What do you say when someone asks, “How are you?” Some people have a stock answer to that. They just say, “Fine!” Or they might say: “Can’t complain!” And they are always waiting to add: “It wouldn’t do me any good if I did!” These are people you know who could give, if they chose, a long, long list of reasons why they could complain. But it is their choice to be easy on you, and on themselves, by not reciting that list.

More than that, they know there is more to their life than their list of pains and struggles. No matter how long that list grows, they are thankful for their life, and they do have another list up their sleeve. It is the list of God’s blessings. They have learned that you can have an abundant life, a full life, and a happy life by keeping the right list up your sleeve.

We are made for thanks. We are made to receive thanks. According to Jesus, one of the great experiences we are created for is the future day when we come into his presence, and he will laugh and say, “Well done, good and faithful servant, you have been faithful over a little, I will set you over much, enter into the joy of your Master!” (Matthew 25:21) We will have the joy of hearing the Lord’s own “thank you.”

We are also created to give thanks, because giving thanks is part of love. Look at how quick thankful children are to show their thanks and love by making presents, and cards, and pictures for those who love them, or those whose love they long for. Thanks is really, only a stifled instinct in us. It is a long lost habit waiting to be relearned.

I know that I could do so much better at being thankful. I think it would help if I started by learning to give thanks for little things. That is part of the reason for giving thanks when we eat.

I often forget to give thanks before my meals. I didn’t grow up in a home where this was normal. Sometimes I remember to give thanks in the middle of my meal, or after it is over.

I am not a bad cook, for the things I do cook, but I find that giving thanks makes the meal better. Not that it changes the taste, or the amount of nutrition I get from it. Thanks changes a meal from being a thing to being a gift. It gives life to the meal. That makes a big difference.

Giving thanks changes everything that way. People are changed, circumstances are changed, pains are changed, struggles are changed, and failures are changed. They don’t look any different. They don’t act any different. They don’t feel any different. But you are changed because you have gotten your footing in God, and everything else becomes a calling, or a cause, or an opportunity, or a gift. That makes a big difference.

Do you need reminders to give thanks? Get something or make something to remind you to give thanks. Maybe you have someone at home who helps you be thankful. Put a note on your mirror. Have a picture or poster, or have a gift from someone. Put it out where you will it and be reminded to give thanks.

Patiently ask the Lord to show you how, and where, and when to be thankful. He will teach you.

Sometimes, by giving thanks you will find healing. By saying thanks, you will feel that you have dropped a burden into God’s hands, or you will see how you should have given thanks a long time ago. You will see the Lord’s gifts better than you ever saw them before.

Saying “thank you” sharpens your senses. It helps you see the difference between the good and bad things. This is important because it can be risky to thank God for something we feel is bad, because God doesn’t do bad things. Thanking him for the bad things may lead you to blame him for them. But if you thank the Lord, in spite of the bad things, your eyes may be opened, so that you can say, “Here was the evil that happened. I can see now that God did not do that thing, yet he was there with me in the middle of it all, and he has helped me. God taught me, guided me, and changed me, as a result of it. God has brought me through, and I am glad to see that he has done it.” Thanks can be hard work: but thanks has this reward.

Now, when Paul says that thanks is God’s will for you he means not only that it is necessary for you, but it is the thing that God is working for in your life. Thanks is the shape of your soul in God’s blueprint for your life. Thanks is your destiny.

God became human, in Jesus, to live a perfect life for you that you could not live on your own; and to die a perfect death for you that you could not die on your own. In Jesus, God died for you; for your forgiveness, for your healing, for your peace, for your everlasting joy.

When we know the Lord, when we know God in Christ; our life is built upon his gift of love. Our life is built on thanks for this love. When you know his love, you also know that God is thankful for you. You are the child that he has won for himself. Real life is thanks, from beginning to end, from everlasting to everlasting.