Giving Thanks in the Middle of Pain?
7/12/2016 8:31:07 PM
Worried? Stressed? Turn to God, pray to him.


Giving Thanks in the Middle – God is Able#4.  Philippians 4.6-7

 

So you have determined to be an overcomer . . . that is the first step in courageously living without being crippled with fear, worry or stress. So, what?  So, what do you do now?  Two things:  pray and give thanks to God—a two-pronged action.

 

I first memorized these verses from the King James Version, no doubt from the Bible my mother gave me when I was five—

Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.      And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding,                      shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.  Philippians 4.6-7  

In high school, I loved The Way.  Any of you remember that greenish cover, with the faces inside the lettering of the paperback Living Bible?            Then I memorized:                                                                      Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything;         tell God your needs and don’t forget to thank him for his answers.      If you do this, you will experience God’s peace,                         which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand.      His peace will keep your thoughts and your hearts quiet and at rest       as you trust in Christ Jesus.  I clung to these verses.

Toward the end of my high school years, the New American Standard Bible came out, and then I memorized:                                                      Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication     with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.          And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension,                will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Whichever the version, the words were instructive and also comforting to me.

However, the words took on even different meaning when I claimed them for my blonde curly-haired little girl of seven. Amy first asked me the meaning of life at seven, as I said evening prayers with her one night.  ‘Ah Lord,’ I later prayed as I put my own head down on the pillow, ‘what can I give her little troubled mind, so old for one so young?’  And he gave me these verses to pray for her, over her, and with her.  They became the verses I prayed for Amy as she went through grammar school, high school, away to U.C. Berkeley . . . Do not be anxious about anything,                                   but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving,        present your requests to God.                                               And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding,              will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (NIV)

Paul’s intent is clear, Christian - You are not to worry. In fact, it is wrong for you to worry.  God has given you the gift of prayer, of communicating with him, and his promise to be with you.  Go to him with everything that concerns you in your life—tell him your needs, ask him for his intervention, with thanksgiving, and he will give you a peace that defies all human logic. 

But, why thanksgiving?  All these years, from all of these different versions, I have just spouted it off as a ‘given’, but never stopped to consider why the ‘thanks’ part was important to either the prayer, the answer, God, or me either, for that matter. . . until now.

These days, when I give these verses away, I most commonly quote the New Living Translation, Don’t worry about anything;                                                         instead, pray about everything.                                             Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.                       Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything                  we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds                  as you live in Christ Jesus.

Though I like this translation a lot, it misses the full measure of “with thanksgiving” that I believe Paul had in mind, as he wrote verse six.  First, children of God must always be thankful for the gift of prayer, the gift of communicating with our loving Heavenly Father; and second, we must bear in mind that whatever his responses to our prayers, we ought be giving him ‘thanks’, because ‘he works all things together for good to those who love him!’1 He who watches over Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps2; he who watches you and me has not gone to sleep on the job either.   So, before worry, let us pray. . . and then before any known outcome, let us give thanks to the God above who is all-wise and all-knowing and has our best interests in mind.

Now I get it . . . now I see the importance of coupling prayer and thanksgiving — they form a powerful ‘one-two punch’ for victorious daily living, understanding God’s loving care for us, enabling us to be at peace, AND to give us hope-filled attitudes transformed by gratitude.

1 - Romans 8.28; 2 – Psalm 121.4