In Every Circumstance?

I saw something new in Philippians 4.6-7 this week:

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 minds in Christ Jesus.

No, this wasn’t the first time I noticed the phrase “with thanksgiving”…but it might have been the first time I really stopped to think about it. My guess is you might say the same. If someone asked you to quote these verses, you might rattle them off fairly successfully, but leaving out “with thanksgiving.” I think I would have until this week.

Here’s the thing. We most often retreat to these verses in times of anxiety, stress, or difficulty. That is what they are for! But it is precisely these times of difficulty when we feel least thankful. It is at these times when requests—not thanksgivings—seem most appropriate and urgent. In fact, sometimes we may only have a brief moment to pray in a catastrophic situation—yet Paul is urging us in that moment to give thanks? Yes! Even when thanksgiving seems out of place or unimportant, we are to do it. In fact, we should never pray without giving thanks.

Here are three suggestions for how you might pray thankfully, even when the going is rough:

1. Be thankful in spite of your difficulty. No one is glad about losing a child, or being unemployed. But in those moments we can thank God for His other myriad blessings—for Christ, for the privilege of prayer, for a supportive family or church, for the savings we can now fall back on. There is never a shortage of reasons to say “Thank you, Lord.”

2. Be thankful because of your difficulty. Pray like this: “Father, I cannot see it…but I know that somehow, some way, this is for my good. I know you are going to make Romans 8.28 come true in my life. I know this will work for my good, and for Your glory. Thank you God for the blessing of trials that draw me nearer to You.”

3. Be thankful for God’s promises to answer your prayers. After you thank God for His other kindnesses, pray. And after you pray, thank Him ahead of time for how He is going to answer your prayers according to His good will.

So, start praying. And remember, there are always at least three ways to be thankful in every circumstance!

Grammar Lesson

Listen to Isaiah 44.22:

I have wiped out your transgressions like a thick cloud
And your sins like a heavy mist.
Return to Me, for I have redeemed you.

Did you get the order of events in that verse? Read it again:

I have wiped out (past tense) your transgressions like a thick cloud
And your sins like a heavy mist.
Return (present tense) to Me, for (or because) I have redeemed (again, in the past) you.

The grammar in this verse (and every Bible verse) is crucial. How were we saved? God redeemed us in the past. He wiped out our sins in the past. And because of that ("for") we should return to Him in the present. God doesn't redeem us because we return to Him. We turn to Him because, in the past, through his electing love and his atoning work on the cross, we were already bought with a price. Theologians call this idea "Particular Atonement." I call it really good news. My salvation really is based on Jesus' perfromance, not my own!

So...a good reason to break out those old gramnmar text-books, huh?

The One and Only

You shall have no other gods before me. Exodus 20.3

We would not go wrong by saying that commandment number one is the most important of all. That is what Jesus says in Mark 10.29-30: “’What commandment is foremost of all?’ ‘The foremost is, Hear O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’” That is not a direct quote of the 1st commandment, but an amplification and explanation of it. It is first for a reason. And we may very realistically say that, if we get this one wrong, every other commandment will fall in the domino effect.

So what does God mean: “You shall have no other gods before Me?” It sounds like He is saying we may have other gods, so long as God remains at the top of our priority list. But that is actually a misreading. A more literal translation of Exodus 20.3 is “You shall have no other gods before my face.” In other words, ‘I don’t want to see any other gods, hear about any other gods, or even detect a hint that you have any other gods.’

The first commandment teaches us that God is a jealous God. He wants mankind all for Himself. He will not tolerate adultery with other gods—whether they be wooden statues in India, worshipped ancestors in China, Allah in the Muslim world, or the gods of money, possessions, and comfort in the good old US of A. God does not tolerate human beings’ tendency to place other things on the thrones of our lives.

We need to let that sink in. Anything, ANYTHING, that competes with God for our attention, affection, or acquisition is a false god—an idol of the heart. Think it out. Have you lately disobeyed God’s instructions because of financial concerns? Have you displeased God so that you might please your boss, your piers, or that special someone? Have you let sleep, work, or play keep you from God’s house or God’s word? Have you gotten all in a passion because someone dared to infringe upon your time, your property, your feelings? Then you are an idol-worshipper. You have broken the first commandment, plain and simple.

And you’re not alone. We are all idol worshippers. We all love our comfort, our stuff, and our money more than God. Even as Christians we do—maybe not every moment of every day, but we do, nonetheless. We are sinners. And if God required us to keep the first commandment perfectly, we would all be dead sinners by now. But don’t let that soften the blow. God’s mercy doesn’t make our idolatry any less wicked. It actually makes it worse—to presume upon this gracious God!

But do not despair either. God sent His Son into the world to save middle class, pleasure loving, selfish, idol-worshipping Americans like you and me. Jesus bled and died so that we might be free of the penalty that idol-worshippers deserve. And Jesus also bled and died so that we might be free of the power of our idols. So that we might be changed into His own likeness. So that, day-by-day, we might actually become free of our idols and free to obey the 1st commandment. Is He doing that in you?

Needing forgiveness for and freedom from my idols,

Kurt

Quick Fix?

Easy believism. It is the belief (really, the practice) that says that what we Christians need to do is get as many people to walk the aisle, sign the card, pray the prayer as we can. If we can just do this, then we've gotten them into heaven. No worries about whether they actually produce fruit, or whether they become true disciples of Jesus (Matthew 29.18-20). So we heal people lightly. We get them into religion without getting them to Christ. And we have churches (or at least member rolls) full of false converts. We have churches full of people who would scatter like cockroaches should the searchlights of persecution shine upon them. So hear the word of the Lord on this matter:

For you have forgotten the God of your salvation
And have not remembered to rock of your refuge.
Therefore you plant delightful plants
And set them with the vine slips of a strange god.
In the day that you plant it you carefully fence it in,
And in the morning you bring your seed to blossom;
But the harvest will be a heap
In a day of sickliness and incurable pain.
Isaiah 17.10-11 (Emphasis added)

Lesson? Real fruit is better than quick blossoms. Real converts are better than quick professors.

Worth Quoting

Whether God come to his children with a rod or a crown, if he come himself with it, it is well.

Samuel Rutherford (emphasis added)
Letters of Samuel Rutherford
Puritan Paperbacks Series
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