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I had the opportunity recently to stop and think about the true meaning behind the term "Thank You." Have you ever done that? Have you ever come to a place where something you have said all your life just doesn't make any sense any more? It isn't that you don't know what you have been talking about, all this time. It is more that what you have been saying has been said so many times that the true meaning is hard to put your finger on. At least that is how it is for me from time to time.
Such was the case this one day when "Thank You" just didn't make a lot of sense to me. Thank God for the Internet on such occasions. Google has opened the door to a world of knowledge that makes days like this a real joy to me.
I have been learning that I am more able to live this life as a victor when I am intentional about staying in the moment. It is the failures of the past or the fears I have for the future that make it so easy to slip into patterns of thinking that make victor living that much more difficult for me to achieve.
Few things help me to stay in the moment better than does being thankful. There is something about being thankful for what is happening right this moment that is so difficult for me to explain. All I know is that taking time to be thankful, even when my circumstances don't seem to warrant thanks, makes it so much easier for me to live in the moment. Thanks helps me to be content. When I'm content it is much more difficult for me to react to the past or obsess about the future.
For that reason, I really wanted to get back to a place where "Thank You" had a meaning I couldn't take for granted. As I dug into some things written on the Internet about the origin of the word "Thanks" I was drawn to see what the Bible said as well. I found that in the version I was looking at on that day the word "Thank" was only used 25 times in God's Word. I decided to take a look at the origins of each of those words and see if "Thank You" could be better explained to me.
What I found was really very interesting. Unfortunately what I discovered is too long for just one presentation, so over the next few weeks, we are going to revisit the issue of giving thanks. Today we are going to focus on one element of the word "thanks" that I found particularly interesting.
I found that in the Old Testament, the original word used for our English word "thanks" had an element of confession to it. In other words, the exact same word that was translated as "thanks" in one part of the Bible was more often used to mean "confession" in another part of the Bible. As I thought about this seemingly mismatch in terms, I started to see something that really opened my eyes to the issue of thanksgiving.
When I thought of the word confession, I begin to think about obligation. The way the definition of the original word "thanks" was worded it appeared that we have not choice when it comes to giving thanks. We HAVE TO be thankful. More than that, we HAVE TO speak out our thanksgiving, both in our heads and out loud. That's what confession is all about. When we confess, we speak out in ways others can understand.
If you have been listening to these presentations for any time now, you know that I hate using the words HAVE TO. Those words speak of obligation. Obligation makes me feel trapped. God has come to set us free so how could thanksgiving be anything about obligation? Where is the freedom in that thought?
Fact is we ARE obligated to give thanks. We aren’t not obligated because we feel like it, or because all is going well in our lives. We are obligated because we owe so much to who we are being thankful to. Even if our situation is nothing but filled with the worst life can offer, we still are saved. We still are loved. We still are valued and purposed. We still have a future filled with what this life might not be able to offer us right now.
We have to confess our thanks because we have so much to be thankful for. Failing to do so puts us in a position where the weight of this world will overwhelm our ability to exude the power God has given us to change this world. Failing to give thanks doesn’t make us any less loved. It just makes it harder to feel and/or to see the power of that love in our lives. Giving thanks opens the door to God’s loving power for us and for all those around us.
At first out confession of thanks is hard to do. “With my life like this, why should I give thanks?” As we move in the direction of letting thanks fill our lives, our thanks will have so little meaning. “Why am I thanking God for all this mess in my life?” There will be times when we feel so helpless in giving thanks. “Shouldn’t I be doing more to show my thanks to God - what’s the use of a stupid word like “thanks?” After a while though, our thanks becomes automatic. It becomes an attitude that reinforces our lives in ways few things will ever be able to do. When we choose to live a life of thanksgiving, irregardless of our circumstances, we eventually find ourselves thanking God constantly. Then when the stuff really hits the fan, we find out our confession of thanks is what actually sustains us.
Better than that, we start to experience God’s greatness in the little things. It is like our eyes are opened to the world in ways we missed before. Here’s a real life example. I was driving home from a meeting one morning. I remember saying over and over again in my head, “Thank you Lord, thank you Lord!” I didn’t have anything in particular I was thanking Him for, but thanks is all I had. Then this little, cotton-white seed floated across the hood of my car while I sat at a stop light. I’ve seen a million of those seeds float by this time of year. For some reason, I couldn’t take my eyes off that seed. A joy filled my heart - I was almost in tears.
In that moment, that seed reminded me of a dear person in my life - a person filled with life, a person whose life is not easy at the moment. This seed was God’s way of showing me that even in the hardships this person faces, life is promised. Then I said “Thank You God” and I felt the power of those words in a way that I think rocks the world.
Thanks brings us to a place from which we can dip into the power needed so that we can take another breath, pick up one foot and place it in front of the other, and step forward towards where God wants us to go. That’s what the confession of Thanks is suppose to be in our life. It is to be a wellspring of power to keep us going in a world that will do all it can to make us stop. Our effectiveness in this world depends on Thanks. Satan wants us to be stuck, mired down in the mess he throws at us so that we have no impact.
Thanks blows Satan’s mind! The thought that we would give thanks in the worst of a situation confounds him. It confuses him to the point where, I believe he begins to leave us alone. If we are crazy enough to give thanks for the worst he can throw at us, this person is too insane to bother with! Confessing thanks has a power to make evil flee!
Take time today to stop and give thanks. Don't thank God because you are getting your way. Thank God because He is God. Thank God because He sees you in a way you might just be catching a glimpse of in your life. Thank God because His love for you is beyond anything you can ever comprehend. Thank God because He is worthy of your thanks. Thank God because you are the victor He calls you to be.
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