The Thanksgiving Secret
Philippians 4:11-13
Grandma was babysitting her three-year-old grandson, Sean, for the first time. At the supper table she instructed, "Let’s thank God for our food." Being a typical toddler, Sean said, "No! I don’t want to!" She remained calm. "Well, at Grandma’s house, thank God for the food before we eat." "You can’t make me," protested Sean. Still calm and patient, grandma says, "If we don’t pray, we don’t eat." "Well," the youngster replied, "I would say it if you had made mashed potatoes."
Many of us are not too different from Sean. We’re not always thankful for what life puts on our plate. It’s not that we want to be ungrateful; it’s just we honestly don’t see much to be thankful for. We might be more thankful if God put mashed potatoes on our plate---if He had given us more money for bills and for all the Christmas presents we’ve got to buy. We might be more grateful if we weren’t so lonely, if we didn’t have quite so many worries or fears or problems, if life just wasn’t so hard and heavy. As Sean might put it, “How can you be thankful when your plate is stacked up with such yucky stuff?”
This morning I want to share a secret with you—the secret of Thanksgiving-a secret that can be summed up in one simple word: contentment. Wherever you find contentment, you will find gratitude—wherever you find discontent, you will always find grumbling, complaining, ingratitude. Thanksgiving and contentment are virtually inseparable. This morning I want to show you how you can be content and thankful even when life is hard, even if you don’t feel very thankful. The secret is found in the Bible in Phil. 4:11-13 and our the man who will share this thanksgiving secret is the apostle Paul.
PRAYER
Come with me to a house somewhere among the winding streets of ancient Rome, where Paul is being held under house arrest, awaiting trial for being a troublemaker. Outside the door stands the Roman soldier, guarding the house, but chances are he would let you in without any trouble for a visit. Inside you can hear a voice speaking and the scratch of a quill busily putting ink to paper. Paul is dictating a letter to the church at Philippi. If you listen early on you will hear brief snatches of his dictation:
Philippians 1:3 I thank my God upon every remembrance of you,
Philippians 1:21 For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
Philippians 2:14 Do all things without complaining and disputing,
Philippians 4:4 Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice!
Here is a man who is thankful. He is thankful, no matter if he lives or dies.. He has a joy that even trouble or trial cannot shake. He has found the secret of thanksgiving---contentment. How can he be this way? He begins to explain in vs. 11 that you have to
I. LEARN TO BE CONTENT (v. 11)
A monk joined a monastery and took a vow of silence. After the first 10 years of absolutely no speaking at all, his superior called him in and asked, “Do you have anything to say?” The monk replied, “Food bad.” After another 10 years of perfect silence the monk again had opportunity to voice his thoughts. He said, “Bed hard.” Another 10 years went by and again he was called in before his superior. When asked if he had anything to say, he responded, “I quit.” The older monk replied, “That doesn’t surprise me a bit. You’ve done nothing but gripe and complain ever since you got here.”
Have you noticed how easy it is to be discontent? It almost seems natural to grumble. Stand around the water cooler at work and see people gather to voice protests over how the company is run. Get a group of students together and see how long it takes to start complaining about the math teacher, or the basketball coach. Human nature gravitates toward griping.
But Paul says I have learned to be content. Contentment didn’t come natural to Paul; he had to learn the secret of thanksgiving—he had to learn to be content. He had once been on top of the world as a Roman citizen and Jewish Rabbi and Pharisee. He was probably well-educated and fairly well off financially. But when he met Jesus on the Damascus road, his life changed forever. He would lose his prestige and power, and would end up living with persecution and death threats. It took effort, it took experience, it took listening and thinking and everything else for Paul to learn to be content. Contentment is learned behavior. You have to learn to be content if you want to truly live a life of thanksgiving.
How many of us want to learn to be content? Not everybody.You might like being discontent. You might be one of those people who are never happy unless they’re miserable.
You might be too lazy to learn to be content. It’s much easier to just do what comes natural, and let your mind naturally focus on everything that’s bad, everything you don’t have that you want, all that’s wrong with this world, all that’s wrong with the people around you.
On the other hand, maybe you are ready for a change. Maybe you’re ready to learn to be content, learn to be thankful, even when things don’t go your way, even if people aren’t always what you want them to be. Perhaps you really do want to give up your habit of being so negative, so discontent, so ungrateful. Paul says you can learn how, if you really want to.
The dental hygienist was giving her pep talk about frequent brushing and flossing—habits her patient had some difficulty doing consistently. Finally the patient couldn’t resist saying, "An old dog can’t learn new tricks." She quickly replied "He can if he wants to keep his teeth.”
If you’re willing to learn to be content, you will discover the secret of Thanksgiving. Once you’re ready to learn contentment, Paul goes on to the first lesson, which is to
II. LEARN TO BE CONTENT NO MATTER WHAT’S PUT ON YOUR PLATE (v. 12)
A little girl stayed for dinner at the home of her first-grade friend. The vegetable was buttered broccoli, and the mother asked if she liked it. The child replied very politely, "Oh, yes, I love it." But when the bowl of broccoli was passed she declined to take any. The hostess said, "I thought you said you loved broccoli." The girl replied sweetly, "Oh, yes, ma’am, I do, but not enough to eat it!"
As hard as it is to get a child to eat whatever you put on their plate, it is much more difficult to get them to be satisfied with what you put on their plate. Aren’t we the same way?
God sometimes puts some broccoli on our plates. Maybe He’s spooned you out a helping of sickness. Or you might be staring at a big dish of loneliness. Your plat could get piled up with a lot of unpleasant entrees that you’d really rather not have, but they don’t disappear. There’s no dog under the table to get rid of it. You have to clean your plate. It’s not a question of whether or not you will take what you get; the real question is how will you take what you get? Paul explains that if you want to discover the secret of thanksgiving, you have to learn to be content with whatever is put on your plate.
How do you do that? Paul says it all comes down to this choice: I will not allow my external circumstances to affect my internal attitude. Put more plainly, I’m not going to let what happens to me rob me of my happiness.
I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. I’ve been on top of the world, and at the bottom of the barrel. As a Christian Paul experienced more than his share of being abased and abounding. As a Pharisee he had been respected and even feared by many, but as a Christian, his own people saw him as a traitor, a heretic, a loser. He knew his times of discouragement and disappointment, as things did not always go the way he planned. Paul knew what it was to walk in the clouds and also to wallow in the pit. But he didn’t waste his experiences either at the top or at the bottom: he made it his choice to practice being content no matter how high or low he found himself.
Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I’ve feasted and I’ve fasted, had more than enough of everything and gone without when I’ve had to. Listen to his resume to the Corinthian church:
2 Corinthians 11:24-27 24From the Jews five times I received forty stripes minus one. 25Three times I was beaten with rods; once I was stoned; three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I have been in the deep; 26in journeys often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of my own countrymen, in perils of the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; 27in weariness and toil, in sleeplessness often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness—
Here is a man who knows what it is to hurt, to suffer, to feast on a table full of food and to listen to his stomach growl with hunger. He knows what it’s like to wear the nice clean clothes of a respected Rabbi, and what it is to walk in rags, with the wind chilling you to the bone. But Paul did not waste his experiences of hunger and need—he made it his choice to practice contentment no matter what he had or did not have.
It should be so easy for us to be thankful sitting around a table full of turkey and dressing, living in a warm house, having clothes and shoes and plenty of all we need. And yet many of us can count all of those blessings, and still not be content, still not truly be thankful.
You can let your outward circumstances dictate whether or not you are grateful. Or we can do what Paul did: you can choose to be happy inside no matter what happens on the outside. You can choose to be content and thankful for with whatever God puts on your plate.
I recently read the story of a young man who went on a short term missions trip to a leper colony on the island of Tobago, off the South American coastline. On that trip he saw up-close how leprosy destroyed the bodies and lives of the people. On his final day, he led the music during the worship service and asked if anyone had a favorite song they wanted to sing. When he did, a woman raised her hand and he saw the most disfigured face he’d ever seen. She had no ears and no nose. Her lips were gone. Yet she raised a fingerless hand and asked, “Could we sing ‘Count Your Many Blessings’?” The missionary started the song but he couldn’t finish. Later somebody commented, “I suppose you’ll never be able to sing the song again.” He answered, “Oh yes---but I’ll never sing it the same way.”
This lady taught that young man the secret of thanksgiving that day—to be content with whatever God puts on your plate. If that sounds humanly impossible, good. Paul wants us to understand that by yourself you will never be truly content. There’s one more element of true contentment that is the secret of real thanksgiving, and that is you must
III. LEARN TO BE CONTENT NO MATTER WHAT’S PUT ON YOUR PLATE
BECAUSE CHRIST IS ENOUGH
When we have nothing left but God, then you become aware that God is enough.- Agnes Maude Royden
Most of us would rather take Agnes’ word on that without proving it by experience. But Paul proved the truth of this statement with his life. The word of vs. 13 have comforted and encouraged many troubled hearts. But they have also been misconstrued by many others. The key to understanding is found in the phrase “I can do all things…”
Some see this as a Superman verse. They want to do something very hard, or impossible, and somebody tries to tell them they need to be careful, and they say, “Don’t be afraid—I can do all things through Christ. I can leap tall buildings in a single bound—and all the rest.
Paul isn’t promising superpowers. He isn’t urging us to take foolish chances and then depend on the Lord to get us out of the mess we make. He’s saying is if Jesus Christ is Lord of your life, you have everything you need to be content, and every reason in the world to be thankful. When you have Jesus, you have all you need. You can do all things—endure all things with contentment and thanksgiving—because you have Jesus.
Tim Vanderveen was tall, broad shouldered, curly hair, smile as broad as the dawn, as handsome as they came. After graduating from college, he took a good job and scurried up the ladder of success about as quickly as anyone can. One November afternoon, Tim called his good friend and former professor, Tim Brown. Professor Brown said, “Hey, Tim, how you doing?” A weak, trembling voice said, “I’m not doing so good.” Professor Brown said, “What’s up with you?”
Tim said, “I’m in the hospital in Grand Rapids. I got the flu or something. My folks are out of the country.” Professor Brown said, “I’m going to be in Grand Rapids later today. Maybe I can stop by and see you. Would that be okay?”Tim said, “I’d like that a lot.”
By the time Professor Brown visited Tim, the doctors had already been there. It wasn’t the flu. It was leukemia.
Now come to Room 5255 in Spectrum Hospital three years later. Professor Brown walked into Tim’s room. His mother was sitting in the corner crying. Tim is lying on his side. Pillows are positioned between his skinny little legs. His hair isn’t curly anymore. There isn’t enough energy for him to look up so the professor gets down on one knee so he could look him eyeball to eyeball.
He said, “Hi, Tim.”Tim said, “Hi, Professor.”
There was a long, awkward pause. Professor Brown had been a pastor for twenty years and still didn’t know what to say. Tim broke the silence, “I’ve leaned something.”
The Professor knew you don’t trifle with the words of a person who
is about to die; you just listen carefully. So the professor said, “Tell me, partner, what have you learned?”
Tim said, “I’ve learned that life is not like a VCR.”
The professor didn’t get it anymore than you are getting it now. So the professor said, “I don’t get it. What do you mean?”
Tim said, “It’s not like a VCR; you can’t fast forward through the bad parts.” Long pause. Then Tim interrupts the silence again to say, “But I have learned that Jesus Christ is in every frame, and right now that’s just enough.”
Jesus is enough. If you know Jesus, you have a God who hears you, the power of love behind you, the Holy Spirit within you, and all of heaven ahead of you. If you have Jesus, you have grace for every sin, direction for every turn, and an anchor for every storm. You have everything you need to learn to be content, whatever is put on your plate.
Do you have Jesus today? Maybe the reason you don’t feel thankful is because you’re not sure. Maybe you feel far away from Him this morning, and you know you need to come back home. Won’t you discover the truth of thanksgiving today? Won’t you come and discover that when you have Jesus, you have enough?
