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Celebrating with Gratitude
A sermon preached by Dr. James Flamming
Pastor, First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, November 21, 2004
Scriptures: Matthew 6:34; Philippians 4:12,13; 2
Corinthians 12:8
Six weeks a year Americans embark upon what might be called
non-stop celebrations. It all begins with Thanksgiving, followed by the cheers
for the winners of football conferences and championship games, followed by
Christmas, and ending up with the focus on the New Year.
Not one of these events is celebrated in just the same way.
Thanksgiving places before us mountains of food; football focuses upon goalposts
and sometimes tears them down; Christmas celebrates with lights, trees, songs,
and gifts, and the New Year’s begins with parties and bowl games.
Six weeks of non-stop celebration. Behind these
celebrations is a frail shadow of gratitude. But it is gratitude for our
strengths, for our blessings, for the promises of a better tomorrow.
But have you ever heard anybody celebrate with gratitude
for our weaknesses, for our troubles, for our busy schedules? You say to me, “Of
course not. That would be totally negative.” Really? Since when is gratitude
negative. The trouble with us is we think everything has to be positive and
wonderful before we can celebrate. The Bible takes the completely opposite view.
The Bible says, “Celebrate in the midst of the negative by being grateful
because gratitude is such a positive power it can turn the negative into a
positive.”
Let me show you how that would work in every day life.
Be Grateful for The Present Moment
First, celebrate by being grateful for the present moment.
Would you like to become an All-America worrier? Then spend
time doing what comes naturally. Spend precious time today in deep anxiety about
the future.
- Be fearful
about the world you live in and the world that your children will grow up in.
- Let fear
strike your heart as you wonder what will happen to you.
Jesus knew this tendency. Listen to his teaching In Matthew
6:24. He used the word merimna, which is translated worry. It means
anxiety, or fearful caring, or worried thinking about what might be. It comes
from the verb merizo, which means divide. Anxiety comes when we divide
our attention from what God is doing today with fretful anxiety about the
days that are ahead. Merizo will not grow trust. It will grow a
bumper crop of worry. Listen to Jesus again in Matthew 6:34: “Therefore do not
worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough
troubles of its own.” Peterson paraphrases that verse like this: “Give your
entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about
what may or may not happen tomorrow.”
A wonderful French believer in another century was Francois
Fenelon. In a letter to one of his friends he wrote: “The present moment is your
sole treasure, for here is where the will of God is found. Do not insult today
by looking for a better tomorrow! . . . Let God work. View each moment as if it
were the whole sweep of eternity.” (The Seeking Heart, p. 65) Do not insult
today by looking for a better tomorrow! Some, you see, never celebrate with
gratitude what God is doing in the present, in the right now. They forfeit the
joys of today by looking at a fearful future. They go through life with a
worried, fretful gaze on their faces. Trust is not part of their agenda,
although it is probably what God is trying to bring into their lives.
On the other hand some take the joy and energy out of every
day by looking at the past with nostalgia. I understand that. Shirley and I were
talking about how much the world has changed since we were children and
teenagers. When we grew up no one locked their cars. No one locked their houses.
Everyone knew everyone else on the block. But, and I remember this also, we were
all as poor as church mice, and few were able to afford an education. Going on a
partnership mission trip in behalf of Christ was unthinkable. We hardly got out
of our county or state much less across the water.
I still giggle at the fact that about 100 years ago,
scholars finally deciphered some cuneiform tablets dug up by archeologists from
the ancient world. One of the sayings they were finally able to translate from
that ancient era, thousands of years ago was: “Alas, alas, things are not what
they used to be.” Jesus said, “Let tomorrow take care of itself.”
Be Grateful for Uncertainty
We love certainty. We want to know that what is, is going
to be in place. We want to live with a certain confidence that change is the
exception, not the rule. We want the solid rock of Gibraltar, not the shifting
sand of Jelly-Stone Park.
The Bible has a better idea. It calls for us to be grateful
in the midst of uncertainty. For it is in uncertain times that we learn trust,
trust in the God who knows the future and can be trusted. In uncertain times we
learn to trust that God will be right where we are, regardless of what is
happening “out there.” God’s purpose for our lives is not to provide safety and
security, but to develop trust and confidence in Him. God is seeking to do some
things in our lives in the midst of our uncertainties.
Many know Philippians 4:13 (1830). “I can do all things
through Christ who gives me strength.” But it is verse 12 that tells you how
this man Paul got there. “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is
to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every
situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I
can do everything through him who gives me strength.”
If you want to learn to be steady and peaceful in every
situation God will be teaching you these things in every kind of situation. If
you have a teachable spirit, and if you want to learn, God will teach you. But
do not expect a well paved highway and a well decorated map along the way.
Expect instead to learn to trust God for that which isn’t yet, but can be
through God’s help.
John’s Gospel closes by letting us know Jesus did many
things that are not recorded. In fact, he says, the world would be full of books
if they were all recorded. One of the sayings of Jesus that is not recorded in
the Gospels is from Rabbi Eliezer the Great, who lived in the first century A.D.
He knew Christians and apparently had admiration for Jesus and so quoted him.
One of his quotations from Jesus is this, “Whoever has a morsel of bread in a
basket and says, ‘What shall I eat tomorrow?’ is one of those who have little
faith.” (Matthew, Anchor Bible, p. 82)
If you want to grow deeper in the Lord, if you want to
learn trust, if you want to live with peace in your heart regardless, learn to
be grateful for uncertainty. Uncertainty is the classroom for trust
Gratitude for the Weak and Tiny
Jesus once prayed a prayer praising God for those he worked
with who were not among the high and mighty, but the overlooked and unnoticed.
He prayed, “I thank you for these little ones.” Have you ever thought about
Jesus’ spotlight on the tiny. A single lamp in a dark room, a grain of salt, a
tiny mustard seed. Of Jesus background they asked, “Can any good come out of
Nazareth?”
The Apostle Paul, for all of his travels, his letters, his
mission endeavors, was not a well man. He lived and worked in ill health. He
called his sickness his “thorn in the flesh.” He tells us in 2 Corinthians 12:8,
(1806), he plead with the Lord to take it from him. God said, “My grace is
sufficient for you and my power is made perfect in your weakness.” Then Paul
says in verse 10, “I delight, I celebrate weakness. . . when I am weak then I am
strong.”
Be grateful for the tiny and the weak because that is what
the Kingdom of God is about. We enter in the weakness of a child. We grow
knowing we don’t know it all. In weakness we call upon the Lord. In strength we
become confident we can do it all by ourselves. When in weakness we pray for the
weakness to be removed, as Paul testifies, nothing may change. Yet, everything
changes. For a depth comes to Paul in his weakness that he knows is not there
when he is at his best. He is completely dependent upon the Lord, upon his
direction, upon his grace. Fenelon writes “The point of trusting God is not to
do great things that you can feel good about, but to trust God from a place of
weakness. . . Trusting in God is a simple resting in God’s love, as a baby lies
in his mother’s arms.” (p. 66, Seeking Heart.)
Daryl was a helper in a youth group in his church. Once a
month they went to a nursing home and had a service. The youth led. The adults
went along to help. He never went. He hated nursing homes. But sickness went
through the department and they needed some helpers and Daryl agreed to go
providing he didn’t have to do anything.
During the service Daryl felt awkward and out of place. He
leaned against the wall between two residents in wheelchairs. As the service
ended he thought about making a quick exit when he felt a hand reach out for
his. It was the man in the wheelchair on his right. He was very old, frail, and
obviously lonely. His mouth hung open and his face had no expression. He
squeezed Daryl’s hand. Daryl could do nothing but hold on. Finally he said, “I’m
sorry, I have to leave. But I’ll be back, I promise.” The man squeezed Daryl’s
hand and then let go. Daryl’s eyes filled with tears. He did not understand. He
didn’t even know the man. He heard himself say, “I love you.” He asked himself
on the way out, “Where did that come from.”
Daryl went month after month. He found out the man’s name
was Oliver Leak. He would hold his hand and at the end the man would squeeze his
and he would say, “I love you.” One month Oliver wasn’t there. He waited because
sometimes they wheeled him in late. But he didn’t come. Daryl went to the
nurses’ station and asked about Oliver Leak. “He is very low,” said the nurse.
Daryl went to his room and a young woman was standing at the door. She said,
“I’m so glad you’ve come. I wanted to meet you. He has told me about you. When
the Doctor’s called, I came immediately. We’ve always been very close. When I
got here he said, “Please say goodbye to Jesus to me.” I said, “Daryl isn’t
Jesus. But I will say you said goodbye.” He said, “Well, he got me ready for the
real Jesus.”
Daryl stepped to the bed. It was obvious that the man was
in his last minutes. But Daryl took his hand and spoke to him and then said a
prayer.
His tears came. He knew he would never see Oliver again. As
he scooted his chair back to leave, he felt Oliver’s hand squeeze his. He had
known that he had come.
Be grateful for the tiny and the weak. Of such is the
kingdom of God.
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