Thanksgiving Service, God's Antidote For Pessimism

By the way, in your notes there is a, I don't normally make a point of this, but I want to urge you to take this home with you tonight and maybe just before you sit down and eat your first bite of your turkey, read Abraham Lincoln's Declaration of Thanksgiving, about 132 years old. I won't read it now, but I was struck by something, and this isn't my message or anything. I read the press release for Thanksgiving from our President Clinton, and it's certainly a fine statement, but there's a huge difference in what I read in these words. There's one important word that's missing entirely in the President's summons to thanks, that's very much in Abraham Lincoln's and the original Declaration of Thanksgiving, and that is the word confession of sin. Abraham Lincoln begins by saying, It is the duty of nations, as well as of men, to owe their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon. And on he goes. And again, I don't want to cast an aspersion negatively against this declaration from the President, but in essence, it simply says, Hey, let's thank God for all the good stuff that we have, and express our appreciation for the things that we already have, and for what God would want to do with our country. It's a nuance, I suppose, but a very important one, and I just urge you to read that before you have your Thanksgiving dinner. Well, I just want to share one thing tonight, one very simple truth, because we're going to have communion in a very different way this evening, and we're going to continue to worship just a little bit. I remember last year, this evening, very, very well. If you were here, you recall that it was when the entire staff pulled a fast one on me, and honored Carol and me for 20 years of service in the ministry, and it was a wonderful evening, one of the best evenings of my life. But they had set me up by letting me prepare a message, and a whole service, and I worked myself into a frenzy doing all that, and then they said, Sit down, we have to talk to you, and that's what they did. So I pulled out last year's message, I hope it's okay. No, I'm just kidding. I wonder how many of us are here tonight, and it's a little difficult for you to have a thankful spirit. I've been watching from up front here, some of you are not into it at all, you're here kind of hoping it doesn't go over so you don't miss the 9 o'clock TV program. I would venture to say that every one of us are here tonight with at least one area of our life that isn't the way we want it to be. Can you think of one? If every area of your life is exactly where you want it to be, God bless you, you're a marvelous person. But I find in my own life, there's still areas that God's kind of working on. And what I've discovered is, if I'm not careful, that one thing that isn't just exactly right in my life, that one thing for which I don't know why I don't seem to get through to God, I can't seem to break in, if I'm not careful, that one area can begin to exert a power over all the things in my life that are good. Have you found that to be true? Hello? This morning, I had a great illustration. This morning I was well rested, I went to bed fairly early, I got up, I felt good, my back felt fine, I mean it was a great morning, all my kids are home from school, my dog likes me, everything is great. And I know this is going to blow the image again of a holy pastor, but I guess that's not really a problem. Carol and I had an exchange about tomorrow, about Thanksgiving Day, that somehow didn't meet the expectation that I had placed on the morning tomorrow. And as I just let that go a little bit, it kind of got real big in my mind. And so we had this exchange, and I went huffing out of the house this morning, driving over in the car, it's only like an eight minute ride for me, I realized halfway over that everything in my life was good, and I was arriving here to lead the people of God in a huff, for no reason. And I was so convicted that I had let the very thing happen to me that I'm talking to you about tonight. And it's so like us, isn't it? And I had to repent of that, because it wasn't a big deal at all. But I had an attitude, and I got a little cynical, and I got a little critical, and I got a little pessimistic about things. And when you let that attitude prevail, folks, it can just start, that dark cloud rolls in, and raindrops start falling out of your head of finding fault, and being negative, and being critical. It doesn't take a whole lot to look around us to find fault with, does it? I mean, you start with the government, and go right down the list, you know, and the national debt, and well, is this peace in Bosnia going to cost us soldiers, and you just go on down the list. I don't want to go through all that stuff, and we're in the greatest nation in the world, but yet pessimism seems to prevail on so many things today. But the most important question, before we come to communion, I just want to ask you, is there an area in your life tonight that is fundamentally pessimistic, and negative, and maybe even a little bit critical? I had a young person tell me, he said, I just keep disappointing God, I just keep failing in my quiet times, I just keep being unable to pray, I just keep feeling far from Him, and I don't know how God puts up with me, and I'm just getting kind of tired of it, and they were going on, and this is a person whose life, as a young person, I think is very solid in the Lord, and they were getting a little pessimistic about it. Well, I've concluded two things, and if this is the overhead, two things. I've concluded, first of all, my humanity will always be a problem. Well, how about yours? I take this too personally here. I have accepted the fact that I'm not perfect. We have a copy of an overhead on the message, I think, Nancy, this is out of the, my translation day, what is it, paraphrase, yes, the message, 2 Corinthians 4, 7, just the top part of that, here's what it says, here it comes, it's sliding its way up there, it says, we carry this precious message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives. Take a look at that clay pot next to you. Don't call him that. What that means is, for some reason, God let the glory of his Son come to rest and dwell and abide in an ordinary clay pot, a frail human being with lots of failures, just like me, and just like you. But Paul goes on to say, the next part of that verse, same verse, says, that's no accident, sir, ma'am, that's to prevent anyone from confusing God's incomparable power with us. I mean, as it is, there's not much chance of that. You know for yourselves that we're not much to look at. He's not talking about that in a physical sense, he's talking about it in a sense of the glory of God in us shines all the more as we realize that he prevails even over our fallenness, our clay pots. So number one, I've learned that my humanity is always with me. And number two, I've learned that God can be trusted in all of my situations. And I want to, I don't want to take the time tonight, but I want to talk at some point in the near future about how God is teaching me and maybe all of you lessons about trusting in his character, how totally, completely worthy of that trust he is, even when we may not feel like it, even when we may not think that he's working at all. The Lord wants us to know, he wants us to know that you matter so much to him, he cares so much about your life, that he's designed you with a powerful, eternal destiny. And he's put in your path certain things that are shaping your character and your being to walk with him eternally and to rule with him in the heavenly places. He's given his son and his spirit to you. And nothing of your human frailty or mine will keep God from having his way with us of working his will. Did you hear that? Nothing of our human frailty, nothing of my huffs, nothing of my inadequacies will get in the way of God fulfilling his destiny in my life, if, if I trust him in the middle of it all. So what do I do when this black cloud rolls into my life? Well, let me just end with these two things. I'm done. When I get pessimistic, when I get negative or critical, there's really only one antidote. I said this in the Sunday bulletin. If you read the cover, you know the whole sermon. The only antidote to pessimism isn't optimism. It's gratitude. Say that with me, would you? Gratitude. The only antidote to pessimism is gratitude. To learn to give thanks in the midst of what it is that you don't like about something. As the scripture says, give thanks in most circumstances. You mean even when the turkey isn't cooked? Even when there's a squabble between my in-laws who are staying with me? You mean even when it snows and I can't get out? You mean even when I don't feel well? Yes, in all circumstances. To thank God, not for it all, because in the sense of, well, this I said on Sunday, everything that happens to us isn't good. But in it all, in it all, we can give thanks. And that act of giving thanks for whatever we're in, begins right at that moment, dear one, to change, maybe not that circumstance, but to change you. And so I want to say it this way. When you're in the middle of something, like this morning, if I had chosen gratitude over pessimism, I would have had a much better day. And if you say, well, it's so hard to do, right in the middle of it, here's a little suggestion. I find sort of a four-step approach to overcoming that. I learn to whisper it first, then to speak it, then to declare it, and then to shout it. Whisper, speak, declare, and shout. And somehow, just that little progression, it's so hard for me to just jump right in, but if I can just whisper, Lord, thank you. Thank you that in the middle of this situation, you're working. Folks, it changes you. It's an antidote. It's like the poison in your body, that negative, critical, judgmental spirit, begins to be turned around. And the second thing, I could go on and give you illustrations, you can read Acts 16, Paul in the prison, in stocks, in chains, in the basement of the prison of Philippi. What does he do, Acts 16, 25? He sings praise and gives thanks to God, and boom. I could go on, I won't do that. The second thing you do, the first is, you give thanks to God. The second thing is, don't make judgments halfway through the process. Or, as I said here, refuse to draw conclusions in the middle of a muddle. One of the things that we do is, we tend to give up on God, or give up on ourselves, or give up on the people around us, right in the middle of something. When God might be in the very process of using that situation, you just got to hang in until he completes it. Listen to this little story. I want to thank Paul Modulesky for passing this on to me. Did you wake up there, Paul? And Paul, you might as well tell the story. This was last year, wasn't it? Corrie ten Boom. This was great. I waited a whole year to bring this out, but it's terrific. Corrie ten Boom in The Hiding Place tells about the time that she and her sister Betsy were first taken to Ravensbrook. You know some of the details of those terrible concentration camps. But when they entered the barracks, they found it extremely overcrowded and flea infested. Their scripture reading that morning in 1 Thessalonians had reminded them to rejoice always, pray constantly, and give thanks in the middle of an overcrowded, flea infested barracks in a concentration camp. Betsy told Corrie to stop and thank the Lord for every detail of their new living quarters. Now this is Corrie ten Boom. She said, I can't, this is terrible. Corrie at first flatly refused to give thanks for the fleas, but Betsy persisted. Corrie finally succumbed and did. During the months spent at that camp, they were surprised to find how openly they could hold Bible study and prayer meetings without guard interference. It was several months later when they learned that the guards would not enter the barracks because of the fleas. You see, in the middle of it, it looked like, where's God? But it made sense when they looked back and saw what the Lord did. So, as we come to communion tonight, here's what I'd like you to do. I'd like you to do this. Take your notes out right now. There's a blank page there. You see it? It looks like this. For the next just a couple of moments, take a pen and write in your church what it is right now that maybe is a little pessimistic in your world.