LIFE LESSONS
Known by Our Thankfulness John Maust After I travel to a Majority World country, people sometimes ask, “Were you able to attend one of the local churches there? What was it like?” Thinking how to answer, scenes from the church flood my mind. I see the exuberant singing of men and women packed in a humble meeting room, the tears of joy on the face of someone sharing a testimony of God’s power, the affectionate hugs and strong handshakes for visitors like me. I hear the “amens” and murmurs of affirmation during the preaching and prayers. And I remember people leaving the service with a sense of celebration, perhaps a bit similar to jubilant fans exiting the stadium after a big hometeam victory. What was it like attending church in the country I visited? “There was joy,” I will say. “And plenty of thanksgiving.” This joy and thanksgiving is especially striking given that many believers in hard countries live in desperate circumstances with little reason, humanly speaking, to rejoice. Yet here they are, living out the Apostle Paul’s exhortation, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” (I Thess. 5:16-18) I wonder what we can learn about joy and thanksgiving reflected by many of our brothers and sisters in Christ in the Majority World. A few things come to mind.
praise; give thanks to him and praise his name.” (Psalm 100:4) Years ago, I visited a missionary serving in a poor barrio of Cartagena, Colombia. The conversation turned to “faith healing” and the missionary saw I looked a bit dubious. “People in my church are too poor to go to the doctor,” he said. “The only way they can be healed is if God does it. So, they must pray for God’s healing, and God often does.” I thank God for all the resources and support networks that he puts at our disposal here. But let’s make God our default, going to and relying on him first, in any given situation. Christian joy does not come through “pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps,” but through our complete reliance on him. Relying on the Lord and seeing him work is a sure-fire way to grow in Christian joy and thanksgiving. GO TO GOD ABOUT EVERYTHING, BIG OR SMALL My grandfather used to tell the story of two men discussing their relationship with their wives. “My wife and I never fight,” one said. “That is amazing,” the friend answered. “What’s your secret?” “We decided before we got married that I would make the decisions on all the big things, and that she would make decisions on the small things,” he responded. “Oh, how did that work out?”
RELY ON GOD, NOT YOURSELF
“Nothing big ever came up,” he shrugged.
Living in a wealthy country with reasonable infrastructure, we have many places to turn in case of a problem. If we get sick, we go to the doctor. If we are robbed, we go to the police. If we lose our job, we look into unemployment benefits. If a storm damages our home, we call the insurance company. In our difficulties, we often try to resolve things first through our own efforts, maybe seeking God’s help or blessing only later.
Perhaps this whimsical story has an application for our spiritual lives. If we’re waiting to go to God until a crisis or big problem arises, what happens if nothing big ever comes up? Simply, our communication with him will go dry. We will lose the joy and thanksgiving of seeing him work in the seeming little things that come up every day.
But imagine living in a place without doctors, or none that are affordable, or where the police are corrupt or unavailable, or where there are no insurance or unemployment benefits, you will most certainly go to God first. You will fall at his feet in prayer and ask for his supernatural intervention. Then when God shows up in power and rescues you from your helpless situation, you will indeed “enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with
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Once I accompanied a friend to the post office in a developing world nation. As he deposited a stack of letters into the slot, he fervently prayed aloud, “Father, please take these letters safely to their destination.” I’m embarrassed to say that his prayer struck me as curious. I’d never voiced that prayer at a post office before, but I realized that my friend must have reason to do so and felt duly reminded to pray to God in both the big and little.
