The Story Table

 

I believe Paul learned that living in ongoing thanksgiving and acknowledgment of what was his through Christ opened him to the contentment available through communion with God— just as we established that the fellowship table of thanksgiving over the sacrifice of Christ nourishes us. Amen? Amen.

Let’s examine the gratefulness teachings of Paul.

Paul’s two major categories of gratefulness: 1) He was always thanking the Father for Jesus and what was his through Christ Jesus. 2) And two, he was always thanking Father for co-laborers that live the faith of Jesus before others. Anytime he saw true love to God and love for fellow men displayed, The Grateful Apostle Paul thanked God! Here’s a sample of verses where Paul thanked God for His salvation, for someone’s faith, for their giving nature, for their obedience, for their risking their lives, for their love for other saints, for their labor of love, and for their patience of hope.

Romans 1:8, “First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world.”

Romans 7:24, “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God – through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Romans 16:3-4, “Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, who risked their own necks for my life. To whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles.”

 2 Corinthians 2:14, “Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place.”

2 Corinthians 8:16, “But thanks be to God who puts the same earnest care for you into the heart of Titus.”

2 Corinthians 9:15, “Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!”

Ephesians 1:15-16, “Therefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers:”

Philippians 1:3-5, “I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine making request for you all with joy, for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now,”

Colossians 1:3, “We give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you,”

1 Thessalonians 1:2-4, “We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers, remembering without ceasing your work of faith, labor of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the sight of our God and Father, knowing, beloved brethren, your election by God.”

2 Thessalonians 1:3, “We are bound to thank God always for you, brethren, as it is fitting, because your faith grows exceedingly, and the love of every one of you all abounds toward each other,”

2 Timothy 1:3, “I thank God, who I serve with a pure conscience, as my forefathers did, as without ceasing I remember you in my prayers night and day,”

Philemon 4-5, “I thank my God, making mention of you always in my prayers, hearing of your love and faith which you have toward the Lord Jesus and toward all the saints,” 

That was a feast. See you tomorrow.

In previous lessons we’ve talked about consecrating a hard moment by acknowledging God in it. The moment becomes holy when we place it on the altar because God moves in us right in the middle of our painful situation. His Presence—this is why we can learn to count the hard thing as a good thing. I want to learn the art of saying grace in and for everything, of Living Thanksgiving on His altar —voluntarily.

I want to thank Him in the hard moments and the easy ones, to acknowledge Him in the tempting moment and the worshipful moment, to live to Him in the light and the dark moments, until there are no moments left that aren’t lived in Him.   

To give thanks in everything always requires giving up something.  It is the very definition of give: To bestow without receiving a return; to confer without compensation; to impart, as in a possession; to grant, as in authority or permission; to yield up, allow, or relinquish.

Giving thanks always requires giving up but sending thanksgiving up never fails to bring glory down. It is as if our yielding makes room for Him in the moment.

We give up our expectations to express gratitude for what is.

We give up our standard of measure to express gratitude for what we have.

We give up our rights to express gratitude for His Lordship.

Indeed, giving thanks always requires giving up, but praise God, I can’t give up without getting back.  I just had a delightful visual of throwing thanksgiving up, having it bless God, and then falling back down all over me. It works in reverse too—if I send out grumblings, I get them back in spades. Again, sending thanksgivings up always brings glory down. I believe the glory and communion found in living thanksgiving is what Paul discovered and why he was able to “be content with whatever circumstances I am in”, Philippians 4.12. I’ve always thought of him as the Great Apostle Paul, but I’ve taken to thinking of him as the Grateful Apostle Paul who learned through thanksgiving how to be content, (pleased or satisfied.)

We can blunt the devil’s effective and constant bombardment of our minds with the daily challenges that come with real world living and feast with God at the same time by learning to take our trying, frustrating, and/or heartbreaking moments and give thanks in them. This is the Living Thanksgiving that feeds our souls! It’s a defense against the devil’s schemes because eucharisteō is the door of divine friendship.  We can see this mighty rich lesson in the thank offerings instituted in the Old Testament and found in the 3rd and 7th chapters of Leviticus.  It’s there we learn that the thank offering fell under the category of a peace offering (Leviticus 7:12, 7:15, 7:30) along with the free will, fellowship, or wave offerings. I know! Our eyes gloss over when we read a book like Leviticus, but stay with me. We can’t afford to miss this lesson from what we might otherwise consider dry and boring reading: While the sin and atonement offerings were mandatory, the category of offerings that included the thank or fellowship offering was completely voluntary, signally willing devotion. That preaches all by itself.

God left it to the individual to give thanks, voluntarily, to demonstrate his or her devotion. Salvation is mandatory, we must repent and believe in Jesus to be saved, but thanksgiving remains a voluntary act on the part of the believer. We disdain it, belittle it, shrug it off and neglect it at a huge cost to our own souls.

In ancient Israel thank offerings were given for favors received or before requests for future blessings were made. In other words, the Hebrews would not come with a request without offering thanks first! You’re looking at one of my life goals!

The Hebrew children met with God, through a priest, over the body of an animal.  We meet with God, through Christ our Eucharist, over our voluntary offerings of acknowledgement and gratitude! By our thanksgiving we acknowledge our dependency, and express our devotion for Christ’s eternal sacrifice.

Here’s another delicious morsel for you to consider. Sin offerings were wholly burned and consumed by the fire, but peace offerings, thank offerings, and fellowship offerings, these were divided between the altar of God, the priest, and the one bringing the offering. This is the table of Eucharisteo, signifying forever that it is in thanksgiving for Christ’s finished work and our access to God through Him that we feast together at His table.

Oh, the beauty of that symbolism! Self-centeredness starves the soul. The world’s top psychologists have produced studies proving that doing for others satisfies the soul, producing health benefits, even if they can’t explain the why behind the process. God can, and God does. Scripture shows that our spirits are literally fed through thanksgiving.

Let’s learn to give Him our voluntary praise and thanksgiving for past blessings, thru Christ our peace offering, as we plead for future blessings, for He himself says these sacrifices are more pleasing to Him than that of slaughtered animals!  Sacrifice is God’s love language. The Living Word spoke it on the cross by making the supreme sacrifice that allows us to live in Him. New Testament believers, we offer God “the sacrifice of thanksgiving” (Ps. 116:17) and “the sacrifice of praise” (Heb. 13:15), from grateful hearts—and through them He feeds us.

More evidence of this feasting with God is found in the first chapter of Malachi. It’s addressed to priests and according to the New Testament, that’s you and me, believer!

6 “‘A son honors his father, and a servant his master. Then if I am a father, where is My honor? And if I am a master, where is My respect?’ says the Lord of hosts to you, O priests who despise My name. But you say, ‘How have we despised Your name?’

(That was rhetorical, for God answers His own question) “You are presenting defiled food upon My altar.

But you say, ‘How have we defiled You?

OH, yes, ingratitude messes with our vision. For more kudzu, we need only keep reading in Romans. We’ll see what happens when they’re no longer thankful, broken down right here in Holy Scripture, beginning in verse twenty-five, “For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature, rather than the Creator who is blessed forever. Amen.” 

They began to serve the creature, rather than the Creator. We’re all servants. The only choice we get is who to serve. The cure to escape the domination of our it’s all about me nature is living thanksgiving, to live in acknowledgement of God, to recognize that He never stops giving, and never stop expressing gratitude for His gifts.

The ugly picture Romans gives us of mankind is one of maturing ingratitude. It begins with the refusal to acknowledge HIM and it only grows worse…Romans 1:28, “And because they didn’t see fit to acknowledge God, so they were given over to a depraved mind.”

Oh, boy, now we not only have futile thinking, but we’re moving on into a depraved mind. What in the world does this look like?  Depraved: deviating from what is moral, right, proper or good; unwholesome; a perverted sense of loyalty. Futile thinking that comes as a result of not honoring and thanking God, left unchecked, leads to depravity.

Listen to Romans 1.28 in the Message: Since they didn’t bother to acknowledge God, God quit bothering them and let them run loose. And then all hell broke loose: rampant evil, grabbing and grasping, vicious backstabbing. They made life hell on earth with their envy, wanton killing, bickering, and cheating. Look at them: mean-spirited, venomous, fork-tongued God-bashers. Bullies, swaggerers, insufferable windbags! They keep inventing new ways of wrecking lives.  

I don’t think anyone chooses verse 28 as their life verse! Little boy, little girl, what do you want to be when you grow up? I want to be a vicious mean-spirited murderous lying cheating atheist. Or, how about this? I want to be a passionless, cold church woman with plenty knowledge of Jesus but very little love flowing through me. Silly, right? No one would choose such lives, not on purpose, anyway. But, refusing to acknowledge the good and perfect God and preferring ourselves is a choice. We’ll think we’ve chosen freedom— only to find that we’re slaves to our flesh. There is no greater tyrant than being in bondage to our own wants! Ask an addict. But don’t look for one addicted to tangible substances and miss the one looking at you in the mirror. We are all one moment away from the pull of acknowledging ourselves rather than God, and heading down the slippery slope. Likewise, we’re each one moment away from consecration, thanksgiving, and fellowship, divine fellowship.

That great gulf we mentioned earlier, the vast gulf between the knowledge of God and the acknowledgment of God, I’m sure we can all readily agree that the outcome of it is hell itself for the pagan. Oh, that we could get the truth planted deep in our hearts that it is also the ever-present thief robbing believers of the promise of abundant life.

When we aren’t Living Thanksgiving, acknowledging Him, we will be acknowledging ourselves by default—convinced we deserve more of what we don’t have and less of what we’re facing. How do I know if I’m living thanksgiving, or living ungrateful with an I deserve more mentality? Simple, if I’m not in one, I’m in the other. We can take a trying moment and make it holy, by acknowledging Him in it.  Ungratefulness, on the other hand, is a slippery slide. Thanklessness is the devil’s kudzu. Left unchecked it strangles everything in its path. There’s a tragic progression found in Romans chapter one that will serve us well as exhibit A.

Romans 1: 21 For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

Interesting… What was the result of choosing not to honor God (esteem or acknowledge Him) or give Him thanks (expressing it)? Futile speculations and a dark heart!

Futile is defined as serving no purpose, completely ineffective, completeness of failure, unwise undertaking, failure to achieve a desired result. Futile speculations would be: Empty, vain, thinking that that serves no purpose, that is completely ineffective, unwise and fails to achieve the desired result, going around and around and leading nowhere!

Of course, no one here participates in futile thinking, right? Wrong. Let me go first. I can get futile in a heartbeat. “What did he mean by that? Was she throwing that at me? Do they not appreciate everything I’m doing and have done for them?” Or how about, “Why is God letting this happen? Isn’t He hearing my prayers?”

OH, yes, I can get futile in a heartbeat, but Eph.4:16 tells me I’m not alone. “So, this I say and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their minds.”  That warning? Paul was giving it to believers.

Futility—I can think and rethink and rethink a thought or situation without taking the claws of my mind off of it and laying it back down at His feet, consecrating the problem, consecrating the moment instead, by acknowledging His omnipotence in it and over it and thus MAKING ROOM for Him to work in it.

But, Praise Him, while I can go futile in a heartbeat, and indulge in vain/think a thought to death thinking/, I can also get thankful in the same instant, with the breath of eucharisteō. I’m so very grateful for the Spirit showing me this wonderful truth: honoring and giving thanks is more than a preventative shield against futile thoughts, although I’m thankful for that shield. Living Thanksgiving also meets me in the middle of the mess. I can get out of the muck of present tense futile speculations by throwing on the brakes and acknowledging God! On, the power of Eucharisteō!

But let’s go back to the Word and watch the unthankful kudzu grow. We’re about to see that with futility comes a darkened mind, in other words, we won’t be able to see clearly. What’s that? Ingratitude messes with our vision! It sure does. See you tomorrow.

To practice Living Thanksgiving, we’ll have to give up the idea that God owes us something more and learn how to accept whatever comes from His hand. But, Shellie, someone would say,

Hebrew 11:6 says we are called to believe that He rewards those who seek Him! That is true.  Our problem comes when we lose sight of the fact that His response to us is all grace. God is obligated to no man. I will never live in the sustaining fellowship that is eucharisteō if I see God as obligated to me.

Job said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb and naked I will return there. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”  Job:1.21 Job spoke those words out of some serious grief. But, that’s not the whole story of how Job reacted to his troubles. He also tore his clothes, shaved his head, covered himself in dirt and fell on his face crying. (Try that response at church and see what happens!)

And yet, in all of that, the Holy Spirit testified that Job, “did not sin, nor blame God.” God was okay with that kind of drama? That’s hard for us to understand but it’s a vital part of understanding how to live eucharisteō.  I believe the Holy Spirit testified that Job was blameless in his response precisely because Job acknowledged God in his pain and in his grief, and bowed low, conceding that his life, his possessions, his children, everything that seemed to be his, was truly God’s, to do with as He pleased. “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I shall return there. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away. Blessed be the name of the LORD.” Job 1:21

If I have to grab my flesh by the neck and haul myself up a thousand times a day to get that message and to live the moments of this life in gratitude, so be it. For the dark trap of “I don’t deserve this, or I deserve more” is ingratitude, the evil opposite of Living Thanksgiving, and it’s always rooted in acknowledging me. Gratitude says, “I haven’t earned this, but thank you.” Ingratitude says, “Is this all? I deserve more, I want more; I will stretch out my hand and get more for myself.” It is the ongoing challenge of our lives.

To whatever extent the devil is successful at planting the rebellious seed of ingratitude in our thoughts, we’ll spend that moment, or that day, or our entire lives, trying to satisfy what we’ve been convinced we deserve and must have, driven by our own insatiable lusts. If he is successful in the moment, we’ll give to the moment’s frustration and refuse to yield our soul’s chaos to the only One who can order it whole and bring peace. If he is successful in the day, we’ll squander the day. If he is successful in the week, we’ll squander the week, in our lives…we’ll squander our lives…

When I cling to an ungrateful thought, when I acknowledge me, and demand my right to stay there in that thought, I forfeit the opportunity to consecrate the moment by offering it up to the Lord. I give up divine fellowship and the power of what Christ wants to do in the situation, all to fellowship with my thought, my issue. I’m reminded of the rebellious man God promises to hold accountable in Deuteronomy 29.1, the one who foolishly said, “I shall peace even though I follow the dictates of my own heart.”

We saw yesterday that only one leper turned back to acknowledge the Source of the blessing, and in verse nineteen Jesus said this grateful one displayed faith that made him whole. Some of your translations will say his faith saved him. What about the other nine? Where they only healed physically, not spiritually? The Bible doesn’t say, so neither can we. But it would seem the nine came away knowing of Jesus while the one grateful leper secured his faith by acknowledging Him. Showing his gratitude by acknowledging the Source of the gift— Jesus said this is what made the grateful one whole and brought glory to God.

We’d do well to camp here in this continuing choice between acknowledging God by conceding to His rule and giving Him thanks, or acknowledging ourselves by refusing. For it is the ongoing choice and titanic challenge of every believer. Proverbs 3:5, In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths.

In all my ways. Here it is again, the “count it all joy challenge.” We can acknowledge that He is here when all is well, but Living Thanksgiving, authentic eucharisteō, means we acknowledge Him when all is not good.  How? How do we do that?

I believe our first clue can be found here in the garden of Eden. Eve fell prey to believing she deserved more, something other than what she had. We’re always facing the same tempting voice. The garden scene is Satan unmasked, a clear picture of the enemy’s modus operandi. Satan is always trying to seduce us with the idea that we don’t deserve this, but we do deserve that.

Maybe it’s a better financial situation we think we deserve, but the temptation towards ingratitude, towards more, towards demanding this world acknowledge me doesn’t always have to do with material things. It can be our feeling that we deserve more appreciation from someone we feel we’ve given to time and again. Maybe it’s a higher position, more authority in the church. Maybe it’s a life without so much pain, trouble from our kids, frustration from our spouses, heartache from all sides. Regardless, our enemy woos us with the same tune he sung in the garden, “You deserve more!” The truth is, harsh as this may sound. We don’t deserve anything—not even when we’ve done all we’re commanded to do. Jesus said as much in the same chapter of Luke.

So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’” Luke 17:10

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