In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. (I Thessalonians 5:18)

More than thirty years ago, God used a time of turmoil to bring a Thanksgiving revival into my life. It happened like this.

From my sophomore year of high school, I committed to attend Fairhaven Baptist College to prepare for the ministry. Our church did a lot with Fairhaven, but my pastor was a graduate of Hyles-Anderson College, and we also did a lot in Hammond.

I graduated from high school in 1989. That summer, Roger Voegtlin preached his now-famous sermon, “Why I am not 100% for Jack Hyles.” My parents had me listen to a recording of that sermon and then told me that they thought Dr. Voegtlin was wrong to preach it and asked me not to attend college there.

I was happy to comply. I loved my freshman year at Hyles and developed enough loyalty to Hyles that Fairhaven became public enemy number one. But at the end of that year, my pastor had me listen to the Paula Hyles tapes. Those tapes turned my world upside down. They confirmed the truth of the accusations against Jack Hyles. My pastor told me that he and about fourteen other staff members were resigning from their teaching positions. My parents insisted that I not return to Hyles for my second year of college.

That summer, I worked midnights washing dishes at Denny’s Restaurant. I didn’t handle midnights very well. I could hardly stay awake during the day – sometimes, I fell asleep eating breakfast. My work week ran from Tuesday to Saturday night. So, I would work all night Friday night until Saturday morning, shower and go out visiting until the late afternoon on Saturday, sleep a few hours, work overnight Saturday until Sunday morning, shower, and go to church all day Sunday. Needless to say, my spiritual life was a wreck. I couldn’t stay awake to read my Bible or pray, and I couldn’t stay awake in church.

Near the end of that summer, I caught my pastor in an immoral act. He, of course, denied that I was seeing what I was seeing. He played the victim as if I were trying to destroy his ministry by saying what I saw him doing.

So, I was worn out, away from the Lord, angry, and disillusioned. Then, I went to a college I hated (Fairhaven Baptist College). Imagine the most miserable young man you could ever meet: that was me from September to November of that year. When I went home for Thanksgiving, I was surly and cynical.

I can’t explain why I went for a walk that Thanksgiving morning because I hadn’t spent time in the Bible or prayer for most of the summer and certainly not that Fall. I suppose it was out of habit.

My Thanksgiving custom, dating back to early high school, was to rehearse all the events of that year, dating back to the December before, thanking God for each event as I came to it. As I began, memories flooded back from my happy times at Hyles. I remembered the close walk I enjoyed with the Lord during that school year and the fervent prayers I prayed as I walked around the lake on campus. I especially remembered one particular prayer request. I asked God to break me, to strip me of everything I was resting in, anything that stood in the way of Him using me, anything that I looked to in the place of Him.

As I rehearsed that prayer that Thanksgiving morning, I felt the hot, angry tears on my face. I  resented what God did. I thought about how unhappy I was now. I complained to the Lord. Sure, I asked God to do what He did – I knew that. I knew it was wrong to resent Him. I knew I should be happy about these things. But they were too shocking, too disappointing. I hated everything about my life at that moment.

For three hours, I walked and walked, complained and griped and thought about how hard I had it until finally, it hit me that I had been walking for three hours and hadn’t found one reason to thank the Lord. And then, I repented. I cried out to God for forgiveness. The tears came flooding back, only this time, the angry tears of resentment turned to humble tears of repentance. I thought about what God was doing in my life, about how uncomfortable He had made me. I didn’t want to thank Him for it because thanking Him would invite more trouble. To thank Him would mean He was right to do what He did. It would mean admitting that God had something good in these troubles, something I needed. I remember all my resentments crumbling as I slowly surrendered to God’s providential guidance. After an exhausting time wrestling with God, I finally came to a place where I could thank the Lord for my troubles.

Only after that surrender did I recognize God’s patience and longsuffering with me. I confessed the anger and resentment I held against God. It was a hard pill to swallow, but after repentance and confession, the hardest thing to do was to thank the Lord for bringing all of these things into my life.

I’ve had many years to rehearse that life-altering event, and I’ve come to recognize a few things about thanksgiving that I think are important. Why did I find it so hard to thank the Lord in the face of crushing pain? Here are a few reasons:

First, giving thanks in difficult times means I think God is right to do this.

God’s thoughts are not mine; His ways are not mine. I argued with God for three hours, disputing His decision for my life. How could I thank Him for something I disagreed with?

If I thanked Him, I was admitting that He was right. And I resented that. Yet, this is why it is God’s will in Christ Jesus concerning you that you would give Him thanks. Because God is right in whatever He does.

That’s a hard pill to swallow. But it is God’s will that we swallow the pill. Giving thanks means saying that God is right.

Second, giving thanks in difficult times means “I surrender” to God’s wisdom.

I knew I couldn’t undo what God had done – there was no going back. It sounds carnal, but my resentments were the only thing I had left. If I gave those up, then I had nothing. I knew that saying “thank you” to God would mean surrender. And I wasn’t willing to lay down arms against God. So, I fought. I kicked. I held onto my resentments. I refused to breathe a hint of surrender.

Giving thanks means surrendering to God, accepting– no, embracing – His will. Giving thanks means laying down arms, laying aside resentment and bitterness.

Third, giving thanks in difficult times means I agree with God that I needed this.

I knew this was true, and I refused to say so. God had made me very unhappy. He took away from me almost everything that mattered in my life. And I could never get it back. I couldn’t return to the happy life I had enjoyed that freshman year. I was at a college I hated. I was away from the Lord. I was (justifiably) angry at my pastor and those who defended him. I couldn’t imagine a scenario where I would ever be happy again. How could God do this to me? How could I thank Him?

If I thanked Him, I knew that meant that God was right, and I needed Him to do this. I wouldn’t admit that I needed it. I refused to see what was clearly there – that my resentments amounted to an Idolatry of Circumstances.

I had things in my life that I believed were necessary for my future happiness. God said, “No, these aren’t.” And I couldn’t agree with that. I wouldn’t accept it. To say that I needed God to do this was to say that there was a fault, a flaw in the things I held dear. It was to say that I had become overly dependent on these things due to my neglect of the things of God. It was to say that my treasure was on earth, not heaven. I felt this in my bones. The moment I thanked God for it, I was admitting that God did what I needed.

Giving thanks says, “Thank you, Lord, for putting my needs above my wants.” But when God has taken something you wanted away, He means you don’t need that. I can’t explain that pain – unless you’ve been there, you might be unable to imagine it. But this is why I didn’t want to say “thank you.”

Fourth, giving thanks in difficult times means I trust God to do what is best for me.

I’m extending the last point here – not only that I needed God to do this, but that I am trusting God overall in my life. I hate to say it this way, but if I thanked God for what He did, I would be giving Him permission to do it again. In the moment, I accepted that I could never get back what God had taken from me. But I wasn’t willing to give up anything else.

Again, that’s what saying “thank you” felt like in my pain. It felt like I was handing over control of my life to God. I was not quite 20 years old at the time. I had minimal experience of granting God control over me. It had been easy to do when I was a teenager – my parents had mainly had control of my life up to that point anyway. So, surrender meant saying that sometime in the future, when I have a little more control, I will give you control.

This might seem overstated to you, but in my mind, if I thanked God, I was saying that I trusted Him to do this again if He thought it was necessary. I felt like I would be saying, “I trust you, Lord, in everything.”

Giving up control like that felt reckless, dangerous. I felt vulnerable. When I asked God to strip away everything from my life that stood in His way, I learned how difficult and uncomfortable that was.

Actually, I thought that God had ruined my life. I felt like I was picking up the shards of clay off the ground to patch something back together and cling to it. I thought that if I thanked God, He would be delighted to keep right on crushing me. I wasn’t ready to trust the Lord, so I didn’t want to say “thank you.”

Fifth, giving thanks in difficult times means I value God above my own comfort.

It means God’s will is more important than what makes me happy. It really means giving up.

I’ve said this several times so far, but that is exactly how I felt about it. To say “thank you” at such a difficult time was to say, “God, your will matters more than my happiness.” God stripped me of what I thought gave my life purpose and meaning. Am I supposed to thank Him for doing that? I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. I treasured my happiness and comfort more than God’s will.

I think that is fair to say, actually. That is what I treasured. God exposed this by taking so much away from me (at least from my perspective). He showed me not what I had wanted to be there but what was really there. He showed me where my treasure was by taking it away and letting me feel the resentment of it.

I understood that the moment I said “thank you” was the moment I gave up my treasure. I’m not saying this is the case every time we give thanks. I am saying that this is the case when we give thanks after a devastating loss.

Should I have looked at my loss as “devastating”? Probably not. I was young, immature. I’m sure I blew things out of proportion. I definitely see the way God spared me by removing me from Hyles-Anderson.

But at the time, I saw it as an earth-shattering loss. God deals with us where we are. God knew how I looked at these things and how I would handle this event in my life. God dropped it at my feet and challenged me: “Say thank you.” And I knew my response would require me to replace my values with God’s. Saying “thank you” required me to say that the things God values are more important than the things I value.

Sixth, giving thanks in difficult times means I believe God is good all the time.

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

Saying “thank you” meant that God is good. That might have been the hardest thing for me to admit. I disagreed with God. I thought that what He did was terrible. In fact, I thought it was wrong.

The need to say “thank you” meant I was confronted with God’s goodness and righteousness, even when it went against me. That’s why I found it so hard to thank the Lord. I knew that when I surrendered and said “thank you,” I was admitting that God is good.

That shouldn’t be hard to say. But God can bring circumstances into our lives that make us doubtful of His goodness. I know. I have experienced that. And when I thanked the Lord for bringing these things into my life, when I thanked Him for taking things away from me – things that I loved and that I thought made my life better – when I thanked God for bringing such crushing sorrow into my life, I knew that the fight was over.

God won. He was good. He was right. I was admitting it. All in one “thank you.” I surrendered. I embraced His will for my life. I yielded to His wisdom. That was the meaning when I gave thanks.

God took things away from me that I thought were necessary for my happiness. I didn’t think I would ever be happy again – because I thought that was the only happy life I would ever have (plus, I thought Fairhaven was a prison).

My thanksgiving time got off to a bad start that day when the thought hit me that I could never go back to that life – what I considered the happiest moments of my life. So, a significant part of my three-hour standoff was spent mourning what I had lost. Today, I know how wrong I was about that – what I counted loss was really gain for me.

And that reminds me: we cannot imagine what God has in store for us if we will just trust Him. Today, I’m grateful beyond measure that God took those things from me. I now realize that they would have been for my destruction.

God commands us to give thanks in everything. In our everyday life, we are to give thanks. That is God’s will. In fact, His will in Christ Jesus concerning us is that we would rejoice, pray, and give thanks (I Thessalonians 5:16-18). Every time we thank the Lord, we acknowledge that the good things we enjoy and the bad things we suffer all come from His loving hand and are all very good. We say that if we have God, we can be satisfied.

Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever. (Psalm 73:25-26)

“Christ is not glorious so that we get wealthy or healthy. Christ is glorious so that rich or poor, sick or sound, we might be satisfied in him” (Piper, Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ, p. 21).

Here’s the irony: it might be more challenging to thank the Lord in times of ease and plenty than in times of crushing disappointment and defeat. Because in those times, we have to say, “What do I have that I have not been given?” We sometimes struggle to throw the praise and the credit to the Lord. May God teach us how to abound and how to be abased.

I know from experience the difficulty of giving thanks in times of trial, especially when that trial strips you of things you considered essential to your life. In those times specifically, we must give thanks consciously, intentionally, and sometimes through tears.

May God teach us to fulfill this part of His will – rejoice evermore, pray without ceasing, in every thing give thanks.