“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”
James 1:17
God delights in helping us grow in the priceless grace of thanksgiving and gratitude. Sometimes we go through difficult seasons, and when we do, the Bible instructs us to still praise our Lord—maybe not for the problems, but certainly in the problems. Just as Paul would learn to glory in his infirmities, many of us have been assigned the same lesson. However, more often than not, I have discovered that God uses blessing and pleasure to provoke us to a spirit of thanksgiving.
This is often illustrated in the table blessing as we thank our Lord for the food He has provided. We may pray: “Lord, for what we are about to receive, make us truly thankful.”
Learning to trace every blessing back to its source reveals the truth about God’s goodness. Sometimes as the river flows downstream toward the sea, it may get muddy and polluted, but if you trace it back and taste the sweet pure water at the fountainhead of the stream you will see the true nature of the water. If I take a thin piece of aluminum, I will be able to easily bend it in any direction I choose. But, sometimes events in my life are not like pliable aluminum, they are more like hardened steel. They cannot be easily bent.
In such cases, I may need the wise counsel of a Christian friend to help me bend it toward God. Such is the nature of the victorious Christian life. We are to bend every blessing, every pleasure, back to God. This was part of the original function of church steeples, to constantly point us toward God. Our Lord wants us to praise Him, but He does not do so by forcing us to our knees. He does not do it by some divine decree coupled with a harsh threat of punishment. God is not the “hard man” described in Matthew 25:24. God’s preferred way is to bestow manifold blessings upon us. Then, it becomes our responsibility to trace every blessing back to its source, back to the fountainhead of blessing.
When we go through hardship we might be tempted to think of God as an austere overlord, who, when He commands us, “In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” (I Thessalonians 5:18). In this Scripture we might assume that God is expecting His poor, oppressed children to manufacturer thanksgiving out of their miserable existence. This, makes the act of thanksgiving about as pleasurable as having a tooth pulled.
While it is true that God wants us to be thankful, and sometimes that will come in the midst of hardship, but more often God draws gratitude out of us with blessings. These pleasures are always designed to be traced back to their source. As we learn to bend them in the direction of God, each blessing then becomes a tutor, instructing us to be thankful.
What kind of blessing am I talking about? What kind of pleasure? Any pleasure, any blessing will work. Dozens of them every single day of our lives. No pleasure is too small to be a reminder of the kindness and mercy and goodness of God. This means we are bombarded by blessings all the time. All around us is fuel for the fire of thanksgiving, if we will but open our eyes.
You might say, “wait a minute preacher, the Bible says that sin can be pleasure for a season, certainly that pleasure should not be bent back to God.” Sure, we all know, there are sinful pleasures. These are pleasures achieved by sinful acts. But we still must not discount the pleasure, even if achieved by sin. I am not saying that makes it right, but let me explain. If I steal an apple from your tree, that would obviously be wrong. Stealing is wrong. But, does that mean the stolen apple will not be sweet? Of course not! Stealing is wrong, but the sweetness is still a blessing from God. Now, this does not make stealing good, actually it makes it worse. I have not just stolen an apple, I have also stolen the pleasure within that apple, pleasure that did not belong to me. God desired to bless me through legitimate means, but just like in the story of Jacob and Esau, I chose an illegitimate route.
We learn very early in our Christian life that Scripture commands us to be thankful. Very often, as young Christians, we learn this before we really understand how thanksgiving works. So, we try to work up a sense of thankfulness and worship over abstract things like God’s beauty, or goodness, or blessings, or love. The problem is, we can’t emotionally connect broad generalities that are not sufficiently grounded in specifics. That is why it is important to bend every blessing that comes into our lives back to God.
We learn that God is good, but if we have not taken the opportunity to personally “taste and see that the LORD is good” (Psalms 34:8), we will miss the true meaning of thanksgiving. A blind man can have the best teachers in the world teach him about the sun and the life-sustaining light that it gives our planet. But, if he were able to walk outside and actually see even the smallest patch of sunlight, it would teach him more than all his worthy teachers.
Pleasures teach us about God like patches of sunlight penetrating through the canopy of a thick forest teach us about the sun. The happy laughter of a beloved child, the rainbow after the summer storm, feeling good after being sick, small blessings that must be bent back to God. Holding the hand of your loving mate, seeing your children and grandchildren grow up to serve God, waking up to a new day and hearing the birds sing their song on a cool autumn morning; these are all patches of light, blessings that must be traced back to the fountainhead. And what do we find when we bend our blessings back to God?
We find the sweet pure water. The blind man who could suddenly see the small patch of light from a sunbeam reaching the floor of the shaded forest looks up and traces that small ray of light back to the sun. Can you imagine? Such are our blessings. When we start to finally see the little patches of blessing, then we trace them back to where they originated, and we stand in awe of what we see.
That’s the key to understanding the pleasures God gives us as teachers of gratitude and thanksgiving. Our goal should be to trace every blessing, bend every blessing, back to God. Our blessings aren’t always apparent. Ask yourself, “What do I take for granted?” When you look in the rear-view mirror of your life, can you recall blessings that you were too blind to see at the time?
As we count our blessings this Thanksgiving season, may we consciously attempt to bend every blessing back to God. Some of us who are going through the deepest of trials, may need the help of a caring friend to help us see our blessings and trace them back to the fountainhead.
Does God command our thankfulness? Of course, He does! But it is not the arm-twisting command of a tyrant. It is the loving command of a father whose desire is that his children experience blessings beyond compare. Our Lord has designed gratitude to be one of the keys that will unlock the door to a fuller life. It can turn what we have into more than enough. It can turn confusion into clarity. It has been said that God desires us to be thankful because it is often the only way to make sense of our past, bring peace for today, and create a vision for tomorrow.
When we are blessed with good fortune, we might be tempted to trace the blessing back to our hard work, our education, or even our good luck; however, the wise man will wisely trace it back to God. For it is God’s nature to draw gratitude out of us with blessings; blessings that to achieve their full potential, must be traced back, bent back to God.
Dr. Worthington has been in the ministry for over forty-five years and serves as President of Pathway Ministries and Christian Bible College.