Copyright © 2006 by The Voice of Prophecy

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JESUS' TOP TEN WORDS OF ADVICE #9

TRUTH REACHES OUT FOR MORE II

They were standing in rows in the center of Shantung Compound---ragged, weary European internees. And they feared the worst. The Japanese chief of police prepared to read his verdict. These civilians, swept up in Japan's invasion of China in 1937, had heard rumors of atrocities in other prisoner-of-war camps there.

Now the “criminal” standing beside the Japanese officer was a small man with a clerical collar: Father Darby. He’d been caught slipping eggs under his cassock as he prayed by the compound wall. Father Darby, it turned out, was a key link between sympathetic Chinese villagers outside and the starving inmates inside.

Well, the chief began a loud speech about stamping out the black market. He was going to have to make an example of Father Darby. The internees shuddered. Would this gentle man of the cloth be tortured or only shot? The chief announced: “I sentence you to one-and-a-half months of solitary confinement!”

There was silence for a moment. And then the whole group erupted in a jubilant shout. The solemn Japanese official was shocked. But what the internees knew was this: Father Darby had served as a Trappist monk for twenty-five years! He'd thrived in the silence and solitude of a monastery. And so, as Japanese soldiers shook their heads, the father marched off to his tiny dark cell---humming a hymn.

Solitary confinement would have been a terrible ordeal for most of those people stuck in Shantung Compound. It would have been an ordeal for almost anyone. But Father Darby took it as a spiritual opportunity. Now think about that. What made the difference between horrible isolation and heavenly peace? Just this man's attitude, just the way he regarded the experience.
Some time ago, William James wrote, “The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude.” Today anybody who works in the field of mental health hammers away at that point: it’s not what happens to us that determines the quality of our lives; it’s how we interpret what happens to us that counts. Our lives are shaped by our mindset, our point-of-view, our assumptions.

There’s one attitude in particular that comes through strong and clear in the New Testament. It’s emphasized sixty-two times: the attitude of thankfulness. As it turns out, that's one of the New Testament Top Ten; it's number two on the things Jesus and His apostles advised us to do the most: Overflow with thanks.
Listen to what Paul advises the Thessalonians: “Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” (1 Thessalonians 5:18, NIV) Paul urges the Ephesians: “Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything.” (Ephesians 5:19) Paul tells the Colossians that life in Christ should overflow with thankfulness.

Give thanks always. Give thanks in all circumstances. Why is that so important? The fact is, nothing else we do can change our surroundings more dramatically or more quickly. Giving thanks is powerful simply because it lets more light in. It functions like the aperture of a camera lens, also known as the F Stop. That's the mechanism that opens wider and wider to let more and more light fall on the film and create a picture. You can take a decent photograph, even in dim light, if you open the aperture wide enough. Well, thanksgiving is an aperture for our hearts. We can open it wider and wider as we develop the skill of thanksgiving. It let's God's light, God's uplifting point of view, get deep inside us.

That’s why Jesus emphasized the importance of our outlook. He said: “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” (Matthew 6:22,23 NIV)

When our eyes are good, when the aperture of our hearts is opened toward God, then our whole being can be flooded with light. God’s light pouring in makes us stronger than all the darkness around us; it makes us more resilient than anything in the world that keeps blowing out candles.
Wonderful things happen when we let some of that light fall on our present circumstances. Thanksgiving counters the culture of complaint that greases so much interaction today. Sure, beefing about how bad things are is good for comic relief. But why make it a steady diet?
You either moan about slipping on the ice, or give thanks it’s holding you up.

You can whine about rain on your picnic, or give thanks it’s falling on your rose buds.
You can complain you never have enough time, or give thanks your life is so full.

And by the way, to give thanks in all circumstances doesn't mean we have to close our eyes to the bad things happening in the world It doesn't mean we have to pretend that people are nicer than they are. We don’t have to put blinders on to be thankful. We just have to keep an eye out for blessings. God has sprinkled plenty of them around. Paul says we can, “Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth).” (Ephesians 5:8-9)
What's the metaphor here? Well, the sun’s rays create an incredible variety of fruit. There are blueberries in the bushes; apples, nectarines, and mangoes in the trees. Opening ourselves to God’s light can bear abundant fruit as well.

To put it simply: God creates with light. And I believe God uses the very act of thanksgiving to work good out of evil, redemption out of calamity. He’s a Rembrandt coloring the world. Flowers are poking up through the mud. Rainbows are flashing across gray skies.

When our days are measured by complaints, we end up trying to create with dark. We just move the smudges around. You know, there’s a reason scientists have been able to calculate the speed of light. It’s extraordinarily useful. Laser beams, for example, can repair corneas. They can play music and encode messages. But what’s the speed of dark? Nobody knows because it’s not going anywhere.

Giving thanks in all circumstances is a key part of that New Testament admonition: "walk in the light as God is in the light.” (1 John 1:7 paraphrased) God sees the good end from the sorry beginning. God sees is plans unfolding in the midst of the chaos of human history. Opening the aperture of our hearts gives Him more room to work transformations.

A young man named Mike Riley was quite attached to his new silver turbo-charged Porsche. So, when someone stole the sports car, he was terribly dismayed. By the time police tracked it down, the vehicle had been stripped and gutted.

Mike felt terrible, but on the way to the junkyard he got an idea. Instead of just dumping his beloved wreck there, he had them reshape it. They crushed the vehicle into a two foot by three foot cube. He turned it into a coffee table in his living room! Today he serves drinks from the custom hubcaps.

Now this young man's Root Beer may taste a bit greasy, but he teaches us something important about troubles: Turn them into something else! Turn the car wreck into a coffee table.

Yes, sometimes bad things do happen to us. Sometimes we do have reasons to complain. But that’s when we need to let in more light. Why? Because thanksgiving permits God to compress the problem into some useful shape. Our human instinct is to expand on misfortune. We tend to get stuck in the junkyard moaning about how beautiful our Porsche used to be, right? God wants to give us a ride home. He has something to teach us. He wants to help us find a way out of our disappointment.

And listen, one of the most important disappointments we have to deal with is this:
disappointments about the past. One of the best things about giving thanks is that it can shed light---backwards! It can illuminate the past.

Most of us have had an imperfect upbringing; we’ve been hurt or disappointed by family and friends. And an awful lot of people spend their lives trying to fix the past in various ways.
Eventually we have to learn that the past is one thing that can’t be rewritten. We can't fix the past. We can’t manipulate other people into making up for it. But what we can do is uncover a few blessings back there. It may take a little detective work, but finding things to be thankful for in the past is worth the effort.

God often asked the people of Israel to do that. Overall, their history was a pretty sad affair--lot of disappointments. But God asked his people to memorialize the moments of great blessing, the times when providence broke through.

Friends, all of us carry around the past as a very mixed bag. We have our losses and our gains. We experience injuries and we enjoy acts of kindness. But the bottom line is this: what we choose to focus on can make an enormous difference. God does something great when we open the aperture of our hearts as we look back. Thanksgiving puts a laser beam in his hands and He is able to heal us in unique ways.

I promise you: wonderful things really will happen when you let God create with light.

Thank you for sharing this time with me today. Tomorrow we'll look at number one. What do you think heads the list of the New Testament's Top Ten words of advice? I'd love to have you join us for: "Faith Sets Up a Rendezvous." Until then, this is Lonnie Melashenko reminding you that it's always true, friend, God loves you.