Facing the Unknown – Part #4, Step #2

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.
(Php 4:6-9)

Let’s rehash the four steps that Dr. Habermas gave:

1. Pray (verse 6)
2. Give thanks and praise (verses 6 & 8)
3. Change our thoughts (verse 8)
4. Practice, practice, practice (verse 9)

In this post I’m talking about step #2: Giving thanks and praise. Praise is a difficult subject to talk about briefly because it can be so complex; a person can either say a whole lot or a whole little about it (I don’t know if “a whole little” is proper grammar or not, but it conveys the point)! Let’s just say that I’m going to do my best to say a “whole little” with a “whole lot” of meaning.

For those of you who were raised in the Pentecostal or Charismatic movements (as I was) then I will say that I do not believe that the praise and thanksgiving that Paul is talking about here is the sort of exuberant praise and worship that one finds in a Pentecostal or Charismatic service. I am not saying there is anything wrong with that type of worship, I’m just saying that I don’t think that’s what Paul is talking about right here! Of course, I could be wrong, so if anyone wants to disagree then that’s OK!

What I think Paul is talking about is just thanksgiving. Nothing more, nothing less. Two words compounded into one: Thanks + giving. Giving thanks. Giving of thanks. Giving thanks to God.

There’s nothing magical about giving thanks to God. There’s no right or one wrong way to do it. If a Pentecostal or Charismatic person wants to give thanks through exuberant praise and worship then that is certainly fine, but a person can also give thanks at all times in their own mind without ever saying a word.

The question that we must ask, though, is, “What should we give thanks about?”

Well, Paul didn’t tell us what to pray about, he just told us to pray. And the same thing goes for thanksgiving: He didn’t say what to give thanksgiving about, he just said to give it. I do believe that we find a key to what we should give thanks about in the eighth verse, though, when he writes, “If there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.”

I think that the things we should give thanksgiving about are the things that God has done for us in the past; the things that are excellent and worthy of praise. When we do this it takes our thoughts off of the current problem and causes us to think about the faithfulness of God and about how excellent and worthy of praise He truly is! Then instead of worrying about our current situation we find ourselves excited about it because we are eagerly waiting to see what God is going to do through it!

That’s my take on giving thanks, but there are lots of other things that we can give thanks to God for. We can give thanks to Him for our current situation, with faith that He is going to turn it into something marvelous. We can even thank Him for the opportunity to be counted worthy to suffer for His sake. The problem with these forms of thanksgiving is that it’s very, very hard to give them sincerely. We often find ourselves doing it because we want God to see how tough we are and how much dedication we have for Him! In other words, it’s easy to get tricked into trying to manipulate God in the same way that a child will try to manipulate their parents.

Remember, God is unwilling to be manipulated!! He knows your heart. There’s nothing wrong with thanking God for the current situation (whatever it may be) but be careful to not try to manipulate the Almighty.

With that said, I really do not think that there is any right or wrong way to give thanksgiving, or any right or wrong thing to give thanksgiving for. What matters is that we give thanksgiving! One thing that might be nice to do is to sit down and start making a list of all the things that we have to be thankful for. When we do that our attention quickly fades from our current problems and it focuses on God and on how blessed we really are.