Thanksgiving Podcast Episode

Hello and welcome. Thanks for tuning in to Breaking Bread. I’m Matt Kaufman. Thanksgiving is right around the corner and to help prepare our hearts and minds, I would like to replay a conversation I had with Kaleb Beyer and Ryan Sutter in our Joyfully Living series on the issue of Thanksgiving. I pray it will be helpful in gathering your thoughts for Thanksgiving.

Kaleb, what do we mean by living with thanksgiving and how does that have anything to do with the joyful life? There are several references throughout Scripture where we’re reminded to be thankful. It’s really about expressing gratitude for goodness in our lives, or the goodness in the lives of others.

It doesn’t mean that it always comes easily. Or that it comes naturally, but it’s something that is good for us. And I think the beauty that I look forward to unpacking is how that can bring joy to our life, which seems a little bit counterintuitive right off the start, that thanksgiving would be a part of the prescription for joyful living.

Whereas typically we might think that thanksgiving might be the outgrowth of a joyful life. Am I right with that juxtaposition? We are called in Scripture to thankfulness. Period. And so, at times, that’s going to be a lot more difficult when we’re not starting in a place that’s easy or things are going our way, and then we’re thankful.

But what does it look like to start with thankfulness regardless of circumstances? And I think first and foremost for us as believers to be able to be thankful because we know of God and his goodness, and that’s really the foundation where we start. So, therefore, no matter what our circumstances are, we can focus on that. But no doubt that can be a challenge.

You’ve got me as your client here across the table with a furrowed brow saying, all right, I’m supposed to be thankful. I’ve just come to you, Kaleb, and shared all these problems. Okay, but how do you counsel your clients who are going through hard stuff, and you bring up this thanksgiving piece and they furrow their brows, look at you and say, seriously! Now, what are some of the talking points that you give to help bring that person to the point of thankfulness?

If we’re working with somebody or even ourselves in the midst of really hard, painful things, we would not start with thankfulness. I think we would start with mourning and weeping with them and hurting. So, I think if that’s where you’re at, that’s part of the journey, but the process of then moving into it is hard, and now I want to start looking for those small things. What does it look like to rejoice and the fact that there’s food on the table, even though I don’t want to eat it?

What does it look like to be able to say, thank you, Lord? Even in sacrifice. What I hear from this too is a bit of normalizing what we mean by thankfulness. And I think coming into this conversation we might think that, well, thankfulness is easy. Thankfulness is automatic. Thankfulness comes out when I am thankful. Yeah. But what you’re suggesting is quite different. And I think that’s encouraging. Yeah, that is the point.

And I think it even goes back to some of the earlier podcasts that we talked about, but just accepting the fact that this is hard. Allowing yourself to be in difficulty while you struggle and you fight for thankfulness, that is a good thing to do. Even though it’s very painful that we’re in spots that, quite frankly, we aren’t thankful for but even beginning the practice of expressing that when we don’t feel it can be a step right in the right direction.

You know, I think of Paul and Silas in prison, in the Philippian jail, right? And they are singing praises to God. And the question that occurred to me is I’ve often thought that they must have been happy, therefore they were singing. Or was happiness an outgrowth of their singing? You know what I’m saying? Do you follow that? I do. And I think that’s a great example of depending on how you look at your circumstances. So, for them it was, we’re counted worthy to suffer for the gospel, and out of that pours thanksgiving.

It makes me think that every good gift and perfect gift comes from above. And that as we begin to cultivate that gratitude in thanksgiving, as hard as it is, it points us back to the author or the giver of those good things. And so, it connects us with Brian was talking about, right? It connects us with the source of life. And so, you’ve made a direct link, Kaleb, to being thankful and having faith, and so we might link these two terms together. It requires faith to be thankful. Am I right with that? Oh, I think so. I think it requires faith when you read a verse, whatever that is, to believe that, to hold on to that and rejoice in that. When everything around you seems the opposite.

Exactly. It takes faith to walk through that. And now that brings some clarity to me, like, oh, that’s why God asked me to be thankful because it is worship to him and it’s evidence of faith towards him. So, you’re challenging me to a much more mature view of thanksgiving than what we might be teaching to our children to say thank you after something.

Yeah. You know, I’m fascinated a little bit by where thanksgiving arises in history. We have the Thanksgiving holiday and what did that come out of? Well, it came out of an awful winter at Plymouth, right? And then we have Abraham Lincoln setting that aside as a national holiday.

Well, when did he do that? Well, that was during the Civil War, I believe Martin Rinkart in a battle on the cusp of being under siege in Germany. He writes this hymn, Now thank We all our God. So, we see that some of the most profound and impactful thanksgivings in history come on the cusp of what you’re speaking of here today.

Yeah. I think it is one of those fascinating things in life where our natural tendency is, give me the easy road and then I’ll be thankful. But always in Scripture and I think as you’re just describing there in history, it says that through hard things. It helps us see things when they are positive or when they are good. And out of that portion comes thanksgiving. It’s not necessarily that you wake up and every day it is 70 degrees. I remember I was so impacted when I was a young man. There was an older brother who stood up and prayed to start off a Sunday School morning, and it was just a terrible, awful day.

The only reason I remember that is because he said, Lord, thank you for days like this that make me grateful for the days that are 65 and nice. And I’m like, what is this guy talking about? But it just stuck with me. It was just fascinating. And that day was redeemed in a sense. Yes. In terms of its worth.

Yeah. Right. He saw the value in it and saw that even though, by the very nature of the day, it was not necessarily a good day. It cultivated thankfulness because he anticipated the good that was down the road, or he remembered the good that he experienced before. Yeah. That was contrasted by the struggle that was there.

And that’s a huge aha for me, even right now as we sit here thanksgiving redeems the situations in our life. So, I feel like it really is incumbent upon the answer to this question I’d like to pose to you brothers, because I feel like if depending on the answer to this question, I see thanksgiving as doable, but without it, I don’t see it doable.

And that is this. Is God able to wield good out of every dark situation of my life? Because if the answer to that question is yes, then I can muster up thanksgiving. But if the answer to that is no, then I think this is just pie in the sky stuff. That’s right.

But you’re exactly right, if God is able to redeem there’s hope and then thanksgiving makes sense, but if he’s not, there’s nowhere to go and nowhere to turn. So, I think I, in my mind, a fundamental key to thanksgiving is seeing God for who he is and being able to trust that he’s big enough to have all of it in his hands, even though it doesn’t make sense to you right here, right now, it may not make sense to anybody.

But we say, I trust the one that’s over all of this. Yeah. And I think that connects that piece of faith, the foundation piece, or connecting the faith with thanksgiving, even when I can’t see it, when I don’t have the ability to bring it to mind that in this darkness or struggle that God can bring light that he can redeem it. And I think that actually speaks right out of the writings of some of the sages of the past. I think of St. John of the Cross who would write and talk about when all of the five senses fail, you’re left with faith. And that’s what I’m hearing a little bit, and I think my Thanksgiving in the past has been propped up by my five senses.

But what you’re suggesting is that sometimes when the five senses fail us, and then we are left only with the facts of God. Can I worship and be thankful? And when I do, I worship faithfully in the truest sense. I think that’s accurate, and I guess what I would say with that is to encourage people. There are some of you right now who are in the midst of the dark and difficult, and I want to encourage these things in you.

And I would also say, those of you who are not, this is a great time to just pour foundation, like try over the next week when you thank the Lord that it’s not about any of your circumstances. It’s based on who God is versus what he’s given you. Like it’s okay to thank him for the food that’s on your plate but try to be bigger than that this week to build a foundation that says, Lord, I am grateful because I know you are the provider.

Does that make sense? Yeah, I think so. Can you speak from experience, having talked to a lot of clients and more broadly than that, your life experience that you have found. You have interacted with people with deep hurts who have exercised this and thereby have lived joyfully. I would say yes to that.

And as I reflect on who I want to be at the end of life’s road, what do I want to look like? I think of men and women that I’ve either sat across from, or that I’ve met with over lunch or interacted with life. Those are the kind of men and women that I’m just like, Lord, give me that.

So, you’re saying yes to my question, you have interacted with them. And I’ll give you a chance, Kaleb, to jump in on this as well, but you’re also saying, Brian, that is like the most compelling life. Yeah. Right. It’s one that if you could embody or example, it would be that one.

Yes. And to go back to your point earlier, when you see that in people, you see it being forged not by freedom of challenges, but you see that forged in them walking through the challenge, through the fires. Those are the men and women who seem to have that. So, the thing that I have to remind myself of is that if that’s what I want, I don’t get the good end to it without the other. So, that means I’m going to go through fires and depending on how I walk through that and where my mindset is, either it takes me to that place where I want to go or it takes me to the other side of that bitter, angry, everything is awful perspective and we’ve seen that as well.

And that’s not a place we want to end either. That’s terrific, Kaleb. And to answer your question, I absolutely think that’s the beauty of being able to walk alongside individuals who walk through those struggles and to see them come out of that with thanksgiving and to see life and light shine through darkness. It is to walk with individuals who are in a hard place or couples in a hard place, and then to witness how God redeems that.

And how motivating that is and, and now that speaks to the joy that we’re talking about here. I can think if we have a difficult situation that we’re carrying and it drains us of joy, before this conversation, I would’ve thought, okay, we want to be joyful. That means we need to resolve this situation.

After all, it is draining my joy. But you’re suggesting in this conversation that there are two ways, perhaps more, but two ways. Yeah. Resolve that situation so that you’re happy with it, but one that we can do right now would be to give thanks in it. And we acknowledge this is not easy.

Yeah. And I think in doing that, in the midst of it, another thing that can hang people up is this belief that, well, if I’m going to be thankful, that means I need to feel it. And you’re not always going to feel it. That’s not a requirement for thankfulness. So, here’s a hypothesis. The more difficult it is the more worshipful. Do you think that’s true? Yeah. The more difficult the issue to give thanks the more faith that we are relinquishing to God. I think that’s an option. Yes. I think that’s helpful. Sometimes the darker the situation, the more poised we are to give glory to God through the avenue of things.

Yes. And I think if we can look at it through that perspective, again, it gives us hope and gives us a lens through which to be thankful for. But if we look at it through the lens of this is too big for me, or why, or this doesn’t make sense.

Then the bigness of how dark it is takes us down that road of Satan being able to devour us. Mm-hmm. So, I think you’re right. The darker the night, the bigger the redemption and the glory and you see that commonly through the Scripture. You know, the Lord strips away until there’s no other hope than him. If he doesn’t show up, you’re done.

Right. I love this story, and you’ve probably read it and our listeners are probably aware of the story of Corrie ten Boom. And there in the Hiding Place, the book that she wrote, she and her sister were in a concentration camp in Ravensbruck. And they had fleas in the camp barracks just awful. And it was miserable. And Betsy, Corrie’s sister, turns to Corrie and says, we need to give thanks for the fleas. And Corrie said, alright, stop already. You know, you’ve been telling me to be thankful this whole journey, but I’m putting a stop at the fleas.

There’s no reason we need to be thankful for these fleas. Well, they were thankful for the fleas and on and on it goes. And it wasn’t until afterwards that they found out the guards at Ravensbruck would not go into those barracks. Because of the fleas. And because they weren’t coming into the barracks, they had Bible studies and led women to Christ. Wow. It was the fleas.

But we’re not wise enough to know what we shouldn’t give thanks for. Yeah. I think that’s a powerful reminder that if we could see things through God’s eyes, we would always give thanks. But we’re not always given that privilege and therefore, it comes back to that faith of just trusting that’s the case. That he is working out something good here, even in the midst of things that cannot be good in our mind and in our eyes. Yeah. Which I think really ties back into some of the intentionality pieces, right?

As we think about that, this doesn’t come naturally and we’re not able to see it. It becomes practice in cultivating something that’s a process over time that we continually come back to. It’s not a point that we achieve but something we grow into. And Brian, you made this point from some of the things that you mentioned, that we should probably be practicing this.

Maybe I’m in a situation right now that doesn’t have a lot of hurt and maybe things are going smoothly. Some of our listeners may think life isn’t going smoothly. Should we expect that thanksgiving is going to bubble forth when we’re tried if we’re not actively being thankful in the good times? Right. I mean that does seem to be incongruent. I think that’s just such an important thing for all of us to remember that we are called to this no matter where we’re at, and if we don’t practice and cultivate that in our lives when there aren’t really difficult circumstances, to try to build that and start that in the midst of hurt and pain is setting yourself up for a harder road. So, it’s wise to start right here, right now.

Yep. I think the analogy of gardening and putting the seeds in the ground that brings forth the fruit is good here and attending to it and fertilizing it so that the fruit of gratitude and thanksgiving can continue to come forward. And I’m challenged by this conversation just to even think, how do I teach my children? Okay, because you know what? It has been on the end of circumstance, so maybe the next time they’re sad, I should say, sweetie, let’s give thanks for that. Right? And you didn’t get something from somebody. Well, let’s say thank you.

Yeah. Dad, you have lost it. What are you talking about? You need a reeducation on thanksgiving. That’s right. Yeah. And it does. I mean, you give that silly example, but it’s so true. It just speaks to how much that goes against our nature and therefore doing this is so hard and it’s really Christian.

I don’t know how you could have this viewpoint or have this lifestyle without having a faith in God. And be a Christian. Yeah. Right. What is thanksgiving outside of that understanding? Oh, my goodness. If you don’t have that context, that in the darkness there is redemption, there is light.

It’s law. I mean you have to wait for the results. Yeah. If the circumstances don’t change, there’s nothing to be thankful for. Yeah. I mean, that’s all it would be based on, apart from a biblical worldview that says God is in control. He’s at work here. We are created in his image, so on and so forth. Without those fundamental things present, thankfulness is a shallow thing that’s based on circumstances

Brothers, thank you. This is so hugely important, and I think it speaks just exactly to what we’re talking about with being joyful. And this is a huge action point, very challenging for me. I know that it’s impactful and will be from this day forward.

I’d like to conclude just by painting a brief picture of Jesus. He’s there on the mountainside and there’s 5,000 around him. Everybody’s hungry. There’s no food to be eaten. He’s getting approached by people. He’s no doubt, worn thin. He calls a little boy aside. They get this small sack lunch. And in the midst of that, the first thing Jesus does is give thanks. Isn’t that amazing? And then out of that thanksgiving pours sustenance. Food. Everything they wanted. Isn’t that what we’re speaking of today? In the midst of that need, Jesus expressed thanksgiving as a reaction. And then blessing follows. Yeah. Thanks again for being with us and bringing clarity to these issues.

And to our listeners. Wishing you a blessed Thanksgiving.