In Colossians chapter 2, the 7th verse, we're
told that we as Christian believers we are
supposed to abound with thanksgiving.
We are to abound with thanksgiving.
And in Colossians 3.15, the last three
words simply say, Be you thankful.
Be thankful.
And many times as Christians, we're not very
thankful.
Christians often complain as much as sinners do,
and sometimes even more.
I talked with a specialist in Saskatoon several
years ago, and he was new to Canada.
Came from England, he'd lived several years in
numbers of countries around the world.
Now he was in Canada, and he said,
and you Americans won't mind me saying this,
he said, you know, Canada is the greatest
country in the world.
He said, you know, Canada has one half
of all the freshwater lakes in the world.
Did you know that?
You probably didn't.
There's a hundred thousand lakes in Manitoba alone,
you know.
And the mountains, and all this kind of
thing.
He said, opportunities for making money.
He said, it's a fabulous country.
I've never been in a country like it
in my life, he said.
But I want to tell you something else,
he said.
See, I've been sharing Christ with him.
And he said, I want to tell you
something else.
I have never lived in a country where
the people complain the way they do in
Canada.
Nobody's satisfied with anything.
And he said, you know what's happening?
I said, no.
He said, I'm starting to complain.
You know.
Abounding therein with thanksgiving.
Be thankful.
Unthankfulness is the characteristic, a characteristic, of the
unbelieving world.
So Paul tells us in Romans chapter 1,
he says that when they knew God.
And remember, historically speaking, there was a time
when there were no atheists in the world.
You know, right after the dawn of creation,
nobody doubted there was a God, see.
They didn't doubt that.
Because it was too fresh in everybody's mind.
Creation and everything.
But it says, when they knew God, they
did not glorify his God as God.
Neither were thankful.
They were not thankful.
And so it says, as a result, it
became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish
heart was darkened.
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God
into an image made like the corruptible man,
into birds, into four-footed beasts, and creeping
things.
And then three things happened.
Twice it says God gave them up, and
once it says God gave them over.
Because they were not thankful.
Once a year we sing the song, come
you thankful people, come raise the song of
Harvest Dawn.
Once a year we sing that.
Just once a year, usually.
And the rest of the time sometimes we
complain, and we murmur, and it grieves the
Spirit of God.
Paul told us, in 2 Timothy chapter 3,
that one of the characteristics of the last
day would be that people would be unthankful
and unholy.
Unthankful and unholy.
A characteristic of the last days.
And it's a characteristic, I know, of the
Church of God.
I hear all kinds of complaining among God's
people.
I like something that happened in Manitoba some
years ago.
A plane crashed up in the wilderness.
And if you crash in the wilderness in
Canada, you may or may not ever be
found.
There's all kinds of planes that went down
that they've never found, you know.
A plane went down in 1940 during the
air training thing they had for the war
in Canada, and they never found it until
two years ago.
And they were building a highway up in
the northern Quebec somewhere, and when they came
across an airplane sitting on a high point
of land, and there was a skeleton at
the controls, they'd been looking for that plane.
Well, they'd given up, of course, but it
was gone that long.
Well, these guys crashed.
Nobody was hurt.
And then they knew if they walked south
far enough, they'd hit a road or a
railroad or some civilization, so they started going
south.
Because there was no plane circling the air
looking for them, they were looking for them
in a different area and all this kind
of thing.
Anyway, one of the fellows kept a diary
on Birch Park with calls from the campfire.
They didn't have much to eat, so one
day they threw some rocks at some partridge,
and they got these partridge, and they...
And so he kept a record of this
and said, Dear Lord, well, it always started
Dear Lord, so he must have been a
Christian.
And he said, Today we managed to kill
some partridge.
We didn't eat them all because we hadn't
seen much game, and so we thought we'd
better save some.
They didn't have any refrigeration, of course, and
so later on there came another Dear Lord
several days later.
Dear Lord, today we ate the last of
the partridge.
And he said, They stunk like terrible, they
tasted horrible, but Dear Lord, I'm not complaining,
I'm just reporting.
And maybe we can follow his good example,
not complaining, just reporting.
But what does God say?
Abounding.
What about today?
Abounding with thanksgiving, yes.
No matter what the situation is, abounding with
thanksgiving.
Unthankfulness is a characteristic also of people who
are full of lust.
It says so in Jude, verse 16.
There's one chapter in that book, as you
probably know.
It says these are murmurers, complainers, walking after
their own lusts.
They're murmurers and complainers.
And the Bible has uncomplimentary things to say
both about murmurers and complainers.
For example, did you know this?
That if you start to complain, you will
go down spiritually?
It says so in the Psalms, I complained,
and my spirit was overwhelmed.
And you'll be overwhelmed by your own complaining
heart.
See?
So murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts.
Then, it's a characteristic of a proud man's
heart.
Do you remember the Gospel of Luke when
the Pharisee prayed thus with himself?
I like that little phrase, he prayed with
himself.
It means, of course, that heaven was not
listening.
He was just flapping his lips, and nobody
was listening at all.
But he said, God, I thank Thee.
He was very thankful for what?
He was very thankful for himself.
I thank Thee that I am not as
other men are.
That's what he was saying.
I'm not unjust, I'm not an extortioner, I'm
not an adulterer, I'm not like this publican,
I fast twice in a week, I give
tithes of all that I possess.
Heaven, you ought to be very thankful for
me.
But heaven wasn't even listening.
He didn't really have a thankful heart at
all for the proper things.
He was just stuck on himself, in love
with himself.
And under a terrible misconception that heaven was
very pleased with him, because he wasn't like
this publican over here.
But, of course, he was filled with self
-righteous pride, which to God was as bad
as anything, or maybe even worse, than a
publican had done.
It's a characteristic of proud people, that they're
too proud even to thank God.
They think they did it all by themselves.
Or they think that maybe they belong to
a lucky family or something, you know.
And God doesn't get glory or credit for
anything that goes on in some people's lives,
and sadly, in some Christians' lives.
Many of us haven't learned how to be
thankful for the smallest blessings that God may
give.
Unthankfulness, then, a characteristic of a sinful heart,
we might put it that way, of a
carnal heart.
You know, we sing, count your many blessings,
name them one by one, and it will
surprise you what the Lord has done, but
we don't count our blessings.
Very seldom do we do that.
I think it's a good thing maybe once
a day to just rehearse the blessings of
God, all the good things God has done
for us.
There are so many, when you really get
to think about them, but a carnal Christian,
he'll never think about that.
All he can see is the bad things,
or the things he thinks are bad, at
least the things that are not working out
according to his plans.
And since he's not surrendered to the will
of God, he's always unhappy because things are
not happening the way he thinks they should
happen.
He just wishes God had come down for
a counseling session so he could counsel God,
get him on the couch and tell him
better, you know.
So we have this unthankful heart.
Why should we be thankful?
There's a thousand reasons why.
I guess one of them would simply be
the fact that God tells us to be
thankful.
We've noted two texts already that said that,
and they're by no means all that God
has to say in this area of being
thankful.
But in Deuteronomy chapter 8, Moses talked about
what he called blessings of basket and store.
And that refers to what we would call
material blessings.
I don't know if you've ever traveled in
third world countries, but I've been in a
lot of third world countries preaching, and every
time I come home, you know, I've said
to my wife many times, I just feel
like kissing the ground.
Put her back in Canada again.
Most of these countries, dear people, if you
don't have a job, there's no such thing
as unemployment insurance.
If you get hurt on a job, there's
no such thing as workman's compensation.
If you're a widower, there's nothing for widows.
If you're an orphan, there's nobody looking after
orphans.
I've been in cities where there's thousands of
orphan kids just roaming the streets, trying to
live by their wits.
They'll rob you if they get a chance,
and you can hardly blame them, they're trying
to exist.
How would you feel if you saw a
lady, maybe 30 years of age, in India,
crawling over the top of a heap of
garbage, and she's got a bag, and she's
looking for orange peels and banana peels to
put something in the bag to take home
so her kids won't starve to death.
And then we complain about this and complain
about that.
We've got so much here, like the Bible
says, we have more than a heart could
wish.
In Sergao, which is a city of 80
or 90,000 in Mindanao, in southern Philippines,
I've been there, and I have movies of
all this.
Here were two streets, like one street, two
blocks.
And you know what it was?
It was called Garbage Street.
You see, there was no garbage pickup.
So by agreement of the people, they decided
to make these two blocks Garbage Street, so
everybody brought their garbage and dumped it in
these two streets.
So when I took my movies there, the
garbage pile was six or eight feet high,
and it ran for two blocks, and it
stretched from house to house, right across the
street.
No traffic could ever get down the street.
And sometimes we complain because the garbage pickup
is a little bit late.
No garbage pickup at all.
I was in Chile, and an interpreter brought
me a fellow one night, a great big
guy, he was twice my size, and he
was crying, and the interpreter was trying to
get him quietened down, so he could interpret
to me what he wanted to say.
And finally I got it.
The message was this.
He had two full-time jobs, he was
working 18 to 20 hours a day, and
he couldn't make enough money to properly support
his family, and he wanted me to tell
him what to do.
What would you tell him?
I'll tell you, I really struggled with that.
What could I tell him?
You may not know this, but in many
of these third world countries, if they could
get to the United States of America or
to Canada by swimming, they'd swim.
They'd do anything to get out of their
country.
Because of the rotten system.
Somebody called politics in third world countries political
mayhem, and that's exactly what it is.
It's dog eat dog.
And the worst cook is usually at the
top.
And everybody's out to feather their own nest,
and they sock money away in the Swiss
banks, and if the thing blows in their
own country, they hop a plane and they're
gone, and then the people have to pick
up the pieces.
One kid, a Christian kid who backslid terribly
finally, just because of the bitterness in his
heart over the situation in his own country,
he said, our country's had about 30 revolutions
in the last 50 years, and not one
has produced anything better.
Just a different bunch of cooks at the
top.
And he was right, that's how it was.
And then we complain.
I went into a tailor shop in Madras
in India one time, and asked the owner
if I could take some movies, and he
said I could, and I took some movies
in there, and then I talked to some
of the...
He had four men, each man with a
sewing machine, and they were working eight, nine,
ten hours a day, so I asked them,
how much money do you make?
It was two dollars a week.
Two dollars a week.
Nobody in his right mind would work for
two dollars an hour here.
There are at least 70 countries in the
world where the average annual income is one
percent of what you make here in the
United States of America.
One percent.
Like a hundred dollars a year.
And we complain.
We do complain.
And I said to myself, I wonder how
in the world God looks at this.
It bothers me when I hear people complaining
in North America.
Blessings of basket and store?
We ought to be praising God all day
and all night for the blessings of basket
and store we enjoy here.
Transportation.
Could I give you a little contrast?
I met a fellow in India, and he
was maybe 25 years of age, and God
had called him to be a pastor, and
some church had called him to be their
pastor, and he had to wait six months
before he went, I forget why, but he
could hardly wait to get there, you know.
So I asked him some interesting questions.
Like I said, how much are they going
to pay you?
What kind of a salary?
And he looked blank.
And he said, well, we never talked about
that.
I don't know if they'll pay me anything.
I said, where will you stay?
Will they have a house for you?
He laughed, no, no, he said, I hope
one family will have a room somewhere, and
if not, he said, I can sleep under
a, you know, under a bridge or under
a platform or something, that's no problem.
And I said, how big a library do
you have?
And he held it up.
One little tattered old Bible, four by six
inches falling apart.
That was his library.
I said, so how will you get around?
Will you have a, I knew he wouldn't
have a car, so will you have a
donkey or a horse or a bicycle or
something?
No, he said, I can't afford anything like
that.
I'll just walk, he said.
And you know what?
He could hardly wait to go.
By way of contrast, in Canada, I know
a church, they asked a man to candidate,
and the salary he'd been getting before was
$42,000 a year, and the church offered
him $35,000, and he said he couldn't
come for that, it wasn't enough money.
He had to have $42,000.
He couldn't go down to this lower level,
you see.
And I say to myself, what in the
world?
I mean, how does God look at all
this?
I think a lot of things are going
to be reversed, dear people, when we get
to heaven, and God begins giving out the
rewards.
A lot of us people here in North
America think we've shone pretty good.
We'll find out that our lamp glass was
full of smoke, you know, and the flame
was out, and we didn't even know it.
We'd be in the back row instead of
the front row.
Alright.
Blessings are a basket and store them.
In Ephesians chapter 1, Paul talks about, he
says, God has blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in heavenly things, in Christ.
The spiritual blessings.
And there's so many.
There's a list of them in Ephesians chapter
1, and I mean almost every book of
the Bible, especially in the New Testament.
It's all these spiritual blessings that God has
given us.
And you see, and rising out of that,
you remember in Romans chapter 8, it says,
He that spared not his own son, but
delivered him up for us all, how shall
he not with him also freely give us
all things?
So Paul said, All things are yours, whether
Paul or Apollos or Peter or the world
or life or death or things present or
things to come, all are yours, and you
are Christ's, and Christ is God's.
All things are yours.
How rich we are.
No wonder Paul said, Thanks be unto God
for his unspeakable gift.
It's a gift so great.
Christ is a gift so great that words
fail.
They break down.
They can't carry the load.
They can't carry the message.
You can't describe it really.
God's gift of his son to a sinful
world.
Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.
You can't think of anything else to thank
God for, thank Him for Christ.
God has given to us eternal life, and
this life is in His Son.
He that has the Son has life, and
he that has not the Son of God
has not life.
We can thank God then for the spiritual
gifts.
Christ, eternal life, the Holy Spirit, the gifts
of the Spirit, and many other things enumerated
in the word of God.
If we just, you know, one of the
problems I think is we just don't take
time to get along with God so we
can really think and let God speak to
our hearts.
If you and I were to get along
with God and say, Lord, show me some
of the things you've done, He'd flood your
mind, and you'd begin to see all kinds
of things that God has done.
The Lord just pushed something into my mind.
I'll have to share it with you, I
guess.
It comes from India.
I was sitting in a station at Lucknow
in India, and there was a number of
missionaries there, including a lady missionary, and we
were talking.
The train leaves eight hours late, and of
course there they don't let you know.
You just wait till the train comes, you
know.
And so we were waiting, and here came
a man, and he was terribly twisted, his
body was.
He didn't have hands, proper hands.
He had kind of sticks tied on and
stuff, and then he was pulling himself with
his elbows like this across the platform, you
see, and he had a rope over his
shoulder and a little carton behind.
He was dragging this cart.
He had it kind of tied around himself,
and he came over, and this lady missionary
said to me, He's a Christian, and he
won't beg for a living.
There's thousands of beggars in India.
He won't beg for a living.
He wants to make his own living.
He shines shoes.
She said, Let him shine your shoes.
So we beckoned him over, and he came,
and he shined my shoes, and he had
such a happy face.
And she told me, she said, He's a
great Christian, you know.
And she spoke to him, and they spoke
back and forth, and he was just praising
the Lord.
So I said, Be sure you tell him
I love Jesus too.
So she did, and his face just lit
up like a June morning, and so afterwards,
I forget, I gave him maybe ten times
what he'd normally get, which didn't even amount
to half a dollar, you know.
And she said, Oh, you've just made his
day.
He's such a sweet Christian.
And I hear again, you know, I think
of that, and I think, Oh, that man
is as precious to God as Dwight L.
Moody, Billy Graham, or you and me.
And in heaven, he'll shine.
All his body problems will be gone.
He'll shine like the stars forever and ever.
People want to get things straightened out in
our mind, to see them as God sees
them, because God is the eventual, the only
eventual reality in the universe.
And the love of God, that's the greatest,
I hate to use the word, thing of
all.
The love of God.
All right.
Blessings of a basket in store.
Blessings of the promises of God.
7,487 promises in the Bible.
If you were to take a one every
day, a new one every day, you can
go for 21 years.
And why would someone say, Well, they don't
all apply to us.
Well, suppose they don't all apply to us.
So what?
A lot of them do.
And whatever things were written before, Paul said
in Romans 15, referring to the Old Testament
Scriptures, was written for our learning, our instruction.
So when you read the Old Testament, expect
God to speak to you from it, and
he will.
Precepts, commands, examples, the Bible is loaded with
them.
How thankful we ought to be for this
book.
Thank God, if you had no other book
in the world, you could be a well
-educated person by just studying the Bible and
applying its principles.
You'd be a cultured person, a wise person.
Yes, and a Christian person, too, if you
listen to it.
So to be thankful.
Be thankful.
Here are some things that we can be
thankful for.
Answers to prayer.
Jesus said, Ask and you shall receive that
your joy may be full.
And George Mueller, the famous man of faith
and prayer from Bristol, England, you will remember
that he kept a prayer ledger.
Some of you will know this.
One called him the prayer, and the next
called him the date he began praying, and
the third called him the day when God
answered.
And when he was 85 years of age,
he lived to be 94.
When he was 85, he began adding up
the figures, and he had 30,000 prayers
that God answered the same day he prayed.
And he had a larger list of 55
,000 answers to prayer that took God longer
than a day, maybe a week or a
month or a year or 20 years.
Somebody asked him, Mr. Mueller, Do you ever
give up when you pray for something?
Do you ever give up?
And he said, George Mueller never gives up
because God is faithful.
He is faithful that promised.
And he is faithful, and we ought to
be thankful just thinking of that, the marvelous
faithfulness of God to his people.
God can do anything but fail.
We say it glibly, but it's a fact
that God can do anything but fail.
God never sleeps.
He that keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor
sleep.
I will both lay me down in peace
and sleep, for thou, Lord, only makest me
dwell in safety.
We had a house break-in a while
ago, and it made my wife pretty nervous,
and so I thought, since I'm on the
road so much, I'll get a security system.
So we put in a security system.
And my daughter, Joanna, who lives with us
two days a week, she counsels two days
a week at a Christian counseling center in
Winnipeg, so it's quite close to our house,
so she stays with us those two days.
Then she works in a thing called Genesis
Counseling Center at the Winnipeg Bible College and
Seminary, so she lives there the rest of
the week.
So she was staying in our house, and
she said she couldn't sleep all night wondering
if that system was going to go off.
You know, it's supposed to give you, you
know, peace.
And she said, Dad, it was terrible.
She said, I could hardly sleep at all.
I was just waiting for that stupid thing
to go off, you know.
No, security's in God, really, isn't it?
I will both lay me down in peace
and sleep, for thou, Lord, only makest me
dwell in safety, so our safety is in
Him.
And so no matter where we are, what
happens?
We can just praise the Lord.
He's with us.
You know, if we would praise the Lord
more, we'd see more of God's power and
God's grace.
I know that.
Abounding with thanksgiving.
He always responds.
God always responds to that sort of thing
when He sees a thankful heart, because there's
so few people that are really thankful.
Did you ever notice Jacob's prayer, not prayer
exactly, but his confession, his testimony before Pharaoh
over there in Genesis chapter 48?
You know, Pharaoh looks at this old man,
Joseph's father, and he says, How old are
you?
And I think to myself, Man, now Jacob's
got a fantastic opportunity to share with Pharaoh,
greatest monarch of his time, about the power
of God and the salvation of God, and
they blew the whole thing away.
Remember what he said?
He said, well, in effect what he said
was this, Well, my days have been few.
He said, I've only lived 130 years and
my days have been evil.
I've had all kinds of terrible things happen,
you know.
I said, man, he sounds like a modern
Christian, you know.
And he blew it.
And then it says he blessed Pharaoh.
I think Pharaoh must have had mixed emotions
about that blessing.
I mean, if being a believer in the
living God means that your years are going
to be few and you'll have an evil
time, forget about the blessing.
I don't want that kind of blessing.
I'm sure Pharaoh must have had mixed emotions.
Maybe Jacob had a fight with his wife
or something that morning.
I don't know what went on, but something
was wrong that there was no joy there.
He just wasn't rejoicing in the Lord.
Gordon Bailey knows Kurt Bork in Canada.
He's a good friend of ours.
He's been a faithful Christian worker for many,
many years, preaching in logging camps.
He's a great person.
He's got a little phrase.
He'll say, Happy-loo-ya anyhow.
Happy-loo-ya anyhow.
I heard him say it many times.
One time he and I were sitting on
a bunk in a bush camp.
I was with the same mission for some
years.
And, of course, it was a double bunk.
So there's a bunk up here, you know,
with the angle iron on the side and
the bunk here.
And Kurt got up suddenly and forgot there
was anything above him.
And he cracked his head on this thing
there.
You know, he just stood there sort of
swaying.
I know he really hurt himself.
And then he said, Well, happy-loo-ya
anyhow.
Now, some people have trouble with that.
Some Christians have trouble with that.
They say he's stupid.
That's stupid.
He's a fanatic of some kind, you know.
Is he really?
Dear people, I don't suppose anything grieves the
heart of God as much as to see
unthankful Christians.
All that we have, as we've noted, spiritual,
blessings of basket and store, and all the
rest of it, and still we can't somehow
really praise the Lord from our hearts.
I heard of a woman in Scotland.
She was very, very poor.
And all she had for this meal happened
to be a part of a loaf of
bread, and it was dry and a little
bit moldy.
And she took the bread in her hands
and she looked up to heaven and she
said, All this, and heaven too?
Praise the Lord.
I'm sure God was pleased with that because,
well, it's so rare to find Christians who
really rejoice in the Lord.
Now, in the third chapter of Philippians, the
Apostle Paul said, Rejoice in the Lord always,
and again I say rejoice.
And there's a little chorus.
I'm not a singer, but it goes like
this.
Rejoice in the Lord all way, all way,
and again I say rejoice.
Rejoice in the Lord all way, all way,
and again I say rejoice.
Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice in the Lord all way.
Rejoice in the Lord all way, all way,
and again I say rejoice.
Rejoice in the Lord all way, all way,
and again I say rejoice.
That's a great little chorus.
Always.
Pains, aches, praise the Lord.
Paul said, Most gladly therefore will I rather
glory in my infirmities that the power of
Christ may rest upon me.
And one of the ways, dear people, to
get the power of God in your life
is to rejoice and glory in tribulations, persecutions,
distresses, necessities, and persecute, all of these things
for Christ's sake, Paul said, for when I
am weak, then am I strong.
Peter said the same thing in 1 Peter
chapter 4.
He said, If you be reproached for the
name of Christ, happy are you for the
spirit of glory and of God is resting
upon you.
But we don't do that.
We complain and we murmur and we wonder
why and all this kind of thing.
God allows trials and tribulations to come, dear
people, to test us.
It isn't that he's forgotten us.
He never forgets his people.
He cannot.
But he does test us in these ways.
Now, 1 Timothy chapter 2, verse 1 says,
I exhort, therefore, that, first of all, supplications,
prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made
for all men.
Do you ever thank God for electricians and
plumbers and carpenters and policemen and truck drivers
and school teachers and all the rest of
them?
Ever do that?
I heard of a fellow who was a
great witness for God and he'd meet some
person and the first question he'd ask would
be, What's your profession?
And the fellow would say, Well, I'm a
plumber.
You're a plumber?
I've been praying for you.
And the guy would say, What?
We just met.
Oh, yeah, but I pray for plumbers all
the time.
The Bible says to do it, to give
thanks for all men.
Because we live in a highly integrated society,
you can't live without garbage collectors.
I mean, you could, but it would be
kind of rough.
And plumbers and all the rest of it,
right?
So, give thanks for all men.
Then it talks about giving thanks for our
politicians.
Well, a lot of them are rascals.
I don't know why it is they get
so many that are rascals.
We have the same problem here.
When you had Watergate, we had Harborgate.
You never heard about Harborgate, did you?
Of course you didn't.
Canadians know how to cover up their sin.
You Americans don't.
You know?
Now, we've got rascals.
Our President, Prime Minister, he shot himself in
the foot so often he can't walk anymore.
You know?
He went in as one of the biggest
majority in Canadian history and right now he's
right down at the bottom in the public
polls.
He's, so much graft and corruption and junk
going on, not himself personally has been totally
implicated, but, you know, some of his henchmen.
I don't know why that is.
But still the Bible says we're to give
thanks for kings and for all that are
in authority.
We're supposed to do that.
So, it doesn't say do it with reservations
or with your tongue in your cheek either.
But they are running the country and our
countries are run a lot better.
Canada and the States and most countries are.
I'll tell you, it's, oh.
You know the first time I was in
Argentina, you know what they told us?
One of the first things the people told
us?
Don't get near a policeman.
I said, why not?
They'll rob you.
Oh, I said, come on.
Policeman robs sure, they said.
I said, what do you mean they'll rob?
I said, they'll ask for money.
I said, do you have to give them
money?
Well, they said, if he's got a pistol,
you better because his gun might go off
accidentally.
And I found out it was a way
of life down there.
I was driving in a missionary and we
came to a roadblock and the roadblock ostensibly
was for the policemen.
They had a little place and a bunch
of policemen to search for terrorists.
So, this policeman comes over very sloppily dressed
and very sloppy in his demeanor and he
wanted to search the trunk.
So, he opened the trunk and he looked
in the trunk and then he came over
and he held out a raffle ticket and
he wanted the driver to buy it.
And the driver said something to him in
Spanish and I mean, the driver was, he
was a missionary, he was really angry and
the policeman looked at him and shuffled away.
And I said, what was that all about?
Well, he said, I just told him, look,
I bought one of your stupid raffle tickets
when I came down here.
You stopped me at the same roadblock and
I'm not going to buy one going back
because there's no such thing as a raffle,
you see.
If they just print these tickets and you
have to pay them for it, you don't
get through the roadblock.
There is no raffle, you don't even stand
a chance of winning anything, see.
Just a big deal, you know.
That's the police.
A guy moved into Buenos Aires and he
made the mistake of telling the police that
he was going away for two weeks holidays,
please guard my house.
When he came back, there wasn't even wallpaper
left in the walls, you know.
Well, it's not that way here, so don't
complain.
Thank God, thank God, thank God, thank God.
Rejoice in the Lord always.
I find people in those situations praising God.
Some of them know how to praise God
better than we do here.
They've got so little to praise God for
in one sense.
The spiritual blessings are theirs too, but I
mean in other respects.
I'm sure God knows how to sort it
out.
Well, be anxious for nothing, be careful for
nothing, but in everything, but in everything, by
prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving.
Let your requests be made known unto God,
and the peace of God which passes all
understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through
Christ Jesus.
There it is again, with thanksgiving.
Pray with thanksgiving.
I find it really helps because people often
tell me, well, I fall asleep praying and
I have trouble praying, you know.
I say start by thanking God.
Start with thanksgiving.
Even make a list if you have to.
Think of all the things.
I see a man with only one leg.
I thank God I've got two.
I see a man with one hand.
I thank God I've got two.
I see a blind person.
I thank God I've got eyes I can
see through.
I saw a fellow sitting in a station
platform in India, he and his wife or
girlfriend, whatever, and his feet were as green
as grass with gangrene or something, and he
had a stick and he was taking pieces
of meat off the bottom of his feet.
Terrible.
He couldn't go to a doctor.
He never had any money.
In a lot of those countries if you
get sick, you know, you can't phone for
a doctor.
First of all, you don't have a phone,
and secondly, there's no doctor available, so you
put up with it.
Well, I don't know where you're at, but
I know it is a problem with most
Christians to be truly thankful, rejoicing in the
Lord always.
You remember in Luke 10, Jesus said, like
he sent the 70 out and he told
them to heal the sick and to preach
the kingdom.
They came back and said, Lord, even the
demons are subject unto us through your name.
And he said, in this rejoice not that
the spirits are subject unto you, but rather
rejoice because your names are written in heaven.
And there's a hymn that says something like
this.
Written in heaven, O glorious thought, this consolation
to me Christ hath brought.
Your name is written in the book of
God.
That's something that never changes.
You may have some defeats when you're warring
and battling with the devil, but your name
will always be in the Lamb's book of
life.
You've received Christ as your savior, God's child.
Rejoice that your names are written in God's
book.
So we're not to rejoice in some of
the things we do rejoice in.
It makes me sick sometimes.
I was in the church, an evangelical church
a while ago, and they were raising money
because they were behind.
They built a big building.
They were quite a bit behind in money,
so they had all kinds of schemes and
projects to get this money.
And so the preacher explained to the people
that that text in the Bible that says
you're not to let your left hand know
what your right hand is doing, that that
doesn't mean that you shouldn't let the people
in the church know how much you're giving.
He had some other explanation for it.
I don't know what the explanation was.
I've never heard of anything so stupid in
all my life.
But anyway, he had a gun to his
head.
He had to get the people giving, and
so he wanted to play one against another.
This was the idea, you see.
So then if you gave, you were to
tell the church how much you were giving.
He had them come up with a platform.
And people came up with a platform.
My wife and I were sitting there.
I couldn't believe it, you know.
And somebody said, well, the Lord told us
we're to give $2,000 and we're going
to do it in the next three years.
And then a fellow came up, a member
in good standing, a good sound evangelical church,
you know.
And this fellow came up, and he said
the Lord has told my wife and I
we're to give $40,000 in the next
three years, so we're not going to take
any holidays, we're not going to buy that
new car we're going to buy.
And when the people, first of all, when
they got there, they gave their name, they
told what their jobs were, you see.
Do you know what his job was?
For the province of Manitoba, he was the
top man for the lotteries for the whole
province of Manitoba, which is a big gambling
thing, you know, you see.
And, of course, when he said he was
going to give $40,000, the amens were
broken all over the place, you know, $40
,000.
Isn't that fantastic?
I would say if the devil's money, I
don't think it's so great.
But anyway, there's some strange, strange things going
on in the Christian world today because people
are almost totally ignorant of the Bible.
They don't know what it says.
Some people don't have a clue.
I hear it again, oh, that's in the
Bible?
I didn't know that was in the Bible.
Like a fellow one time, believe it or
not, he taught Sunday school.
And I'm not being critical, but I'm just
saying.
And I quoted a verse in the meeting,
and he said, you quoted this verse, he
said, you know, it's funny, he said, I
know the Bible pretty good.
He said, I don't think, I don't remember
that verse at all.
He said, where's it found?
I said, it's in the book of Hebrews.
Oh, yeah.
He said, I knew it had to be
in the Old Testament.
He said, you know, I know the New
Testament off by heart.
But I think we need to ask, I
think we need to repent before God at
the same time for our lack of thankfulness.
And you may have a bad home situation,
but you do have a home.
I saw a fellow in India.
You know what his home was?
A cardboard box.
A big cardboard box sitting on the sidewalk.
And he cut the front up two sides
and across the top so that in the
daytime he could let the front down so
the sun would come in.
In the nighttime he'd pull it up so
he'd be alone in there, you know.
Of course, when the rainy season came, which
once a year at least, you know, then
he'd lose his house.
I took movies of the fellow.
His house was about this tall, and it
was just a bunch of sticks and hunks
of paper and junk and just long enough.
And he had to back in there, lying
on his stomach, just back in there.
That was his home.
And I took a picture of him standing
in front of his house.
He didn't have, I think he had one
tooth left in his head because he couldn't,
of course, afford to go to a dentist.
And oh, dear people.
I mean, the Lord definitely laid this on
my heart to share with you this morning.
And I don't want to sound critical at
all, but I know it's a major problem
on God's people in North America today that
we're so thankless and we want more and
nobody's satisfied and nobody's happy.
I want to close.
You remember it says that some people suppose
that gain is godliness.
And he said, from such people, turn away.
Don't listen to them.
Gain is not godliness.
He said, we brought nothing into this world
and it is certain we can carry nothing
out.
A rich man dies, and the inevitable question
is, how much did he leave?
And the proper answer is he left it
all.
He left it all.
And so it goes on to say in
1 Timothy 6, having food and clothing, let
us be there with content.
For we brought nothing into this world and
it is certain we can carry nothing out.
How many Christians in North America would be
content with food and clothing only?
No car, no house, maybe a house to
rent or something, but not a house you
own.
Food and clothing.
Be content.
Godliness with contentment is great gain, he says,
great gain.
So to flee, as a matter of fact,
he used that very word, flee from a
pursuit of material gain.
Flee these things, man of God, Paul said,
flee these things, and follow after righteousness and
godliness and love.
These are the things to pursue, but not
material things.
If they come use them for the glory
of God, be thankful, but don't ever set
your heart on them.
Set your mind on things above, your affection
on things above, not on things on the
earth, for you are dead and your life
is hid with Christ in God.
And I guess one of the reasons why
we can't praise God the way we should
is because the old self problem.
We're living under the dominion of the old
man yet and we haven't gotten free.
And we can be free by the grace
and power of God, we can be free,
we can get to the place where we
can be thankful for, you know, potatoes that
are not even cooked.
Wilberforce was a famous English politician who loved
God with all his heart.
They called him a butterfly.
His wife was an abominable cook, and sometimes
Wilberforce, everybody he saw he'd invite to his
house for meals.
And people who knew better never ever went
because the food was so horrible.
Everything was cold and either burnt or cold
or something was wrong with it.
But they all agreed they never saw a
man so happy in the Lord in all
their life as Wilberforce.
Just praising the Lord.
He loved his wife, he didn't care about
the cooking.
I guess he knew what all of us
know but sometimes forget.
That in the glory land we aren't going
to have leaky roofs or leaky taps or
flat tires in cars or bad crops or
anything of that kind.
So can't we put up with these few
things for now and glorify God in the
fires to use a biblical phrase and set
an example to the world out there.
They need to.
But if they see that I'm happy under
adverse circumstances and maybe desperate circumstances I'm still
praising the Lord.
Then that says something to them.
It speaks powerfully to their hearts.
All right, abounding therein with thanksgiving.
Now you may struggle with that but this
is what God says.
And those three words again.
Be you thankful.
Let the peace of God rule in your
hearts it says.
And be you thankful.
Let's pray.
Father, we thank you for all you've done
for us and all you mean to us.
You have given us eternal life and this
life is in your Son.
And you said he that has the Son
has life and he that has not the
Son of God has not life.
Oh God, you have blessed us in marvelous,
marvelous ways.
And Father, no doubt many of us here
today are not really truly thankful as we
should be and this grieves your heart.
And Father, we pray you'll work powerfully in
all of us in these days.
Change us Lord.
We read of the early disciples in Acts
13.52 it says, And the disciples were
filled with joy and with the Holy Ghost.
For again, Father, in Romans 14, the kingdom
of God is not meat and drink but
righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy
Ghost.
Oh Father, dear God, lead us to this,
we pray, lead us to this place where
our hearts are wholly thine and we don't
complain.
Because you said to all things about murmurings
and disputings that you may be blameless and
harmless as sons of God without rebuke in
the midst of a crooked and perverse nation
among whom you shine as lights in the
world.
Oh God, forgive us for complaining and murmuring
when we should be rejoicing.
And dear God, continue to work in our
hearts.
We pray in Christ's name.
Amen.