Embracing Acceptance and Gratitude in Suffering

Abraham looked at the facts of his life -- his own age and his wife's barrenness -- and it says he staggered not at the promise of God. He looked clearly at the facts, and Christians ought to be people who are prepared to look most steadily at the facts, the awful facts, and then look at the other level on which those facts may be interpreted, and stagger not at the promise of God. [00:01:03]

Paul accepted the thorn, even though it wasn't to his tastes and preferences. Jesus accepted the cup, and said, "Not My will but Thine be done." And that same vision and that same principle ought to characterize each of us Christians as we receive from the hand of God the cup of salvation, with whatever it contains, for our ultimate redemption and perfection. [00:02:04]

Gratitude is my subject today, and I'd like to give you three things to think about under this subject. I'm very gratified to see that there are some note-takers here, and I know I haven't been helping you very much with following points one, two and three or anything like that so I'm going to do my best to make that a little bit better this morning. [00:02:49]

If we can accept a gift then we can say, "Thank you." Now, we all have the experience of receiving all kinds of gifts from friends, and relatives, and great aunts, and people for which we have to say, "Thank you," but we really aren't exactly tickled with their choice. I mean how many crocheted toilet paper covers can a woman use? [00:05:04]

But when we're talking about the gifts of God, we're talking about gifts that come from One who knows exactly what we need, even though it is not necessarily to our tastes and preferences. And He gives us everything which is appropriate to the job that He wants us to do. And so, understanding that, then we can say, "Yes, Lord. [00:05:38]

It's not the experiences of our lives that change us; it is our response to those experiences. And that should be a very noticeable distinction between the Christian and the non-Christian. I mentioned, in an earlier talk, the responses of various people that I saw in Logan Airport one day last February when the airport was closed. [00:06:28]

We all know people who have gone through terrible things and have turned out to be pure gold. I think every one of us knows somebody like that who has been through awful things, and yet that hot fire has refined that steel or that gold. We also know people who have been through equally bad things -- maybe not quite as bad -- but they have turned out to be angry, bitter, resentful, querulous, and generally un-get-along-with-able. [00:07:07]

I think we could divide the world into two classes: the people who make a habit of complaining about what they haven't got -- or what they have got -- and those who make a habit of saying, "Thank you, Lord" for what they haven't got and what they have got. And you remember my basic definition of suffering: having what you don't want, and wanting what you don't have -- which covers the whole gamut from the smallest things, like a toothache or taxes, to a tumor. [00:07:59]

And I remind you of these things because, so often, we can get completely preoccupied with theory, metaphysics, invisible principles up here which are very hard to put into practice in our own lives. So what is your place of need today? Has the wine run out? Are you hungry? Is it something more desperate, like the man who had been crippled for 38 years, or the child who had died, or the widow who had lost her only son, or the baby born blind, or the storm that came up when the disciples thought they were perishing? [00:26:54]

Now, I, personally, have never thanked God for cancer. I have never thanked God specifically that certain Indians murdered my husband. I don't think I need to thank God for the cancer and for the murder, but I do need to thank God that, in the midst of that very situation, the world was still in His hands. The one who keeps all those galaxies wheeling in space is the very hand that holds me. [00:27:55]

And, to my amazement and delight, I discovered that that word "burden" in the Hebrew is the same word as the word for "gift." This is a transforming truth to me. If I thank God for this very thing which is killing me, I can begin, dimly and faintly, to see it as a gift, and to realize that it is through that very thing -- which is so far from being the thing I would've chosen -- that God wants to teach me His way of salvation. [00:31:20]

I will take the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord. I will say, "Yes, Lord." I will say, "Thank you, Lord." [00:32:06]