Thanksgiving Versus Complaining

"Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you" (1 Thessalonians 5:18).

Thanksgiving and complaining are two contrastive attitudes. The soul that gives thanks can find comfort in everything; the soul that complains can find comfort in nothing.

God’s command is, "In everything give thanks." It is a positive command. If we want to obey God, we simply must give thanks in everything. There is no getting around it. Yet many Christians look upon this as a "counsel of perfection" that mere flesh and blood could never reach. Unconsciously, they change the wording to "be resigned" instead of "give thanks," and "in a few things" instead of "in everything."

They argue, "If everything came direct from God, I might do it, but most things come through human sources or sin." To this I answer: we cannot always give thanks for the things themselves, but we can always give thanks for God’s love in the things. He is in them somewhere, compelling even the most grievous to work together for our good. Faith never sees "second causes" (the people or mistakes that hurt us); it sees only the hand of God behind them. By the time the effects of a trial reach us, they have become God's will for us and must be accepted from his hands.

The story of Joseph is an illustration. Nothing could have seemed more contrary to God’s will than being sold into slavery by his brothers. Yet, if he had known the end from the beginning, he would have been filled with thanksgiving. His slavery was the direct doorway to the greatest blessings of his life. At the end, Joseph could say, "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good" (Genesis 50:20). To the eye of sense, his brothers sent him to Egypt; to the eye of faith, "God sent me" (Genesis 45:7).

I remember a trial in my own life brought upon me by another person. I was filled with bitter rebellion and saw nothing to be thankful for. But that very trial worked out the richest blessings of my life. If only I had had faith enough to give thanks at first, how much sorrow I would have been spared.

I am afraid the highest many Christians reach is "striving after resignation" to things they cannot alter. Thanksgiving is almost an unknown exercise. In the world, it is considered discourteous to receive a benefit and fail to say thank you; I cannot see why it is not just as discourteous toward God. We wouldn't dream of omitting a thank-you note to a human friend for a trifling gift, yet we fail to thank God for the innumerable benefits he showers on us.

Worse still, many allow themselves to complain and murmur. We are told that "the people complained in the hearing of the Lord about their misfortunes, and when the Lord heard it, his anger was kindled" (Numbers 11:1). We are tempted to think our "spiritual" complaining doesn't displease him—that it is a sign of zeal or deep insight. But complaining is the opposite of the faith that pleases God.

But complaining is always alike, whether it is on the temporal or the spiritual plane. It always contains the element of fault-finding. Webster says to complain means "to make a charge or an accusation." It is not merely disliking the thing we have to bear; it is finding fault with the agency that lies behind it. If we carefully examine the inwardness of our complainings, we shall generally find they are founded on a subtle fault-finding with God. We secretly feel as if He were to blame, and we make mental charges against Him.

On the other hand, thanksgiving always involves praise of the Giver. Have you ever noticed how much we are urged in the Bible to "praise the Lord"? It was the principal part of Israel's worship: "Praise the Lord, for the Lord is good; sing to his name, for it is pleasant!" (Psalm 135:3). I believe if we counted them, we would find more commands to give thanks "always for all things" than for any other act. It is evident that the Lord loves to be thanked and praised just as much as we do. It gives Him real pleasure, and our failure to thank Him for His "good and perfect gifts" (James 1:17) wounds His heart, just as ours are wounded when loved ones fail to appreciate what we bestow upon them.

When the Apostle exhorts us to be "imitators of God, as beloved children," he includes this: "giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Ephesians 5:1, 20). "Always for all things" is a sweeping expression. It must mean that there is nothing in our lives—no matter the channel—that does not contain a hidden blessing from God.

The Apostle tells us that "everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving" (1 Timothy 4:4). But it is hard to believe things are good when they do not look so. Often, God’s gifts look like curses to those who only see the surface.

How many "good and perfect gifts" have we looked upon as curses? For how many have we thanked ourselves, our friends, or our circumstances, without looking behind the earthly givers to the Heavenly Giver? It is as if we thanked the messenger but never sent word to the friend who sent the gift.

Even when we realize things come from God, it is hard to thank Him for what hurts. Yet, we thank a skillful physician for a treatment, even if it is severe. Should we not likewise thank our Divine Physician when He gives us bitter medicine to cure a spiritual disease, or performs a painful operation to rid us of something harmful?

Instead of thanking Him, we complain. We usually direct our complaints not against the Physician, but against the "bottle" in which He sent the medicine. This "bottle" is usually a human being whose unkindness or neglect caused our suffering—but they are only the "second cause" God used for our healing. Common sense tells us it is folly to rail against the medicine bottle; it is equal folly to rail against the "second causes" meant to teach our souls.

When the Israelites wandered, they "murmured against Moses and Aaron" (Exodus 16:2). But in reality, their complaining was against God, for He had brought them there. The Psalmist calls this "speaking against God" (Psalm 78:19). Divine history takes no account of second causes; it goes directly to the real Cause behind them.

We may settle it, then: all complaining is "speaking against God." Second causes are powerless to act except by God’s permission; what He permits becomes His arranging. The Lord was wroth with the complainers "because they did not believe in God and did not trust his saving power" (Psalm 78:22). At the bottom, all complaining means we do not trust His salvation.

The Psalmist says, "I will praise the name of God with a song; I will magnify him with thanksgiving. This will please the Lord more than an ox or a bull" (Psalm 69:30-31). Many are willing to offer a great sacrifice, but a little genuine praise would please Him more.

The Bible calls it a "sacrifice of thanksgiving" (Leviticus 7:12). It is an act of worship. "Let them offer sacrifices of thanksgiving, and tell of his deeds in songs of joy!" (Psalm 107:22). It is an easy thing to offer, yet if the prayers of Christians were noted for a single day, I fear we would find—as with the ten lepers—that nine out of ten offered no genuine thanks.

Our Lord was grieved by those ungrateful lepers: "Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine?

Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" (Luke 17:17-18). Will He ask the same of us? We wonder at their ingratitude, but what of our own? Do we not pass by innumerable blessings and fix our eyes on our "losses" until our whole horizon is filled with them?

We can judge how this must grieve the Lord by our own feelings. A child who complains about the provision a parent has made wounds that parent's heart often beyond words. We all know people who are always complaining—nothing pleases them, and no kindness is ever appreciated.

We know how uncomfortable their society makes us, and, conversely, how life is brightened by one who finds something to be pleased with in all that comes. I believe far more misery is caused in human hearts by the grumblings of those they love than we imagine; and I believe woundings we never dream of are given to the heart of our Father in Heaven by the continual murmuring of His children.

How often is it said of fretful spirits, "Will nothing ever satisfy them?" And how often must God turn away, grieved by our complainings, when His love has been lavished upon us in untold blessings. I have sometimes thought that if we realized this, we would check our inordinate grief even over the loss of those we love, and try, for His sake, to be cheerful and content even in our lonely condition.

I remember hearing of a girl who underwent a very painful medical treatment. The doctors dreaded her outcries, but to their amazement, not even a moan escaped her. She simply smiled at her father. When asked how she did it, she said: "I knew how much my father loved me, and I knew how he would suffer if he saw that I suffered, so I tried to hide it; and I smiled to make him think I did not mind." Can any of us do this for our Heavenly Father?

Job was a great complainer, and we might think he had good cause. He said, "I loathe my very life; therefore I will give free utterance to my complaint and speak out of the bitterness of my soul" (Job 10:1). We can hardly wonder at him. Yet, could he have seen the divine side, he would have known his troubles were permitted in the tenderest love to bring him a revelation of God he could have had by no other means. If he had seen the end from the beginning, thanksgiving would have taken the place of complaining.

The children of Israel were always complaining. They complained when they had no water, and when water was supplied, they complained it was bitter. We do the same when our spiritual "water" seems bitter—when religious exercises seem dull and unsatisfying. We turn from the "fountain of living waters" and then complain because the "broken cisterns" we hewed for ourselves hold no water (Jeremiah 2:13).

The Israelites complained about their food, fearing starvation, and then complained when manna was provided because they "loathed this worthless food" (Numbers 21:5). We also complain about our spiritual food—that our preacher doesn't "feed" us or that we lack the privileges others have. We ask for bread and then complain that He has given a stone. But our Divine Master knows what food and drink are best for us. The amazing thing is that we cannot believe, without waiting for the end, that the Shepherd knows which pasture is best.

Jonah provides a wonderful illustration. His prayer of thanksgiving came from the "belly of Sheol": "I called out to the Lord, out of my distress, and he answered me... But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you" (Jonah 2:2, 9). No depth of misery is too great for the sacrifice of thanksgiving. We do not thank God for the misery, but in the misery, knowing He is there to help and bless.

It is not because things are good that we thank the Lord, but because He is good. We aren't wise enough to judge if a circumstance is a joy or a sorrow in its essence, but we know His goodness makes it certain that what He permits must be for our ultimate good.

In the tract "Mrs. Pickett's Missionary Box," a woman who had complained all her life was challenged to put a penny in a box for every benefit she discovered. She said: "'Great benefits I have!' says I... 'Guess the heathen won't get much out of me.' I made up my mind I would keep count, jest to show myself how little I did have."

But sitting on her steps, hearing about women in other lands who were starved and abused, she blurted out: "Well, if I be a widow, I'm thankful I'm where I can earn my own living!" Her niece told her that was her first benefit. She dropped in a penny. Then she put in another because she wasn't Chinese. Then she sold some eggs—a "penny sellin' eggs"—and when she tried to say it wasn't the Lord's benefit, her niece sang: "God's grace is the only grace, And all grace is the grace of God."

Soon, she was searching for things to be thankful for, and the box didn't rattle near so much when she shook it.

There is a Psalm which I call our Benefit Psalm. It is the 103rd, and it recounts some of the benefits the Lord has bestowed upon us, and urges us not to forget them. "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits" (Psalm 103:2). Our dear sister’s Benefit box had taught her something of the meaning of this Psalm. All her life she had been forgetting the benefits the Lord had bestowed upon her, but now she was beginning to remember them.

Have we begun to remember ours?

If during the past year we had kept count of those benefits for which we had actually given thanks, how many pennies, I wonder, would our boxes have contained?

We sometimes sing at mission meetings a hymn of thanksgiving, with the chorus, "Count your many blessings, name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord has done." And sometimes I have wondered whether any of us who were singing it so heartily had ever kept the slightest record of our blessings, or even in fact knew that we had any.

For the trouble is that very often God’s gifts come to us wrapped up in such rough coverings that we are tempted to reject them as worthless; or the messengers who bring them come in the guise of enemies, and we want to shut the door against them, and not give them entrance. But we lose far more than we know when we reject even the most unlikely.

"Evil is only the slave of good, And sorrow the servant of joy: And the soul is mad that refuses food From the lowest in God’s employ."

We are commanded to enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise, and I am convinced that the giving of thanks is the key that opens these gates more quickly than anything else. Try it, dear reader. The next time you feel dead, and cold, and low-spirited, begin to praise and thank the Lord. Enumerate to yourself the benefits He has bestowed upon you, and thank Him heartily for each one, and see if your spirits do not begin to rise, and your heart get warmed up. Sometimes, it may be, you feel too disheartened to pray; then try giving thanks instead; and, before you know it, you will find yourself "glad" in the multitude of His loving- kindnesses and His tender mercies.

One of my friends told me that her little boy one night flatly refused to say his prayers. He said there was not a single thing in all the world he wanted, and he did not see what was the use of asking for things that he did not want. A happy thought came to his mother, and she said, "Well, Charlie, suppose then we give thanks for all the things you have got." The idea pleased the child, and he very willingly knelt down, and began to give thanks. He thanked God for his marbles, and for a new top that had just been given him, and for his strong legs that could run so far, and that he was not blind like a little boy he knew, and for his kind father and mother, and for his nice bed, and for one after another of his blessings, until the list grew so long that at last he said he believed he would never be finished. And when finally they rose from their knees, he said to his mother, with his face shining with happiness, "Oh, mother, I never knew before how perfectly splendid God is!" And I believe, if we sometimes followed the example of this little boy, we too would find out, as never before, the goodness of our God.

It is very striking to notice how much thanksgiving had to do with the building of the Temple.

When they had collected the treasures for the Temple, David gave thanks to the Lord for enabling them to do it. When the Temple was finished, they gave thanks again. And then a wonderful thing happened, for it came to pass as the trumpeters and singers were as one, to make one sound to be heard in praising and thanking the Lord . . . that then the house was filled with a cloud, even the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister by reason of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord had filled the house of God. When the people praised and gave thanks, then the house was filled with the glory of the Lord. And we may be sure that the reason our hearts are not more often filled with the "glory of the Lord," is because we do not often enough make our voices to be heard in praising and thanking Him.

If the giving of thanks is the way to open the gates of the Lord, complaining, on the other hand, closes these gates. Jude quotes a prophecy of Enoch's concerning murmurers: "to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him. These are grumblers, malcontents, following their own sinful desires" (Jude 1:15- 16). People who are "grumblers" and "complainers" make, in their complainings, more "harsh speeches" against the Lord than they would like to admit, or than they will care to face at the last day. And it is not to be wondered at that the judgment of God, instead of the "glory of God," is the result.

I wish I had room to quote all the passages in the Bible about giving thanks and praises to the Lord. It is safe to say that there are hundreds and hundreds of them; and it is an amazing thing how they can have been so persistently ignored. I beg of you to read the last seven Psalms, and see what you think. They are simply full to overflowing with a list of the things for which the Psalmist calls upon us to give thanks; all of them things relating to the character and the ways of God, which we dare not dispute. They are not for the most part private blessings of our own, but are the common blessings that belong to all humanity, and that contain within themselves every private blessing we can possibly need. But they are blessings which we continually forget, because we take them for granted, and hardly notice their existence, and never give thanks for them.

But the Psalmist knew how to "count his many blessings, and name them one by one," and he would have us do the same. Try it, dear reader, and you will indeed be surprised to see what the Lord has done. Go over these Psalms verse by verse, and blessing by blessing, and see if, like the little boy of our story, you are not made to confess that you never knew before "how splendid God is."

The last verse of the Book of Psalms, taken in connection with the vision of John in the Book of Revelation, is very significant. The Psalmist says, "Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!" (Psalm 150:6). And, in the Book of Revelation, John, who declares himself to be our brother and our partner in the tribulation, tells us that he heard this being done: "And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, 'To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!'" (Revelation 5:13). The time for universal praise is sure to come some day. Let us begin to do our part now.

I heard once of a discontented, complaining man, who, to the great surprise of his friends, became bright and happy, and full of thanksgiving. After watching him for a little while, and being convinced that the change was permanent, they asked him what had happened. "Oh," he replied, "I have changed my residence. I used to live in Grumbling Lane, but now I have moved into Thanksgiving Square, and I find that I am so rich in blessings that I am always happy."

Shall we each one make this move now?