Give Thanks in All Circumstances

“See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone. Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil.” (1 Thessalonians 5:15-22 ESV)

In this life, if we are following Jesus Christ with our lives, we will be persecuted for righteousness’ sake and for the sake of Christ and his gospel message. We will be hated and persecuted because we are living holy lives in submission to Christ as Lord, and in surrender to his will and purpose for our lives. This does not make us perfect people, but lack of perfection is never to be used as an excuse for deliberate and habitual sin. For if we are truly following Jesus with our lives, we are dying with Christ to sin daily, and we are walking by faith in obedience to his commands, in his power.

[Matthew 5:10-12; Matthew 10:16-25,34-39; Matthew 24:9-14; Luke 6:22-23; Luke 21:12-17; John 15:18-21; Revelation 6:9-11; Revelation 7:9-17; Revelation 11:1-3; Revelation 12:17; Revelation 13:1-18; Revelation 14:1-13; Luke 9:23-26; Matthew 7:21-23; 1 Peter 2:24; Romans 6:1-23]

But when we are persecuted, and when we are mistreated, and we are sinned against, and we are falsely accused of wrong we did not do, we are not to try to get even with those who do evil against us. Rather, we are to love our enemies, and pray for them, and do good to them, and say to them what is for their spiritual benefit, that they might be saved from their sins. And we are to forgive those who do evil against us. But forgiveness is not permission to keep on in sin, but it is encouragement to “go and sin no more.” It is giving the other person another chance to do what is right.

And this word “rejoice” literally means “to delight in God’s grace,” in what Jesus Christ did for us when he gave his life up for us on that cross. First of all we must experience God’s grace in our own lives, and then we are to be glad in that grace. And that grace sent Jesus Christ to the cross to put our sins to death with him, so that by God-persuaded and God-gifted faith in him, we will die with him to sin and now live to him and to his righteousness in walks of obedience to his commands in holy living. So we are to be glad in our dying with him to sin and in walking in obedience to his commands.

For the grace which comes from God, which is bringing us salvation, is training us to renounce (say ‘No!’ to) ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives while we await our Lord’s return. For Jesus Christ “gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.” “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” (Titus 2:11-14; Ephesians 2:8-10)

And to pray without ceasing is not suggesting that we are to spend our entire days and nights in bowing our knees before God and in bringing our requests to him. Instead, I believe it means to be in continuous open communication with the Lord to where we have an open door for us to speak with him, and him with us, 24/7, during all our waking hours of every day. So, prayer to the Lord is not some official and religious thing that we do each day at a particular time of day and place, though that can be part of it, but it really has to do with open 24/7 communication between us and God.

Now, regardless of our circumstances, if they are good or evil (evil being done against us), we are to give the Lord thanks. We are not to be those who make it our practice to grumble and complain about anything and everything that comes across our paths which displeases us. Now this is not saying that we cannot address wrongdoing and bring it into the light and call for repentance and for walks of obedience to the Lord. For we are to expose the fruitless deeds of darkness and call sin what it is and call for people to repent of their sins and to follow Jesus with their lives.

And we are not to quench the Spirit. How do we quench the Spirit? We do that by resisting the Spirit and his convictions and the teachings of the Word of God in order to go our own way. We do that by ignoring God’s commands and choosing to sin against the Lord. And we do that by ignoring and skirting around whatever Scriptures we don’t like which tell us what we do not want to hear, and by only following the Scriptures which make us feel good, which are often taught out of context and made to say what they do not say if they are taught in their appropriate context.

And prophesying, in this context, according to the Greek Interlinear, is “the gift of communicating and enforcing revealed truth.” It is “what is clarified beforehand; prophecy which involves divinely-empowered forthtelling (asserting the mind of God) or foretelling (prediction).” And the Holy Spirit was given to us within us to teach, instruct, reveal, encourage, and warn, etc. So we must be able to hear his inner voice speaking to us, which then sometimes he gives us to share with the body of Christ. But then we must test these words “from the Lord” to see if they truly are from the Lord.

But we are not to despise them immediately without even testing them against the truth of the Scriptures, taught in context. Some of them will be obvious immediately if we are in tune to the Spirit’s voice, and if we know what the Scriptures teach, but if we just ignore everything that anyone says he heard from the Lord, without even being certain whether or not it is from God, then we risk quenching the Spirit. But not everything that is claimed to be of the Spirit is of God. There is so much abuse of the gifts of the Spirit, so we must be very wise and discerning, and seek the counsel of God.

But once we have tested everything, then we are to hold fast to what is good, and we are to abstain from every form of evil. And just know that there are many false teachers among us who are teaching lies to the people and who are altering the character of God/Christ, and of his gospel, to make them more acceptable to the ungodly and to human flesh. And the lies are what are most popular today and which are being received more often than the truth. And that is because the lies give permission to keep sinning without change, and the truth requires death to sin and obedience to God.

[Matt 7:21-23; Lu 9:23-26; John 10:27-30; Acts 26:18; Rom 2:6-8; Rom 6:1-23; Rom 8:1-14; Rom 12:1-2; 1 Co 6:9-10,19-20; 1 Co 10:1-22; 2 Co 5:10,15,21; Gal 5:16-24; Gal 6:7-8; Eph 2:8-10; Eph 4:17-32; Eph 5:3-6; Col 1:21-23; Col 3:1-17; Titus 2:11-14; 1 Jn 1:5-10; 1 Jn 2:3-6,24-25; 1 Jn 3:4-10; 1 Pet 2:24; Heb 3:1-19; Heb 4:1-13; Heb 10:23-31; Heb 12:1-2]

Oh, to be like Thee! Oh, to be like Thee,

Blessèd Redeemer, pure as Thou art;

Come in Thy sweetness, come in Thy fullness;

Stamp Thine own image deep on my heart.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrYhiK2nQBg 

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