The Explanation of Thanksgiving
From Livestream
by Pastor Nave on November 12, 2017
And Joseph said unto his brethren, Come near to me, I pray you. And they came near. And he said, I am Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt. Now therefore be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither: for God did send me before you to preserve life. For these two years hath the famine been in the land: and yet there are five years, in the which there shall neither be earing nor harvest. And God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God: and he hath made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt. Haste ye, and go up to my father, and say unto him, Thus saith thy son Joseph, God hath made me lord of all Egypt: come down unto me, tarry not: And thou shalt dwell in the land of Goshen, and thou shalt be near unto me, thou, and thy children, and thy children’s children, and thy flocks, and thy herds, and all that thou hast: And there will I nourish thee; for yet there are five years of famine; lest thou, and thy household, and all that thou hast, come to poverty (Genesis 45:4–11, KJV).
It’s easy to give thanks to God when things are going “well” from our perspective. But, we don’t give God thanks when we don’t understand the circumstances in our life. Paul told the church we must walk by faith instead of by sight (II Corinthians 5:7). He admonished the church to remember all things work together for good for them that love God (Romans 8:28).
Too often we get a picture in our mind as to what the blessings of God should look like. Then we try to prescribe to God what needs to happen in our lives by our definition of goodness. But, God is bigger than what we think, feel, and know based on our own experiences. The explanation of God is more important than our experience.
Every miracle doesn’t always look like a miracle. Every door doesn’t always look like a way out. There are hard edges of our lives we must endure because they are vital to our faith. Many times, our trials are the only way to get to the ultimate glory God is trying to pour out in our life.
When we look at the life of Joseph, we walked through many hard edges. But, regardless of the trials he faced, he realized why they happened. His brothers thought they were responsible for his life’s hardships, but Joseph saw the bigger picture. He knew there was something God was trying to do in all of it.
When describing what happened in his life, Joseph’s explanation came from his faith, not by what he saw and experienced. And, the same must be true for our own lives. When we focus on the pit, the prison, the lies, or the hard edges, we won’t see what God is trying to do. God is trying to get us to focus on the bigger picture!
Instead of focusing on the negatives, we must see the positive in what God is doing. Therefore, when we look to explain our life’s experiences, we need to learn how to best relay what God is doing; proclaim your experience! We must seek to tell the story of what God is doing through applied wisdom (Proverbs 1:20). If we don’t have the wisdom today to look at our situation with another perspective, we can ask God and He will give it to us (James 1:5).
Through all things, we must trust the Lord (Psalms 20:7). Even if we don’t have all the answers, trusting in the unknown of God is better than the answers of man. We may not ever know everything there is to know about God, or the purpose of His plans, but let’s see the greatest picture of all. All things happen to give God the glory (Romans 11:33–36).
