Well…Thanksgiving will be upon us in just a few days. It is one of my favorite family holidays and is traditionally intended to be a day of thankfulness for the blessings that we enjoy. Hopefully, that is not the only day we express thanks for the good things in our lives. What I want to suggest in this blog is that Thanksgiving should not be merely a day, but a lifestyle. In fact, I think it is a very powerful form of spiritual warfare.
The apostle Paul told us that we should not be unaware of Satan’s schemes. He should never be our main focus, but we do need to be wise in his ways. Satan doesn’t seem to have many strategies, but only a few which are expressed in many ways. The first encounter with him is recorded in Genesis where the “serpent” tempted Adam and Eve. This strategy is a primary strategy that he uses over and over. Basically, he did what every successful salesperson does…he created a sense of discontentment with their circumstance so that they began to feel a desire for something different or something more in their lives.
Satan planted a seed of distrust in Adam and Eve when he said, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the Garden?’” With that question, which was more of a statement, he implied that God had a stingy side that might be withholding good things from them. He was hinting that he knew Yaweh was the kind of god that would surround people with abundance, but then refuse to share it with them. He knew there was only one tree from which they were not to eat, but his question suggested that there was something spectacular and good to be gained from that tree, that God did not want them to have.
Suddenly, instead of being thankful for all that they did have – every tree in the Garden, including the Tree of Life – they suddenly felt a lack in their life and began to resent God for withholding the “one thing they really needed for happiness.” As soon as they accepted the premiss that God withholds good things from his people, they came into agreement with the enemy which gave him open access to their lives. Within a few years, they were not only living outside the Garden, scratching a living out of a hostile earth, but one son murdered the other.
Satan loves to get us to define God by something he hasn’t done for us that we think is the key to our happiness, rather than defining him by all the things he has done for us. If God has answered ten thousand prayers for us, we are prone to only think about one prayer that has not yet been answered or was not answered in the way we wanted. We then begin to believe that God doesn’t hear our prayers or that he doesn’t care about us. That view of God makes us very susceptible to the schemes of Satan.
A lifestyle of thanksgiving is a very effective way to push back against the lies of the enemy. We need a lifestyle of thanking God for every blessing we encounter…large or small. If it blesses us, thank God for it. Thank him for Jesus, your salvation, his grace, his patience, his Spirit, but also a beautiful morning, a parking spot, hot water, an old car that still gets you where you need to go, an amusing squirrel, friends, purpose, a job, health, four inflated tires in the morning, etc. These are things we don’t always pray for, but they are gifts from God none the less and we should thank him for each of those as we go through our day.
When we recognize and verbalize the abundance of small blessings from God that make up our lives, it creates a belief in us that God is, indeed, good and faithful.
When we have that view of God, it is much more difficult for the enemy to suggest to us that God may not have our best interests at heart after all, and is keeping from us the very thing that would give us happiness. Remember, Satan is the ultimate salesman and he has been selling lies for thousands of years. He is always highlighting what we don’t have and convincing us that there is something or someone out there that would make our life complete and worth living, if God were not standing in our way.
Paul believed that God would always give us what we needed for life, love, joy and peace. He stated in his letter to the church at Philippi, “for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength” (Phil.4:11-13).
Paul believed that God is a good father who always gives us what we need in every season and, in his wisdom, sometimes says “no” to what we want. A lifestyle of thanksgiving helps us walk in the same contentment because it keeps is focused on what we have, rather than what we don’t have.
So, this Thanksgiving, give thanks for all the big things, but all the small things as well….then keep it up for the next twelve months. You will find that a heart of thanksgiving slams the door on Satan in many, many ways.