Bill Johnson - Thanksgiving Takes Your Situation Out of the Enemy's Hands
On the night Jesus was betrayed, He took bread and gave thanks. See, thankfulness took a situation of extreme lack in John 6 and turned it into extreme abundance, where they ended up with more than they started with in the leftovers. Now Jesus takes this moment, the most difficult moment, where He has poured Himself into twelve people, twelve men, for three and a half years. At the end of it, one has a better idea and for personal gain sells the access he has to Jesus. He betrays Him. Yes, on the night Jesus is betrayed, Jesus is fully aware of what Satan has inspired Judas to do. Fully aware of that, He takes the bread, breaks it, and what does He do? He gives thanks.
See, thanksgiving sanitizes your touch on the matters of your life. It decontaminates us from having lingering fleshly influence that defiles that which God is doing. It’s thankfulness that keeps us in a place where everything in my life is now usable by God because I have cleansed myself, if you will. I don’t know if I’m using the right language, but you can help me out and figure it out. I have sanitized my own involvement in the affairs of my life through thankfulness, to where this now is in the hands of the Lord to use on my behalf for His glory. It’s thankfulness that transitions that very tool that the enemy intended for evil.
Perhaps the best example of this is found in 1 Timothy, chapter 4. If you would look there with me in light of the last passage of betrayal, what thanksgiving does, what the specific deliberate acts of expressions of thanksgiving do, is deliver me from the influence of the spirit of offense and bitterness. I personally think the two greatest dilemmas for the body of Christ that hinder us from maturity are unforgiveness and disappointment. Sorry, these two areas are the most crippling; they have the most crippling effects on the hearts and minds of the people of God. Those two things—resentment, bitterness, and disappointment. What thankfulness does is it grabs the moment back, even though the water has passed under the bridge, even though the disaster has happened, even though I can’t see any possible way for God to get glory out of this. It is a part of the recipe, and as a part of the recipe, I am going to give thanks.
Because in the giving of thanks, I don’t want to say God can’t use it without my thankfulness; it’s just that somehow I get to be a participant when I yield and acknowledge trust in Him over this challenging and difficult area. I remember, well, I’ll get to 1 Timothy 4 in a moment. I remember years ago, maybe 15 years ago, Benny and I were eating at The French Laundry. Let’s give thanks together for quality food. I remember this first time we had been there; we were with Bob and Cindy Kattrick. Our first time together, and there are like nine courses. They brought out this bowl of two of the things that I least like on earth. They are never to enter between these lips. I did not like caviar and did not like oysters. My wife actually—very few know this—she tricked me one day when she was in a cooking class. She had a spoonful of what looked like blackberry jam. When you are anticipating the sweetness of blackberry jam and you get a mouthful of fish, it’s not right at all. That spirit of deception was all over that moment. I’m telling you, there was a sink close by; I got rid of it, and I had the same fondness for oysters.
So I am now at The French Laundry, and I could take you to the table I was sitting at; I could take you to the chair I was sitting in. They brought this bowl of what’s called oysters and pearls. Literally, Chef Thomas Keller is world-famous for this dish—oysters and pearls with oysters and caviar and this sauce. I’m looking at the oysters, saying, «I don’t like you; caviar, I don’t like you,» and I don’t know what the sauce is. But I looked up at Benny and said, «I’m spending too much money for this meal to not at least taste it.» So I took a bite of oysters and pearls; the angels began to sing, the heavens opened. I could see, you know, in the Old Testament where his eyes were brightened when he had the honey—that was me in that moment. I turned to Benny and said, «Honey, I want a chili bowl full of this stuff.» This was so good! Things I don’t like became my favorite things when they came under the influence of the Master Chef. Every one of us has oysters and caviar in our life, things that we’re not fond of, but the Master Chef is at work. With thankfulness, we literally yield in trust to the process where God gets glorified by the very parts that we regret the most.
1 Timothy 4, verse 1, says, «Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times, some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron.» Here’s this last-day warning of the power of deception, and then he goes into specifics, forbidding to marry, commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.
Now think with me through this situation: What is the warning? The warning is of the perils of the last days and literally the spirit of deception that is trying to draw people into a collapse of faith, a place of spiritual failure. He warns about some of the things that people will believe that will dissuade and cause people to detour from their simplicity of faith in Christ, and he mentions food. Somehow he takes this most natural element of food and says if you receive it with thankfulness, I’m going to put it in my terms, my words, so that I can illustrate my point: You receive this, the enemy puts in front of you through deceiving spirits for the collapse of your faith. When you receive this with thankfulness, that thing that was the tool to be used against you now becomes a tool that is for you. It’s almost, I see it this way: Now God is sovereign; He can do whatever He wants. So I don’t feel that we somehow limit or restrict Him; He’s sovereign God. But He has protocol—very specific processes in which He wants to perform, and they become more challenging the older you get in Christ.
Yeah, you have a lot of leeway when you first come to Jesus, and He tightens the screws the further we walk with Him. It’s not punishment; it’s because He wants to release greater glory, and that greater glory requires more refined and specific intentional obedience. There’s a sanctifying effect of thankfulness—a sanctifying cleansing effect. It decontaminates my own heart and its attachment to different parts of life. I remember a number of years ago we had a single mom who was down to her last $4. I later heard the story; she was down to her last $4. She thought, «Well, I’ll just come on Sunday morning and I’ll get a coffee at Hebrews and then just see what the Lord does.» So she got here and was ready to get her Hebrews glory—let’s be honest, glory—and she felt, «No, I’m just going to skip it; I’ll just put it in the offering.» So she took what was huge to her that was insignificant in the measure of the entire offering, and it was her sacrifice. See, thanksgiving is supposed to be a sacrifice, and it’s not a sacrifice if it doesn’t cost me. If I have $1,000 in my pocket and I gave away $10, it wasn’t a sacrifice; I won’t even miss it.
But for the gal who’s got $4 in her pocket and she decides to put that in the offering, that’s everything. What she didn’t know is that was Father’s Day, and on Father’s Day, we like to honor single moms. Having just placed her last $4 in the offering, I had single moms stand up, and we blessed them. She overwhelmingly walked out of the place with over $400 that morning because people just poured cash in. Now let’s be honest; if it worked that way all the time, we’d have God the slot machine going every week. Here’s four more! What the Lord does is He gives you that breakthrough at the beginning of your journey that you are required to remember for the remainder of your journey. Because you’ll have ten more of those situations following in which there is no quick deliverance.
The experience is not for us to figure Him out; it’s for us to endear our hearts to the One who always has a solution in every situation. I get to figure out the process and go on this relational journey to see His breakthrough come once again. And in this situation, it’s thankfulness, the specific act of thanksgiving for the very thing I least like in my life. It’s that act of thankfulness that delivers me. I’ve had more challenging situations in the last six to eight months than I’ve had any time in my life. I’m preaching this to me. This is the result of me saying, «All right, what can I do? What should I do? What must I do to fully place every aspect of my life under the grace and tenderness of the Lord? I don’t want anything standing out because I ignored it, because I missed my chance, because I just wasn’t feeling it.»
You know, there’s something about thankfulness in the Old Testament. In Nehemiah, chapter 12, it says that he appointed two great choirs of thanksgiving. It actually all started after David became king; they started appointing thanksgiving choirs, which means you are assigned to give thanks. Don’t wait until you feel it. You’re not required to feel it; you’re required to give it. If it’s supposed to be a sacrifice, when is it the greater sacrifice? When your favorite team just won or you got a raise at work or you were finally able to buy that house? All important times to give thanks, unless your team was playing against one of my teams! All important times to give thanks, but the costly times of thanks—there’s the bad report, «Your mercy and grace, I thank you because you’re bigger than this. I know that you will work this into the recipe. You’ve done it before; you’ve taken things I despised and you made them my favorite things. Oysters and pearls.» That’s what thankfulness does; it captures our moments. It captures what seems to be the random parts of our life that could easily work against us. But when we grab hold of what God intended for good, I don’t believe at all we’re ever supposed to be thankful for evil itself. Never. I can’t celebrate the devil’s work, but I cannot afford to live impressed by the devil’s work.
In other words, living in reaction to what he has said or what he has done. It’s got to be according to His promises. My encouragement to you today is to be very intentional and deliberate. And you don’t have to feel it. See, in the Kingdom, emotions—the emotional realm—is trained through obedience. In the Kingdom, the emotional world or internal world is actually trained through obedience. In the natural, before you came to Christ, you did what you felt like doing. But it’s a backwards way to live in the Kingdom. In the Kingdom, you do it because it’s right, and it trains you what and how to feel and actually heightens your sensitivities to be more trustworthy. You okay?
When I was thinking about today, I actually wanted to talk about a number of different virtues, but I couldn’t shake this one expression. I speak again next week; maybe we’ll go on to some more; we’ll see. But I feel like the most surprising weapon of all—maybe equal to God sending choirs out into battle before the army. That wasn’t an unexpected strategy. So is thankfulness in the midst of your worst situation. It’s an unexpected strategy. Nothing is outside of the reach of my thankfulness. The profound impact of thankfulness is that it transforms every situation that we become thankful for. And what it does is it connects us with hope. It connects us to hope because thankfulness comes back to the nature of God, the covenant of God, what He has covenanted with us—His promise: all things work together; all the parts of the recipe He’s going to use in a way that He’s exalted and we are strengthened. It’s His promise with us, and thankfulness itself restores hope where we have little hope.
So let me pray for you. Father, I ask that You would help us again as a family with this unusual grace, a profound ability to embrace the surprising things of life and to yield them to You with thankfulness. We do acknowledge You’re good. We do acknowledge that my unwillingness to give thanks is for me to trust in myself above Him. And things have never turned out well in my life when I’ve trusted in myself instead of Him. So God, I pray for that realization to fall upon us as a church body for the glory of God. And give special grace throughout this day to look at the most challenging parts of our life and to honestly celebrate with expressions of thankfulness for Your goodness. I pray this in Jesus' name.
It’s vital that we look for unusual opportunities to draw near to Him. It’s easy to do it when things have gone well. You know, when you’ve had a good day or you’ve had a promotion at work or you found out you’re pregnant and you’ve been wanting a child for years or whatever it might be. We all have our list of things that we become so encouraged with when we see them happen. And those are appropriate times for us to celebrate God’s goodness and to give Him thanks and to give Him praise. But there are the scary moments too that you have no control over. You don’t know why something happened. You didn’t get the answer to prayer that you had been contending for. We have those moments in life. It may be a simple thing—maybe just a disappointment. A friend hurt your feelings, or you felt betrayed by somebody you cared for. It could be something like that, or it can be a major, major loss—losing a wife, a child, a parent, or a dear friend. Whatever it might be, there are these moments that we have in life that cannot redefine the nature of God to us. He has to be revealed in Scripture to us, not through the absence of an experience. He cannot be redefined by the absence of an experience.
It’s the reason the cornerstone of our theology, I believe, must be the goodness of God. Yes, because otherwise you will always question His goodness when things don’t work the way you think they should. And the craziest thing is you can experience a tragic loss, and for some crazy reason, you forget everything good that God has done. It all disappears, and all you have in front of you is this painful loss. You don’t remember the hundred other things that He did in the same season. Sometimes they just seem to disappear, and there is a fight involved to take hold of this cornerstone of theology, and that’s the goodness of God. Taking hold of that and being unwilling to compromise. I cannot explain, I do not understand what happened, I do not understand why. The only thing I know for certain is God is good. And so I’m going to let that define everything that I go through. That has to be my point of reference; that has to be my compass; that has to be due north. Everything else is measured from there.
What that meant for me is when my wife breathed her last at 6:58 p.m. on July 13, 2022, she took her last breath. The first response team, the whole family is in the room. The first response team, we raised our hands and we gave God thanks for His goodness, for always being the healer. You don’t get those moments over and over, and we don’t want those moments. We don’t want moments like that. But once you’ve been given that moment, I don’t ever believe that God created the crisis, the disease. I don’t buy into that at all. But we are alive on a planet that’s got problems, and sometimes those issues, those problems affect us. It’s not necessarily because we did something wrong. We are just being groomed for eternity, and every victory you’ve ever had is eternal in its impact. Every loss you’ve ever had is temporal. Every loss is temporal; every victory is eternal. The impact of what God has done has to be treasured and held on to. There has to be a certain stubbornness, if you will. I will—you know, He says in Psalms 103, «Forget not His benefits.» It’s not a suggestion; it’s a commandment that keeps you sane because we live in an insane environment at times.
The determination—it’s not like, you know, I’ve told you guys over and over I’ve tried to be as open and transparent as I know how to be on just the journey of going through loss. I’ve not talked about it for a while, but I know for maybe six or eight months, week after week, I would just talk to you about the process. I’m not trying to be strong; I’m trying to be faithful. There’s a difference. If I try to be strong, I’m going to get my flesh involved somehow; I’m going to go through self-determination. See, faith doesn’t come from striving; it comes from surrender. What we want in life is to maintain faithfulness to the Lord and to live faithfully before Him. There has to be that activity of faith stirring up in our hearts.
There’s this concept about faith; I feel like probably most of us need an overhaul in our understanding of faith. When it says, «Have faith in God,» it actually could be translated and probably should be translated «Have the faith of God,» because our understanding of faith involves a lot of sweat, determination, and self-will. Faith and belief are different things. You can believe with your mind, but faith comes out of your heart. You can determine to believe something, and oftentimes all we’re doing is we’re putting our spiritual will into motion, but it has nothing to do with authentic faith. Authentic faith is either a gift from God or it’s a fruit of God’s work in us. It either grows through use or it’s a sudden gift for a moment. The whole issue of being faithful before the Lord has to do with us functioning in God’s gift of faith.
Forgive me for promoting a book; it’s not mine, so I can get away with it. It’s called «The Real Faith» by Dr. Charles Price, and it’s the classic book on faith. He hits this thing over and over again so strongly. In fact, one of the main publishers I work with got the rights to republish that book. It’s an old book; it’s a classic. And then they put some of my footnotes and stuff in there, but it’s available. I just want to encourage you in this whole issue of faith that the surrender is what takes us to faith. Yes. And you know, we just had this wonderful time in worship. Do you know there’s no authentic worship apart from surrender? Otherwise, we worship worship. If there’s no surrender, then we worship the worship experience, but not the One we’re worshiping. There’s a lot of worship of the worship experience because it’s delightful, enjoyable, refreshing, and encouraging. But it’s possible for us to actually never connect with the Lord but go through the songs and enjoy the music, being with people, and the activity going on in the room.
The distinguishing mark of authentic worship is that it actually comes through brokenness. But I’m not using brokenness now as a term of something wrong; brokenness in the sense of I’m being surrendered. I’m yielding to what the Lord is wanting to do, what the Lord is wanting to say. That’s why faith really should be one of the most prolific things that grows during worship, because authentic worship has to come out of surrender, where we come before Him, yielding to Him once again, «God, it’s Your will that we’re passionate about. It’s Your heart that we’re passionate about. It’s what You long for that we dream about.» We come before Him and acknowledge who He is.
It’s important to take these moments like that we had here tonight, and we take our understanding of who He is. When it says to love God with all my heart, my soul, and my mind, it means I actually have to consider who He is and then take what I know about Him, put it on my lips, and declare it. He hasn’t forgotten who He is; I just need to say it. I need to declare: «God, You are perfectly faithful. You’ve never been anything but faithful. You are absolute, and when I’m faithless, You remain faithful.» We take these things about Him that we’re learning, that we see in Scripture, and we put them on our lips. There’s something, there’s like this covenant that is made as we come before Him and we give sacrifice to the Lord.
There’s a covenant made between the heart of man and the heart of God, and we have this incredible privilege. We are not forbidden to gather together; we don’t have laws of the land that keep us from gathering together. So we have this great liberty to come together day after day after day and just to offer sacrifices of praise to God and to honor Him. It’s a great privilege that we have that kind of liberty. I guess one of the things I want to say to you tonight is that these are very special moments, and they’re life-changing, life-transforming moments. And whether you’ve had the best day of your life or the worst day of your life, grab your moment and give Him an offering. Give Him something that costs you. Give Him something that costs you. You’ve got guilt and shame, you’ve got questions, you’ve got confusion, you’ve got any of that stuff going on. Grab hold of it and give Him an offering. Say, «God, You remain faithful. You are always the healer, and I honor You for that.»
This is an invitation from the Lord for us to come into a place where the brilliance of God is seen through our daily decisions. And it’s not just the big spectacular things—the miracles and the healings—it’s the daily decisions. It’s the daily decisions; it’s the bad report you get from the doctor. Instead of moving in fear, you just give God thanks: «God, I thank You that You are in charge. You are in charge; You haven’t abandoned me. You said You’d never forsake me.» It’s the fact that we take these little moments, and our life is actually built out of small decisions. Honestly, the big decisions are not that hard. What city to move to, you may have a real challenge trying to figure stuff out—what job to take, whatever; those are easy. It’s the little decisions that make your life what it is. It’s the decision to stay that extra moment reading Scripture. It’s the decision to call that friend when it’s inconvenient, but you just felt that prompting. It’s those little decisions that you want to get going, but you see a friend on the other side of the room that you think just needs a word of encouragement. You walk over; you take five extra minutes and spend that moment. Our life is built out of those kinds of things; they actually shape us—literally a school for eternity.
Psalms 103—here’s that Psalm that someone—thankfully—wrote into a song. But verse 1 says, «Bless the Lord, oh my soul, all that is within me. Bless His holy name. Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and forget not all His benefits.» Okay, stop right there. This is a command. This command, should it be followed, will ensure a life of greater breakthrough than any of us could possibly imagine. We never once in our lives probably would have attributed selective memories to disciplined memories, to sanctified memories. Many tragedies that have happened in our lives just need a sanctified revelation of where God was and what He’s doing because once you see God’s hand in a situation, we suddenly give thanks for the things we never thought we could ever give thanks for. His ability to use broken things actually enables us to give Him thanks for broken things. Amen?
That was actually better than their response. Be encouraged! All right, just teasing. Verse 3: «Who forgives all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from destruction, crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies, satisfies your mouth with good things, so that your youth is renewed like the eagles.» Don’t forget the benefits. And here’s a list: heals some of your diseases? No! So what does that mean then? He heals all our diseases. That means that whenever in my thinking I consider the possibility that this, that I’m praying for, will not happen, it means I forgot! I know that’s a hard one.
Who heals all your diseases, who forgives all your iniquities, and who crowns us? He puts His mark of sonship, of daughtership, of favor on our lives—the mark of royalty, of eternal purpose. He renews us so that there’s no such thing as just declining, accepting things because we get older. Things just get worse and worse. But He constantly renews, He constantly restores, refreshes, and constantly brings us back to renewed strength. That’s actually the normal Christian life. Amen? Don’t forget, because if you forget, you’ll look at your present problem through a different lens.
The story that has marked me the most in this regard is out of Mark chapter 8. I will have you turn there. Mark chapter 8. I’ve taught from this goodness so many times that I’m almost—not quite—embarrassed for having you turn to it again, but turn to it anyway. Mark chapter 8. What hit me this week when I was trying to explain when they were leading a song is I realized I’ve got certain things that I’m facing in my life that I am looking at as a challenge and as a problem, but not through the lens of my history. Have you ever had miraculous provision? Amen? After the provision, did you have another financial challenge? Were you as nervous the second time as you were the first time? The whole point is we know what that’s like. We know what it’s like to pray, get a breakthrough, and we give thanks. We’re so encouraged, and then we have another problem.
I’m not sure why it is, but I almost always start over again, right? Not thinking that I am worthy of continuous supply—not shifting perspective of actually having a right to some things simply because He calls me son—not because I have earned anything. Oftentimes the foundation of prayer and seeking Him for breakthrough, I have to start close to the beginning because I didn’t learn enough from the last time. Here’s a story where the disciples have just had their second experience with Jesus multiplying food. They’ve just seen, at their own hands, as they distribute the food, it increases in their baskets. They just came out of the second time. The first time was 5,000 men with women and children; the second time was 4,000 men with women and children—so thousands of people. They just came out of that experience, so they’re still smelling fresh bread as they come out of that experience. They follow Jesus, and Jesus says, «Get into the boat.»
Verse 13: «And He left them"—which is the crowds—and getting into the boat again, departed to the other side. The disciples had forgotten to take bread; they did not have more than one loaf with them in the boat. Then He charged them saying, «Take heed; beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.» They reasoned among themselves saying, «It’s because we have no bread.» You know why I like this story? Because I see me in it. I see me being stupid again. That’s what I see. Every time I read this, I go, «Oh, I’m right, I’m in that verse right there, over and over and over again.» They’re imagining Jesus gives them profound insight: «Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees"—that’s the religious spirit, God’s at the center of everything but He’s impersonal and powerless—and «Beware of the leaven of Herod,» that’s the humanistic spirit, man’s at the center of everything. He doesn’t mind a belief in God; just don’t bring Him into the decisions—that’s political spirit, religious spirit.
Jesus warns them, and they’re together going, «Did you bring lunch?» «No, it wasn’t me!» «I thought you were doing it; we had leftovers.» They completely missed what Jesus was addressing. It’s like Jesus said, «All right, I wasn’t talking about lunch, but let’s pretend I was. Why do you reason that you have no bread?» Look at this: «Why"—excuse me—"why do you reason because you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive nor understand? Is your heart still hardened?» So that implies that if I don’t see, my heart’s hard. If my experience with God hasn’t enabled me to see clearly unseen promises, unseen realities, then there’s a resistance in me.
He goes further: «Having eyes, do you not see? Having ears, do you not hear?» And do you not remember? Having eyes, do you not see? You know they’re in a boat. There’s no food, so He’s asking them to see realities in the unseen world. Does that make sense to you? He’s not asking them to visualize loaves of bread in a boat that has no bread; He’s asking them to be conscious of a kingdom that has ample supply for every need. «Can’t you see?» There’s no answer. He says, «Can you hear?» Now for me, I hear better than I see, but in this moment I’m sure the disciples are answering, «Nope, I don’t see; I don’t hear either.» And He says, «Can you remember?» Ouch! He got me because I tend to think of seeing and hearing as spiritual gifts connected to maturity; remembering is a choice.
Remembering is a choice—it’s the deliberate attempt to preserve my history by giving attention to what God has said, to what God has done until it has gained its rightful place in shaping my perception of reality. «Can’t you see? Can’t you hear? Don’t you understand? Is your heart still hard?» And He takes it all the way back. «Can’t you remember?»