{"id":4545,"date":"2019-02-28T09:37:31","date_gmt":"2019-02-28T15:37:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nafwb.org\/?p=4545"},"modified":"2019-02-28T09:37:31","modified_gmt":"2019-02-28T15:37:31","slug":"nothing-to-be-thankful-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nafwb.org\/site\/nothing-to-be-thankful-for\/","title":{"rendered":"“Nothing to Be Thankful For…”"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Jack Williams<\/strong><\/p>\n

A pastor asked me to preach for him last Sunday.\u00a0 Said he needed to talk about something important and wanted me to stay after church.\u00a0 I met \u201cRalph\u201d and the missus in his study.\u00a0 As we shook and howdied, I said, \u201cThank the Lord for such a beautiful Sunday morning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ralph replied, \u201cJack, I got nothing to be thankful for.\u00a0 My church is filled with critics and grumps.\u00a0 I feel like a failure.\u00a0 My sermons are bad.\u201d\u00a0 The three of us missed Sunday School.\u00a0 When men like Ralph have nothing for which to be thankful, they need a friend to listen, encouragement and a different point of view.<\/p>\n

Critics.\u00a0<\/strong>Let\u2019s not be too hard on our critics.\u00a0 After all, they remind us that not everybody sees things the same way we do.\u00a0 Some criticize us for our own good.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Consider them the loyal opposition; they are constructive critics.<\/p>\n

Others expect the worst and are surprised when it doesn\u2019t happen.\u00a0 They don\u2019t like us, don\u2019t trust us and secretly hope we fail.\u00a0 These mean-spirited souls are suspicious of everybody; we call them destructive critics.\u00a0 They\u2019ve given up on people and revel in the mistakes of others.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m thankful for critics.\u00a0 They push us higher.\u00a0 Critics don\u2019t like to be criticized, but that\u2019s a story for another day.<\/p>\n

Grumps.\u00a0<\/strong>Yep, I\u2019m thankful for grumps, even though they\u2019re kissin\u2019 kin to critics.\u00a0 Grumps get irritated if you aren\u2019t miserable too.\u00a0\u00a0 They resent it when you smile on a rainy day.\u00a0\u00a0 They grind their teeth if you see rainbows and promises instead of mud and inconvenience.\u00a0 They\u2019re not going anywhere and they paint their windows black to keep out light and laughter.<\/p>\n

Grumps could be nice company if they had a sense of humor.\u00a0 Left to their own devices, they veer off into the ditch of criticism and throw harsh words at passersby who disagree with them.\u00a0 Grumps enjoy rocks in their shoes and a hole in the roof, because it verifies that life is unfair.<\/p>\n

Some of my favorite people are moderate grumps.\u00a0 I\u2019ve noticed that the plan of God usually includes one thorough-going grump per church.<\/p>\n

Failures.\u00a0<\/strong>I\u2019m thankful for failures because we\u2019ve all failed at something.\u00a0 Those of us whose best golf move is wrapping a nine iron around a pine sapling provide examples for others who are not golf-challenged.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a humility about failure.\u00a0 Nobody who has failed has any illusions about himself.\u00a0 We understand that sometimes we fail because we didn\u2019t study or overestimated our driving skill or spoke out when we should have listened.<\/p>\n

The brotherhood of failure has this in common with the successes in life.\u00a0 Every success was at one time a failure like us…a failure who tried again, who rewrote that paper, who changed a habit, who learned to take advice, who came to work earlier, who went back to school, who got up off the ground one more time.<\/p>\n

Bad Sermons.\u00a0<\/strong>Strange as it may seem, I\u2019m thankful for bad sermons.\u00a0 There are two kinds of bad sermons\u2014somebody else\u2019s and yours.\u00a0 I\u2019ve heard some awful sermons and preached worse.\u00a0 Both experiences left me with the certain knowledge that there is a better way.<\/p>\n

Bad sermons encouraged me to take notes while listening to them.\u00a0 I discovered that most \u201cbad\u201d sermons weren\u2019t that bad.\u00a0 Their delivery suffered because of nervous speakers or unrealistic expectations from hearers who demanded that every preacher thunder like Billy Sunday.\u00a0 Of course, some sermons are simply awful and only cease getting worse when the speaker stops.\u00a0 One of mine was so bad I hid behind the church until everybody left.<\/p>\n

The solution?\u00a0 I learned to avoid certain subjects because I mangle them.\u00a0 I also learned to preach shorter.\u00a0 I\u2019m amazed at how fewer bad sermons I preach when speaking 20 minutes instead of 40.\u00a0 I shall not mention those 60-minute disasters when grown men\u00a0 waved watches above their heads.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t be alarmed\u00a0<\/strong>at my \u201cthankful\u201d list.\u00a0 Paul gave the Ephesians an unexpected principle, \u201cGiving thanks always for all things…\u201d (Eph. 5:20).\u00a0 There\u2019s usually something in every event for which we can be thankful\u2014patience learned when that tire exploded, faith we were forced to exercise in the hospital waiting room, new skills developed when the company downsized.<\/p>\n

Jesus gave thanks the night before His crucifixion (Matt. 26: 27-28).\u00a0 His thankfulness was not for the pain He would suffer, but for what His death would mean to lost humanity\u2014the remission of sins.\u00a0 That\u2019s why we thank God for the day the Perfect Man died.<\/p>\n

Paul and Silas were beaten and jailed by city leaders in Philippi (Acts 16).\u00a0 When Paul wrote the Philippian epistle, he began with the words, \u201cI thank my God upon every remembrance of you\u201d (Phil. 1:3).\u00a0 That\u2019s because the story at Philippi didn\u2019t end with a beating.\u00a0 Paul was thankful for the miracle that changed everything in the last half of the chapter (Acts 16: 25-40).<\/p>\n

For all the Ralphs <\/strong>struggling with harsh words, your story doesn\u2019t end with the critics, the grumps or the failures.\u00a0 The chapter continues; you can expect some doors to open.\u00a0 There is a God who hears in the darkness and who can with one swift move turn bitterness to joy.\u00a0 You do<\/em>have something for which to be thankful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Jack Williams A pastor asked me to preach for him last Sunday.\u00a0 Said he needed to talk about something important and wanted me to stay after church.\u00a0 I met \u201cRalph\u201d and the missus in his study.\u00a0 As we shook and howdied, I said, \u201cThank the Lord for such a beautiful Sunday morning.\u201d Ralph replied, \u201cJack, I got nothing to be thankful for.\u00a0 My church is filled with critics and grumps.\u00a0 I feel like a failure.\u00a0 My sermons are bad.\u201d\u00a0 The three of us missed Sunday School.\u00a0 When men like Ralph have nothing for which to be thankful, they need a friend to listen, encouragement and a different point of view. Critics.\u00a0Let\u2019s not be too hard on our critics.\u00a0 After all, they remind us that not everybody sees things the same way we do.\u00a0 Some criticize us for our own good.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Consider them the loyal opposition; they are constructive critics. Others expect the worst and are surprised when it doesn\u2019t happen.\u00a0 They don\u2019t like us, don\u2019t trust us and secretly hope we fail.\u00a0 These mean-spirited souls are suspicious of everybody; we call them destructive critics.\u00a0 They\u2019ve given up on people and revel in the mistakes of others. But I\u2019m thankful […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pastors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nafwb.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nafwb.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nafwb.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nafwb.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nafwb.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4545"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nafwb.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4546,"href":"https:\/\/nafwb.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4545\/revisions\/4546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nafwb.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nafwb.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nafwb.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}