Can We Be Thankful for Everything? Ephesians 5:20

Can we give thanks for everything? It is easy to give thanks for the good, the happy circumstances, or prosperity. When we feel happy and grateful for blessings we find giving thanks to be natural, but when bad things happen can we still give thanks?

"Always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ." Ephesians 5:20. NIV.

EXCEPTIONAL

Always giving thanks. Ephesians 5:20

This verse uses both words, always and everything, and that combination teaches an attitude of thankfulness that is unnatural to the common person.  To be thankful in all circumstances, good and bad, is more than character or emotion- it is a conviction.  The words always and everything includes bad events and sorrows.

Thankfulness in itself is a pleasant quality in a person, but thankfulness directed to God the Father is saintly. To focus thankfulness to the author of the circumstances in our lives we raise the affairs of daily circumstances and life's milestones to divine interest and holy activity.

GOD
Since God is sovereign He has right, power, and will to exercises His control over circumstances in the world he created, therefore the events of our lives are in his control. Since God is good the events of our lives ought to be good. The finite mind of man cannot comprehend the infinite mind of an all-knowing and all-wise God, so it must by faith in the truth that He is good that we know He must have a good purpose in the seemingly bad events of our lives.

People may see evil as evidence that God is weak, indifferent, or capricious. These views ignore the gospel of redemption where God came in bodily form as Jesus to die on the cross and buy redemption for mankind. His death seemed the act of evil yet the purposes of God were for this very tragedy to be the basis of salvation by His substitution of himself as payment for our sins. God has given us free will where we may sin or choose Him.

GOOD
Knowing that God is good we must believe that whatever happens in our lives is motivated by His goodness; even if we do not understand the circumstances we do understand (even only if just slightly) the goodness of God, so we can be thankful for everything- the good and painful.  We must hold on to the view that God is good; this is the basis of noble thinking. To be thankful for everything becomes the basis of noble living. To give thanks is the basis of noble doing.

We must always give thanks.  There is little that creatures created by God can give to God. Strangely he wants is our thanks which we are able to give.

(c)Adron Dozat