GRATITUDE: #4 Gratitude for What We CAN Have

By Dr. Gilbert W. Stafford
Scripture: Psalm 42:1-2, 11 and Matthew 11:28-29

A SEEKER AFTER GOD 

Gloria Plank, friend and long time missionary, tells about Mercedes, a girl in Costa Rica who longed to have a personal relationship with God.1 She wanted to experience peace with the Lord, peace with others, peace in her heart. She was willing to go to any extent to find it. Finally she left home to become a member of a religious group that promised her that if she would live a rigorous life under their direction, she would discover what she was looking for. For three years she denied herself of the joys of being a young girl. She fasted and prayed all the time. Sometimes there were sores on her knees from the long hours she knelt in prayer. During those years she was deprived of having even a comb or a mirror so that she could concentrate on God instead of herself. Once a week Mercedes was required to flail herself in an attempt to put herself under subjection to God. The head of the religious group made her strip down at the end of the week in order to see whether any marks appeared on her body from the flailing. If not, she would beat Mercedes until she did have marks to show for it.

But, of course, Mercedes was not finding what she was looking for through all of this torture. Consequently, she abandoned the place. After returning home, she eventually met a young man named William whom she married. To their union were born three boys and a girl. Even though she was busy working as a mother, her heart still was not at peace. Her search continued. She wondered whether she would ever find the sense of wholeness and purpose for which she longed.

One day when her children were on their way to some classes, they heard singing along the road. It was coming from a little church building. They could hear children inside singing happy songs about Jesus. As they stood listening, someone invited them in. They went inside and learned the songs quickly. In fact, they liked the experience so much that they kept going back again and again. Fearing that their parents wouldn’t like it, they kept it a secret.

One day, however, Mercedes, perhaps a little suspicious that the children were not always going where they were supposed to be going, followed them and saw them turn into the little church. Approaching the building, she listened from outside, and she, too, was intrigued by the delightful songs about Christ Jesus. When someone came out and invited her in, she accepted and found herself fascinated by the wonderful Bible stories about Jesus of Nazareth. She, too, continued going back again and again. Every time she went she heard about God’s love. She was told that God’s salvation is a gift which we don’t have to earn. She listened carefully to the message about a joy and a peace that all of us can have here and now. This, Mercedes concluded, was what she had been searching for since her girlhood. And so, in humble faith, she bowed to receive Christ into her heart.

The experience was so precious that she wanted William also to know the joy of the salvation she had found. Finally, after much prayer, he, too, experienced Christ’s saving love. People began noticing that something so important had happened to him that he no longer was interested in spending his evenings at the bars; he had better things to do. William and Mercedes had new joy and purpose in life.

When they moved to a mountain farm where there was no church, they began one in their home. So many people were converted that a church building had to be built to accommodate them.

In the course of time one of their sons felt his call to the ministry, went to seminary, and eventually was instrumental in establishing a large growing church in the capital city, San Jose. How proud and grateful they were of him!

And now, Mercedes herself is the pastor of a growing church and is introducing more and more people to the joy and peace that they too can have through faith in Christ. She is able to sing in the words of one of the songs of her church: “I have found the pleasure I once craved, It is joy and peace within; What a wondrous blessing! I am saved From the awful gulf of sin. It is joy unspeakable and full of glory.”2

My dear listener, God can fulfil your deepest desires, too. Our deepest desire, as human beings, is to be at peace with God. As Augustine who lived from 354-430 prayed in the very first paragraph of his famous Confessions: “Thou awakest us to delight in Thy praise; for Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose [or rest] in Thee.”3

Augustine was expressing the same desire that the psalmist who wrote Psalm 42:1-2 had: “As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. 2>My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.”4

Mercedes of Costa Rica thirsted for God, and found him. Augustine of North Africa thirsted for God, and found him. And you, my thirsting and hungry and restless friend, can find God, too. You can drink and feed on Christ. You can experience rest for your soul. Jesus in Matthew 11:28-29 says, “Come to me, all you are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29>Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

God wants you to have this spiritual nourishment and rest.

GETTING IN TOUCH WITH OUR NEED

But in order to experience this good gift, we first of all have to get in touch with our need. We humans tend to mask our need for God by keeping so busy that we don’t have time to think about our spiritual emptiness. Even in our busyness, though, we have a nagging feeling that something important is missing. Things are not quite right. How often we hear stories about people who for the first time come face to face with their need for God. It may happen at the time of sickness, or financial reversal. It may happen when a loved one dies, or when some other major trauma takes place. In the midst of some reversal in life, they can no longer mask the emptiness. It is then that they own up to the reality that they need God desperately.

LOOKING IN THE RIGHT PLACE FOR THE NEED TO BE FULFILLED 

Second, when you recognize the need, look in the right place for it to be fulfilled. It is at this point that many turn to cheep substitutes for God. They turn to drink, to gambling, to sexual flings, to overeating, to cult groups, to New Age books, to psychics. But, my friend, only God will do. Only God can fulfill the deepest needs of the human heart. Again, in the words of Augustine: “Our heart is restless, until it repose [rests] in Thee.” There is no lasting and eternal rest in anything or anyone else.

COME IN FAITH TO THE ONE WHO CAN GIVE YOU GOD’S REST 
Third, come in faith to the one who can give you this rest. “Come to me,” Jesus said, “and I will give you rest.”

It may be that you, like Mercedes spoken of earlier, are eager for peace with God but aren’t finding it. But, you need not despair because God is as interested in your finding peace with him as you are. In fact, he is even more interested in it, and is willing to meet you in the most unexpected ways. Mercedes made the discovery after her children had stumbled across some singing in a little church and when she herself went with them one day and heard some stories about Jesus. What was all that about? It was about God superintending her life in such a way that he could give her the blessings for which her heart had yearned for so many years. As she looks back over the events of her life from this vantage point, she sees the hand of God superintending her marriage, her having four children, their discovery of a little congregation called the Church of God, their secretive attendance at the church, her following them one day, and her listening to the simple stories of Jesus and his love. All of this was part of God’s superintending love for her. As a result of this, she finally found the rest for which her heart had yearned for so long. Even as she was longing for God, even so God was longing for sweet fellowship with Mercedes. It would be equally as true if the psalm has read: “As a deer longs for flowing streams, even so God longs for fellowship with us; God thirsts for us, those created in his own image.”

The good news is that we can have this blessed fellowship with God. The last verse of the psalm ends like this: “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.”

It is time for us to give praise to God for the blessings, which he offers to us for the asking. In the words of the King James translation of Hebrews 11:6, “he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.”

In another psalm, the 107th, it is physical water and food for which the psalmist searches. He rejoices that god fulfills that physical need. In verse 9 he declares with gratitude that God “satisfies that thirsty, and the hungry he fills with good things.”

But the same is true of those who are spiritually thirsty and hungry: he “satisfies the thirsty, and the hungry he fills with good things.” Rise up, then, dear one, and give praise to God for these good things. They are things, which everyone can have. That includes you.

PRAYER 

Let us pray:

Gracious God, our hearts are restless until they rest in you. Grant that this very day we will experience all that you have for us. We give you praise for all that is ours through faith in Christ our Lord. In his name, we pray. Amen.

1 Gloria Plank, “The Calling” in Five Loaves and Two Fish, ed. Cheryl Johnson Barton (Anderson: Board of the Church of God, 1996), pp. 19-21.
2 Barney E. Warren, “Joy Unspeakable,” Worship the Lord: Hymnal of the Church of God (Anderson: Warner, 1989), No. 620.
3 The Confessions of Saint Augustine, trans. Edward B. Pusey (New York: Collier, 1978), p. 11.
4 New Revised Standard Version used here and throughout.

Script 2604 (GWS)
November 24, 1996
SERIES: GRATITUDE
4. Gratitude for What We CAN Have
Scripture: Psalm 42:1-2, 11 and Matthew 11:28-29