Glory to God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
There is a curious word in your Bible; you’ll find it in places like,
I will confess Thee among the peoples, O Lord, I will chant unto Thee among the nations (Psalm 58:12lxx)
I will confess Thee, O Lord my God, with all my heart, and I will glorify Thy name for ever (Psalm 85:11lxx).
Last night at Matins, we sang this word differently: “Give thanks to the Lord for he is good, for his mercy endures forever.”
“Give thanks” doesn’t sound like the same thing at all, but it’s the same word: In Greek, “confess” and “give thanks” both literally mean to agree: to say the same thing. That’s why the Apostle John writes:
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:8,9).
One word in your Greek Bible means both to acknowledge your sins in confession, and to acknowledge the goodness of God in thanksgiving.
Both confession of our sins and giving thanks to God are ways we line up our words and actions with reality. They put truth in our mouths – so that our words can teach our minds, and our mind can teach our heart.
If we say that we have fellowship with [God], and walk in darkness, we are lying, and not doing the truth: But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:6-7).
Well, that’s great for people who walk in the light and do righteousness – but what about sinners like me? I’m a terrible excuse for a disciple.
If that’s so, then agree with the Lord. Your words and actions reveal the truth about you. So speak the truth to the Lord. God is not afraid of your honesty.
“Lord, I keep promising to trust you but you know I’m full of fear, and my thoughts say you don’t love me and you won’t do what I need. I keep acting and speaking without any compassion or gentleness, and my thoughts show I’m full of envy and impurity and my own superiority. I come to church but my thoughts wander, and I don’t even want to be here sometimes. My words and actions show that I don’t love you and there is no fear of God in me.”
What if we all talked to God like that? Well, “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).
Did you think you were going to surprise the Lord?
“Lord, thou knowest when I sit down and when I stand. Before a word is even on my tongue, Lord, thou knowest it altogether” (Psalm 139).
No, you can’t offend the Lord with truth. God is not afraid of your honesty. Now you’re telling the truth, you’re walking in light, and now you’re in a place where you can receive grace.
It’s the place called humility. And if you’ll speak the same thing as the Lord, confess your sins and confess God’s goodness and mercy, his faithfulness and the calling he’s placed on your life, then the goodness of God can lead you to repentance (Romans 2:4).
How to you go from shame to boldness before God? By confessing the truth: “Lord, you have called me by name and drawn me to follow you. But I am a sorry excuse for a disciple. I haven’t got any tears of grief for my sins, and the truth of my actions reveals that I don’t love you or fear you. So I’m going to say what you say: You are the good God who loves me, and your grace and power and faithfulness are forever. So have mercy on this sinner, Lord, forgive my errors and my willful disobedience, and raise me up to walk in the light with you because that’s what you have said you want. Your mercy makes me bold to confess the truth that my God is good.”
Confessing the truth about God is how you get your eyes off your performance and onto to your Provider.
When we learn to confess the truth about God and give thanks to the Lord for he is good, then we come out from under the shadow of shame and start learning boldness.
St John of the Ladder wrote: “Let us make an effort not only to wrestle with the demons but also to wage war on them. He who wrestles sometimes throws them, and sometimes he is thrown; but he who wages war is continuously hounding the enemy.”
He is talking about displacing deception and despair with confession of the righteousness of God in Christ. Entering into spiritual warfare by fasting, praying, serving your family and parish and the poor, and doing good to your enemies.
Boldness comes when you face an enemy standing side by side with the Lord God Almighty and all his saints and angels.
* * *
Have you seen advertisements for products that are meant to purify your blood? You know, you’ve actually already got a liver and kidneys to do that. They work full-time pulling poisons out of your bloodstream.
Your soul has something similar. Day by day you encounter pain and suffering – this is normal in this sin-damaged word – just as the Lord promised, “In this world you will have tribulation” (John 16:33). But your soul is not meant to fill up with the poison of pain and sorrow, or turn septic with bitterness or cynicism; you have a mechanism that’s meant to purify the poisons from your soul. It is called thanksgiving.
The saints, with the wisdom of experience, tell us to give thanks even for betrayals, insults, disasters, and injustices, “Knowing that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, lacking nothing” (James 1:3-4).
But many of us are not strong enough or wise enough to give thanks for all things (Ephesians 5:20). – for betrayals, insults, disasters, injustices. So for us, it is vital to taste and see that the Lord is good (Psalm 33:8) and meditate on “his goodness, and his wondrous works to the children of men!” (Psalm 106:31lxx). To confess the truth about who God is. Then our words can teach our mind, so our mind can teach our heart.
And then, when a stone falls on our lives, we are not crushed by our grief – because we know how to “give thanks to the Lord for he is good, for his mercy endures forever” (Psalm 136). “I will give thanks to the Lord because of his righteousness; I will sing the praises of the name of the Lord Most High” (Psalm 7:17), “for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works; and that my soul knows right well” (Psalm 139:14kjv), for “he hath done all things well.” (Mark 7:37). Saint Paul teaches how to pray: “With thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6-7).
You see, gratitude is not a mood. It’s a discipline. We don’t withhold thanks when we don’t get our own way. God will not be coerced, but will continue to permit “rain to fall on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45).
If we will allow thankfulness to have its full work in us, it will purify the poison from our sufferings. Then “you will be blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and perverse generation, in which you shine as lights in the world” (Philippians 2:15).
And don’t stop with just verbally saying that God is good: DO good, especially when you have been wronged.
Friends at the parish in Boise have told me about a 99-year-old concentration camp survivor named Lyuba, now departed in blessed memory. She used to say, “When someone throws a rock at you, throw back bread instead!”
This is a virtue the Bible calls philótimo (Romans 15:20; 2 Corinthians 5:9; 1Thessalonians 4:11). It’s remembering how deeply we are indebted to the good God who loves mankind, so that we begin to be filled with love for others – and without any thought of our own rights, we honor and supply and serve other people. “Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise — the fruit of lips confessing his name. And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased” (Hebrews 13:15-16).
Finally: Just as God’s mercy, the steadfast love of God, is not a feeling or a mood but a constant energy from his unchanging character, in the same way, let thankfulness be your commitment and your discipline, so that you reflect and participate in the character of God. It requires practice. No virtue becomes natural to us without being practiced daily — but with intentional repetition it can become our accustomed way of life.
The difference between the person who is hardened and destroyed by their suffering, and the one who is made compassionate and holy by what they suffer, is in the way they cooperate with the divine action of grace. Let thanksgiving open your mouth, so that your lips can open your mind – and your mind can open your heart.
“And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body; and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him” (Colossians 3:15-17).
