Pastor Greg’s Thanksgiving Letter
Dear Church Family,
Thanksgiving is on our doorstep and with it, an invitation to count our blessings. The gospel hymn writer wrote, “count your blessings, and it will surprise you what the Lord has done.”
As I consider the lives of our church family — and be sure that I’m grateful when you trust me with your struggles and challenges — I’m reminded that for many, it might be a challenge to be thankful this Thanksgiving. And this makes Paul’s message to the church at Thessalonica a bit hard to hear. How, in the midst of life’s challenges, is it possible to ALWAYS be joyful, NEVER stop praying and be thankful in ALL circumstances? Especially when Paul tells us that such remarkable standards are God’s will for us. Surely life must have been decidedly different for those first-century Christians. Yet, I’m thankful to Leon Morris for setting me straight on the background of this passage and on the key to spiritual thankfulness:
“Persecution was always threatening and often actual. The believers were usually in straitened circumstances and compelled to work hard for a living. Their lot can rarely have been other than hard. But if we fasten our attention on these things we put our emphasis in the wrong place. They thought more of their Lord than of their difficulties; more of their spiritual riches in Christ than of their poverty on earth; more of the glorious future when their Lord should come again than of their unhappy past.”[1]
According to Morris, successful blessing counting starts with focusing on our Lord, our spiritual riches in him and the glorious future promised to us through the grace of Jesus Christ. It can be hard to take our eyes off the struggles we face each day, the burdens we carry from the past and concerns for an unseen future. And I believe that our loving God understands better than we know our human weakness, including the experience of being ‘tired of being tired.’ Yet we’re still left with Paul’s admonition to always be joyful, never stop praying and live lives of thankfulness.
Curiously, John Stott, in The Message of 1 & 2 Thessalonians, argues that these commands are not directed to us individually but rather to the church regarding our public worship. He writes that joy and happiness are not in our control, to turn “on and off like a tap.”[2] While I’m not sure that his assessment should let us entirely off the hook, I believe there’s an element here that is directly relational to joy, prayer and thanksgiving. That element is the church, the Body of Christ — the BSBC church’ family.’
Experience the love of Jesus. Live it out everywhere.
We’ve just proposed a new mission statement, a reason for existence, and a goal for our interactions: Experience the love of Jesus. Live it out everywhere. I believe that one of the ways God intends for us to live out our faith is by engaging with others who also love Jesus. As a church ‘family,’ we seek to emphasize Jesus Christ, the spiritual riches that come from a relationship with him and the remarkable future that he affords, both in this world and the next. I pray that our participation in life together at BSBC will bring us all closer to living with joy, prayer and thankfulness.
How you can get involved
This Thanksgiving, I encourage you to consider your current level of engagement in the life we share and encourage you to take a step toward further engagement. Enclosed you’ll find an invitation to join our fall study, The Relentless Elimination of Hurry. There are opportunities to connect with a study group and practical ways to embrace a slower pace and find greater peace and satisfaction. Also, just after Thanksgiving, we’ll start our online community called PRAY. PRAY will be a blog on our website with weekly teaching on prayer from your pastors and testimonies about the role of prayer in the lives of your church family. You’ll be able to share with one another in the comments and send any questions you might have about prayer and faith confidentially to your pastors. These are two new ways we can engage in life together.
Visit our website, thestreetonline.ca, to learn more about how we do life together. Not everything will be for you, but there’s likely to be something for someone you know. We’d also be grateful if you would pray for our ministries, those who lead them and those who come to participate — including you.
Join us this Thanksgiving Sunday
So, please join us in person or online this Thanksgiving Sunday at 10:30 a.m. and each Sunday after that! We can’t be the Body of Christ on our own. It takes two or more together. Come out and experience the love of Jesus, and be encouraged and equipped to live it out wherever you find yourself!
Count your blessings and see what God has done!
Greg Geldart, Lead Pastor
[1] Leon Morris, The First and Second Epistles to the Thessalonians [Eerdmans], p. 172
[2] John Stott, The Message of 1 & 2 Thessalonians [IVP Academic], p. 124
