In his sermon 'Giving Thanks for Trouble,' Phillip Kayser discusses the story of Jonah and the importance of thanksgiving, even in the midst of adversity. Using Jonah's prayer from the belly of the fish as a focal point, Kayser illustrates how Jonah's initial reluctance and bitterness gave way to a profound act of faith and thanksgiving. The sermon delves into Jonah's symptoms of depression, attributing them to his unresolved bitterness and past trauma. Kayser describes the narrative of Jonah as a counseling manual, drawing parallels between Jonah’s story and modern counseling techniques. He emphasizes that thanksgiving, even when difficult, is an act of faith that can lead to spiritual and emotional healing. The concept of God's sovereignty is pivotal throughout, as it reassures believers that all experiences, even painful ones, are under God’s control and work for their ultimate good. The sermon encourages believers to adopt an eternal perspective, and to engage in thanksgiving as a way to align with God’s will, find inner peace, and experience deliverance.

We'll be reading from Jonah chapter 2. And I do bring greetings from the saints in Omaha. It's been a joy to be able to be a part of the wedding here and it's always a joy to fellowship with you and to worship our great and awesome God. I'm going to back up one verse and begin reading in Jonah 1 verse 17. Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

Then Jonah prayed to the Lord, his God, from the fish's belly. And he said, I cried out to the Lord because of my affliction and he answered me out of the belly of Sheol I cried and you heard my voice for you cast me into the deep and into the heart of the seas and the floods surrounded me all your billows and your waves passed over me then I said I have been cast out of your sight. Yet I will look again toward your holy temple. The water surrounded me, even to my soul. The deep closed around me.

Weeds were wrapped around my head. I went down to the moorings of the mountains, the earth with its bars closed behind me forever. Yet you have brought up my life out of the pit. O Lord my God, when my soul fainted within me I remembered the Lord And my prayer went up to you into your holy temple. Those who regard worthless idols forsake their own mercy.

But I will sacrifice to you with the voice of thanksgiving. I will say, I will pay what I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord." So the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land. Amen. Father God, we thank you for your word, and we do bow our knees before you and acknowledge that you are sovereign.

You are Lord of sea. You are Lord of land. You are Lord of fish. You are Lord of our lives. It is our desire to conform our lives more and more to you.

And I pray that as we examine your word, that our hearts truly would embrace it, that our lives would conform to it, that you would give us great joy as we seek by the power of your Holy Spirit to do that which is impossible for any graceless heart to do. And so we commit this continued time of worship to you and pray it in Jesus name. Amen You may be seated Well, thanksgiving is coming up in another week or two and Gary thought that it would be Nice for me to speak on the topic of Thanksgiving, but I'm not going to be giving you a warm fuzzy Thanksgiving message today. I'm going to be giving you something. It's a little more challenging and As I prayed it will require God's grace to even be able to achieve this.

It is thanking God not only in the belly of the fish, but thanking Him for the belly of the fish, thanking him for your troubles. Now before I deal with that theme, I want to try to paint a background picture for you of how bad things really were for Jonah because it was much more than the fish. His troubles preceded this by probably quite a bit of time. And I believe his primary problem was that because of bitterness, because of issues that he had experienced in the past, his poor responses to them, he began to have incredible, what J. Adams calls depression, what some people call nervous exhaustion, but it's more than just the exhaustion, it's his responses to life caused him to see all of life very very negatively and many times people I don't think appreciate what Jonah went through they just shake their heads at him and say what is wrong with Jonah what kind of a prophet is this that he would act in the way that he did?

Many people think of him as a racist. Many people think of him as being so hard-hearted. I don't think he was either hard-hearted or a racist. You can think of his treatment of the Phoenicians. He was very generous to them.

He could have just said fine. I'll drown just going down with the Phoenicians who cares about them, but he Volunteered to have them throw him into the ocean and for them to be rescued and he actually cared about them enough that he shared the gospel with them and they repented of their sins and worshiped the true God. They even used the name, Yehoah. So he cares for the Phoenicians from a different race. He does not care at all for the Assyrians from a different race.

He is mindful of the one, not of the other. And I want to explain a little bit of what was going on behind the scenes. And before I do that, I want to also explain that he shows all of the classic symptoms of depression, or whatever you want to call it. First of all he withdraws from people and then he complains about his isolation. Now he's the one that withdrew but he complains about his isolation.

Second he is unbelievably downcast and blue, unbelievably sad. He just cannot get over his sadness. Third, he feels overwhelmed with what God wants him to do and he doesn't think he can do it. His responsibilities seem impossible to handle, so he avoids his responsibilities. Fourth, he sleeps when he should have action.

And this is one of the symptoms, actually, insomnia can be a symptom as well, but Just feeling like I've got to crawl into a hole and sleeping is one of the ways that they get past the negative feelings that they have. Fifth, he shows no desire to eat. He has lost his appetite. Sixth, he excuses his irresponsibility. And he feels perfectly justified in doing so even though others looking on say, wow, this really seems irrational.

This seems bizarre what Jonah is doing. Seventh, he has lost all desire for living. For example, in chapter 1, he insists that the mariners throw him overboard. He probably knew that suicide was wrong. It was sin.

So he said, well, let them do the dirty work. Let them throw me into the water. But if you take a look at chapter 4 verse 3 it says, Therefore now O Lord, please take my life from me for it is better for me to die than to live. Many times people who have had deep, deep depression, They don't want to go on living. They might not commit suicide because they know what's wrong before the Lord, but they sure feel like it.

Chapter four, verse eight, then he wished death for himself and said, it is better for me to die than to live. So he is so depressed, he does not want to continue on living. And chapter by chapter, God forces Jonah to confront the inner wounds and hurts and the bitterness that have led to this depression. And I believe God in this book is being the master counselor in Jonah's life. And we'll look at his techniques in a little bit.

But next I want to examine the question of why he was sewed down and exhibited bitterness. Some of the reasons for his bitterness are hinted at in chapter 3 verse 8. This is the king's decree to the citizens for how they should repent. It says, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and cry mightily to God. Yes, let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hand." So the king picks out two things that he wants them to repent over, their evil way and the violence that is in their hands.

Now if you look at the biblical evidence and the archaeological evidence of the way Assyria was back then, you realize it was one of the most barbaric, cruel, evil nations of that period. Even all of the other nations, as pagan as they were, thought that the Assyrians deserved to die. They were terrible. They were horrible. I have subscribed to quite a number of archeology magazines.

It's one of my hobbies on the side. And it's astounding how many times artifacts from the Assyrians come up. And almost every issue that has discovered new artifacts about the Assyrians has torture artifacts in it. Or even frescoes. There was this one, they had an intact living room with a kitchen off to the side.

They had an intact living room with a kitchen off to the side. They had an intact living room with a big fresco over the whole wall. The whole wall of that living room was covered with various forms of torture, including one where it showed a person's skin being flayed off. People have mapped this all out in even their writings and have said that the Assyrians delighted in torture. They loved to draw it out as long as they could and they found some pleasure in hearing the screams and the torture.

You might cross reference Nahum chapter three, where it talks about all of the pagan nations round about Assyria rejoicing when Nineveh falls. Why? Because of Nineveh's cruelty. It was well known that they were incredibly cruel. So that all by itself would give a good justification for him saying, look, these guys deserve to die, Lord.

Look at all of the barbaric things that they have done. Yes, I will be kind to the Phoenicians because they've done no harm, but it goes beyond simply recognizing the evil that was in Nineveh's hands. I think this impacted Jonah very personally. Now I cannot be dogmatic on this. This is reading between the lines.

I think it's a sanctified reading between the lines. But in 2 Kings chapter 14, you will find that Jonah lived in Gath Heifer, and Assyria had attacked that region. And you know when Assyria attacked various people what they did the tortures that followed because they tried to instill fear into their enemies don't fight with us or this is what's going to happen to you and so putting some of the pieces of the puzzle together it appears to me that he was one of the survivors from that region after Assyria had attacked and he had witnessed family members and friends who had been tortured slowly to death perhaps driven into his memory were the cries of children who were being tortured, with the Assyrians laughing at them, making fun of them. And so his emotions churned with the memory of this ghastly demonic cruelty And it would take a great deal to heal Jonah of this pain and to enable him to get to the place where he could Love his enemy now that is a background hopefully you can a little bit sympathize with Jonah. I can definitely sympathize with Jonah.

These guys deserved to be axed. If there was any nation that deserved it, they deserved to be axed. And The very fact that Jonah wrote this embarrassing biography, I mean it would be embarrassing to me to write all of these things, expose my dirty laundry. The very fact that he wrote this embarrassing biography may indicate that Jonah later came to love his enemies and in doing so had conquered the hurts that brought on his severe depression. Step by step God brought Jonah out of his depressed state and we can't look at all of the steps that God took but as a side note I want to point out that the book of Jonah, I think, is a great counselor's manual.

It's a training manual for how we ought to approach similar things ourselves. Let me give you eight hints that are parallel to Newthetic counseling, which is biblical counseling on dealing with people who have this nervous exhaustion, this depression, and this retreating from life. First, this book illustrates the principle that Depressed people frequently need intervention. They frequently need intervention. They often refuse to come for help.

They retreat from their jobs, from their responsibilities. They just hang out in their rooms. Jonah wanted to crawl into a hole and let the world just go away. But you are not doing a depressed person any favors when you allow that to happen. They want you to just leave them alone.

God wouldn't let Jonah alone. He did not allow him to crawl into a hole. Second, Jonah wanted to avoid his pain. God helped him to deal with his pain. Those two are quite different.

Some people think, well, I am dealing with my pain. I'm avoiding it. I don't want to have anything to do with that person anymore. There's a big difference between avoiding your pain and dealing with your pain. Next, Jonah felt overwhelmed with the task.

God took him through that task a step at a time. When I was a kid I used to get overwhelmed with big tasks that were put before me and if you ask my wife she'll say it's still easy to do you know when you've got a limited area you got everything crowded into your garage you gotta clean it up like I've got nowhere to even put things So she helps me step at a time to figure out how to get that thing cleaned. Well that's what God does with Jonah. He takes him through this a step at a time. How do you eat an elephant?

It's like, I can't eat an elephant. Well you eat an elephant a bite at a time and maybe in a thousand years you'll be done. No, that would be depressing thinking that way too. But Next, Jonah tried to avoid action. God forced him to take action.

This is something that really helped Kathy out. She and I both in our twenties went through some severe depression. I'd already had counseling training through Jay Adams, so I just forced myself to take actions even though I wanted to crawl into a hole. Her parents helped her through that but this is an important important step we can't get into this morning. Fifth, Jonah sought to excuse his irresponsibility but God kept reminding him of his responsibility and wouldn't let him off the hook.

Now that could be frustrating to a depressed person. They don't want to hear about the responsibilities. They just want to crawl into a hole. But it's essential for their restoration. Six, God asked, is it right for you to be angry?

Of course Jonah responds irrationally and emotionally. He says, it is right for me to be angry even to death! Exclamation mark. You can see his emotions overriding his clear thinking. But this is what happens many times when we are absolutely physically exhausted and our emotions many times come to the fore much too much.

Seventh, just as Jonah was a challenging case, depressed people are often challenging cases, but that doesn't mean you wash your hands of them. They need help, just like anybody else does. Eighth, Jonah saw only the negative in life. God has to remind him of the positive sides of life. And you even see that in chapter four, you know.

Here he has some pity on a plant and God takes his pity from there and says you really ought to have pity upon the city of Nineveh, your enemy, the people that you hate. But the inability to see the positive is one of the symptoms as well. In fact, when we have bitterness accompanying the depression, it completely poisons us to seeing anything good. And I've had this happen to me a number of times where as I've repented of my bitterness, all of a sudden I realize, you know, these people that I am upset with have so many good characteristics that I'm missing. But bitterness makes us blind to them.

So in many different ways, God showed his love to Jonah by bringing him out of his depression a little bit at a time. I think it's a fantastic book for training those who counsel the depressed. But this morning what I want to focus on is just one tiny little part of that taking of people out of depression and that is Jonah's prayer of thanksgiving. Giving thanks when you do not feel like giving thanks is a God ordained means of bringing inner healing and strength. It really is.

It may not make sense, but it works. And many people have testified to the supernatural healing they have experienced as a result of a persistent God-centered thanksgiving. It is actually an action of faith and once we have faith that God-centered faith, faith always claims God's grace. It empowers us. Paul says that we are to be giving thanks always for all things.

He doesn't want us to wait until the depression is over. Now where does Jonah start? Frequently depressed people have lost so much will to live that they can't even pray. Sometimes prayers don't even come to their mind. Their mind is just a big blank.

All they can say is, help me, help me. That's about all they can say. Now here's the thing I think that can help a person. If you're trying to counsel a person through depression, have them, encourage them to read a psalm or at least read a psalm to them, like Psalm 27 or Psalm 42 or 43. These are Psalms that help to organize our disorganized and scattered emotions and allow us to be a little bit more God-focused in the way that we express our emotions.

It's not denying the emotions. The very fact that God has included so many Psalms in the Psalter by his inspiration shows that God identifies with our pain. He identifies with these emotions that we experience that we're going through and he authorizes us to pray them to him. Now I would not dare to pray some of the things that are in those Psalms if God had not commanded me to. But the very fact that he commands us to sing these Psalms to God, it releases our emotions but it directs them, it guides them in a God-focused way that is very, very healing.

Now you can use other prayers as well. I love Valley of Visions. Sometimes I would kneel on my bedside and just pray out of the Trinity hymnal. Just recite it. I don't necessarily even sing the Trinity hymnal.

And some of the Anglican prayers, I think, were written by people who really experienced the deep and sometimes the dark side of life and were able to help God's people to pray them to the Lord. But I don't think reading a prayer is unspiritual. Why? God gave us more than 150 written prayers that he expects us to pray. So if God wrote it in the Psalter and then there's other written prayers that he wants us to pray, I would say no it can be just as meaningful as a spontaneous prayer and sometimes depressed people have a hard time praying.

So I said don't worry about it. Start where you can. Start reading a prayer. Next, when does Jonah start his thanksgiving? And the answer is, not when he feels like thanking God.

He doesn't start his thanksgiving after he gets delivered. He starts his Thanksgiving before he is delivered. Verse 1, then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the fish's belly and he said, so he is thanking God in the belly of this strange sea creature. Verse 10 indicates that it was only after this prayer of thanksgiving that the fish spit Jonah out. New American Standard Bible says, then the Lord commanded the fish and it vomited Jonah onto the dry land.

The Septuagint translates it, upon this a command was given by the Lord to the fish. So his thanksgiving preceded his deliverance. But by thanking God, Even when it didn't make any sense to be thanking God, by praising God when it didn't make any sense to do so, he was engaging his faith and by that faith He was receiving strength for the situation and some people they will immediately tell you no way I am not thanking God in the midst of this slimy belly of this fish no way And the answer is well, then you're not going to get any deliverance from your negative feelings that you're going through Thanksgiving is an action of faith. It is the obedience of faith. And let me tell you how I have handled myself when I have not felt like doing this.

I have not felt like thanking God. I preach to myself. Two of the Psalms that Jonah quotes are Psalm 42 and 43, both of which, by the way, deal with the same symptoms that Jonah was going through, same symptoms of depression, but both of which have the author absolutely determined to go against his feelings and to praise and thank God anyway. It's almost like he takes himself by the scruff of the neck and says, cut it out Phil, cut it out. You are not going to continue to mope about this.

You are going to praise God. You are going to thank God. It's almost like he gets upset with himself. He says, why are you cast down on my soul? Why are you disquieted within me?

Hope in God for I shall yet praise him the help of my countenance and my God. So he's exhorting himself, teaching himself, saying, cut it out Phil, you're going to do what you need to do. So that is a key thing to having a breakthrough. Now I sometimes forget what I've preached on before and what I haven't, and I may have shared this illustration with you before, but I think it's a helpful one. When my two brothers and I were in Ethiopia, we were up in the mountains one time.

We got lost. Now, we were always climbing the mountains, but on this particular time we had taken a different route. We got lost, fog set in, we got really lost as a result of the fog. And a nightfall was approaching and we were getting nervous because you could hear the animals were starting to come out and so we started to really hurry. We thought we had found the right pathway and so we started to run down this hill and part way down this hill I was just running pelt mill.

Something hit me in my knee and I went sprawling. I skinned up my arm and my knee, my hip got hurt, and I dusted myself off and got up, was griping and complaining to the Lord, why here, you know, here we're lost, and you're having me fall, why are you allowing me to go through all of these things? I was having a bad hair day and a bad attitude. It was a sourpuss attitude. Well, by that time my brothers had caught up to me And just then the fog lifted and a few feet in front of me I saw this huge cliff that I would have run right over.

All of a sudden I'm thanking God. I'm saying thank you, thank you, thank you for tripping me. This was wonderful. You know, otherwise I would have gone right over that cliff. And here's the point.

I look back, by the way, and I didn't see anything that tripped me. There was nothing there. To this day, I'm convinced it was an angel that hit me in my knee and sent me sprawling. But Here's the point. My thesis for this morning is that God wants you to say, thank you Lord, thank you for tripping me, thank you for the pain that you bring into my life, thank you for that fish that swallowed me, thank you for the storm, thank you for all of these negative things that have come into my life before the fog lifts.

If God has to lift the fog before you thank him, you're walking by sight. You're not walking by faith. God allows the fog to come in And he says, look I tripped you for a good reason. Romans 8, 28 is true. All things work together for good of those who love God to those who are called according to his purpose.

You can't see what the good is yet because the fog is not lifted, but I dare you to start thanking me before the fog lifts. That's the thesis this morning. We've got to get to the place where we walk by faith and not by sight, and when we do so, it truly is an action of faith, and God always answers faith. By faith we receive his grace into our lives and that grace begins to transform us and begins to change us. If we really believe Romans 8 28, we're going to be able to thank God in any circumstance without any hypocrisy whatsoever.

But if you have to wait until the fog lifts, then you really don't believe Romans 8.28. That's the bottom line. You do not believe that God is sovereign. If you cannot thank God for the difficulties you've gone through, you really do not believe that God is sovereign over that difficulty. What enabled Paul and Silas to thank God in prison even while the dried blood was still caked on their backs?

I think it was a knowledge that even this was advancing his kingdom. This was working together for their good This was a glorifying God and if God has glorified Lord, we're willing to suffer for your name's sake They were excited to even be able to go through that. In Ephesians 5 verse 20 is a key verse that has really helped me to approach this whole area of praise and thanksgiving in a way that has brought deep inner healing into my life. That verse reads, giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. He says first of all that there is never a time when you should not, if you're a true believer, you should not be thanking God.

Giving thanks always. No circumstance in which you should not have a thankful heart. But there's more to it than just that. First Thessalonians says we're to thank God in all circumstances. So that's sort of like saying, I can see the silver lining around the dark cloud.

But Ephesians 5 is saying, no, I want you to not only thank God for the silver lining, all the good things that come out of the difficulties. I want you to thank God for the difficult circumstances themselves. He says, giving thanks always for all things. That means thanking God for the irritating person that has messed up your life this last week. Yes, thanking him for that and saying, Lord, you've tested me again to see whether your grace is at work in my life.

And I thank you for that test. May I pass the test this time. I've complained so many times in the past, but may this time I have the grace to get through this and to grow. I thank you that you never put more into my life than I can handle by your grace. I thank you that you are greater than this problem.

I thank you. And just think of all of the things you can thank God for as well as thanking him for testing you with this difficult person. For the fish's belly, so to speak. The pain that you were going through. So the first step is to thank God where you can even if that means reading somebody else's prayer.

Second step is do it right away, don't wait. Jonah thanked God before the herd had gone away even while he was depressed, even while he was in the fish's belly. Third thing that can make our Thanksgiving a reality is developing an eternal perspective. I think we way too frequently measure our gains and our pains and all of the things in life by time rather than by eternity. And it makes a big difference which direction you go through.

God shook Jonah free of that by making him face death. That will make you start thinking about eternity. I mean, if you knew for certain, there was some infallible prediction, you're going to die tomorrow, all of a sudden, you're going to think about life a lot differently. The things that used to really trouble you all of a sudden don't seem that big a deal. I'm gonna die tomorrow, who cares?

There's other things I need to be getting done in the last day of my life. So verse 2 says, I cried out to the Lord because of my affliction and he answered me, out of the depths of Sheol I cried. He'd either died or at least had a near-death experience. I tend to believe that He literally died and his soul went down to Sheol as a type of the Lord Jesus Christ and his death. But either way, it really doesn't matter how you interpret that, either way he came face to face with eternity.

Many people take it metaphorically. They say, no, he came face to face with death, but either way he goes on, for you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me, all your billows and your waves fast over me. Then I said, I have been cast out of your sight, yet I will look again toward your holy temple. The waters encompassed me even to my soul. The deep closed around me.

Weeds were wrapped around my head. I went down to the moorings of the mountains. The earth with its bars closed behind me forever." And then verse 6 describes the rescue by the fish yet you have brought up my life from the pit Oh Lord my God There's nothing quite like the prospect of dying to make a person realize that his concerns as frustrations as fears as hopes as priorities even the things that he's bitter over, are out of balance when he compares it to eternity. Moments before you die, you're not going to regret that you have not made your financial goals or you're not going to be bitter over the fact somebody stole 200 bucks from you, you know, or something else has happened. You're not going to say, I wish I had a nicer house or a boat.

Right before death, the only things you're going to be concerned about are the things that count for eternity. You're probably going to wish, you know, I wish I had spent more time with my friends or I wish I had evangelized. I wish I had shared the gospel with so-and-so. So eternity does make us evaluate our day-to-day decisions much more effectively. Thanksgiving helps us to have an eternal perspective because it is looking at life from God's perspective.

And when you have an eternal perspective, it reinforces a desire to thank God. It's like there is this self-reinforcing circle. So thanksgiving gives us God's perspective on life. God's perspective on life makes us think, whoa, there's a lot to be thankful for. Continuing to be thankful always in all circumstances, again, reinforces that eternal perspective.

And before you know it, the clouds are gone, and you're, I mean, the clouds really are there, but you're like an airplane that's gone above the clouds. You feel much better. You feel great. In fact, in my life, as I have thanked God, initially it's like grinning and bearing it. I just do it because God calls me to do it, but I know there's a theological basis for it, so it's not hypocrisy.

As I do it, I perceptibly feel the bitterness leaving. I perceptibly feel the panic attacks or any other things that have been negative in my life. There is a power in thanking God in a God-centered way. Not manipulatively, but in a God-centered way. A fourth thing that helped Jonah be thankful for that slimy mucus-filled stomach of a fish was that he knew God was sovereign.

You cannot thank God for all things unless you are absolutely convinced that God is sovereign over all things. Those two go hand in hand. I feel sorry for Arminians who don't believe in the sovereignty of God. How in the world are you gonna survive if God is not sovereign? Because you're constantly being taken advantage of by chance.

But if God is sovereign and he's working all things together for your good, well get your act together brother and sister and start thanking him for that. He is doing it because he loves you. Get your act together. He knew this was God's storm and he told the sailors that. He knew this was God's fish.

He says in verse 3, all your billows and your waves passed over you. Jonah knew that nothing but the sovereignty of God could have put him in the fish's belly, and nothing but the sovereignty of God could get him out. But Jonah knew also the reality of Romans 8.28, that this is a good God, a loving God, a caring God. He said in chapter 4, I know that you are gracious and a merciful God, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness, one who relents from doing harm. Now he didn't want that grace for the Assyrians, right?

That's a little bit of his complaint right there. Because he knew that God is so loving and gracious in his life, Romans 8 28 really began to be true and so it enabled him without hypocrisy to pray this prayer of thanksgiving. His good theology gave him the faith to give thanks. Thanksgiving also has the power to move you from self-seeking, self-centered idolatry into servanthood. In verse nine he says, but I will sacrifice to you with the voice of thanksgiving, I will pay what I have vowed.

Now I want you to notice that word sacrifice. Thanksgiving is hard. That's why it is called a sacrifice. And I've had times in the early parts of my life when I started doing this when it felt like Eating gravel. I mean, it's just like really and in fact there are other things that God commands us to do in the sermon on The mount that felt like eating gravel.

There's this one person who was so nasty to me and The Lord just convicted me. No, you need to bless this lady. Bless her even though she is cursing you, cussing you out, trying to get you fired, doing everything she can to make your life miserable. So I started praying, okay Lord, bless her with a salary increase. And I'm thinking, ah, she doesn't deserve a salary increase.

What am I doing? But I did it anyway. I said, Lord, please, bless her in this way, bless her in that way. And what I found happening is that initially there was not much change in her life, but there was a change in my life. All of a sudden I realized I'm not being controlled by her.

She doesn't get me bitter, didn't get me upset, and my perspective began to brighten. But it took about two years of my constantly conquering with love, just doing all kinds of actions of love into her life before You know she actually was conquered she considered herself My friend and I forget why I went down that rabbit trail, but we do things that we don't feel like doing. I think that was the issue. Now in the verse before that, verse 8, he implies that when we only do what we want to do, we are self-seeking idolaters. That's not what we're called to do.

People say, well, I don't feel like doing it. So? What does your feeling have anything to do with it? We are here on earth to serve our Lord God. He has saved us from hell.

He has given His Son for us, He freely gives us all other things, and you're continuing to selfishly live for yourself? No. God has poured Himself out 100% for you, and He has called us to pour ourselves 100% out for Him. So God does not pour out mercy in the Christian's life when the Christian reverts to self-seeking idolatry. No, that's when discipline comes.

Mercy comes to those who seek God, not to those who are self-seeking. And thanksgiving is the very opposite of being a self-seeking idolater and God blesses. A further benefit of thanking God is that it helps us to realize that nothing in creation can be our Savior. Too many times when people come for counseling, they treat me as if I'm their savior. They say, Phil, you've got to fix me.

And I said, no, I can't fix anything in you. I'm going to be pointing you to the Word, pointing you to Jesus, and if your faith is not in Jesus, if your faith is in me, everything I say is gonna be short-circuited, because God does not honor anything but faith, faith in him. And so there's this constant tendency for people to put their faith and their focus in the wrong things. Verse 3 says, he realizes, God's the one who threw him into the ocean. You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas.

In a sense, God had cast him into this depression as well because of his poor responses. But he ends the psalm by meditating on the realization that, quote, salvation is of the Lord. He would stop looking for salvation from men and from things. Those were all bound to let him down and be discouraging to him. He would look to the Lord alone for salvation from his problems.

So this is really a focus issue. Where is your faith focused? If your faith is focused on man, or on medicine, or on something else, then God's gonna say, you know what? Even though that medicine's good, even though that person's good, I'm going to wash it all away because I want your faith to be in me. Yes, I use means, but where is your faith focused?

That's a focus issue. One last benefit of Thanksgiving is deliverance. This shouldn't be the only point that we focus on, but it is interesting that Jonah was delivered at the very moment that he came to Thanksgiving. Verse 10 says, so the Lord spoke to the fish and it vomited Jonah onto dry land. And we've already looked at other versions that show there was a cause and effect relationship here.

Thanksgiving delivers. Now, it's not always a physical deliverance like God gave to Jonah, but there will always be a spiritual deliverance in our lives. For 40 days Jonah was stable enough emotionally to be able to walk through this hostile city that could have killed him any of those days, walked through it boldly preaching against Nineveh's sins and to me it shows he had gotten at least for those 40 days past his depression. It was only after Nineveh repented and he began thinking how unfair it was for God to show mercy that his old thoughts and his old feelings began to bring on the depression again. And this can so easily happen.

People can get completely past their depression only to start feeling badly again because they are not disciplining their thoughts. There's an old saying that goes like this, to praise God for our miseries ends them, to praise God for our blessings extends them, To praise God for our miseries ends them. To praise God for our blessings extends them. And thanksgiving is a powerful tool for spiritual healing but we must use it. Now let me just review the steps that we've gone through.

The first step is to thank God where you can and if your mind is just blank and you're so fried you can't even pray spontaneously, read a prayer, read a song. Second step, do it right away even in the midst of pain. Third step is to relate what you are thanking God for to eternity. Measure all of your decisions by eternity. Your thanksgiving, I think, will become a lot more real when you do that.

In light of eternity, the pains and the difficulties you're going through will tend to diminish. That's what Paul said. He said that our light and momentary afflictions are nothing to be compared with the eternal weight of glory. So it's only as you see the eternal weight of glory, that these mountains become little mole hills. They don't become as important anymore.

The fourth step is to remind yourself that God is sovereign over your problem. Since he is a good God, this will give you a rational basis for thanking him. He never gives you more than he can handle. So meditate on his sovereignty, include that as one of the reasons for thanksgiving. Fifth step is to take the effort, or what Jonah calls the sacrifice to give thanksgiving.

And I know you're not going to want to do it, we rarely do initially. It's a sacrifice after all. Sacrifices are difficult, but they do pay off. Many times it's been in the midst of thanking God that I can very tangibly feel the symptoms of depression leaving. Sixth step is to put aside other saviors and other sources of security and to realize God alone is your source of salvation.

Even vitamins and minerals, as important as they are physiologically to repairing your worn out nervous system, by the way, there is a physiological aspect to depression. You need trace minerals, you need things like this. But as important as they are, I believe God will not allow those vitamins and minerals to work if you short-circuit the God-centered approach. Your faith has got to be in God, not in the things around you. So too many times we look to vitamins to be our Savior, or food, or medicine, or liquor, or drugs, or man.

Even though God uses means, we must recognize salvation is of the Lord. Thank him for that. And having done all that, God has promised to deliver you. It may not be in the way that you anticipate it, but he will deliver you. And this is exactly the promise of Psalm 50 verse 14.

It says, offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving in the day of trouble. I shall rescue you and you will honor me." God will bring the exact rescue or deliverance that we need and through our thanksgiving we will honor him. So God says, those who honor me, I will honor. So a lot of benefits, spiritual and physiological actually, benefits to the discipline of thanksgiving and we need to get used to thanking God much more. But my admonition to you is begin to thank God always for your troubles, even for your troubles, and by faith receive His provision to get through those.

May the Lord be glorified. Father, we thank you for your Word. We thank you that it challenges us, but we thank you also that it gives us examples that encourage us. And I pray that each one of us would step more and more into the grace that Jesus purchased for us at such a dear price. May we not neglect those precious resources.

You have blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. You have said in Ephesians 1 3 and I pray that we would have the faith to write on the checkbook everything that we need from that spiritual bank in heaven. Bless this, your people, and I pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.