Rev. Marty Slingerland

And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God: and the prisoners heard them.
—ACTS 16:25

On Thanksgiving Day, we reflect on our blessings and express our gratitude for the joy they give us. We do this in private worship, in family worship, and in public worship. We give thanks for grace with our health, our finances, and all our daily necessities of life, and we give thanks for specific items such as a new bike, a house to live in, or friends and family. We can give thanks for Jesus, for salvation, for the Word of God, for preaching, and for the power of the Holy Spirit. We can also praise God for His faithfulness, mercy, grace, and goodness. We could never compile a complete list of items to be thankful for since we can never finish counting our blessings one by one.

Thanksgiving Day also serves as a reminder that we should always be thankful. We should be, shouldn’t we? Scripture commands it: “In every thing give thanks” (1 Thess. 5:18). In other words, we are to express thanks on every occasion. Does this command also apply in times of adversity?

Consider Jesus. He is our greatest example of this. He expressed thanks even when He instituted the Lord’s Supper. “And he took the cup, and gave thanks” (Luke 22:17). “And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given foryou” (v. 19). The cup which He took and the bread which He broke symbolized His imminent death, the time of His greatest adversity and the greatest adversity ever experienced by anyone. He knew that, and yet He gave thanks! He not only knew that it was for the redemption of those who His Father had given Him, but that it was all imposed upon Him by His perfect Father.

Let us pray for grace to be like Him. We are to be repentant and to trust in Him, but we are also to go on as followers or imitators of Him always. To assist or encourage us, God has given us the example of two followers, Paul and Silas, in Acts 16.

Paul and Silas were in Philippi and they had been unjustly punished for delivering a young woman who was possessed with an evil spirit of divination. They were stripped, beaten, had their feet tied with chains, and were thrown in the inner prison, which was like a brutal, solitary dungeon within a prison. But what did they do? Here, in the middle of the night, after a disappointing and painful day, they prayed and sang songs of praise to God. In both of these activities, there surely was the element of expressing thankfulness. God enabled them, by the Holy Spirit, to do this.

What was the effect? Surely their praying and praising encouraged their own hearts and minds, and it obviously glorified God, but it was also a blessing to others. This verse highlights that “the prisoners heard them.” Wherever they were in that prison, the other inmates heard their prayers and their praises, their petitions and their thanksgivings. They especially would have heard of God and of Christ. This, in turn, had more remarkable effects. When the prison doors were opened by an earthquake and everyone was released from restraints, all the prisoners, of their own volition, remained there instead of escaping. That prevented the suicide of the jailor and led to his salvation, and eternity will reveal how many inmates were likewise affected. Paul and Silas were also given the opportunity to share the word of the Lord to the jailor’s household and to baptize them. Their godliness also led them to gaining respect among their enemies.

There is much to learn from this occasion. Paul and Silas are examples for fellow believers in Christ. Are you a believer in Christ? Do you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and in His great sacrifice alone for salvation? If so, let us work and pray for the Holy Spirit’s help to be thankful on all occasions, whether quietly or for others to hear. Expressing thanks is good for us, it is good for others, and it is glorifying to God. However, to our shame, we are prone to take our eyes away from God and Christ and instead become unthankful. When we catch ourselves murmuring over our sufferings, big or small, let us repent afresh and take refuge again in Christ, the suffering yet thankful Servant.

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Rev. Marty Slingerland is a Heritage Reformed minister who works for Redemption Prision Ministry in Canada.

Published with permission by The Banner of Sovereign Grace Truth