Give thanks in all circumstances? Definitely! God knows that giving thanks is the key to having an appreciative spirit. The enemy uses the things we do not have or are unsure of to distract us from God. Remember, God has already forgiven your past and has a plan for your future. The reason the Word is a lamp unto your feet is that faith needs only to see the next step God has for you today. The enemy however, wants you either living in your past, or worried about your future. That way you cannot live for the present task God has for you to do in His kingdom. The Apostle Paul was visited by a messenger from Satan to torment him. He begged the Lord three times to remove what he referred to as a "thorn in his flesh." Three times God assured him that His grace was sufficient for him. Whatever the thorn was, the enemy was trying to distract Paul with something temporal to get his eyes off of the eternal life God wanted him to grab hold of. Here was the response from Paul:
That
is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships,
in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
2Corinthians
Giving thanks in the midst of your pain takes the power away from your pain and gives it to God. Giving thanks in the middle of your trial, takes the power away from the trial and gives it to God. It refocuses you from the temporal problem to the eternal promises you have in God. That is why it is God's will for your life.
Do not put out the spirit's fire nor treat prophecies with contempt. It is the will of God that we be "in tune" with Him. He has given us His very Spirit to do just that. Yet sometimes we can get into a pattern of deferring to the world or our circumstances. The same goes for prophecies. We can receive a word from God and seemingly dismiss it away or let the world speak its faulty logic into it. We must realize that we are called upon to renew how we think:
Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will. Romans 12:2
His good, pleasing and perfect will. God has a calling on every born again believer's life. Even if it is just to do as Paul exhorts Timothy to do in our key verse and grab hold of the eternal life we have been called into! God does not want us to live a defeated life but one that is full and abundant.
Test everything? Everything? Unquestionably! What is the plumb line God has given us? What is the measuring stick? The Word of God! The Bible is not meant to be brought out once per week on Sundays and then put away for the week. It is meant to be an integral part of who we are. It is what we believe and it is alive. When the enemy attacks us it comes often in the form of thoughts or arguments that are in direct opposition to what God has already promised us:
We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. 2Corinthians 10:5
