Paris Reidhead emphasizes the significance of understanding and fulfilling God's will in our lives, particularly through the act of giving thanks in all circumstances. He highlights that true spiritual maturity involves being filled with the knowledge of God's will, which leads to walking worthy of the Lord and being fruitful in good works. Reidhead points out that many challenges in life stem from personality conflicts and disappointment, which can lead to discouragement and defeat if not addressed with gratitude. He stresses that giving thanks is not just a suggestion but a command from God, essential for spiritual health and victory. Ultimately, the sermon calls believers to present themselves as living sacrifices, allowing Christ to live through them in every aspect of life.

For this cause, we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that you might be filled with the knowledge of his will, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, that, and again it's that little causative, in order that, or so that, ye might walk, or be able to walk, worthy of the Lord, unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, increasing in the knowledge of God, strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power unto all patience, and longsuffering with joyfulness, giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light, who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son, in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sin. Now we're going to start at the twelfth verse and work our way backward. Assuming that this is a missionary hour and a missionary message, we're going to consider, therefore, why he should have attached so much importance to this twelfth verse. Here, as the culmination of four wonderful things that we'll later see, he says that one of the results of this glorious result of being filled with the knowledge of his will, walking worthy of the Lord, increasing in the knowledge of God, fruitful in every good work, one of the expressions of this is giving thanks unto the Father. Now I suppose each time I've been here I've had some occasion to make reference to this, but I want to see have you see it today. Already this morning I've had someone come to me, and as we talked and consulted together, the only answer that I could give that was appropriate and right and spiritual, the answer, was 1 Thessalonians 5 18. Now do you know it? Do you know it? I trust you do, but do you know it? If you don't, you'd better learn it. It may be the most important thing you gleaned from this conference. It's the will of God for you to learn it, and it's certainly the will of God for you to do it. The verse is, in everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. Now as any missionary I'll have to admit that the greatest hindrance to the cause of Christ in the mission field are not the witch doctors and the demon powers, the climate, and the food, and mosquitoes, and snakes, and all the other things we generally associate with tropical countries. These are not the problem. I was in the Mahaffey camp meeting, oh back in 1954 or 5, and I made the statement that 99 and, oh 95, excuse me, 95% of the problems on the mission field were personality adjustment problems. And when I finished at lunch, Mr. LL King, our foreign, the foreign secretary of the Christian Missionary Alliance said, brother, he said, I wish you, you preachers wouldn't use missionary statistics without being sure of them. He said, oh dear, what do I do now? I said, I suffer from acute foot and mouth disease, so don't, don't feel badly about it. What did I do? Well he said, that statistic you used about problems on the mission field, didn't you say that 95% of the problems were personality adjustment problems? Yes. Isn't that right? I've heard that it was that high, and I think I have pretty good authority. Oh, he said it isn't that high. Isn't it, isn't that high? The fact of the matter is that 99 and 44, 100% of the problems are personality adjustment problems. And personality adjustment problems have a, the root in the fact that you're going straight ahead, and he's going straight ahead, and you meet in the intersection. And we call, call that he crossed me. In other words, I wanted to do this, and he wanted to do that, and he crossed me. And the consequence of this is that he or she, or whoever it is, interfering with my plan and my purpose, now is to become the object of my contempt, or my anger, or my vengeance, or my vindictiveness, or something. I've even had missionaries tell me, I so despise that, and a fellow missionary, that I wish one of us would either go home or die, that just to work on the field is impossible. Now, you can't believe it would come to that pass, but I've actually heard it. Now, I feel that this verse that we're dealing with is here because it is of paramount importance. It's a little thing, giving thanks. What's important about that? Giving thanks always unto the Father. Isn't that, isn't that a binocular little expression? But actually, this is the heart, in a sense, of your day-by-day victory in the Lord's work and in the Lord's service. As a missionary, whether that service is at home or abroad, wherever it may be, and unless you see the results from disobedience at this point, you're going to take this for granted and it won't be nearly as important as it should be. Now, here it is. One of the glorious results of that which we are going to see later on is giving thanks unto the Father. Now, let's for a moment assume that you have events come into your life and you do not meet them on this scriptural basis. What is the result? Perhaps some of you have heard me give this, but you'll bear with me and we'll be patient for the sake of those that haven't. Some years ago, I suppose it would be as long ago as 1954, I had my first visit to Glen Rock Bible Conference up at Miss Lake Rosso in the Muskoka Lake District of Canada. First day there, I was impressed with the first service in which I spoke by a gentleman that sat way in the back, came in late, left early, and he looked, well, he actually looked like an accident that was trying to find a place to happen. He was the saddest person that I have ever seen, honestly. The lines of sorrow were etched so deeply in his face that you just looked at him and you would reach for your handkerchief. You just felt like crying. I mean, here was sadness personified. And I'm not exaggerating. It was a face that had had all the sorrow of the ages carved into it, it seemed. Well, I saw him get up and go out, and then the one in charge came to me and said, and I said, who is this? He said, he's been on, oh, practically a breakdown for two, three months. He's been staying up here alone at the cottage. He's had to close down his practice. I said, I hope you can help him. I said, will you pray with me that as we preach and talk, if the Lord wants me to be of some help, that he will come and ask for that help. And I can't go to him, and don't you arrange it. Just leave it. If God wants some help from me for him, let him come. Well, on Thursday night, he said, brother, could I talk to you tomorrow morning at nine o'clock at my cottage, if you could arrange it. So I was there, and I began to let him tell me, just ask him to tell me what happened. And he started out by saying that he'd been converted, had a wonderful joy in the Lord, and gone into a church, greatly appreciated the pastor, and had begun to witness to his professional colleagues in the city of Toronto, and taken them to the church. And then his pastor did something quite unbecoming, and actually dishonoring to the name of the Lord. And he looked at me, and the lines deepened, and he said, I was so disappointed, so disappointed. Then he said, after a little while, I went over to another church that had a big program and a lot of activity. And my, we were seeing people converted, missionaries go, but you know, at the end of the year, it was the same group of us that were paying all the expenses. I'll tell you the truth, when I began to realize that these people were being converted, were going somewhere, but they weren't coming to help us, I got a little bit discouraged. Then said he, I, one of the brethren in that church came to me, wanted to go into business, and, and he asked me to loan him some money, and I did. Business didn't succeed, and when I asked for the money, he said, no, it was an investment, it wasn't a loan. He said, actually, I got, well, he said, I got disillusioned. And I've been thinking about all these things for a couple of years. About three months ago, I got so depressed, I just couldn't practice anymore. I'd be in the middle of treating a patient, and, and I'd just go in a room and, and cry. And he said, I just, I just been on the verge of, of a complete defeat, a nervous breakdown. Well, he didn't know it, but he had given to me, in that little recitation, what I had come prepared to give to him. And so it made it extremely easy for me. I said to him, now, doctor, if I can prove to you that the condition in which you are, you are in, is the result of sin, will you believe it? Will you really believe it? Well, he said, I believe it, if you can prove it. But during these months, I've been searching my heart before the Lord, and one thing I'm certain of is that I've dealt with all known sin. Well, if I can prove to you that your condition is caused by sin that you've committed, and never forsaken or confessed, will you deal with it as sin? Yes, he said, I will. I said, now, do you believe that the law of God is the will of God? Yes. And do you believe that to break the will of God is the same as breaking the law of God? I said, do you know 1 Thessalonians 5, 18? He said, no. I said, doctor, when patients come to you for treatment, you charge them. Now, I am here this morning, and I don't know where I'll ever see you again, or when I'll see you next, but if I ever see you again, and the next time I do, I'm going to say to you, doctor, 1 Thessalonians 5, 18, I expect you to give it to me like that. If you don't, I'm going to send you a bill for $100 for professional services. And he laughed. He said, that'll be fine, all right. He learned it, too, because he wasn't even a Scotsman. He wasn't going to have any chance of $100 for not learning the wee verse. And so we turned to him, and he read, In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. He said, now, brother, I want one thing clear. You don't expect me to give thanks for a preacher that dishonored the ministry. I said, I don't expect you to, but I think God does. Well, I can't do it. I said, don't argue with me. I never wrote the Bible. If you've got some fuss about it, you go to the Lord. As far as I'm concerned, he said, in everything give thanks, and that means even for this situation. Well, I don't know how I can do it. I said, neither do I, but I said, you'd better. You'd better do it. And we went through that point by point, and he saw the five steps to spiritual failure. The first step down is disappointment. No Christian ever has the right to be disappointed about anything. Disappointment is a sin mortal in its effect upon life. Because in its essence, disappointment says, God isn't what you thought he was. Now, no one is honest enough to come out and say, look, God bluffed me in this thing. We never do that. What we do, you see, is to say, I didn't have faith enough, or I didn't do this, or didn't do that. But in effect, disappointment says, if God had been up to what I expected of him, this never would have happened. Now, the reason why a Christian cannot ever be disappointed is that Romans 8, 28, and 29 are in the Bible. All things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. And from the very moment that you put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ, from that moment, God set his sovereignty to the end of shaping and molding and forming you into the likeness of Christ. And he has sovereignly said that all things must work together to good. Now, not good in the general sense of you define good, he defined good. The good of all goods is that you should be like Jesus Christ. This is the one supreme good. And therefore he said that all things may work together for good. For whom he did foreknow, he did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son. And his purpose isn't to make you happy, or comfortable, or successful, or famous, or anything else. His purpose is to make you like Christ. And he's much more interested in the worker than he is the working. He's far more concerned about the minister than he is the ministry. And he's quite willing to let a ministry go to work in a minister. Because it's the man he's interested in, not the ministry. When you see this, then you realize that nothing can touch you but what your Heavenly Father permits. Father, let it come. I care not whether it, what area of your life it touched. He said all things, and all things means all things. Nothing can touch you but what is to the end of making you like Christ. If it's sickness in the body that touches you, as it probably will along the way, initially your responses say, Father, thank you for permitting this to come. Because it has stopped me and forced me to seek thee, and to, you've used this to get my attention. I hate to tell it, but I must, because it illustrates it. You've heard of the man that sold a mule to a neighbor, and he couldn't make the thing do a thing, and the contract said this mule will obey. So he called the seller back and said, what are we going to do about this beast? Won't do a thing I tell him. He said, well are you, are you telling him what to do? He said, yeah. He said, well what do you do? Well I say, get up, and he stands there, and he just doesn't move. He said, well I'll show you how to do it. He went over and picked up about a three-foot length of two-by-four and hit it a good clout across the head. And he said, get up, and the mule went right off. See your trouble was you weren't getting his attention. And it's this sense with us with God. There's so much God wants to say with us, but he has so much difficulty getting our attention. We're well and pressing down the road, and, and, and God says, son, son, child, child, child, and so something touches us. Now the thing to do is to say, thank you father, thank you. Whatever it is, makes no difference, because he said all things. Disappointment is a sin against God, it's a sin against our spirits, it's a sin against Christ. That's because disappointment invariably leads to the second step into defeat, and that is discouragement. Well I tried it once, what's the use? It didn't work. Oh well, why, why should I try it again? Uncouraged. The first time I went into it, the second time, no. Discouragement. Then the discouragement soon gives way to a third step downward, which is disillusionment. I thought I saw a city, but I pursued it, and I was disappointed. I stopped going, and because it was nothing but a mirage, it wasn't a city at all. And how many there are that have moved in the direction of sanctification, the spirit to life? And I said, well I tried it, and it didn't work. I was down in Orlando, Florida years ago, and we moved there, and one of the dear people had a very real pressing physical need. She went to her pastor, Andrew Murray's book on healing, and oh, he said don't pay any attention to that. I was sick once, and I tried that, and it didn't work. In other words, disillusionment had set in, and disillusionment was communicated. But the third thing, and the fourth thing that happens after disappointment, and discouragement, and disillusionment, is depression. Depression is that stage where we'll go to bed at night with a heavy cloud, and when we wake up in the morning, it's even heavier than when we went to bed. And throughout the hours of the day, our minds are going over the same thing, but never creatively. Just going around, and around, and around, and around, and a kind of a beast tied to a sweep of a mill. Just a rut that deepens daily. Depression, a cloud that settles over the human spirit. And then the fifth thing is defeat, disintegration of morale, a breakdown. Now I realize that there are many reasons why people have what are called a breakdown. Sometimes they're from glandular change and physical conditions, and I wouldn't make light of it. But I also realize that so frequently we come to this stage of defeat, because somewhere in the past we've had disappointment that led to discouragement, to disillusionment, to depression, and to defeat. And I went over this and used the very words that Dr. Findley had used to me, and I said, Doctor, this is a sin. You've had these events come into your life, and instead of dealing with them in the way God prescribed, you've been disobeying God. And now look, you're paying the price of disobedience in your body, and in your mind, and in your spirit. You're invalided out of your practice, because you disobeyed God. It's a sin. Well, he said it's not a sin like drunkenness, and adultery, and murder, is it? Well, I said it's had the effect of cutting you completely out of his service, and ministry, and witness. And in that sense it seems to me so devastatingly sinful, that you can't try to countenance it, or in any way take the edge off of it. I said, Doctor, what are you gonna do about it? I said, do you want, are you enjoying this breakdown? Do you feel you've earned it? You don't want me to do anything that will cheat you out of it? Are you happy here? And he said, with brokenness. Oh no, no. Well, I said, what are you gonna do about it? Well, he said, I can't just say thank you, Lord, when I don't feel it. I said, you jolly well better. You say thank you just because God told you to, and after a little while you'll feel like saying it. But if you don't start simply because he told you to do it, then you'll never do it. You just do it because he told you to do it. Well, I don't. I said, look, don't argue with me. I never wrote the Bible. You got any fuss about it, just talk to the Lord. But you better do what he told you to do, and then you discuss it with him afterwards. Because if I understand it correctly, he's not going to change things to accommodate you. Well, the next year I was back there. We were out in the open air, walking, looking across the grass toward beautiful Lake Muskoka. And he stopped, put his chest back, drew in a deep breath. Oh, he said, brother, isn't it, isn't it a wonderful to be alive? I said, this year, Murray, this year. And he turned and he said, in everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. Oh, dear missionary friend, going or coming, at home or abroad, here is the Spirit of God telling you one of the glorious benefits that come. The ability to understand the importance in everything that touches us, in everything that touches us, to be able to say, thank you Father. There's no other way of dealing with the heartache and the bruises of life, apart from Romans 8 28 and 29 and 1st Thessalonians 5 18. I was speaking on this some many years ago, and a dear brother came to me and said, but isn't it marvelous, it said in everything and not for everything. Well, that was the first doubt I'd ever found for the verse. And so the next time I preached it, I said, well, but you've got to understand it says in everything and not for everything. And when I finished, a sister came to me and he said, how long has it been since you've read Ephesians? Oh, I said, quite recently. How long since you read Ephesians 5? I said, well, just recently. She said, well, then do you believe it? Well, I said, I certainly do. But she said, then why don't you preach it? I said, oh, I'm in trouble again. What is it now? She said, do you know Ephesians 5 20? I said, I don't, I'm sure I know. What's it say? And she said, giving thanks always for all things. Cornered. Utterly cornered. Not a way out of it. Well now, that's only one result of being filled with the fullness of God. We come to the place that we give thanks in everything. But look at the 11th verse of Colossians 1. Strengthened with all might according to his glorious power unto international fame and evangelistic endeavor. Is that what it says? Oh, I guess I'm reading from the reverse vision again, am I not? What does it say? Strengthened with all might according to his glorious power. Oh Lord, couldn't you have had something else besides this? With unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness. Seem pretty mundane, doesn't it? What kind of a world did they live in? It was a world of persecution. Do you know what the word witness means? You know what its root is? Martiros. Martyr. And one who witnessed for Christ was one who dared to say, Jesus Christ the Nazarene, the Son of the Living God, is my Lord and my Savior. And Nero would say to his soldiers, march past my statue and drop incense. And Church history tells us that there was one band known as the Holy Band as the Christians that were valiant in service surpassing the nobility of all of Caesar's legion. There were a hundred in that group. And all of them loved Jesus Christ. And the order went out, either drop incense or every tenth man will die. Ten times that company passed until all of the hundred had died. They were all gone. That's what it meant to be a witness, a martyr. That's where the word comes from. Now this is the context of the New Testament. We have found it very difficult to stand valiantly for Christ, not against the sword that would be leveled at our, aimed at our heart, nor a whip at our back, nor stocks for our feet and hands, nor shackles that would bind us to a galley seat. No, we've not had that. We've had to stand valiantly against a raised eyebrow, or a curled lip, or a sneering word. And sometimes that raised eyebrow, or a curled lip, or sneering word, has sent us mortally wounded into the dungeon of our regrets that we ever identified with Christ. Now we haven't had what marked other days. But I believe that it's still imperative for you to see that this is the result of being filled with the knowledge of his will, and to all wisdom and spiritual understanding, that you can walk worthy of the Lord. Being fruitful in every good work, increasing in the knowledge of God, that you might be strengthened unto, with all might, according to his glorious power, unto patience and longsuffering with joyfulness. And so we have here every indication that being baptized with the Spirit of God, and filled with the Spirit of God, for this is his will, and filled with the knowledge of his will, is to be filled with himself, for it's his will that we should be filled with the Holy Spirit, that Christ should live in us and walk in us his life. Let it be understood that the illustration of a Spirit-filled life is not some great evangelist or missionary, but it may be someone who, being brought to that place, simply chose to die for the Lord Jesus. Word came out of China, where incidentally we've been told that 20 million people since 1948 have been, and I like this term, don't you? It's so neat, and so, so, sort of, oh, clean. Nothing sanguine about it. 20 million people have been deprived of existence. Isn't that a neat term? By the Red Chinese. And we've also told that 10 million of these have been deprived of existence because of their steadfast adherence to religions brought in by imperialist adventurers. In other words, during the last 18 years, at least 10 million people have died for the cause of Christ in China alone. That means more people have died for Christ in the last 20 years, 18 years, than have died in all the centuries since the time of Christ before. If you read by Fox's Book of Martyrs, you'll find that it was merely a fraction of a million, and all that are described. But in the last 18 years, 10 million people, according to official figures, have died for their faith in one country. Now, we do not know what will be our lot. We don't know, but we do know that we are here enjoined by the Spirit of God to be strengthened with might, according to his glorious power, the power that raised up Christ from the dead, to the end, that we might manifest patience in the midst of long-suffering. Not just endurance, but patience, with joyfulness. Now, here are two principles. The first is that in everything we're to give thanks. Giving thanks unto the Father for the long-suffering. Giving thanks unto the Father for all the conditions, for everything that touches us. Manifesting patience with joyfulness in the midst of all events. Now, let's look just one minute in closing. For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you and to desire that you might be filled with the knowledge of his will. God has a plan for your life. A plan that he made, in a sense, he made the world. If you were as wise as God, you couldn't make a wiser plan, as loving as God, you couldn't make a more beneficial plan, to you, to him, to others. And if you were as powerful as God, you couldn't make a more, or ensure a more successful plan. And he wants you to know his plan. And so we avidly say, Lord, what is your plan for my life? And what we want is a blueprint of a journey, with all the geographical stops and starts outlined for us. But you know what his plan is? That you would present your body a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable under God, and would invite Jesus Christ to live his life in you, and make yourself totally available to him. His plan is that your feet become his feet, your hands his hands. That your body becomes the vehicle by which he can move in time and space, where and when he wills. He wants you to present your body and personality to him, as unreservedly and as perfectly as he presented his body to the Father. Remember, everything done by Christ in the three years of his ministry, was done not by the Son, the second person of the Trinity. Philippians 2 tells us this, he emptied himself. That is, everything he did, he did by the Father through the Spirit. He could have done everything he did his Son. But if he had, he wouldn't have been like unto his brethren. So at his baptism, in a sense, it's the emptying of the right to act in his essential deity of Son. And he presented his body to the Father, and he was filled by the Spirit, anointed with the Spirit. Now the Spirit of God had been in him, oh yes, from the time of his conception. But the Spirit of God now was upon him. He said, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me. And everything done by Christ in his public ministry, was done by the Father through the Spirit. He said, I do nothing of myself. I don't speak of myself. I speak as I receive commandment of the Father. The works that I do, the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. Now this is his will, that he can live in you with the same freedom, without restriction or hindrance or any impediment at all, to his perfect will, perfect. And Christ can live through you his own life. This is why he says, you might be filled with the knowledge of his will and all wisdom and spiritual understanding, in order that you might walk worthy of the Lord. However well you may meet a legalistic description of how a Christian should walk, you infinitely fail, unless you're permitting the risen Christ to live in you his own life. Because this is not a legalistic life that can be imitated by the Pharisees. This is a dynamic life that can only be produced by the risen Christ living through you. And to walk worthy of the Lord is not simply to avoid this and to do that. But it is to present your body to him so that the Lord himself can fulfill his purpose in and through you. So we find here that we are to be fruitful in every good work. What good work? Every work that he has planned for you. He has a plan for your life. And the only way you can ever finish your course is to permit the Lord Jesus Christ to live unhindered and unrestricted his own resurrection life in and through you. And in so doing, you will increase in the knowledge of God. In other words, your intimate fellowship and union with God, which is your reward for abandonment, will so fill and flood your heart that as the dear little woman who wrote the book for woman she must have been, the cloud of unknowing said, you become so enveloped in the love of God or indicated you become so enveloped in the love of God that you need not mere words to express that union. Well here it is dear friend. He wants to live in you his life. This is his will. He wants to walk through you and fulfill his purpose. That you might be strengthened with might in everything to give thanks. You say missions? Is that missions? Why of course. This is how you become a missionary. This is what it is. Being a missionary isn't a trip. It's a relationship to him. The geography isn't as important as the relationship.