David:     Back in your school days Karen, do you remember fill in the blank tests?

Karen:     Oh yeah, I ace them.

David:     I didn’t like them all that much. You either knew it or you didn’t. Anyway, they’re a part of my memory as well.

Intro:      Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife noted author, Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.

David:     America’s second president was blank.

Karen:     My mind just went, you know what?

David:     I surprised you tonight. Okay, calling this podcast, Fill In The Blank. Okay, I’ll come back to why we’re doing that. Let’s just do a review. With a day before Thanksgiving, we’re thinking in terms of the calendar and we said some months back that it gets very busy in those last two months of the year. You got Thanksgiving and you have Advent leading up to Christmas.

Karen:     And our commercialized holiday system is already pushing Christmas stuff. It’s like Thanksgiving doesn’t really matter. So, we kind of got on our high horse and said, “Okay, we’re going to set the whole month of November aside. We’re going to make the whole month of Thanksgiving month.” And in that process, I think we’ve started some Thanksgiving practices for ourselves and we’re challenging our listeners to start them if they don’t have them already.

David:     We didn’t want to just give busy work. We thought these would be very helpful. So, our first suggestion in that first broadcast was to compile a list of people for whom you are thankful because they have played a significant role in your life. I ended up with a long list. I had over 30 people. Many I hadn’t thought about it for a long time.

Karen:     And it was an extraordinary practice for you. We hadn’t intended it to reveal. I mean, there’s sort of a memory system that begins to say, “Oh my goodness, I forgot about that person, and they were wonderful.” Yeah, it was a great exercise.

David:     The next thing we said as we came to a new week was let’s think in terms of blessings. And by blessings, we had in mind such things as a roof over our head, meals always there.

Karen:     Enough to eat.

David:     Enough to eat.

Karen:     Good food, healthy food. Friends and all of our grandkids are walking with the Lord. I mean, we just thank God for that every day.

David:     There have been wars during our lifetime involving the American military. But there haven’t been bombs dropped on our home and such a thing. The havoc of all of that and the terror of it all as well.

Karen:     Gruesome and the destruction.

David:     We’ve been very fortunate in many ways. And we said list those. And just again, let your heart speak out to the Lord for the blessings in that regard. Then we said, thank you regarding music. Let’s use music as our language during this week.

Karen:     That was really fun to research music. And of course, with the internet now, I can do an internet search and come down with music. There was all kinds of church music. You even, I think, sang on the air one that you learned when you were a little child. “Thank you, thank you, Jesus. Thank you, thank you, Jesus.”

David:     I’ve been singing it again all this past week.

Karen:     I think you have that music with you. That was wonderful. I loved that exercise because it took me into Broadway musicals. They’d have, “Thank the Lord, thank you, Lord.” That’s from God’s will with all your soul. I’m not sure quite about the words, but you know.

David:     I didn’t have the tune either, but that’s all right. You’re happy.

Karen:     It was a beautiful exercise.

David:     Okay, we’re now just the day before Thanksgiving. We’re saying one more time, let’s go with this. And the idea that we have in mind is fill in the blank, okay?

Karen:     Okay.

David:     Here’s my sentence. A thoughtful word of thanks from you to (blank) could do more good than you can imagine.

Karen:     Repeat the sentence one more time, though.

David:     Ok. A thoughtful word of thanks from you to (blank), fill in the blank, could do more good than you can imagine.

Karen:     Okay.

David:     And I want to now go to something that happened to us this past week.

Karen:     Okay.

David:     Our person who works with us, his name is George. I was working yesterday, and he came in and he said, “Have you looked at your emails?”

Karen:     You have to be reminded to do that, right?

David:     Well, I was involved in what I was doing, and I said, “No.” He said, “You should see this.” And he brought me, look at this full sheet of paper. He said, “I’ll read it for you.” This is a letter says, “Dear David and Karen, on your most recent podcast, you encouraged your listeners to make a list of people that God has used to bless you in your life as another way to practice having a heart of gratitude. I’m writing because both of your names are on my list.”

Isn’t that something? First paragraph is to me, “David, one summer when I was probably eight or nine years old, I was attending Vacation Bible School at the Wheaton Evangelical Free Church and you were doing a continued story reading of a missionary biography. To be honest, I cannot remember the name of the story. I only know that when my parents announced that we were leaving on a family vacation before the end of VBS, I begged them to wait because I wanted to hear the end of the missionary story you were reading.”

Karen:     That is wonderful.

David:     “I was so persistent that finally my mom called the church, found out the name of the story you were reading, bought it, and continued reading it aloud to me on our vacation. I share this with you because God used you in my life long before you were a well-known pastor and radio host. Though I do remember, several years later visiting Circle Church in Chicago on a Sunday with my family and hearing you preach on 1 Peter 5:8-9.”

“Be alert and of sober mind, your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. I am laughing and you are because I have preached that a number of times. Much of the way God chose to disciple me in my faith was through the testimonies and missionary biographies, not only into missions but in coming to know God in his ways as revealed in his word and work through ordinary people, people like you. Thank you for your faithful obedience, David, even in ordinary everyday ways like reading a missionary story to your wiggly kids on a hot summer day.”

Isn’t that great? She’s got a paragraph for you as well.

Karen:     I’ll read it just to give an example of what we need to be doing for other people. And I won’t embarrass or engage you by giving your name, but she’s an elementary school director so she’s in education. Sounds like it, doesn’t it?

“Karen, how well God knows and loves his children. He knows just how to get their attention and draw them close. One of the most significant ways God has done it and continues to do this in my life is through The God Hunt.”

David:     Well, that’s the part of who you are in one of your books.

Karen:     That we developed this, it was what’s learned with pleasure is learned full measure, so we developed this spiritual game to teach our children how to go on the God hunt. So let me continue.

“When I first read the God Hunt, it spoke to me in a way that I not only could understand, but in a way, I could see, hear, touch, taste and remember.” An educator would appreciate that. “It not only increased my awareness of God’s presence, it revealed his love for me in very real and personal ways. Ways they were easy to share with others. People can debate theology and I add, and they do, but they cannot debate your experience. I not only have delighted in finding God this way, but over the years God has given me many, many opportunities to invite others to hunt for God’s presence in their lives. Children, parents, teachers, youth, and young adults and even during a Sunday morning sermon. Thank you for taking the time to invite others to join this life changing game.” She has game in quotes. “…of wonder, delight, and faith. I can testify that this hunt never grows old. I am almost 67 years old. And I can testify that God never tires into lighting and surprising his children. Thank you, Karen.”

Isn’t that fabulous? What a wonderful thing to sit down and do. It warms you. You think, “Oh, the fact that anyone would take the time to do that.”

David:     Yeah, I hadn’t preached on Peter’s roaring lion going around looking for a victim to tear apart for quite a while. So that stuck with her, which is really interesting to me.

Karen:     So, what we’re saying to our listeners on this podcast today is, this is a Thanksgiving practice that can be done all year round, but particularly during this month, which you and I have set aside to be, not just Thanksgiving Day, but Thanksgiving month, all of November. You can sit down and write a letter to someone who meant something to you. Perhaps you have not really communicated that to and say, “This is what you’ve meant to me, and I just want you to know and I’m taking the time to do this.”

David:     Yeah. I remember, Karen, feeling prompted in years past to write a letter to Billy Graham just to thank him for his ministry. And then I thought, “No, he gets so many letters coming in,” but I did that.

Karen:     You never heard back. I mean, we understood.

David:     And I wrote it a second time, a different letter. And as I was getting older, I thought, just looking back, I’m going to write Billy Graham and just thank him for who he is.

Karen:     Yeah, we did admire him so much. No scandal, no financial problems. His marriage was excellent and just a wonderful man. What an example.

David:     I’m so glad I did that. I only met Billy once in my life. I think I’ve told the tale on this podcast before.

Karen:     Well, we were in a group of people standing around after a meeting.

David:     In a religious broadcaster’s convention.

Karen:     Okay. And he was being surrounded by people and then he looked around at you and you were kind of behind him and he said to you, “Oh, David.” And immediately someone else rushed up and interrupted the conversation.

David:     That’s all he said, the two words for my entire life.

Karen:     But the tone of voice was lovely, and we haven’t forgotten.

David:     Yeah, he was very gracious.

Karen:     Oh, he was lovely. Just a lovely, lovely man.

David:     Even if that had never happened, I still would have said, I wonder if that letter touched him. You know, how it got through all the different screeners because he was getting thousands and thousands of letters. But I did it. Yeah, just that time when I knew that he knew who I was and that was a neat thing for which I’m grateful.

Karen:     I want you to read our purpose sentence again because I want to go in a little different direction but go ahead.

David:     A thoughtful word of thanks from you to (blank), you fill in the blank. Could do more good than you can imagine. Okay, now you’re going to talk about additional good, right?

Karen:     Yes, additional good. And this is a blog I did titled,” A New Drug for Health and Happiness.” We’ll get into that in a little bit.

Wikipedia, the Online Encyclopedia reports. A large body of recent work suggests that people who are more grateful have higher levels of well-being. So, the Church for Centuries has instructed followers of Christ in the Old Testament, the Hebrew nation, to be grateful. I mean, I’ve done a search and I came up with three or four sheets of papers of scriptures that said, “Give thanks.”

We have chosen a few just to share in the podcast. But this is what the scientific community has done. They changed from just looking at pathologies a few years back and began to look at what creates health and goodness and well-being. So, here’s their report.

David:     So, instead of looking at the bad…

Karen:     Just what’s wrong. Yeah.

David:     This would be the good thing.

Karen:     And how can we increase that? A large body of recent work suggests that people who are more grateful have higher levels of well-being. Grateful people are happier, less stressed, and more satisfied with their lives and social relationships.

David:     So, the lady who wrote us is probably as happy as we are that she did.

Karen:     Grateful people also have higher levels of control of their environments. Isn’t this intriguing? Of their personal growth, of their purpose and light, and of their self-acceptance. Wow.

David:     It doesn’t seem like there’s any connection at all, but there is.

Karen:     Yeah. Grateful people have more positive ways of coping with the difficulties they experience in life, being less likely to try and avoid the problem or deny there is a problem, to blame themselves or cope through substance abuse. Now this is the scientific community. Grateful people sleep better, and this seems to be because they think less negative and more positive thoughts before just going to sleep.

David:     Wow.

Karen:     So, here we have a body of scripture. That in itself, that word search is something I would highly recommend to our listeners. On giving thanks or on thankfulness through the Old and the New Testament is just emphasized again and again and again and again. And the saints knew, and the leaders of faith knew that this was an instruction from God. Give thanks in all things. And it increases these positive capacities and our well-being. And that kind of thinking actually involves our neurological system.

David:     It’s just wonderful.

Karen:     It’s just amazing. Amazing.

David:     You also wrote that if you could make a pill that people could take.

Karen:     Yes. I did it. We got a little obnoxious. If headline suddenly blasted the news that a miracle like prescription drug had just come on the market, which had been trialed over the decades and which demonstrated no ill side effects, and that scientists had determined that regular usage would enable the user to reach a state of well-being, would you be interested in having this?

David:     It could be a hit immediately.

Karen:     Then get this. If the pharmaceutical house announced that the new drug would be free to all users, wouldn’t you rush out and try it out?

David:     Well, we’re on that side and we’re encouraging people to do that. And we’re saying this is beneficial to the person who says “Thank you. I’m grateful for this part. You’ve played in my life.” Yeah. We’ve tested it out and feel really good about it.

Karen:     I’ve got pages of verses but let me give a few. This is from the New International Version. “Rejoice always. Pray continually. Give thanks in all circumstances for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” I didn’t leave the references. I mean, let people do their own searching. “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your request to God.” How often would we apply that?

David:     I chose one verse. It’s a little bit different.  It’s just an illustration of a person doing that. This is Paul’s letter to Timothy, number two letter. “May the Lord show mercy to the household of Onesiphorus because he has often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains. On the contrary, when he was in Rome, he searched hard for me until he found me. May the Lord grant that he will find mercy from the Lord on that day. You know very well in how many ways he helped me in Ephesus.”

Karen:      That’s beautiful.

David:      This gratitude.

Karen:     This gratitude. Yeah, and I’m sure it was I felt considering his circumstances that day. “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. For as members of one body, you are called to peace and be thankful.”

David:     It’s just all the way through there. Are you still reading?

Karen:      Yeah, I have one more.

David:      Okay.

Karen:     “And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

David:     It’s a busy time. It’s going to continue to be a busy time. Somehow you just say, I’m going to put this in my mind and I’m not going to let it rest until I actually do what has been suggested. And I’m going to see if this is as beneficial as being said by the Mainses.

Karen:      By scripture.

David:      There you go. Good for you. Good for you. Here’s a sentence. My sentence is not as powerful as scripture, but it does kind of encapsulate what we’re talking about.

A thoughtful word of thanks from you to (blank) and you fill in the blank as to who that would be, could do more good than you can imagine. And I think we’ll back that up by what we’ve been talking about.

Karen:     That’s great. So, my last thought is to the listener, who are you going to thank today?

Outgo:     You’ve been listening to the Before We Go podcast. And if you would like to write to us, please send us an email at the following address,  hosts@beforewego.show. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please remember to rate, review, and share on whatever platform you listen. This podcast is copyright 2023 by Mainstay Ministries, Post Office Box 30, Wheaton, Illinois 60187.