Parking On Someone Else’s Dime

Have you ever noticed that people get stuck in habits?

A perfect example is how we might drive the same route to work every day for years, and there comes a point in time when we can’t remember the drive we just got through making. That is when we just “go through the motions” bu do not “experience” anything.

Another example is when a church gives the holiday message. Historically, churches will always give a holiday message the Sunday prior to the holiday, and that is good, but sometimes we don’t see the need to give one after the holiday, even though the message involved is needed all year long.

Last Thursday was Thanksgiving, and so many of us have given thanks for the turkey and probably won’t think too much about thankfulness much until this time next year when we, once again, celebrate the day of Thanksgiving.

Let’s talk for a moment about the day of Thanksgiving. It is truly unique to America. No other nation has a day set aside to offer their thanks for anything. Why would that be? That is very simple: No other nation, except Israel, was founded on purpose as a nation that is under God.

I know …. you hear all the time about how America was NOT founded as a Christian nation. May I give you a bit of real truth? If you go to the library or even on Google, and look up every one of the first 20-30 early documents signed in America by the Founding Fathers, you will see that in each and every one of them there are explicit references to God, to Jesus Christ, and to Jesus as our Savior.

I will not spend much time on that aspect this morning, but I challenge you to go find out for yourself what I am saying and you will see that America actually WAS founded as a Christian nation and not a multi-religious nation.

It is fact that our forefathers did put God over this nation and that can be found in every single document they created, from the Mayflower Compact to the Massachusetts Bay Charter to every state constitution in America.

And so, because of our faithfulness to God, He blessed this nation. In fact, He blessed this nation more than any other nation that has ever existed! We have had our times of hardship such as wars, fires, tornadoes, etc., but we have never come close to falling into total famine or being taken over by our enemies … until now.

And today, as America tries her best to push God aside and disavow any allegiance to Him, He is slowly taking His blessings and protections away from us. But it is a slow process, and sometimes we do not get “slow”.

It is like the new preacher who wanted to move the piano from one side of the stage to the other and the leaders of the church had a conniption fit! They even threatened to fire him, saying the piano had always been on that side and it will always remain on that side of the stage.

The preacher thought for awhile and then each week he moved the piano one inch toward the other side of the stage. It was a very slow process and nobody ever caught on. It took him two years, but he finally had it where he wanted it.

And God is slowly positioning America where He wants us, too. Where is that? He wants us to be in such a predicament that we must make a choice between bowing to Him or bowing in total collapse.

And to bow to Him, we must always be in a mode of thanksgiving to Him – for everything He has given us.

1 THESSALONIANS 5:17 tells us to never stop praying.

That means we are to keep a running conversation with God all the time. He doesn’t like it when we get too busy to talk to Him, or to listen to Him as He talks to us.

The very next verse is an extremely important verse that is all-too-often forgotten about.

In 1 THESSALONIANS 5:18, we are told to be thankful in all circumstances because that is God’s will for us in Christ Jesus.

Be thankful in “all circumstances.” That is a pretty big order, isn’t it? What about when things seem to go so wrong they couldn’t get any worse?

There was a woman at work when she received a phone call that her daughter was very sick with a fever. She left work and stopped by the pharmacy to get some medication for her daughter.

She returned to her car to find that she had locked the keys inside the car when she went into the pharmacy and was now unable to get into her car to drive home.