This coming Thursday is Thanksgiving. Families all across this nation will be sitting down to enjoy the abundance of food that the Lord has provided. It is a day we have set aside to focus on how thankful we are for all the many blessings our heavenly Father has given us.
But how can we be thankful if we have not submitted our will to the Lord’s will? How can we show gratitude if we are refusing to let Him into our lives? I think we need to sacrifice something to God before we can give Him our thanks. I think we need to sacrifice our pride and our independence.
When we give up that, we are humbling our hearts, and when we have a humbled heart, God is then able to work His miracles in and around us.
Have you ever taken the time to ponder over what giving thanks really means, or how we should do it?
1 THESSALONIANS 5:18, says,
“... Give thanks in all circumstances.”
We are told to be thankful in everything. That doesn’t mean we are thankful for the bad things that happen, but we are thankful because it is in those bad things we can seek solace in the Lord. Be thankful we serve a God who wants to have that kind of relationship with us.
In PSALM 35:28, it goes on to say,
“My tongue will speak of your righteousness and of your praises all day long.”
None of us thanks in all circumstances for those things God has given us. And I would even go so far as to say that most of us do not praise God all day long, either. But we should for two reasons. First of all, we should because God commanded it, and secondly, we should because no matter how much or how little you have, you have more than most of the people in the world.
Let’s talk about how …
1. GOD GIVES - BECAUSE HE LOVES US
How thankful would you have been if you were among the first pilgrims? There were three boatloads that came over from England to make a home in this new country. On the voyage over, the wind blew them off course and instead of landing in Virginia, they landed in Massachusetts. And they landed just before the onset of winter.
When winter came, it came with a fury, and within a month, half of them were sick. They had the crudest of shelters and very little in the way of supplies. Over half of them died that first winter, sometimes at the rate of two and three a day!
Come springtime, those that were left had next to no supplies left. Thankfully, the Indians showed them how to plant and raise corn. Their first harvest was barely enough to keep everyone fed. The sponsors of their trip refused to send any more supplies and I can imagine that, being human, many of them probably wanted to go back to England.
I guess it is human nature to choose to go back into bad situations rather than go forth into unknown situations. After all, the Israelites did the same thing. Just a matter of weeks after being delivered out of bondage and they were complaining and saying they should just go back to Egypt.
What did the pilgrims have to be thankful for? They had their lives, and because the Indians showed them how to plant and harvest corn, they had enough supplies to get through the second winter. But how was their Thanksgiving different than our day of Thanksgiving?
The pilgrims prayed as if their lives depended on it, we don’t. The pilgrims knew that every thing they had was a direct blessing from our Lord; sometimes we forget that. The pilgrims yearned to give thanks for all they had, and most often we don’t.
I want you to think of some of the blessings that God has given you in your lifetime.
First of all, God has given you the blessing of physical life. He has also given a spiritual blessing, too. He has given you the wisdom to seek Jesus in your life.
The list in both these categories could go on and on, but I want to concentrate on just one blessing for a moment; a blessing that surpasses all the rest in importance to us. God, in His great love for you, gave up His Son so that you might choose to be reconciled back to God.
God is a righteous and holy God. All of us have been given the same chance to follow His rules, and to gain entry into His house we must follow His rules.
So, what else has God done for us? For those of us who try to follow the rules, He let the blood of Jesus pay our fines in full. That is the one blessing that God has given us which is greater than all other blessings combined.
So God gives from the love in His heart, but how do we receive?
2. WE RECEIVE SELFISHLY
The grocer saw the mother and the little boy and knew they came in together to buy groceries every week. Wanting to keep his good customers happy, he went to them and offered the boy an orange. The boy looked at the man, and the mother said, “Now, Johnny, what do you say to the man?”
Little Johnny handed him the orange back and said, “Peel it first.”
Sometimes, we get so focused on what we want, we don’t think about giving thanks. And, sometimes, we think so hard about what we want from God, we forget to ask God what He wants from us.
In areas of Mexico, there are hot springs and cold springs right beside each other. The local women often bring their laundry and wash them in the hot springs and rinse them in the cold springs. But instead of being thankful that God has given them this natural and free Laundromat, they gripe because there is no soap!
How many times have we been so focused on what we want that we didn’t recognize the blessings God put in front of us?
In 1 SAMUEL, it talks about our pride and arrogance. We view ourselves as the center of our lives, but that keeps God from being the center of our lives. We rely on ourselves, thinking we have what it takes to get us through, but we should be relying on God because only He has what it takes to get us through.
In EXODUS 34:9, there is a description that fits most of us today. That description is not flattering, but it is true. It is “stiff-necked.” We are stiff-necked people, whether we are willing to admit it or not. We are just like the ancient Israelites.
Moses is worshiping God, and he asks God to go with and forgive the “stiff-necked” Israelites. What was their problem? They couldn’t seem to rely on God and focus on Him in their lives. And God made a promise to Moses saying that the Israelites would see wonders never seen before in any nation. He said if they would obey His commands, He would drive out their enemies from in front of them.
And God is telling us the same thing today. If we will but turn from our wicked ways, and rely on Him, He will do wonders for us as has never been seen before in the world. But we need to receive His blessings in humility and love, and not be so focused on what the world offers that we all but forget about Jesus.
There were four young men who went into a pizza place after work. There was a sign that said the pizza would be ready in 20 minutes or it was free. One of the men brought out a stopwatch and began counting as soon as the waitress took their order. They all watched with eager anticipation, and when it got down to a minute left, they yelled at her to hurry, as time was running out.
When it got down to the seconds, they all counted down in unison, “3-2-1.” Barely ten seconds late, they scolded her and demanded it was free.
Have we ever treated God like some waitress at a pizza place? How many times do we tell God what we want and then start counting down to see if we get it when we want it? Have you ever asked God for something and then got upset that He didn’t answer the way you wanted Him to? God will answer the prayers of His children, but maybe not in the way, or the time, that we want Him to.
3. LET’S GET IT RIGHT
Have you ever noticed that we somehow manage to mess everything in our lives up? It’s true. We don’t even know how to pray right most of the time.
For instance, a car dealer was facing bankruptcy. Everything in his life seemed to be heading south. He was walking on the beach one day trying to figure out what to do when he stumbled on an old brass lamp.
When he picked it up, a genie popped out and said he could have any wish he could think of. He thought for a moment and said he wished to be the only foreign car dealer in a large city.
The genie snapped his fingers and poof; the dealer was the only used Cadillac dealer in downtown Tokyo.
I wonder if he would have had better results if he had gone to God and asked for whatever God wanted in his life. That is how God wants us to pray, for things that will bring glory to Him, not comfort to ourselves.
On Thursday, kitchens in America will be used more than at any other time of year. And as we focus on kitchens, I want to share with you a list of signs that have been spotted hanging in kitchens.
· If you don’t like my cooking, lower your standards
· This is a self-cleaning kitchen. You use it; you clean it
· We offer 2 choices; take it or leave it
· My next house won’t have a kitchen – it will be next door to a diner
Most of us could find one or two of these signs to hang in our kitchens, too.
If you had been one of the first Pilgrims, would you have given thanks?
Consider what they had been through, the men and women who broke bread together on that first Thanksgiving in 1621.
They had uprooted themselves and sailed for America, an endeavor so hazardous that published guides advised travelers to the New World, "First, make thy will.”
The crossing was very rough and the Mayflower was blown off course. Instead of reaching Virginia, where Englishmen had settled 13 years earlier, the Pilgrims ended up in the wilds of Massachusetts. By the time they found a place to make their new home - Plymouth, they called it - winter had set in.
The storms were frightful. Shelter was rudimentary. There was little food. Within weeks, nearly all the settlers were sick.
"That which was most sad," Governor William Bradford later recalled, "was that in two or three months’, half of their company died, especially in January and February, being the depth of winter, and wanting houses and other comforts; being infected with the scurvy and other diseases.... There died sometimes two or three of a day."
When spring came, Indians showed them how to plant corn, but their first crops were dismal. Supplies ran out, but their sponsors in London refused to send more. The first time the Pilgrims sent a shipment of goods to England, it was stolen by pirates.
If you had been there in 1621 - if you had seen half your friends die, if you had suffered through famine, malnutrition, and sickness, if you had endured a year of heartbreak and tragedy - would you have felt grateful?
As we give thanks for the abundance of food we have received, let us also remember who we are and why we need our Lord.
ROMANS 3:11 tells us –
“There is no one righteous – not even one.”
According to that, every last one of us is a sinner. Why are we sinners? We are classified as sinners because we focus on ourselves instead of focusing on God. And that is rebelliousness.
The Bible tells us that sinners will have a price to pay. What is the price for our sin? It is our very spiritual life. ROMANS 6:23 begins by saying,
“For the wages of sin is death.”
That means that if we sin (and we all have) we deserve to die (which we all do).
If we die, that means our souls are going to be in hell forever. No matter how bad you can think hell will be, it will be millions of times worse than what you can imagine. There are no words to accurately describe hell. And those who think about it make a choice not to go to hell. But the only way not to go to hell is by going to heaven instead. But how do we get to heaven?
The last part of ROMANS 6:23 tells us. It says, “The gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord.” What does that last part mean? It means that God has given us one way, and only one way, to escape the torment of hell. That One way is through Jesus as our Christ.
We all have different reasons to be thankful, but more than any other reason, I think all of us should give thanks for the things Jesus did for us.
Thank you, Jesus, for your act of self-sacrifice. You sacrificed your royal place in Heaven so that you might come to us as man; and we worship You for that.
Thank you, Jesus, for making yourself our servant for our sakes. For showing us how to care for one another until You come back.
Thank you, Jesus, for giving your very life on Calvary, so that we might live with You throughout all eternity.
As we celebrate another Thanksgiving Day, let us look st the many blessings God has given us, and as we do, let us realize that it is in the abundance of those blessings that we will find the most important blessing of all; the blessing of His love.
INVITATION
