Not Just Another Thanksgiving,
And now you know the rest of the story!
And now, I would like to interrupt your regularly scheduled sermon,
to bring you the Thanksgiving weather report and extended forecast:
A weight watch and indigestion warning have been issued for the entire area, with increased stuffiness around the beltway.
During the evening, the turkey will diminish and taper off to leftovers, dropping to a low of 34F in the refrigerator.
Looking ahead to Friday and Saturday, things will start to warm up and high pressure to eat sandwiches will be established.
There is also a chance it will cool off later in the day and Flurries of leftovers can be expected both days with a 50 percent chance of scattered turkey sandwiches
By early next week, eating pressure will be low as the only wish left, will be the wish bone.
2 Tim 3:1-5 MSG.
“Don’t be naive. There are difficult times ahead. As the end approaches, people are going to be self-absorbed, money-hungry, self-promoting, stuck-up, profane, contemptuous of parents, crude, coarse, dog-eat-dog, unbending, slanderers, impulsively wild, savage, cynical, treacherous, ruthless, bloated windbags, addicted to lust, and allergic to God.
They’ll make a show of religion, but behind the scenes they’re animals. Stay clear of these people.”
It seems like, and we are constantly bombarded daily on the news channels,
Of just how much of a dog eat dog world in which we live,
it seems like now more than it ever has been, in man kinds existence.
Everybody seems to think, everybody else owes them everything.
Nobody seems grateful anymore and the word thank you has been all but erased, from a lot of conversations.
That’s how the world views it, but those of us who know the meaning, of the word thanksgiving and the creator of all things,
Realize just how good God is to all mankind each and every day all throughout the year.
And if your one of His own, the more you get to know Him, the more you realize how He goes out of His way each and everyday to shine His favor and grace, down on His children!
That’s why the 4th Thursday in November each year, is more than just a day to watch football, or a day to plan a big dinner with their family and take lots of little naps.
Thanksgiving is a time to reflect on the Goodness of God, and how He has blessed each and everyone of us beyond measure.
Even the poorest of poor in America, are rich compared to probably about 90% of the rest of the world,
Sometimes we have so much and were so blessed, we don’t even have time to enjoy what we do have.
How many times, have you ever heard someone say when their trying to sell something, about how few times its been used and its just like brand new.
Well if its just like brand new, than why are you getting rid of it?
I’ll tell you why, Because you are BLESSED!! We all are!!
God is so good to each and every one of us, and its not based upon us being worthy of any of His goodness, because were not, none of us are.
Its based totally on His goodness and that’s why we should be thankful all year long and not just on the 4th Thursday in November, each year.
I would imagine, if someone were to write down all the blessings God does for someone through out the year, there probably wouldn’t be enough pen and paper to write it all down.
And reading a years worth of written blessings, would certainatly give someone a new perspective on just how good God really is, ALL THE TIME!!
The psalmist gave us instructions on how to pay tribute, to the One True God!
And it something we should do daily every morning, you know like pushups,
only the praise the Lord kind. Like lifting your arms towards heaven instead of your body off the floor.
Now don’t get me wrong there both good for you, but one is definitely better for you.
Psalms 100: 1-5 MSG.
On your feet now—applaud God! Bring a gift of laughter,
sing yourselves into his presence.
3 Know this: God is God, and God, God.
He made us; we didn’t make him.
We’re his people, his well-tended sheep.
4 Enter with the password: "Thank you!"
Make yourselves at home, talking praise.
Thank him. Worship him.
5 For God is sheer beauty,
all-generous in love,
loyal always and ever.
Historically we think of Thanksgiving as a time of feasting for the Pilgrims and Indians.
In the fall of 1621, the Pilgrims had been in America less than a year.
During those months, over half their original population died from disease or starvation.
The Pilgrims hosted the first feast not to try out their latest recipes, but to celebrate life.
The new life that God had given them.
As meager as their beginning in there new enviroment was, they were happy to be able to worship God the way they wanted.
Its sad to say the very reason they came, has all but been taking away in America, the freedom of religion.
The first National Day of Thanksgiving was declared by President George Washington. On the the 3rd day of October, 1789,
President George Washington, at the request of Congress made the following declaration, proclaiming a A National Thanksgiving.
I want to read just the first paragraph.
"Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor; and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me "to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:"
They didn’t have any of the modern conveniences we enjoy today.
By anyone’s standards of today, those people were roughing it, can you imagine no running water, no electricity, no A.C.
Yet they realized how good God was to them, and they wanted to proclaim it and let the whole world know it too!!!
What in the world has happened to our modern day leaders, its like the old saying “You got to stand for something or you’ll fall for anything”
Little by little, Many critics of the Christian faith are attempting to rewrite our nation’s history.
President George Washington’s declaration indicates that our nations founders and leaders were men of faith who sought God’s favor.
It seems like God has honored America all these years, because of our founding fathers great faith and convictions.
God has always had great men and women down through the years in our countries heritage at the right place, exactly at the right time.
We need more men and women like that today, to get involved and take a stand.
And even today, when the country and the rest of the world sometimes seems to be
a little bit off the track, you can rest assured God still has everything under control.
Today I wanted to share a true story I discovered about the beginnings of our country,
And how God, when you seek and put him first, always takes care of you, always makes a way, always is in the right place at the right time!
Squanto and the Miracle of Thanksgiving:
This is an article by Eric Metaxas, he has written for The New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, and Christianity Today.
He said: Well, when I found out what happened, when I actually researched it, I couldn’t believe what I was reading.
I said, "There has to be some mistake here." So I read the original documents written in the 1620s and 1630s, and I was absolutely dumbfounded by what I read.
I mean this was an out-and-out miracle. If there’s such a thing as a miracle, this is a miracle.
And I’m a believer, and I said, "This was God’s hand in American history." I had never heard this story.
Most of us have heard the story of Squanto meeting the Pilgrims, but really, the miracle happened long before that.
Well, this is just one of the examples of how God does things, and we don’t know what He’s doing at the time.
Most people have no idea that any white man came to the coast of New England before 1620.
Most just think that the Pilgrims came, and that was the first time Englishmen came to America.
But there were many traders who would come from England and other places,
and they would come down the coast of Maine and Massachusetts, and they would trade with the Indians.
Around 1612, a trader, a Captain Hunter, came to the coast of Massachusetts and was trading with the Indians.
He was obviously a very bad man, because when the Indians came down trustingly to trade with him,
he knocked them over the head, took them to the ship, threw them in the hold of the ship.
He then took them across the Atlantic Ocean, and sold them into slavery in Malaga, Spain.
This, of course, was a nightmare for the Indian’s. Squanto was one of those captured and sold into slavery.
Monks in Spain, men of God, bought him, and treated him well.
There he was taught the Christian faith. Three years later, in 1615, they made it possible for him to get to England.
He went from Spain to England -- just think of a young Indian boy from Massachusetts going all the way across the ocean to Spain,
and then going up to England so that he could somehow get a ship back across the Atlantic.
There were no ships. So, he worked in a stable as a stable boy for a family called Slaney.
Squanto was with them for five years until a ship going back to the coast of North America could be found, another trading ship.
This was around 1620. He learned English and lived in London. He was dreaming and hoping
and probably praying that he could come back to his family after ten years of exile and slavery.
He learns that a ship is going to American, he becomes the translator on the ship.
He gets all the way back, again, against odds we can’t even dream of, comes to the coast of Massachusetts,
runs to the place where he was raised, but here is no one there.
His entire tribe had been wiped out by disease, probably small pox.
He was heartbroken. Ten years to get back and no one is there!
Squanto went to live with a neighboring tribe, briefly. But after a short period of time, he went to live in the woods by himself.
Remember that in 1620, a band of Pilgrims in a little boat
comes across the Atlantic, trusting God is leading them.
They land and experience hardship, the cold, and starvation. And these were faithful, faithful Christians. 50% of them died.
And so they got through their first winter, as we know the story, and you can imagine that they were probably questioning,
"Lord, how could You have taken us this far?"
Their trials and hardships were devastating, they were crying out to God. We know that these were very strong Christians.
And suddenly, out of the woods walked an Indian brave speaking English. This is 1621.
They were so shocked; an Indian speaking perfect English.
Actually he was in London England much more recently than they were.
And it just happened that he grew up on the very spot where they had settled.
This was his home that had been abandoned by his tribe. He had no place to go, They became his family.
And he knew everything there was to know about how you plant corn.
Squanto showed them how to plant corn with the fish as the fertilizer - how to plant the gourd around the corn so it goes up the cornstalk.
He knew how to get fish out of muddy streams. He knew where the lobsters were and where the fish were. He knew everything.
And the Lord used him, truly miraculously to help sustain their life. What a miracle!
So in the fall of 1621, after a good harvest of crops and wild game taken from the woods,
the Pilgrims and the Indians had a “Harvest Feast” for the blessings God had bestowed upon them.
William Bradford wrote later that Squanto was a "special instrument sent by God for their good beyond their expectations."
God is always an on time God, He is always in the right place, at the right time.
He always makes provision for His people, He will always make a way where seems to be no way.
Squanto helped them recover from their first difficult winter by teaching them the best places to catch fish.
He helped them to build warmer houses. He acted as an interpreter, and guided them on trading expeditions
God used Squanto to create blessings resulting in Thanksgiving in others.
How will God use you? Are you willing to surrender your life to the Lord, in order for Him to use you to be a blessing to others?
There is truly a great work to be done here in Monticello, In. and all over the world.
TBS.
Eph 2:7-10 MSG.
7-10Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.
There is so much this year to be thankful for, and the best way we can thank God is to tell someone about Him.
Tell someone about His precious son and what He has already done for them.
How He died on the cross for them, so they can experience eternal life, the greatest miracle of all!
God is in the life changing business!
What you tell them will change their life forever. And you can do it!!
if you will allow God to help you, He will put you exactly just like Squanto was, at the right place just at the right time to minister His word.
You can become the person God has destined you to be. You can do the works he ordained you to do.
You can become a miracle to someone else, as Squanto did.
To the world you might be one person, but to one person you might be the world - Unknown
*Thanks to Melvin Newland and Larry Langston for the illustrations
