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.
She didn’t know what to do and started to panic, so she called home and told the baby sitter what had happened and that she did not know what to do. The baby sitter told her to find a coat hanger and see if that would open the door.
The woman looked around and found an old rusty coat hanger that had been thrown down on the ground, possibly by someone else who also had locked their keys in their car. Then she looked at the hanger and said, "I don’t know how to use this." So she bowed her head and asked God to send her some help.
In so doing, she obeyed the command to never stop praying. Do you think God would reward her for that?
Within five minutes A motorcycle roared up and pulled into the parking space next to her car. A rough, dirty-looking biker got off and saw her situation. He asked if he could help her. The woman thought, "This is what you sent to help me, God?"
She finally told him yes, as she needed to hurry and get home to her sick daughter. He walked over to the car, and in less than one minute the car was opened. She hugged the man and through her tears she said, "Thank you so much! You are such a nice man."
The man replied; "No, I’m not, Lady. I just got out of prison for car theft." The woman hugged the man again and with sobbing tears cried out to God, "Thank you, God! You even sent me a professional."
In doing this, she properly showed obedience to God’s command to be thankful in all circumstances.
Another quick example of depending fully on God through prayer and then being properly thankful for what He does for us is shown in the story of a poor old lady who lived in a run-down apartment building. She was on welfare and couldn’t afford even the basics. The day came when she was totally out of food and had no money to get any more, so she began praying. She prayed out loud all day long for God to do something to help her with getting some food.
In so doing, she obeyed God’s command to never stop praying.
The landlord lived next to her and he got very upset every time he heard her praying, so he decided to prove to her that God did not exist. He went down to the store and bought her a whole week’s worth of food and then came back and put all the bags in front of her door. Then he rang the doorbell and hid around the corner.
When she opened the door, she saw all that food and then began thanking God for the food. The landlord then jumped out and told her it wasn’t even from God because he was the one who bought them!
Thinking he had proven to her that God didn’t exist, she then looked up and said, “Thank you God, you even got the devil to pay for them!”
Thus, she obeyed God’s command to be thankful in all circumstances.
These things show how man might react to the act of thanksgiving, but we need to know how God would want us to act.
PSALM 35:28 says,
“My tongue will speak of your righteousness and sing of your praises all day long.”
In the most basic of ways, thanksgiving is a time when we realize that someone else has pulled us through the worst of times and has seen fit to give us things that will take care of us. And, after realizing that, we humble our hearts enough to give that person our true thanks for what he has done.
The worst of times started the day the pilgrims got off the boat on the new shores of what would later become America. The year was 1607, and winter was just about to set in.
Three boatloads of men, women, and children were crowded into small boats and kept in these cramped and filthy quarters for months until they landed in this new land. They had set sail for Virginia, but winds blew them off course and they landed in what we call Massachusetts today.
Within a few weeks, winter came in with a fury unseen in many years. Within the first 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.
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 everything they had was a direct blessing from our Lord; sometimes we forget that. The pilgrims yearned to give thanks for all they had, and with all their hearts; and most often we don’t.
If we were to talk to the Pilgrims, what would they say about what we have turned out like? Maybe we would walk away from that conversation with a totally different perspective of being thankful.
So, what are some of the things we should be thankful for?
We could be thankful that we aren’t a turkey this time of year, or in my sister’s case when she was young and learning how to cook, we could be thankful for smoke detectors in the kitchen.
One quick note here: When we were youngsters, my sister made her first batch of biscuits and that caused my brother and I to get a spanking. How can you be thankful for that? It seems we took several of those biscuits out and used them to play baseball with and my sister got mad and told our mom.
Instead of just that one precious day a year called Thanksgiving, maybe we should get into a real habit of giving thanks every day of the year. And maybe the first thing we should be thankful for is that we have a God who loves us enough to keep giving to us all year long.
I want to concentrate on one particular blessing for a moment; a blessing that surpasses all the rest in importance to us. God, in His great love for you and me, gave up His Son so that you might choose to be reconciled back to Him.
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. For instance, if I ask you over for dinner and tell you that you must wear a shirt, do you think for a moment that I will let you sit at my table if you don’t wear a shirt? Let me give you a hint: NO I WON’T!
Likewise, if we expect to go to God’s house someday, we will not get there by depending on our rules or what we might think, but on the rules God sets for us.
Eternity in heaven. 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? Sometimes, we have a tendency to receive selfishly.
A grocer saw the mother and the little boy walk into his store. He saw them come in every week, and wanting to make customers happy, he went to them and offered the boy an orange. The boy looked at the man but said nothing. The mother said, “Now, Johnny, what do you say to the man?”
Little Johnny handed him the orange back and said, “Peel it.”
Sometimes, we get so focused on what we want, we forget about what He wants for 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. We complain because things in our nation and even in our lives are turning sour. Stop complaining and turn to God just like the woman did when she was locked out of her car, or the woman did who had no food to eat.
1 CHRONICLES 7:14 gives us a solemn promise from God. He says,
“If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and I will forgive their sins and I will heal their lands.”
Wow! That is such a simple message, yet we have trouble understanding or following it. Why is that? Maybe it has something to do with our selfish focus. It seems to always be on ….. well, on us!
I heard a parable that explained it like this. Due to the economy, a car dealer was on the verge of being forced to close down. Walking along a beach one day, he found a brass lamp. He picked it up, and as he did so, a genie popped out.
The genie said he could only have one wish. He had always wanted to sell foreign sports cars in a large city so he could be rich, so he asked the genie to give him a foreign car dealership in a large city. Smiling, he put the lamp back down and as he stood and looked around, he saw that he was now a Chevy dealer in Tokyo!
His problem was that he prayed for the wrong thing in the wrong way. We do the same thing. We need to pray to God for His will to be done, not our will to be done, and then we must be explicit in our prayers. We need to analyze what God’s will is in our life. Then, when we pray, we must pray in thanksgiving and praise.
Last Thursday, all across this great nation, people were busy using their kitchens to make great meals for their families. In our kitchen, Diana has often threatened to put one of these three signs up on the wall.
— This is a self-cleaning kitchen. If yourself uses it; yourself will clean it.
— I offer 2 choices for dinner; take it or leave it
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? The Pilgrims did.
And as we say the words of thanksgiving today and tomorrow, let us truly mean them. But not only for the abundance we have in our lives, but that we do have a God who chases after us and only wants us to love Him back
We all have different reasons to be thankful, but more than any other reason, but let me share with you what I am most thankful for in my life. I am most thankful because Jesus loved me enough to wait for many years on me … until I finally woke up to my real need and love for Him.
America also has many reasons to be thankful, and they all stem from what God has given us. Our forefathers fought for this land, build this land, and dedicated this land to God. And in return, God bestowed His blessings on us. But for our future generations to be thankful for what they have, we must do the same thing today that our forefathers did in the past – honor God in all that we do. But are we?
There’s the story of an old farmer who came to town once a month to do all of his shopping. He was not just frugal with his money, he was very selfish with it. He hated to spend any of it, so he would just keep driving around town until he found a parking place that had money left in the meter. When he saw one, he would quickly pull in and park, then hurry to complete all of his shopping so he could drive out without having to put his own dime in the parking meter. He was, in fact, parking on someone else’s dime, not on his own.
We tend to be like that man today. We are enjoying the many blessings America offers even though many of us haven’t done anything to earn them. Even though our society is not honoring God, we are enjoying the blessings He has already given us. We are, in essence, parking on someone else’s dime, not our own.
And unless we once again begin to honor God in all we do, our blessings will soon disappear. What can we here in this congregation do today to keep God’s blessings intact? We can pray on purpose and with a purpose. We can pray for God to be returned to His rightful place over America. We can pray for our precious men and women in uniform. We can pray that our children come to have a very intimate and personal relationship with Jesus Christ. That is what we can do.
And there is something else we can do. We can strive to keep the attitude of thanksgiving all year long and not relegated down to just one day.
Let’s bow our heads in closing prayer.
Thank you, Lord, for making yourself our servant for our sakes. For showing us how to care for one another until You come back for us. Thank you for loving us and pursuing a relationship with us. Thank you, Jesus, for giving your very life on Calvary, so that we might live with You in eternity.
Thank you for our families and friends. And thank you for your forgiveness.
We pray these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
