This week by my calculations marks the 397th time Americans have celebrated Thanksgiving. I know many of you will be celebrating with your families. I hope with all the commercialism you never forget why we celebrate.
The ability to have a personal relationship with the creator of the universe , the one true God and his amazing son Jesus is why we celebrate!
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.
It’s amazing that here in the land of the free and the brave, the greatest democracy ever known to mankind, the defender of the free world, there are so many who think there is little or nothing at all, to be thankful for.
Our streets look normal, yet they are anything but normal. At the devils delight, Opioids and Meth are consumed like candy, by not just a generation but those from all generations. Far too many view hope as too Illusive and have blurred their vision almost to the point blindness!
God has never had the availability of genuine hope farther away then a whisper. Truth is, we could all share a story of how bad we think we once had it. Truth also is, God has also always offered help or an intervention at every point of our need. The saddest part is when someone is offered light, but still chooses darkness over the light!
Thanksgiving is traditionally celebrated once a year, thanksgiving should be celebrated every day of our lives! Yet the accuser Wants us to believe there is nothing to be grateful for, when he himself knows and has experienced the amazing goodness God continually offers to all willing to partake and receive.
2 Peter 3:9 MSG
Don’t overlook the obvious here, friends. With God, one day is as good as a thousand years, a thousand years as a day. God isn’t late with his promise as some measure lateness. He is restraining himself on account of you, holding back the End because he doesn’t want anyone lost. He’s giving everyone space and time to change.
God’s promises, blessings and goodness, you will find everywhere you look. More times than we could probably even imagine, God’s provision miraculously finds the way to you, so you don’t even have to look for His Blessings!:
As bad as some always think they have things, there is always someone who has things worse and when we become aware of there condition, almost always its a wake up call to let us know how much we truly do have to be thankful for! Amen!
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.
If the children of Israel had there share of complainers after Moses led them out of captivity, I’m sure the pilgrims probably did too! God was there in both situations, God was faithful in both as well. God is faithful in every situation! Amen?
The Pilgrims hosted the first feast not to try out their latest recipes, but to celebrate life. The new life God had given them. As meager as their beginning 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 eroding in America, the freedom of religion.
I want to share a great Thanksgiving story I’ve shared before that illustrates the goodness of God and how He truly cares for His children. It’s a fantastic true story that doesn’t get told often enough, the story of Squanto!
Around 1612, a trader by the name of 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.
Thing is, 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.
Squanto 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. Hold that thought for a minute....
Remember that in 1620, a band of Pilgrims on a little boat called the Mayflower
comes across the Atlantic, trusting God is leading them. They land and experience hardship, the cold, and starvation 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 for help, they needed a miracle!
And suddenly, out of the woods walked an Indian brave speaking English. This is 1621 mind you! They were so shocked; an Indian speaking perfect English.
The very spot where they had made there settlement he grew up on. This was his home that had been abandoned by his tribe. He had no place to go, They became his family.
Squanto knew first hand, everything they needed to know about survival, 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.
God always makes provision for His people, He will always make a way where seems to be no way. God has always made a way and provided for His children!
The Bible tells about the amazing story of Joseph and his journey from slavery to being a ruler in Egypt. The people Joseph met along the way, would later be at the right time, to say the right thing at the right time to propel Joseph into the favor God had waiting on him to arrive at!
There are no accidents with God, only divine interventions of miraculous proportions!
Elisha would have never risen to prominence and been given the opportunity to perform 14 Amazing miracles for the Lord, if God hadn’t first allowed him to be taught by and witness Elijah accomplish 7 unbelievable miracles and be caught up in a chariot of fire and ascend to heaven!
God always has someone in the right place at the right time to be there in the time of need to help His children!
Now I know their not called Squanto moments, but the Bible is full of divine heaven inspired miracles all along the journey which has led to the life of every Christian who has ever been able to experience a relationship with Jesus, the greatest miracle of all!
We have so much to be thankful for in our lives and our relationship with God!
For every time God sent just the right person with the right words to encourage us,
or the right knowledge to fix a problem,
or the right person to listen when we needed someone to hear us out,
for the right person who bailed us out of a financial need,
the right person to care for us when we were sick,
or the right person who prayed for us and with us and joined their faith to our faith and saw us all the way through to our miracle!
All those undeserved needs met just at the right time. The amazing lengths God has gone to tend to our needs, the hundreds of millions God has inspired and has caused to be spent for our benefit, gives proof there is no mountain to high or valley He won’t go, to come to our rescue!
The reasons to be thankful for are too numerous to count, or to comprehend!
Thank you falls so short on our part to offer gratitude and praise to the one true Living God, for the constant care and attention He gives to us!
Even today as I stand here speaking this word to you is a miracle, because of every divine intervention in my life by someone God caused to pour into me, is a part of the credit and word you are receiving today. And for that I Am truly thankful!
Let this be our prayer; song by Del Way
Lord
I was hungry, You were bread for my soul,
I was thirsty and You gave living water,
You were my shelter when I had no place to go;
That's why sometimes I just want to praise You, Sometimes
just to speak Your name,
Sometimes I just want to thank You, Without asking You for a
thing;
Oh, sometimes I lift my hands to You, And sometimes all I do
is cry,
Everything that I have I owe to You, Lord, And Calvary's the
reason why.
