The Miracle Of Thanksgiving

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.