The Bible tells us that the Holy Spirit is constantly calling us to “Come!” He wants to draw us nearer to God’s presence. But sin separates. Let me be more specific and more personal: My sin can make me believe I can’t come closer to God.
In Psalm 99:8, notice how the psalmist focuses first on God’s forgiveness, and then on His punishment. It’s as though he is saying, “Yes, God punishes sin, but He is first and foremost a forgiving God”—
…You were to Israel a forgiving God, though You punished their misdeeds. (Psalm 99:8)
God is slow to anger, but He must punish sin. His punishment is always to encourage reconciliation. He wants to remove the sin that separates us. This has always been His focus since the very first sin.
In fact the next psalm celebrates coming into God’s presence with joy—
Shout for joy
Worship with gladness
Come in with joyful songs
Remember that God made us and we are His
Enter with thanksgiving
Enter with praise
Come give Him thanks
Praise Him
He is good
His love endures forever
His faithfulness never diminishes
This should encourage me all the more to quickly confess my sin and repent from it, so that I can once again answer the Holy Spirit’s call to come deeper into God’s presence.
This is part of George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation in 1789—
“…May we also unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him—
To pardon our national and other transgressions,
To enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually,
To render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed,
To protect and guide all nations and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord,
To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science,
And generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.”
‘Tis the season we are supposed to be thankful. As Thanksgiving Day approaches, many people will gather around a dinner table and share what they are thankful for this year, and then quickly move on to the turkey and football. But we never quite finish the thought: Yes, we are thankful, but to whom are we thankful?
Consider some of these clichés we use:
The ball bounced my way.
I thank my lucky stars!
Wow, must be good clean living!
Whew, I caught a lucky break there.
It’s about time something went my way.
In all of these phrases we are saying, “I did something to get what I got. I did the right things, or I was in the right place at the right time.”
God says, “My people shall be satisfied with My goodness” (Jeremiah 31:14). Notice He says MY goodness.
Contrast this with what Moses warned in his farewell address. He said, when you have been blessed make sure you give the thanks to God, and don’t forget all He has done for you. If we forget to thank God, the inevitable result is pride in our own abilities, or in our own luck. YOU may then say to YOURSELF, “MY power and the strength of MY hand has made this lucky break for ME” (see Deuteronomy 8:10-20).
Notice the MY has been changed from God to me. I have made a god out of my luck. Or even worse, I have enthroned MYSELF and dethroned God.
The only guard against this is continual, uninterrupted gratitude to God for His goodness—Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18).
Don’t make a god out of luck, but make sure the One True God is the center of your thankfulness this week, and all year long!
Some folks asked me to share the quotes I used in my message today in our Grateful Heart series. Ask, and you shall receive!
“It is no wonder that the Lord’s people should be satisfied with the goodness of their Lord. Here is goodness without mixture, bounty without stint, mercy without chiding, love without change, favor without reserve. If God’s goodness does not satisfy us, what will? What! are we still groaning? Surely there is a wrong desire within if it be one which God’s goodness does not satisfy.” —Charles Spurgeon
“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense out of our past, brings peace for today, and create a vision for tomorrow.” —John Maxwell
I’m looking forward to wrapping up this series next Sunday!
As we approach Thanksgiving Day, many people begin to get their thanks on! They will start rehearsing for their family gathering when someone might ask them, “What are you thankful for this year?”
But I want to make the case for practicing gratitude all year long!
There are emotional, physical, psychological and relational benefits to being a thanks-filled person. Truly those with grateful hearts have strong, healthy hearts … both physically and emotionally.
“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense out of our past, brings peace for today, and create a vision for tomorrow.” —John Maxwell
Please join me the next two Sundays at Calvary Assembly of God as I share some of the medical research and biblical truths that will reveal the year-round, whole-person benefits of being grateful.
How do you feel this morning? Are you still feeling good from your day yesterday? I sure hope you are!
Did you know those good feelings are more from your thoughts than they are from anything else? Check out this insight from Jon Gordon—
“Research shows that grateful people are happier and more likely to maintain good friendships. A state of gratitude, according to research by the Institute of HeartMath, also improves the heart’s rhythmic functioning, which helps us to reduce stress, think more clearly under pressure and heal physically. It’s actually physiologically impossible to be stressed and thankful at the same time. When you are grateful you flood your body and brain with emotions and endorphins that uplift and energize you rather than the stress hormones that drain you.”
Thanksgiving Day is a good place to start. It’s a good day to begin to flex your gratitude muscles.
But don’t stop there!
Allow those thankful feelings from Thanksgiving Day to expand into multiple thanksgiving dayS.
But don’t stop there!
Let multiple thanksgiving dayS expand into a habit of daily thanksgiving.
But don’t stop there!
Let the habit of daily thanksgiving become a lifestyle of givingthanksgiving—a lifestyle that is always God-focused, Christ-centered, and Spirit-led in constant thanks for everything!
Givingthanksgiving looks like this…
Always giving thanks to God the Father foreverything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Ephesians 5:20)
Do not be anxious about anything, but ineverything, by prayer and petition, withthanksgiving, present your requests to God. (Philippians 4:6)
For everythingGod created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving. (1 Timothy 4:4)
Let’s not limit ourselves to only one day of giving thanks, but a lifestyle of givingthanksgiving every single day!
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
Have you ever noticed how quickly we label people? We tend to give them a label based on their education, their socio-economic status, their race, their age, their job, even their choice of vocabulary.
We may not verbally express these labels, but we think them. And we will always treat people as we label them! In fact, it’s impossible to treat someone differently than you think about them.
What sort of label does God use? Well, He says that He knit you together in your mother’s womb; that He saw all of the days of your life before you were even a twinkle in your father’s eye; He knows the number of hairs on your head; He knows the thoughts in your head; He knows what you’re going to say before you say it. And then there’s this beautiful thought—
For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Ephesians 2:10)
The label God puts on you:
My one-of-a-kind, irreplaceable, invaluable masterpiece!
When you are givingthanksgiving for people (that means you are always thankful for people), you will begin to see them as God’s masterpieces too!
Everyone you meet is God’s gift. He gave them to humanity to do the good works which He prepared in advance for them to do. You are surrounded by gifted people!
If you don’t see people this way—or if you tend to label them with less-than-flattering tags—perhaps you should begin to pray for them. Try a prayer like this:
I thank my God for you; in fact, I always thank God for you. And every time I thank God for you, I pray for you, night and day. In all my prayers for you, I always pray with joy, being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. And this is also my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God. So I urge you to join me in offering requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving for everyone.(This prayer is taken from Romans 1:8; 1 Corinthians 1:4; Colossians 1:3; 2 Timothy 1:3; Philippians 1:3-11; 1 Timothy 2:1)
Don’t just express your thanks for people on Thanksgiving Day, but be givingthanksgiving all the time. Remember: everyone you meet is a gifted person because everyone you meet is God’s one-of-a-kind, irreplaceable, invaluable masterpiece.
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
If you’ve ever been to a doctor’s office, you have probably experienced the patellar reflex test. It might be better known as the “knee-jerk reaction.” This is when the doctor taps your knee just below the kneecap to test your body’s involuntary response. How you respond (or don’t respond) tells the doctor a lot about your nervous system’s health.
Did you know that we have a spiritual patellar reflex too?
Consider this verse—
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. (Philippians 4:6)
How you respond spiritually to stressful things says a lot about your spiritual knee-jerk reflex.
We see this spiritual knee-jerk reflex in the well-known story of Daniel in the lion’s den. Some of the guys who were jealous of Daniel trick the king into passing a law that forbids everyone from praying to anyone other than the king. Look at Daniel’s spiritual knee-jerk reflex:
Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before. (Daniel 6:10)
Daniel’s knee-jerk reaction was to hit his knees in prayer!
This is because hitting his knees in prayer was a spiritual habit for Daniel. Check out this key phrase: he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before. The verb tense here is one that means unbroken continuity. In other words, Daniel always prayed, so when anxious times came his spiritual knee-jerk reflex was to do what he always did: Pray, giving thanks to God.
Thanksgiving Day is fast approaching, and families are already making their travel plans, and meal plans, and football-watching plans, and Black Friday shopping plans. Whew! That’s a lot to pack into one weekend!
So what if we don’t try to pack it into just one weekend?
What if we made sure that Thanksgiving was not just a day, but every day was a day of giving thanks?
What if giving thanks was more than just Thanksgiving?
That’s what we’ll be exploring and learning about from God’s Word over the next two Sundays. I hope you will be able to join me for this eye-opening, heart-challenging two-part series called givingthanksgiving.
And if you can’t join us in person, I challenge you to take some time to answer the question for yourself: What if giving thanks was more than just Thanksgiving? If this were true, how much sweeter your life would be!
If you missed either of the messages in this series, check them out here:
The Bible tells us that the Holy Spirit is constantly calling us to “Come!” He wants to draw us nearer to God’s presence. But sin separates. Let me be more specific and more personal: My sin can make me believe I can’t come closer to God.
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Craig T. Owens 