The Thanksgiving holiday is coming up and soon families will gather together to give thanks to the Lord for His goodness and provision, and to remember the harvest feast of the early settlers and other blessings of the past year. The world celebrates by eating too much, watching football and hitting the ‘Black Friday’ sales.
What if you woke up this morning with only the things you thanked God for yesterday? Psalms 106:47 - “Save us, O LORD our God, and gather us from among the heathen, to give thanks unto thy holy name, and to triumph in thy praise.”
Thanksgiving became a national holiday in 1863. During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving:
As a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.Ah, to have leadership in America like that again!
As we give thanks this week, consider thanking those who have said ‘yes’ in obedience to God’s commands which in turn impacted your spiritual walk and/or the walk of others. Thank you Pastors, Sunday School teachers, missionaries, disciplers, Christian TV and radio, Bible printing ministries, Christian song writers … and countless others … all those who have sewn seeds of how to spend eternity in Heaven with our Lord. Because of your willingness to share the Love of Jesus and the powerful Word of God, many people are now able to call heaven their eternal home. Thank you, Christ-followers, for giving to the Lord!
Be thinking about what you will say to the Lord in your Thanksgiving Day prayer before eating your meal. (See printable prayer below for ideas.)
Most of all, thank You, Lord … 2Corinthians 9:15 - “Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.”
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