Thanksgiving Service
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I don’t think there could ever be a more appropriate time for us to come together for the first time gathered as a church more than this week of Thanksgiving! The miracles that have taken place for us to be gathered here together tonight would take to long to list tonight.
The last two years have been hard. They have been full of ups and downs. I tell everyone that asks me about our church planting journey that it has been the most exciting time of our lives, and yet at the same time it has been the most terrifying time of our lives.
Nevertheless we are here for one reason and one purpose tonight and that is to focus on the praise and adoration of our Thankfulness to God!
If you look up the word “Thanksgiving” in theological word books you find that praise and thanksgiving go hand in hand.
Lexham Theological Wordbook Praise and Thanksgiving
Praising God is the activity of God’s creatures in honoring God because of the acts and the nature of God. Thanksgiving is an expression of gratitude to God for his care and concern, especially as shown through his redemptive acts.
Redemptive acts simply meaning the acts that God took to save us! He has ordained all of our steps and worked His plan of redemption in all of our lives so that we might come to have a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, but more than the knowledge....the relationship and salvation that can only be found through trusting in Christ for Salvation.
In Scripture we find both in the Old Testament and the New Testament that Thanksgiving involves both personal and corporate prayer, musical expression, singing, exhortation, exaltation, and expressions of gratitude and worship to God for who He is and for what He has done for creation, his covenant people, and ultimately for every tribe, nation, and tongue of the world through Jesus Christ. Salvation!
Tonight we want to take a few moments and we are going to practice something that hopefully will draw your hearts and minds closer to Christ as we intentionally have a time of focused or intentional guided prayer. Most of you have probably not experienced this or practiced this much if at all but it is simply taking scripture and prayerfully responding to God’s Word back to Him in prayer.
There’s nothing freaky about it....it is meditating on Scripture through prayer.
Charles Spurgeon
“To praise God without praying to Him would be impossible. To pray to God without praising Him would be ungrateful.”
We must do both!
Psalm 100
4 Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him and praise His name. 5 For Yahweh is good.
Give thanks to Yahweh; call on His name;
proclaim His deeds among the peoples.