The Cause of Thanksgiving pt 2

The Cause of Thanksgiving pt. 2 1Thess. 5:18

Little Jenny sat down to eat dinner with her family. She looked at the leftovers and said, “Hey, wait a minute. We thanked God for this lastnight!”[i]

You guessed it. No I’m not going to serve you leftovers, but I do want to talk to you again about The Cause of Thanksgiving.

Last Sunday morning I gave you five principles of thanksgiving. Today I trust with the Lord’s help I can motivate you to put them in practice. I want to just briefly review with you what those five principles are,

Thanksgiving should be directed toward God Thanksgiving should be a freewill volunteer cheerful offering Thanksgiving includes action Thanksgiving includes fellowship Thanksgiving brings God’s blessing and approval.

This morning as I said I want to help us to not just understand the principles of thanksgiving but to apply them. We are commanded to give thanks for everything; again this is a commandment not a suggestion. If we are not giving thanks to God, we are not following the will of God.

When we talk about giving thanks in everything, you are probably prone to say, “but you don’t know my situation.” No I may not and others may not either, but it’s not so much about thanking God for the pain, or suffering, or discouragement, or whatever it might be. It is thanking God that He is working all things out for our good. That he is taking the things that come our way in life, and using them to bring glory to His name. It kind of puts a different perspective on it. We aren’t thanking him for trials and tribulations, but rather thanking Him for bringing glory to Jesus through our suffering.

The spirit of thanksgiving should be a constant daily moment by moment experience because,

Thanksgiving is the command of God - Therefore, all forms of ingratitude are sinful

In everything give thanks (Col. 2:7 “abounding in therein with thanksgiving” Eph. 5:20 “Giving thanks always for all things…”) Col 3:15 “Be ye thankful”

Joni Eareckson Tada, who was involved in an accident that left her paralyzed from the neck down, writes, “Giving thanks is not a matter of feeling thankful, it's a matter of obedience.

Be Thankful – Lon R. Woodrum

If you have many foes

And they press you pretty hard;

And from their bitter blows

You’re rather hurt and scarred-

But if you still can look around

And find a single friend

Who’ll stick to you thru thick and thin

Until the very end-

Thank God for that

Thank God for that.

If your purse is pretty lean

And you find that you are stuck

In tough financial bogs

Because of old Hard Luck-

Still if your heart is beating right

And your health is all okay

And by God’s grace you’re able yet

The game of life to play-

Thank God for that!

Thank God for that!

If sickness lays a grip

Upon your fevered form

If agony is in your world

And sweeps you like a storm-

But, still, if thru the mist of pain

The Holy Ghost has come

And thru your soul His raptures roll

When pain has made you numb-

Thank God for that!

Thank God for that!

If life has not seemed kind

Here on this sphere below,

And yours has been a homeless way

Like One of long ago;

Still, if by faith you see agleam

A house that brightly stands

In God’s own world of Home, Sweet Home-

A house not made with hands-

Thank God for that!

Thank God for that!

Thanksgiving is the Will of God – Not only is it commanded of us but it is God’s will that we get to the place that we can in everything give thanks.

John Macarthur put it this way, “in everything give thanks—allows believers no excuse for harboring Ingratitude. In everything carries an unlimited requirement. It refers to everything that occurs in life…. If you’re not obeying that command, you’re not following God’s will. Think of it like this: If gratitude doesn’t come easy for you, neither will finding God’s will. Or to put it another way, if you struggle with being thankful, you’ll struggle with following God’s will.”

Thanksgiving acknowledges the Almightiness of God.

O give thanks unto the Lord for He is good. It shows that anything we have or get in this life comes from him

i. All talents, abilities, personality, wealth, position, power, prestige, you get the message everything comes from God.

It shows that God is greater than any impossibility, problem or circumstance we may face in this life. It is always good practice to even Thank God in advance for what you believe or are praying for Him to do.

[i][i][i][i][i][i][i] (Kent Crockett, I Once Was Blind But Now I Squint, Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers, 2004, 169) The Cause for Thanksgiving pt. 1 Eph 5:15-20 Last week we talked about how we are to give thanks in everything. This morning I’d like to talk about Givng thanks for everything. Have you considered the fact that the poorest American is still the envy of almost all of the rest of the world. Let me prove it. Missionary David Thompson has this little four-question quiz. He said that if you can answer three of the four questions with a yes, you are among the 10% wealthiest people who've ever lived on earth: · Do you own more than one pair of shoes? · Do you own more than one pair of underwear? · Do you have a choice of what to eat for at least one meal out of three? · Do you have your own transportation? How did you come out? How many people in India, China, Russia, Latin and Central America, Africa, Cuba, and Iraq would not give anything and everything to exchange places with any of us here dollar for dollar, house for house, health care for health care, and church for church? I think we can see in all of these things to be thankful for, or the cause for thanksgiving. 1. Thank God for what you have. One lady prayed, "Dear Jesus, please teach me to appreciate what I have before time forces me to appreciate what I had." While here, do you realize that our forefathers did without, · Sugar until the 13th Century? · Coal fires until the 14th Century? · Buttered bread until the 15th Century? · Potatoes until the 16th Century? · Coffee, tea and soup until the 17th Century? · Pudding and eyeglasses until the 18th Century? · Eggs, matches and electricity until the 19th Century? · Automobiles, televisions, computers, and McDonalds until the 20th Century? And yet as deprived as each of these people were down through the centuries, each generation still had innumerable reasons to be thankful. 2. Thank God for what you don’t have – I am sorry for people who are not well and I give them my sympathy, compassion and prayers, but I do thank God that He has thus far kept me from some things 3. Thank God for what you have had a. A Holiness (not just Christian) Heritage b. A home that was sheltered, protected and blessed c. A Church that has taught me right and stood by me and sent me out to work with their blessings 4. Thank God for what you will have a. A home in heaven b. Reunion 5. Thank God for Jesus a. Birth /life./death/ resurrection/ ascenion b. Redemption/ atonement The point of all of this is, we should ever be on the lookout for the blessings of God. The more you look for them, the more you will discover them. Count your blessings, name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord has done. Count your blessings, name them two by two and it will surprise you what the Lord can do. Someone has noted that it is "better to lose count while naming your blessings than to lose your blessings counting your troubles. Some of the illustrations of this sermon were taken from "http://www.nlag.net/Sermons/Transcripts/mjthanks.htm The Happiness of a Thankful Heart Psalm 26:7 The Pilgrim Proclamation: Inasmuch as the great Father has given us this year an abundant harvest of Indian corn, wheat, beans, squashes, and garden vegetables, and has made the forests to abound with game and the sea with fish and clams, and inasmuch as He has protected us from the ravages of the savages, has spared us from pestilence and disease, has granted us freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience; now, I, your magistrate, do proclaim that all ye Pilgrims, with your wives and little ones, do gather at ye meeting house, on ye hill, between the hours of 9 and 12 in the day time, on Thursday, November ye 29th of the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and twenty-three, and the third year since ye Pilgrims landed on ye Pilgrim Rock, there to listen to ye pastor, and render thanksgiving to ye Almighty God for all His blessings. ~~ William Bradford, governor of the Plymouth Colony, 1623 It has seemed to me fit and proper that [the gifts of God] should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do, therefore, invite my fellow citizens . . . to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. -Thanksgiving proclamation, 1863 ~~ Abraham Lincoln http://www.seekfind.net/Thankfulness.html 1. Thanksgiving is healthiness – according to the research of Dr. Robert Emmons, a University of California professor and author of “Thanks!” How The New Science of Gratitude can make you Happier” gratitude improves emotional and physical health. Dr. Emmons says that thanksgiving is a “chosen attitude” and, “We must be willing to recognize and acknowledge that we are the recipients of an unearned benefit. http://www.vvdailypress.com/articles/gratitude-15718-happiness-improves.html 2. Thanksgiving is Happiness - There was an old man who went door to door selling vegetables. He often knocked the door of a wealthy couple to sell vegetables. The couple one day realized that the man was partially blind and also very poor. He wore odd shoes that looked very shabby. He lived just down the lane. They quietly dropped a bag of shoes late night at his door. Two days later, the old man knocked at the couple’s door, smiling, he said “Sir, I am thankful to God. He has been so good to me. Someone dropped a bag full of shoes at my door two days ago”. The old man continued “Sir, I’m even more thankful to God for one more thing. He showed me poor people who never had shoes on their feet and I gave away these shoes to them”. http://www.deccanherald.com/content/198729/thankfulness-happiness.html I was touched while reading this months issue of God’s revivalist of how they used to have the Thanksgivign Dinners on the Hilltop, Uncle Buddie Robinson was one of the evangelists one year and wrote an article on it, telling how those kids some of them brought right off the street were given a good service, a good thanksgiving meal with all the trimmings, a good hat coat and sometimes gloves, and how happy they were, one young boy would set there by his little brother and take a bite of food and hug up his little brother take a bite of food and hug up his little brother over and over he did that he was so thankful and so happy he hardly knew what to do with his self. 3. Thanksgiving Is Godliness a. I have been trying to show us from the Bible that thanksgiving is not only expected but comanded of the Children of God. What a responsiblility is ours. To have a happy, thankful heart. It is so easy for us to get caught up in looking at what we are having to do without, or we have so much that we take all that we have for granted. Godliness says “Thank You Lord for everything” Some tips to thankfulness 1. Keep a thanksgiving journal (everyday write about things you are thankful for) 2. Every morning before or as soon as you get out of bed think of five things you are thankful for 3. Be quick to say thanks for things