Are You Giving Thanks?
Selected Passages
November 20, 2005
Thanksgiving Message
Introduction
Can you believe that this Thursday is Thanksgiving Day? Why do we celebrate Thanksgiving?
Lou Whitmire, a reporter in Mansfield, Ohio, asked the all important question "Why do we celebrate Thanksgiving?" to students at Sherman Elementary school. Here are a few of the answers he got:
Jamie Copley, 7, said people celebrate Thanksgiving because it’s the season where everyone joins together.
Christina McGuire, 7, said, "It’s a good month."
Kamozye Bowles, 6, said people celebrate Thanksgiving because "it’s a happy day."
"My granny cooks and it’s good," she said.
Bradley Ernsberger, 6, said he celebrates Thanksgiving because he is thankful for a lot of things. "I’m thankful for my friends, my limo ride for selling the most candy, my Superman costume I got to wear at Halloween and my little pumpkin I got," he said.
Selina McGregor, 6, said she knows why people all get together to celebrate on Thanksgiving Day. "It’s a wonderful year and a good time to share all that food," she said. "I love pumpkin pie," she added.
We make Thanksgiving Day about history. We get this wonderful image of pilgrims and Indians gathered around this massive table, covered with food, enjoying a meal together. We make something that is as American as Apple pie and baseball.
We make Thanksgiving Day about family. How many of you are planning to travel to spend time with family? How many of you are having family come in? Either we travel to the family or the family is invited to come join us. We get together with those we love and maybe those we haven’t seen in a long time.
We make Thanksgiving Day about food. We spend large amounts of time preparing food and our special items that make the meal special. The world might come to an end if the meal was missing our favorite cranberry sauce or casserole that we love. Then we sit down to a big meal and gorge ourselves with turkey and Pumpkin pie.
We make Thanksgiving Day about entertainment. We turn on the television early so we can watch those wonderful parades in New York, Philadelphia or Chicago. We then are ready to spend the afternoon watching football or some other sporting event. We might have a heart attack if we missed that all important football game. Then when evening comes we watch some concert or some television special.
Is this what Thanksgiving is all about?
One Thanksgiving season a family was seated around their table, looking at the annual holiday bird. From the oldest to the youngest, they were to express their praise. When they came to the 5-year-old in the family, he began by looking at the turkey and expressing his thanks to the turkey, saying although he had not tasted it he knew it would be good. After that rather novel expression of thanksgiving, he began with a more predictable line of credits, thanking his mother for cooking the turkey and his father for buying the turkey. But then he went beyond that. He joined together a whole hidden multitude of benefactors, linking them with cause and effect.
He said, "I thank you for the checker at the grocery store who checked out the turkey. I thank you for the grocery store people who put it on the shelf. I thank you for the farmer who made it fat. I thank you for the man who made the feed. I thank you for those who brought the turkey to the store."
Using his Columbo-like little mind, he traced the turkey all the way from its origin to his plate. And then at the end he solemnly said "Did I leave anybody out?"
His 2-year-older brother, embarrassed by all those proceedings, said, "God."
Solemnly and without being flustered at all, the 5-year-old said, "I was about to get to him."
The word thanksgiving literally means to give thanks. This means that we show our gratitude for the things that we are blessed with. The real question on our minds is not whether we should be thankful but who we need to be thankful to. The Hebrew word for thanks means to make public. When was the last time that you publically thanked God for His blessings?
Thank You Lord - Don Moen
I came before you today? And there’s just one thing I want to say/ Thank you Lord, Thank you Lord/ For all you’ve done in my life/ For all the blessings that I cannot see/ Thank you Lord, Thank you Lord
With a grateful heart? With a song of praise/ with an outstretched arm/ I will bless your name
Thank you Lord, Thank you Lord? I just want to Thank you Lord/ Thank you Lord/ I just want to thank you Lord/ Thank you Lord
I. We need to be thankful because we have been truly blessed (Psalm 103:1-2)
1 Praise the LORD, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. :2 Praise the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits--
The phrase “O my soul” means to praise God with your entire being. It means that every aspect of your life is focused on giving praise to God and nothing is held back.
The psalmist is calling us to focus on the fact of God’s mighty deeds as reason enough to praise God. No matter what our circumstances might be or what difficulties we might face that there is always a reason to give praise to God.
The Benefits that God bestows (3-6)
1. Forgiveness of sin 2. Healing of diseases 3. Redemption from death
4. Crowning with love and compassion 5. Satisfaction of our desires
6. Awards of righteousness and justice
II. We need to be thankful because God is the One who gives the blessings (James 1:16-18)
16 Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers. 17 Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. 18 He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.
Every single one of the good things in your life is not from your efforts but from the hand of God. God is the one who gives the blessings and we are just the ones who get the blessings.
III. We need to be thankful because it is right (Job 1:21)
"Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised."
The need to give thanks has NOTHING to do with the circumstances you face in life. These word are from Job just after he has been told by servants that he has just lost everything and by everything I mean everything. We fail to praise God when our we have a long day.
Blessed Be Your Name - Matt Redman
Blessed be your name/ In the land that is plentiful/ Where your streams of abundance flow/ Blessed be your name/ Blessed be your name/ When I’m found in the desert place/ When I walk through the wilderness/ Blessed be your name
Blessed be your name/ When the sun’s shining down on me/ When the world’s all as it should be/ Blessed be your name/ Blessed be your name/ On the road marked with suffering/ Though there’s pain in the offering/ Blessed be your name
Can you honestly say that you give blessing to the name of Jesus when times are tough?
Why do most people fail to give thanks?
Five barriers to gratitude
1. Over abundance
Sadly, America is blessed and we fail to remember who gives the blessings. We take credit for blessings and feel that we have either earned them or somehow we deserve them. We cannot imagine life without the things we have become so accustomed to. We have been blessed with such an abundance that we have become spoiled.
Can you imagine having to walk to church? Can you imagine not having running water in your home? Can you imagine trying to live without electricity? Can you imagine having to live on only one meal every few days?
2. Lack of contentment
We have been blessed in so many ways that we no longer know what contentment looks like. Contentment simply means to be satisfied with what you have. We are constantly bombarded with message that we need more this or more of that. We have a culture that sells materialism and we buy into it.
3. Selfishness
We are too busy looking out for #1 to see the fact that the world needs us. In the midst of our amazing abundance, we fail to truly give. I believe that God has blessed the United States, so that, we can bless the world.
God told Abraham that He would be a blessing so that others would be blessed. This applies to us as well, we have been blessed by God to bless others.
4. Self Indulgence
We seldom ever give up something in our society. True sacrifice is a rare thing in our nation today. We are so busy indulging our desires and our wants that we forget where our blessings came from and how truly blessed we are. We indulge ourselves and think nothing of it. We are surrounded with the message
5. Lack of perspective
We live in a world where the wealth division is becoming greater and greater. One of the things that we discussed this past week at my meeting with the General Superintendents was the fact that we are serving in a dying world. At one point a clip of people from around the world was played. All that was seen was face after face and the voice over said if all the lost people were photographed and displayed at this rate it would take 35 years to see them all. The pictures were slowed a bit and the voice over said these are the people who will die before hearing the gospel.
Conclusion
A friend sent me an email that teaches thankfulness to its recipients:
If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75% of this world.
If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace, you are among the top 8% of the world¡|s wealthy.
If you woke up this morning with more health than illness, you are more blessed than the million who will not survive this week
If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation, you are ahead of 500 million people in the world.
If you can attend church meetings without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death, you are more blessed than three billion in the world.
And if your parents are still alive and still married, you are very rare, even in the United States.
Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever.
Thankfulness is a lost art in our American society and I believe the same can be said for the church. Are you forgetting to thank God?
Action Steps - Ways to Thank God
1. Thank you letter to God
2. Give a gift of back to God
3. Thank those whom God has used in your life
