2 weeks Ago By Laurinburg Exchange
My community friends, Thursday was the Thanksgiving holiday, the day that is nationally recognized as a day when we all celebrate the things that we are thankful for — thankful for our families, our nation, and the liberties that we have. A look at our families, friends and loved ones ought to stir within us a spirit of thanksgiving and appreciation and cause us to recognize just how blessed we really are. Community, for everything that we know we are blessed to have we ought to verbally say to God thank you! That’s where we are this morning.
God blessed all of us to make it to Thanksgiving Day and I hope since all of us have been through something this year and God brought us here, there is a praise of Thanksgiving this morning. In other words, we ought to have an attitude of gratitude! We’ve been talking in Sunday School over the past few weeks from the psalmist about praise and worship. He gives all of us a reason for being thankful and the Bible calls us this morning to give thanks and it tells us why we should do it.
For example in Psalms 107:1, the psalmist said “O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.” In Psalms 7:17 he said, “I will give to the Lord the thanks due to his righteousness, and I will sing praise to the name of the Lord, the Most High.” Psalm 86:12 says “I give thanks to you, O Lord my God, with my whole heart, and I will glorify your name forever.
” I want to be blunt this morning when I say God’s people ought to be thankful this morning. All of us should have an attitude of gratitude. In fact, our thanks should already be going up to the Lord.
All of us know someone who didn’t make it to this point! I could ask all of us to testify, and every one of us knows of somebody who was here last year but is not here today. In fact, how many readers this morning can raise your hand that know somebody who didn’t make it to today? Well, that’s your praise right there because it wasn’t you! I said some years ago, if you want a reason to give thanks just start counting your blessings. You don’t have to look far.
You don’t have to think back five or 10 years. You don’t have to think about something major. Just start counting 1-2-3 — my family, my health, my finances, the bad diagnosis that was turned around, hat accident that should have taken us out.
Name them one by one, and by the time you get to 10 thanksgiving will be flowing from your lips. If you don’t believe me just start counting your blessings! Look around you, think, and start counting. Count the little things, those things that we take for granted.
Somebody this morning needs to look at your loved ones and count. Community, just look around, look across and think about it. Look at yourself.
You could not be here today. Don’t think about what you don’t have. Think about what you do have.
Don’t think about what you are going through, think about what you are not going through because there’s always somebody worse off. Community, you can’t think about the goodness of Jesus and not give thanks! That’s why the writer tells his readers “By him, let us offer up to God the SACRIFICE of praise continually, that is the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name,” (Hebrews 10:13). See God always wanted sacrificial offerings; from Cain and Abel till now (Genesis 4:3-4).
But the difference between our sacrifice now and animal sacrifices is that the animals were dead and their blood was sprinkled but our sacrifice is a living savior, and his blood is flowing! It reaches to the highest mountains, and it flows to the lowest valley. It’s that blood that gives us strength from day to day and it will never lose its power..
. and he’s alive! He’s living and he wants his people to give him a sacrifice of praise. It should not have anything to do with a turkey, dressing or cranberry sauce.
Community we are to give a “thank”-offering unto God. God wants his people to be thankful — not walk around with long faces — and we have every reason to be thankful. Christians are to give thanks to God in every circumstance of life.
That’s God’s will! In the good and the bad, because you know the bad is working together for your good! We should be thankful in every condition, in adversity as well as prosperity. It is never so bad with us, but it might be worse. And though we may complain to God, we can never complain ABOUT God.
So, in this season, when we all have so much to be thankful for, let’s have a thankful heart. Let’s have an attitude of gratitude! Let’s check our “thank” account. Start counting your blessings.
One, if you’ve got five fingers, thank him. Two, if your heart is still beating thank him. Three, thank him because you’re still here.
Start counting and let’s have a thankful heart! The Rev. George Ellis is the pastor of Union Grove Missionary Baptist Church and can be reached at [email protected].
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