Sabbath 11/21/15 Daytona SDB Church Pastor Wray sermon “A Proper Perspective on Thanksgiving”

Sabbath 11/21/15 Daytona SDB Church Pastor Wray sermon “A Proper Perspective on Thanksgiving” Ephes. 5:19-20, I Thess. 5:18


In 1623, three years after the pilgrims had settled, the governor said because God had blessed them with food, health and protection that they would gather at the meeting house on Thursday November 29, 1623. They were gathering to listen to their Pastor and give thanks to God for all His blessings. Next Thursday, 392 years later, is Thanksgiving Day. Now there is nothing wrong with an annual day of thanks giving but the Word says we should thank God EVERYDAY. Always give thanks to God for everything in Jesus’ name. We are to be joyful always and pray continually and give thanks always. Praise and thanks giving are the main things to be continuously doing. Sing praise to the Lord and be merry to the Lord in our heart. Christians are to have this joyful attitude in our hearts. We are to try and have this attitude in ALL circumstances. We need to be giving thanks to God for our blessings always. We need a proper perspective of our circumstances and a proper perspective of our God to give thanks always.

Three Attitudes that Stop Us from Being Thankful:

  1. Pride:

    Our pride says that nobody gave us anything. We think we did it all ourselves.

  2. Critical spirit:

    The constant complaining instead of being grateful for things. This is a person who is always finding something to pick at and complain about. This is a constant grumbler.

  3. Carelessness:

    This is getting used to things always being there and getting careless about it. It’s finally getting unsatisfied with it all.
These three things, pride, critical thinking and carelessness stop people from being truly thankful for what God has given them. The word thanks is a 100 dollar word and it’s more like a million dollar word. We need to adopt an attitude of thanksgiving in our lives. We ought to be thankful to God and grateful for his goodness.

*Biblical Thoughts on Thank Giving*

Thanks giving should be expressed: Give thanks to the Lord and to others also. When the ten lepers were healed by Jesus, only one came back and said thank you. Jesus said to him “your faith and made you whole”. He wasn’t just talking about his physical healing but about his spiritual/mental healing as well. We too are made whole, made well by saying thank you. Gratitude gives you positive energy. Sincere thanks giving is a healthy human emotion that God appreciates. God appreciates it and it draws us closer to Him and endears us to God. We can say thank you to God when we spend time with Him, when we forgive others, share his plan of salvation, reach out to hurting people, give God the best of our time/talent and praise Him enthusiastically. Our thanks giving should be for the blessings we have received. The song says “Count your blessings, name them one by one, Count your many blessings and see what God has done”.

We should give thanks during the burdens of life: God will bring us through our burdens to a better situation in life and to better circumstances and blessings. We should KNOW that He will help us through. Others can come to Christ by seeing how we go thru our troubles, trusting in God. We are constantly adding to our prayer list when we should be constantly adding to our praise list! It is good to be alive and praise and thank God!

As Christians we can be thankful that we are forgiven and free: We can all say that it’s good to be alive. The mark of a growing Christian is to be thankful. Being thankful does not come naturally but when we realize how blessed we are, we will be thankful. This is a sign that we are a growing Christian. We are blessed to be alive and blessed to be able to say thank you to the Father of Lights, Our God and Our Lord Jesus Christ. In good time or in bad times be constantly thankful to God always. Be grateful and walk in God’s ways.

AMEN
 
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