Thanksgiving
“Oh give thanks to the Lord, for He is good;
For His steadfast love endures forever.”
Psalm 118:1
“Sing to the Lord with thanksgiving;
Make melody to our God on the lyre.”
Psalm 147:7
“When He had given thanks …”
(The pattern of Jesus giving thanks to God before eating a meal.)
Matthew 26:27 / Matthew 15:36 / John 6:11
“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18
“Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen!”
Revelation 7:12
Thanksgiving is such an important virtue, expressed constantly in Scripture. Thanksgiving is a gateway to joy and hopefulness. Thanksgiving is the antidote to despair, covetousness, and anger. Thanksgiving is directly related to contentment. Contentment is the virtue of being satisfied in your heart with what you have. A content person gives thanks, a discontent person is not truly thankful and has a heart slipping toward covetousness.
As a Christian, we recognize that Jesus is the object of our thankfulness. When we give thanks, we give thanks to God for His gracious providential supply of our needs. God knows what we really need. God knows, even more than we do, that our greatest need is spiritual life and spiritual development in the soul. If a person has every material thing this world can offer, but dies in rebellion to God, they will be judged forever for their sins. In giving thanks to God, we first give thanks for what God has done to send Jesus as Savior, and that we have heard and believed the good news of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
The steadfast love of the Lord is not seasonal or regional. Let us give thanks to the Lord Jesus, for His steadfast love endures forever – through every season of life and region of the world. We are to give thanks in all circumstances. It is God’s will that we focus on thankfulness no matter the circumstances of life. Thankfulness does not begin only when a person enters a certain economic status of life. The world is full of unthankful and discontent wealthy people. The world is also full of discontent ungrateful economically poor people. What makes the difference is the salvation of Jesus Christ. Our hearts will only ever be at rest in Jesus. When we come to believe in the salvation of Jesus, we begin to understand the personal love of God toward us, and our faith begins to increase that God will supply what we need, as we need it. As we learn to rest in the good providence of God, our heart of thankfulness increases.
As we grow in Christ, we also grow to value what God cares about more than what this world cares about. Our modern world is consumed with advertising. This advertising works into every nook and cranny of our lives to create discontent with everything we have. Advertising uses every personalized metric available to cause you to feel ungrateful and discontent with the car you drive, the house you live in, the clothes you wear, the shoes you walk in, even the way you appear as a person. The fix, of course, is to buy their product. We know in our heart that this will not fix the problem. The solution to this cycle is to, “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” Matthew 6:33. This speaks to giving Jesus the priority in all aspects of your life. As you do, thanksgiving will grow in your heart and the things of this world will dim into their proper place.
Last, Jesus walked in the habit of giving thanks before meals. Over and over in the Gospels we have recorded examples of Jesus giving thanks before meals. This has become a basic pattern of Christian living, but one that is often taken for granted. I encourage you to walk in this pattern, but with intention. Give thanks in prayer before every meal, but take a deep breath, slow the frantic pace of life, and truly be thankful to God for His provision. This pattern works to ingrain thankfulness into the daily pattens of life.
Giving thanks in all circumstances,
Pastor Vic