pastorjohnb

Thoughts and musings on faith and our mighty God!

Tag Archives: thanksgiving


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Abide

Reading: Psalm 22: 25-31

Verse 29: “All who go down to the dust will kneel before Him”.

Today’s passage from Psalm 22 has both a present and a future sense to it. Overall the Psalm is about worshipping and abiding in God’s presence. Verse 26 reads, “they who seek the Lord will praise Him”. What we find when we seek God does lead us to praise God. The psalmist also writes of a future time. Verse 30 reads, “future generations will be told about the Lord”. The continued telling of and living out of our faith will help future generations to know God and to have faith in Him.

In order for us to tell of and to live out our faith we have to have a relationship that abides daily in Christ. To do so, we must practice our spiritual disciplines. This begins with daily time with God. Each day we need to spend time in the Word and in prayer. Finding a time and space each day to abide in God keeps Him always at the center of our life. When God is whom we abide in, God is who flows out of our life through our words and actions. Both how we live our life and the stories of faith that we share help our families and the “future generations” to know of and to have a personal relationship with the Lord.

Worship and thanksgiving are also means to abide in the Lord. When we gather to praise and pray and hear the Word proclaimed we are renewed and strengthened for our personal faith journey. Corporate worship is an essential faith discipline that connects us not only to God but also to each other. A personal part of our worship is our thanksgiving. Taking time to name and give specific thanks for the work of God in our lives helps us to stay in love with God. This essential helps us to abide even deeper in God and His love.

When we abide daily in faith, then we are assured of His presence each day in our lives and we also live with an assurance about our eternity. Both are blessings of nourishing our relationship with God daily. Verse 29 reminds us, “All who go down to the dust will kneel before Him”. The word ‘all’ is pretty inclusive. So this week may we live our faith out loud so that all we meet will experience the light and love of Jesus Christ in their lives too. May Christ brightly shine in us so that others may invite Him to abide in them as well.


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Praise and Exalt

Reading: Psalm 118: 1-2 & 19-29

Verse 27: “The Lord is God, and He has made His light shine upon us”.

The section of Psalm 118 that we read today is full of joy over being connected to God. Verse one is used in a popular praise and worship song. I can’t but help singing, “Give thanks to the Lord, our God and King, His love endures forever”. In our church and in many others we will sing this song on Sunday morning. The song and this Psalm are just part of the excitement of Palm Sunday.

The Psalm was a well-known Psalm so Jesus would have been familiar with it. These words probably encouraged Him as He turned and made His way to Jerusalem one last time. He knew well what lay ahead so the reminders that God is good and that His love endures forever would have brought Jesus comfort and strength. In recalling verse 22, “The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone”, Jesus would have found affirmation in the mission that lie ahead.

As we read this Psalm ourselves, we can also find encouragement and strength. On our paths through life we too encounter times of trial and testing. To remember “I will give thanks, for you answered me; you have become my salvation” places us firmly in God’s family both now and into eternity. In seeing the bigger picture, we are better able to walk through the trials. To remember “The Lord is God, and He has made His light shine upon us”, reminds us of God’s ever-present light that guides and blesses us, especially in those trials.

Almost at the end of the Psalm we read these wonderful words of thanksgiving and praise: “You are my God, and I will give you thanks; You are my God, and I will exalt you”. Yes, indeed, you are our God. For that we lift our thanksgiving and praise today! Your love endures forever, always a sign of your goodness. Thanks be to God! Amen.


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Thanksgiving

Reading: Psalm 100

Verse Four: “Give thanks to Him and praise His name”.

As we begin the day, the psalmist encourages us to “Give thanks to Him and praise His name”.  It is very appropriate for Thanksgiving Day.  This is the day when we will gather around the table and list off all of the things we are thankful for: family, friends, home, employment, time off, the food!  And in the midst of the holiday, let us not forget to be thankful for our God.

People will come into this day of thanks with a wide range of emotions and from different places in their lives.  Most will come into the day with the joy and praise called for by the psalmist.  But for some, this will be their first big holiday or their first thanksgiving without someone special.  May we be sensitive to and extra loving of them if this is the case.  Others will come to the gathering with different struggles or sorrows or burdens.  To each of these may we offer kindness and understanding and acceptance along with our love and welcome.

Maybe this is how we enter Thanksgiving today.  Then these words that open the Psalm are harder to live out.  we think: joyful songs when I feel this way?  Shouts of praise as I am going through this?  If so, perhaps just verse five matters today: “For the Lord is good and His love endures forever; His faithfulness endured through all generations”.  Sometimes we must just cling to God’s love and His faithfulness.  Sometimes we must lean into God and His presence and know that it is enough.  As we turn to God in our need, He will surround us with His love.  And in time we will be grateful for this and we will thank Him for His love.

May our day today be filled with God, family, and  friends and with wonderful food and a joyous time of fellowship!  Amen!


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Faithful Prayer

Reading: Ephesians 1: 15-23

Verse 18: I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened.

Today’s passage is about how Paul prays for others.  He is praying for a group of believers that he has heard of.  I think we all pray for a group of people.  While I most regularly pray for family and friends, I do add people to my daily prayers that I hear about at church.  At times, events in the community or in our wider world will draw my heart to be in prayer for those people or that situation.  So, like Paul, we too pray for people we do not know.  It is part of our role in the fellowship of all believers to pray for one another.  This all leads me to think about prayer.

The core of our daily prayer life focuses on the people and events that are close to our hearts.  Early each morning I pray for my extended family by name, for those I know battling cancer and illness, for those I know who have experienced recent loss, and for our church.  It is a pretty standard list.  It changes from time to time but remains pretty constant.  As I go for a walk, I also pray.  I pray for each pastor and their churches in our area.  I pray for our leaders – national, state, and local.  I pray for our police, highway patrol, EMTs, and firefighters and those who lead them.  I pray for the jail, both the inmates and the workers, as well as for the judicial staff across the street.  It is good to have a pattern of prayer to follow.  It is good to have a time set aside to pray.  It is good to have a regular list of folks to pray for.  It is good to be in prayer.  What and whom do you pray for each and every day?

Two other important areas of prayer that we need to consider are thanksgiving and confession.  It is important to take time each day to reflect on our blessings and to name them before God.  It acknowledges God as our provider and it reminds us of our need for His provision.  It helps us to be humble.  Another important area of prayer is our confession of sin.  We are sinful creatures so we are not usually in short supply of confessional material.  It is so important to daily bow before our Maker, to confess our sins, to seek His forgiveness, and to pledge repentance.  This act of prayer helps us stay in a right relationship with God.  How well do you offer thanks and practice confession?

Lord, may we ever bring our praise, our petitions, our thanksgiving, and our confessions to you.  You are faithful.  May we be as well.  Amen.


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Thanks

Reading: Psalm 100

Verse Five: For the Lord is good and His love endures forever.

In my Bible, the subtitle to Psalm 100 is: “A Psalm.  For giving thanks”.  After reading through the Psalm it is certainly a fitting subtitle!  The psalmist begins by calling us to shout for joy and to worship with gladness and then he gives us the why: know that the Lord is God.  He goes on to remind us that God made each of us and therefore “we are his people, we are the sheep of his pasture”.  It is a good reminder for us.

Sometimes life can get crazy and the busyness can feel overwhelming.  We can almost feel as if we are so busy we are moving near paralysis.  Our minds get consumed by the worries and pressures to the point of feeling we are near to collapse.  It is in these moments that the Psalm is an excellent reminder.  It calls us to slow down for a time, to step back from life, and to step into God’s presence.  The words remind us of the bigger picture – we are his people – and this lessens the importance of the things of this world.  In our craziness may we remember to slow down and to connect to God.

The second stanza again picks up the call to praise God, to “enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise”.  Being thankful is essential to being content.  And being content holds the world and it’s craziness at bay.  Part of my morning routine is my little ‘thank book’s.  I write out five to eight things from the day before that I am thankful for and then I pray through each one.  In giving thanks I can see God’s faithfulness and love for me.

The ending of the Psalm echoes this idea: “For the Lord is good and his love endures forever”.  God was and is and always will be.  No matter what this world brings or has in store for us, God and his love are forever.  Thanks be to God.


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Bow, Kneel

Reading: Psalm 95

Today’s Psalm is an encompassing passage.  It reminds us both of God’s gifts to us and of God’s power as well as reminding us of our human state – bowing to worship God at one moment, testing God at another.  The cycle of obedience and disobedience is common to the Israelites and it is common to us.

When the chosen people are being faithful and obedient, regular worship is at the core of their daily life.  They often walked in a close relationship with God.  God was their Rock and they came to offer their thanksgiving.  The people extolled God for creation and for the blessings in their lives.  In this place, they felt they were “the flock under his care”.  I feel the same way when my walk with God is faithful and obedient.  When I am daily in the Word and when I am praying prayers that offer my repentance and thanks and that seek God’s will for my life, then I too feel God’s love and care surrounding me.  When I am here, you’d think I’d stay forever.

Sheep tend to wander so they are a good choice.  In the Psalm, the author refers to one of the many, many times that the Israelites tested God, one of the many times they were not obedient and faithful.  This too is my pattern.  Although living within God’s presence and protection is where the Israelites wanted to be and where I want to be, sin creeps in.  We find ourselves testing and trying God.  As Paul wrote in Romans 7:15, “For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do”.  The power of the flesh is strong.  It is a daily, and often hourly or minute by minute, battle to be obedient and faithful.  It is a battle that we cannot win on our own.  It is a battle that never ends.

Thanks be to God that He is faithful and that His love and mercy never fail.  “Come, let us bow down in worship”.  Let us confess our sins with our lips and find God’s forgiveness in our hearts.  Let us offer our praise and thanksgiving!  “Let us kneel before the Lord our maker”.  In humble submission we bow, admitting our weakness, calling on God’s strength.  We kneel before our God, grateful to be in God’s love and care, for we too are the sheep of His pasture.


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Thanks

Readings: Philippians 4: 4-9 and John 6: 25-35

Thanksgiving is an awesome day where we gather with friends and family to give thanks for all that God has blessed us with.  All that we have comes from the Lord.  This day we give thanks.

Our Israelite forefathers recognized God’s provision from day one.  Adam was grateful for God’s love and care in the garden.  His son, Abel, brought the first lamb of his flock and sacrificed it as a thank offering to God.  The Israelites continued to give thank offerings and have a festival at harvest time where they thank God for all of their blessings.  Other festivals, such as Passover, also give thanks to God for the role God has played in their history.

Our American forefathers began Thanksgiving out of gratitude for surviving in a new and wild land.  They were grateful for those who God had sent to teach them what they needed to do to survive here.  They too recognized God’s hand at work in their lives and gave thanks.

Today, as we gather with family and friends, may we too give thanks for all of the ways God brings blessings into our lives.  May we celebrate today with a grateful heart full of thanks to God our Father, the giver of all good things.


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Love, Forever

Reading: Psalm 118: 1-20

Psalm 118 is a celebration of what the Lord has done for the Israelites and of what God desires to do for all who call on the name of the Lord.  It is a song of celebration and hope.  The Israelites sang this song in worship for the same reason we sing “Amazing Grace” or “Lord, I Lift Your Name on High” – to remind ourselves of God’s power and love.  The Israelites have come out of slavery in Egypt; the story of the Exodus celebrates God’s presence with them through it all.  For them and for us, the story of God’s presence is summed up well in verse one, “Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His love endures forever”.  Amen.

As readers of the Psalm today, we must claim the same promises and the hope found in this Psalm of Praise to God.  At times, when we are in captivity to our sin or to the circumstances of life, these words speak to us as well: “The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid.  What can man do to me”?  Verse six reminds us that ‘here’ is temporary and that God is the only one really in control.  Keeping focus on the overarching, supreme love of God can help us in our times of trial or need.

This theme is continued in verse fourteen, but in an even more significant way: “The Lord is my strength and my song: He is my salvation”.  God desires to carry us through whatever life brings.  God deserves to hear our thanksgiving and praise lifted up to the heavens in grateful song.  To be strengthened on the journey and then to sing praises for God’s hand at work in our lives is contagious.  Just as the Israelites sang to remember and to be encouraged, so should we.  And lastly, God is our salvation.  God will save us from our sins and from whatever life brings.  We are children of God, claimed by Christ forever through our proclamation of Jesus as Lord.  His love endures forever.  His love endures forever!!  His love endures FOREVER!!! Amen.


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Worship the Lord

Reading: Psalm 145: 1-5 and 17-21

Psalm 145 is a song of praise to God.  In our worship we call out to God, singing to an “audience of one”, as the saying goes.  Verse 18 reads, “The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth”.  As we call out in worship, we offer God our thanksgiving and praise in song.  We also call out to draw near to God, to be in God’s presence.  When we call out to God, God draws near to us.

Some years in Youth group we are blessed to have a young man or woman who can play the guitar or piano and can sing.  These gifted young people bless us by leading our times of worship.  Other years we do not have such an individual and by default I lead.  Although I do not always maintain the same tempo and play an occasional wrong chord, I can provide the guitar to lead worship.  The vocals are another story.  I cannot count how many times on of the youth singers has looked at me with the “what are you singing?” look.  I smile and we keep on going.  I wish I could sing.  But I am simply not a good singer.  So I make a joyful noise to the Lord.

God does not require our perfection.  God desires our presence in worship.  God desires that our hearts be fully present in worship.  God would much rather have our off key singing with love and passion than our reverent silence.  God does bless many with the gift of a good voice.  Accordingly, they should lead the worship of the Lord whenever possible.  And even the best is not perfect.  This matters not either.  God desires our joyful worship.  God wants us to offer all of ourselves in worship.  Each time, as we seek to draw near the Lord, may we offer our audience of one all that we are and all that we have, for it is pleasing in God’s sight when we worship the Lord.


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Upward

Reading: Luke 18: 9-14

How would you finish this line: “Thank God I a not like __”?  For the Pharisee in today’s story, the tax collector is nearby and is an easy target to compare himself with.  Everybody looks down on the tax collectors!  But on another day it could be a struggling widow or the town beggar.  When one steps outside the temple the possibilities of how one could finish that line grows quickly: Gentile, Samaritan, prostitute, slave, foreigner, Roman…

For the Pharisee, he finds great comfort in who he is, or at least in how he appears to others.  He is, of course, playing a game that we are quite good at too.  By comparing himself to another who is an ‘obvious’ target in society, he is elevating himself.  But it is shallow and self-centered.  It is also far from pleasing to and honoring of God.

So, how would we finish that line?  Who in our communities would go on that line?  Our answers could be political, ethnic, racial, socio-economic, emotional, moral, or simply learned.  Our answers could be intimate friends, family members, co-workers, fellow pew mates, neighbors, and strangers.  We find no shortage of others we could compare ourselves to.  We are also quick to look away from those to whom we do not compare to favorably.  The game can cut both ways.

For the Pharisee, and all too often for most of us, the focus is not on God and the many things we should be grateful for.  Our focus is too easily inward and not upward.  May we be grateful for who we each are in God and for the unique gifts and talents we all possess.  May we offer praise and thanksgiving for the many blessings we have.  May empathy and compassion be what fills our eyes, minds, and hearts.  May generosity and humility guide our response to those God places in our lives.  May our gaze be ever upward.