Tag: Thanksgiving

Posted on

JAMES MERRITT: GIVE THANKS to GOD of HOPE

Today’s blog is a reminder to give thanks to our great God of hope. Let’s be thankful everyday not just one day each year as we celebrate a national holiday. If we Americans ever doubt there’s much for which to be thankful, then let’s consider the following.

We will eat more today than most people in this world will eat this week. We drive our air conditioned or heated vehicles while billions will never own a car.

We will sleep tonight in our heated or cooled bedrooms while most of the world will sleep shivering or sweating.

If we have more health than sickness today, then we are more blessed than the one million who will die this week.

If today we aren’t facing dangers of battle, loneliness of imprisonment, suffering of torture, or hunger pains of starvation, then we are better off than 500 million people.

If today we are not afraid of being harassed, arrested, tortured, or killed, then we have it better than 3 billion people.

If we have food in our refrigerator, clothes on our backs, a roof over our heads, and a place to sleep, then we are richer than 75% in our world.

If we have any money in the bank or even spare change in our pocket, then we are in the top 8 percent of the richest people in the world.

If we can read a paragraph in a book or sign our names, then we are better off than 775 million who can neither read nor write.

Dare we doubt that God has blessed us? Do we have any reason to thank Him everyday? He deserves our thanks, and He wants it. What will our thanksgiving do for God?

Pastor James Merritt stated eloquently, “Thanksgiving is the music that brightens the face of God. It is the spark that warms the heart of God. It is the love that kisses the hand of God.”

Let’s communicate with God today, but let’s not ask Him to bless us. Instead let’s give Him thanks and bless Him; He deserves it. The Bible instructs, “Enter His gates with  thanksgiving and His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him, bless His name.”(Psalm 100:4)

I want to thank James Merritt for the reminder to give thanks to God everyday and for the numerical info that I gleaned from one of his messages. He is Pastor of Cross Pointe Church in Atlanta, Georgia. For years I have been blessed by his televised sermons.

Visit the website @ touchinglives.org for info about a ministry that is truly touching lives… including mine.

Posted on

FIRST THANKSGIVING: A GREAT HOPE (Part 1)

The Pilgrims, who celebrated America’s first Thanksgiving holiday almost 400 years ago, held fast to a great hope in God and a desire to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ. To show this idea is actual fact not just my hopeful opinion, I will share writings of their well-respected Pilgrim leaders, Governor William Bradford and Pastor John Robinson. I am thankful for Governor Bradford’s detailed written record and will include many quotes to enhance this three-part blog.

After years of searching for a home where the Pilgrims could live in peace and worship freely, Bradford wrote of their strong desire to travel to the New World:

“…a great hope and inward zeal they had of laying some good foundation, or at least to make some way thereunto, for the propagating and advancing the gospel of the kingdom of Christ in those remote parts of the world; yea, though they should be but even as stepping-stones unto others for the performing of so great a work.”

They faced the reality and risks of such an endeavor and chose to trust Almighty God even if it might cost their lives:

“…all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and must be… overcome with answerable courages. It was granted that the dangers were great, but not desperate, and the difficulties were many, but not invincible… and all of them, through the help of God, fortitude and patience, might either be borne or overcome…

[But] their condition was not ordinary. Their ends were good and honorable, their calling lawful and urgent, and therefore they might expect the blessing of God in their proceeding; yea, though they should lose their lives in this action, yet they might have comfort in the same, and their endeavors would be honorable.”

They anticipated difficulties but also had enough hope to expect help from the all-powerful God they trusted:

“Yea, and as the enterprise is weighty and difficult, so the honor is more worthy, to plant a rude wilderness, to enlarge the honor and fame of our dread sovereign, but chiefly to display the efficacy and power of the Gospel, both in zealous preaching, professing, and wise walking under it, before the faces of these poor blind infidels.”

They were concerned with more than themselves and prayed for the natives in the New World:

“And first, seeing we daily pray for the conversion of the heathens… it seemeth unto me that we ought also to endeavor and use the means to convert them; and the means cannot be used unless we go to them, or they come to us. To us they cannot come, our land is full; to them we may go… that they may be persuaded at length to embrace the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus, and rest in peace with him forever.”

Their pastor, John Robinson, did not accompany the largest group of Pilgrims who left Holland to board ships in England for their journey to the New World. Instead he stayed behind to care for those physically unable to travel. Pastor Robinson genuinely cared for his flock and sent a letter with those leaving. His letter was filled with reminders of hope and help that would be read many times during challenging days ahead.

These words by Pastor Robinson show the kind of teaching they had been used to, still believed in, and would continue to rely on for needed strength:

“We are daily to renew our repentance with our God, especially for our sins known and generally for our unknown trespasses…[For] sin being taken away by earnest repentance ad the pardon thereof from the Lord… great shall be [a man’s] security and peace in all dangers, sweet his comforts in all distresses.”

(To be continued… See A GREAT HOPE Part 2)

Posted on

PILGRIMS: LABORED in HOPE

Many prayers, grateful  words, and speeches have been voiced  about the Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving since that historic event in the “new world” almost four hundred years ago.

“…let us not forget the religious character of our origin. Our fathers were brought hither by their high veneration for the Christian religion. They journeyed by its light and labored in its hope. They sought to incorporate its principles… through all their institutions, civil, political, or literary. Let us cherish these sentiments… in full conviction that that is the happiest society which partakes in the highest degree of the mild and peaceful spirit of Christianity.” (Daniel Webster, 1851)

“Let us, in the midst of these reflections, have our hearts enlarged in thanksgiving to God for his merciful favor to our fathers and to us…. Let us piously acknowledge the hand of God in all that has been done for them and us and to the whole, cry grace, grace…. Let our gratitude be to our father’s God and ours. And out of gratitude to God, let us improve the blessings of life with sobriety and maintain our liberties with an honorable Christian firmness.” (Charles Turner, 1773)

“Thus out of small beginnings greater things have been produced by His hand that made all things of nothing and gives being to all things that are; and as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone to many. Yea, in some sort to our whole nation; let the glorious name of Jehovah have all the praise.” (Pilgrim leader William Bradford, 1600’s)

This hope and laboring in Christianity as expressed through the years are at the root of this nation’s origin. Unfortunately these beliefs are not as widely held today as they were in previous centuries. It is that foundation that made us strong, and without it our strength diminishes.

Some fear we have reached a point of no return. I hope and pray that we haven’t and that we will return to the attitude of the first Thanksgiving participants. It is, after all, our choice. Every day we have a choice to be humbly grateful — or grumbly hateful. I believe history proves which is the better choice.