Going through Ephesians 1 last night at FLAP we counted almost 50 blessings we have from God in Christ! What a wonderful life it is, having Believers beside us to help carry us on. Thank you!
The following is a well written Thanksgiving Devotional I’m sharing because I am to rushed to write one myself. But you get the point!
I thank God for
Thanksgiving. Particularly this year, as a father of four, I feel a fresh sense
of awe, and gratitude, that my generally unbelieving nation pauses for a
weekday each November formally dedicated to giving thanks.
It
may seem like a trifle to most people. But for those with eyes to see, this is
a dazzling ray of God’s common
kindness in our day, however much we grieve the public
commendations of sin and unbelief that surround us in other ways. Our heavenly
Father “is kind to the ungrateful and the evil” (Luke 6:35). “He makes his sun rise on the evil
and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:45). To his common kindnesses of beautiful days, human minds and
bodies and words, friends and family, food and shelter — the everyday divine
kindnesses we take for granted until they’re threatened or gone — add this
annual mercy: Thanksgiving Day.
Whatever
conversations it might prompt with neighbors and coworkers, the Thanksgiving
holiday is also an especially rich opportunity for moms and dads. To be sure,
if practicing thanksgiving happens only once a year in our homes, then our
children will not be much better for it. But if this one day is a marker, a springboard, an annual
emphasis and re-kindler that feeds a regular theme and habit in our families,
then we have an occasion, in this
one day, to highlight one of the most important realities God calls us to teach
our sons and daughters.
Thanksgiving
Honors God
When we ourselves give thanks to God,
out loud for our children to hear, we model for them something very basic and
profound about being human: we are created by God, for God.
God
made us in his image (Genesis 1:27), and what do images do? They image. They reflect, display,
make visible. They ensure the one being imaged is remembered and honored. God
made us to reflect him and display him in the world around us. We image him
through our visible actions and our audible (or written) words that give
meaning to our actions. This fundamental purpose and calling makes thanksgiving essential
to life.
Sin,
however, mars our imaging. In Romans 1:21, the apostle Paul gives us a revealing glimpse into what has
gone wrong in the human race: “although they knew God, they did not honor him
as God or give thanks to
him.”
We
Did Not Give Thanks
At one level, our plight in this world
is remarkably simple: God made us, and surrounded us with a world teeming with
good, and we failed to thank him as we ought.
God showered us with warm sunny days,
beautiful blue skies and green grass, stunning cloud formations to dazzle the
eye and provide shade, trees bearing mouthwatering fruit, and the greatest
wonder of all in the created world: each other and the marvels that are human
bodies and brains. Our world, even now under the sway of sin, still abounds
with God’s goodness and kindness. And we ourselves have been given life and
countless blessings, even in our most trying of times and disabilities.
Our
first response to God’s lavish provision, very simply, should have been
to give him thanks. To do so honors the
one who made us and provides for us. But we did not give thanks — whether from
indifference or contempt — and so we dishonored him.
We rebelled against one of the most basic purposes for our existence. To give
God thanks honors him, and to honor him — our very design and calling as humans
— includes giving him thanks.
Ingratitude, then, is no minor vice. And
thanksgiving is no insignificant act for a creature designed to image God.
Feel God’s Pleasure
We
were made to give God thanks. And when we do — and model it for our children,
teaching them to do the same — we taste one of the great pleasures God made us
to enjoy. As Olympian Eric Liddell (1902–1945) memorably said that God made him
to run, and he felt God’s pleasure when he ran, so we all were made to
give God thanks, and
feel God’s pleasure when we do.
“Will
our children grow up in homes that thank God daily, regularly, spontaneously,
gladly?”
Yet we find
ourselves, as fathers and mothers, with a call to raise the next generation,
while living in times that celebrate pride, rather than humility. Our
generation’s sense of entitlement is off the charts, and rising. Will
Thanksgiving be a trifle for our children? Will they assume grace, assume God’s
provision, assume blessing, assume resources, assume ability, assume community?
Or will they presume little, and learn to thank much and express it?
Will our children grow up in homes that thank
God daily, regularly, spontaneously, gladly — even as Thanksgiving Day adds its
annual exclamation point?
Jesus Gave Thanks
In the end, despite our many failures, we want
to model for our children what it would be like for God himself to live as
human. And when he did come as a man, he gave thanks. Even as God himself, Lord
of heaven and earth, Jesus embraced the fullness of the humanity he took at
that first Christmas, all the way down to the basics of our flesh and blood —
including thanksgiving.
He
thanked his Father in prayer (Matthew 11:25–26; Luke 10:21), not just privately but out loud for his disciples to hear. When
he fed the four thousand, “he took the seven loaves and the fish, and having
given thanks he broke
them and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds”
(Matthew 15:36; Mark 8:6). And when he fed five thousand, he began the same way (John 6:11). So memorable, in fact, was his giving thanks that later John
refers to the location where the miracle occurred as “the place where they had
eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks” (John 6:23).
“Jesus
was the supreme human, and the supreme giver of thanks.”
Then,
on the night before he died, Jesus took bread, gave
thanks, broke it, and
gave it to his disciples (Luke 22:17; 1 Corinthians 11:24). So too, after supper, he took the cup, gave
thanks, and they all
drank to the spectacularly gracious new covenant in his blood (Matthew 26:27; Mark 14:23; Luke 22:19). So pronounced was Jesus’s thanksgiving during that Last Supper
that some traditions call the rite of remembrance “the Eucharist,” from the
Greek for thanksgiving.
For
Jesus, the God-man, giving thanks to his Father was no trifle. Jesus was the
supreme human, and the supreme giver of thanks. Nor should thanksgiving be
small for us, or for our children. What an honor, and pleasure, to not only
taste for ourselves the joy of giving God thanks, but also share this joy with
our children. Thank you, God, for Thanksgiving.
David Mathis (@davidcmathis) is executive editor for desiringGod.org
and pastor at Cities Church.
He is a husband, father of four, and author of Humbled: Welcoming the
Uncomfortable Work of God (2021).
