Once a year Americans gather in family circles to share the bounties of our land, many without praising God Almighty for his gifts that far outweigh turkey and dressing, pumpkin and pecan pie.
Thinking of some personal reasons to PRAISE GOD. FOR recovery from a fall months ago when:
It spelled an INTERRUPTION in service, not the END. FOR being 87 and counting, still going strong:
FOR the pleasure of not only counting my blessings, but seeking new opportunities to serve the Lord Jesus. FOR not only remembering victories won, but seeking new battles to wage in defense of Biblical Christianity in a defiantly anti-Christian society. FOR the defeats that remind me of humanity that ages and the victories that assure me of greater pleasures in ever-new experiences in Jesus Christ. FOR the sufferings of Christ that brought his PERFECTION To COMPLETION as the reason no cost in discipleship can ever be excessive. And on and on. May this Thanksgiving arouse greater appreciation than we have ever known in Praise of God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, the Three in One.
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blical basis of, Part IV
Even the unrighteous can occasionally feel the need to thank God. Andrew Jackson had a devout mother and married a devout wife, but wasn’t himself religious. Nevertheless, he was deeply impressed when his army in New Orleans, 1/8/1815, suffered only 7 dead and 6 wounded when the British with Waterloo veterans attacked his entrenched, makeshift troops. He realized that God had protected his men. In return he asked the bishop of New Orleans to conduct a public service of Thanksgiving. Life of Jackson, 247, 252-253. Thanksgiving in the Bible sense demands a recurring appreciation of and reference to God. For example, Noah built the Ark at God’s command and according to his strict instructions. Then, leaving the Ark Noah on his own volition built an altar to God. In the conviction that God deserved to be praised for delivering his family from the Flood that destroyed all else that breathed. After narrowly escaping disaster in Egypt, Abram built an altar at Bethel and called on God. Because Abram knew only God’s mercy had saved him and Sarai from his bad decisions. The point is: whether God whispers or shouts, when God speaks: LISTEN; HEAR; UNDERSTAND; ACCEPT; OBEY. All the above are the least of what we OWE God the Father and Christ the Son in gratitude and thanksgiving. –Fini- New Apologetics book at: Amazon Check out Virg Hurley books at Amazon Check out Virg Hurley Digital books at: Smashwords Gratitude to God proves our humility, as its absence proves our pride. Mortals charmed by their own affability can’t sense their fall from Grace. Only those ashamed of their sins are subject to its removal by Christ’s sacrifice.
Indeed, the believer’s response to life constitutes the essence of gratitude. God makes great those who know they are small. Who never think they are great and God is small! God delights in forgiving those who know their sins are many, but know that Christ’s blood covers them all. Who never think their sins are few so their debt to God is small. Gratitude is thanking God that he wants to banish our sins; and thanking him for deigning to fill our new life with his righteousness. Gratitude is appreciating God’s ongoing, never-ending life replacing our constant dying and death. In return, God is always the object of our gratitude for giving us a FAITH that’s anchored in the Past, geared to the Present and focused on the Future. For God’s spiritual wealth and wisdom are merely explored in this life and plumbed only in the world to come. So we thank God for the pardon of our past, the power over our present and the promise of a future that is so vastly in excess of this life that we’ll forget this one ever existed! –End Part III- New Apologetics book at: Amazon Check out Virg Hurley books at Amazon Check out Virg Hurley Digital books at: Smashwords Only creation by divine intelligence accounts for everything continuing to re-produce after its own kind. But where a profound awareness of GOD as Creator and Provider marked earlier generations, boastful humanism fills ours.
Pride is as natural to us as winds to Antarctica. While we have the skill to invent, we mistakenly claim skill to create. While we find ourselves with flaming ambition to be more than we are, we find ourselves short of fuel to fire the ambition. Long story short, all created beings are in God’s debt, whether or not we recognize and admit it. The most interesting inconsistency between humans and creation is their respective responses to God. When Jesus commanded Galilee’s towering waters to be still, they stopped suddenly and completely into a flat calm that astonished the disciples. But when God calls rational human beings to be still in faith, we instead worry. When he calls us to obedience, we refuse or procrastinate. What we call creation’s instinct is really a sensitivity to God’s will that humans lack by welcoming pride and tolerating sin. Humanists arrogantly claim, “We can do it”. Christian humbly admit, “We can’t do it, but God can through us!” -End Part II- New Apologetics book at: Amazon Check out Virg Hurley books at Amazon Check out Virg Hurley Digital books at: Smashwords Back to blogging after family health problems caused interruption.
The concept of Gratitude originates in the awareness that the Superior Being—GOD, the Only Original, Underived, Always IS person—gives inferior beings—all created things, the basics of life they couldn’t otherwise have. In 1975 our family attended the launching of super tanker S.S. Mormacstar in San Diego. We watched as the gigantic ship slid down the Ways into San Diego Bay. Everyone delighted in the technological achievement. I wrote a column that week on overlooked facts: who made the BAY into which the ship slid? In fact, where would ships sail without seas? Or planes fly without skies? Or space ships soar without moon or planets? ALL of which humans have no input in providing! Since God alone provided all these “basic” amenities, don’t we owe him a collective debt of gratitude? Will we not praise Almighty God, whose original works of creation shine like noon-day sun against our twinkling-stars achievements; his simple, but profound works that make our most advanced flowering faded blossoms? Despite that truth, while confidence in ourselves has grown like a rumor, interest in God is often limited to a profanity. It’s true that God is a household name, but not a household guest. Nevertheless, flowers that bloom, birds that fly, insects that crawl and human beings that rule the earth are indebted to God for their continued existence according to their kinds and daily sustenance. The chance that evolutionists so grandly posit as the source of life could never be so consistent. –End Part I- New Apologetics book at: Amazon Check out Virg Hurley books at Amazon Check out Virg Hurley Digital books at: Smashwords |
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