Thanksgivingness: Honor It!

Thanksgivingness: Honor It!                                                        Kelly Durant

Psalm 116:17 I will offer to You the sacrifice of thanksgiving,

And will call upon the name of the Lord.

18 I will pay my vows to the Lord

Now in the presence of all His people,

19 In the courts of the Lord’s house,

In the midst of you, O Jerusalem.

2. How many of you have ever had a street beggar come up to you and ask you for money? How do you feel when they are very thankful and thank you after you give it? To the contrary, how many of you have given to a beggar that was not thankful? How did you feel then? We know the answers, and we must equate this within the context of God and how he feels about us showing Him thanksgiving for everything, our health, family, and nation! Thanksgiving is a must if you and I want God or anyone’s favorable opinion!

Thanksgiving Day reminds you and I must take a close look at what this day is for and as Christians take it seriously. We should get together all the facts around it and compare it to the past and to the events in the Bible with the people of God. Thanksgiving Day is unique to the U.S.A. and it was started by Christian Pilgrims wanting to thank God even though the non-Christian progressives try to hide that fact in the history books.

Most everyone knows that it was a harvest celebration in which the Natives and the European immigrants got together to have a big feast to be thankful for the food; enough food to get them through the cold and brutal winter. Harvest Festivals are practiced by most cultures in the world, but this one is unique and is remembered because the kindness of the Natives prevented the starvation and death of many of the settling families.

3. Why should we highlight being thankful this year? Because we can see the thankfulness of many is just not there anymore! People have so much in this country and yet they complain loud about so many petty things!  It seems to get worse year after year that people are more and more less appreciative to God and to what you or anyone else does for them. “The love of many are turning cold”, and it can make you angry and discouraged to want to show kindness only to see it is not valued. Sadly, in the church, and even in our church some people are not valued appropriately and thanked for what they do! Our society is corrupted, we must educate others that the provision we are surrounded by does not come from the crumbs of the government, but from God and the labor of His dedicated people. How many people have you made thankful lately?

The problem is people in their routines forget where all things come from, and prosperity can only happen with God granting peace and His favor. It takes a whole army of people to move food and basic needs form place to place. Some people live in a fantasy and they think trucks should just show up full of turkeys and that one should just be there place food on the table for them just because they expect it! Society is made up of busy armies of bees, but some people are more comparable to blood sucking mosquitos! The bee is praised while the mosquito is not welcome!

We need to educate our family, friends, and society! To begin with, we must tell people that it is God and the Christian faith that prospered and protected this nation originally. Despite certain horrible past atrocities (which every nation has), this nation has been for the most part a nation fighting evil, worshipping Christ, and being thankful to God! And we need to be thankful to the migrant worker and native born American worker who by the millions before us built up our farms, and built infrastructures of trains and trucks to transport to us our daily food. Each bite of food we get was produced by much work and trafficking of goods, sweat, and even blood from accidents on the job. I’ve been around farms and livestock and I know accidents are something you just have to live with! Never take for granted a single bite of food!

4. When God raised up the Israelites out of Egypt one of the first things they did was establish certain days of gratitude, such as the Passover. God’s people were commended to repeat a festival of thanksgiving so that they would remember it was miracles that God did to keep them alive amidst destruction. A few thousand years later and many of us are still remembering, right?

As Christians we celebrate Easter, the resurrection of Jesus, which coincidently corresponds to the day of Passover and as Christians we should honor a few good holidays to refresh our memories on God’s goodness. Thanksgiving is unique to the United States and every country has special days, but how wonderful it is when that day includes thanking God for his mercy of provision sharing in peace with others. Christians should celebrate this day well because it is to thank God for freedom of worship and provision! This country is unique because of God’s hand from the beginning. Freedom seeking worshippers were the first immigrants.

Jesus reminded us in the Lord’s prayer to ask God for your ‘daily bread’, and why ask it from Him? Because that means you need to thank Him for supplying! Thanking God for work, income, provisions, and for supplying everything is our duty as created creatures! Thankfulness requires humility and many people do not have it. The opposite of it is pride and prideful unthankful people are shameful and need to be exposed as vile and in need of correction! Unthankful people either need mercy for the healing of past injustices done to them, or they need a good hard lesson to learn to show thankfulness to God and his people for helping them. We should pray God sends everyone what they need so they learn to honor Him!

5. Back to the Psalm of today, what is David talking about? For one, he often equates thanksgiving with sacrifice. How is thanksgiving a sacrifice? Because being thankful often implies more than just words, it implies doing or contributing something in order to prove you are thankful. The Jews brought sacrifices to the altar. How much do you sacrifice for God?

Here is a related idea on this matter, in several cultures if a person saves you form being killed, or rescues you from dying, the tradition has it so that you voluntarily become their slave for the rest of your life! To some degree, this is how I see my relationship with Jesus, I am so thankful that He saved me from an eternal death and the slavery of sin that I voluntarily give Him my life as a servant to Him forever in response to prove my gratitude. Isn’t this the correct thing to do?

So with God we should never play around, if He has been good to you and me, then we must do whatever we need to do, sacrifice anything we should, to prove to Him we are authentically thankful. Your whole attitude and nature should be transformed by thankfulness. The consequences of not being thankful to God are severe but another day we will cover that!

6. In this Psalm David is returning thanks because God saved him from being killed in battle, not just once but many times. David also suffered from depression once in a while and other parts of the Psalms suggest he lived with pain in His body. Imagine, he wakes up to record his experiences and feelings and it serves to teach us here. David made the day special to enter into the courts of the Lord with Thanksgiving.

I love verse 7 as it reminds me to just calm down. Vs 7 Return to your rest, O my soul, For the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.

When you are doing nothing but praising and thanking, you get a peace over you, a rest, and when you reflect on how good God has been to you it makes you feel wonderful. Try reflecting on that on Thanksgiving Day! We should rest in the Lord every day!

And what does David mean that he will “pay his vows’ in verse 18? It basically implies that he promised the Lord to give back to Him in gratitude. David was giving his life to God, this we know by his testimony, but he also was promising his faithfulness to worship the Lord with sacrifice, even until death. The equivalent is for the Christian to vow to tithe and support the church doing all they can to obey Jesus’ commands.

7. David even contemplated if he were to die, how it would be something honored by God. Vs 15 ‘Precious in the sight of the Lord Is the death of His saints.’ This verse refers to those who die in God for all time!

Dying proclaiming the Lord’s goodness, is the ultimate proof of thankfulness to Jesus for His dying for us on the cross. Sadly, an average of several hundred have died as martyrs around the world today for Jesus! We need to be thankful to those that have died serving the Lord!

Thanksgiving to me implies encompassing all of the work of God throughout all cultures and races, and throughout all of history! To bring it home I want you to include being thankful for the new people in the Corps and the Jr. Soldiers. I wonder how many of you have thanked God for our young members? Few people ever talk to our young people! Sad, right? And how many of you have said encouraging things to the newer members of our Corps? Haven’t we prayed for new blood? Well, look around, new people are here! But sometimes with new people they get resistance instead of acceptance, and this is so wrong; are you thankful for them? There does come a time when we have to pass the baton.  

8. On Thanksgiving Days, stop to talk and reflect when having family time counting your blessings! Thank God not just for the food but for your family, home, and provisions. Then tell others about what you are thankful for! Grateful people are happy people!

In the final verses of today David says he will proclaim it in the Lord’s house and to all Jerusalem. Thankful hearts express their thankfulness in the church and they do it to all those they can in the city where they live. Those who truly love God seek to share His message of love with everyone they meet in the city. Are you going to shock the cashier in Publix this year and tell her how thankful you are to God for your health, provisions, and God’s love? Tell your store clerk next time, thank God for you for working hard, and then watch their reaction!

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

We need to take thankfulness from our hearts to the Corps church and then to the streets! People are forgetting that it is God that provides all and He is to be thanked! No one likes unthankful people with their bad attitudes so we must always be an example of God’s light and proclaim to others our thankfulness! Let’s follow David’s example. Thank you, God, for my home, family, food, and health and help me to sacrifice for you! Thank you Lord for this church Corps and for every family here, bless them with your blessings of peace, love, and happiness!

Christians Should Go On Parade!

Christians Should Go On Parade!                        Kelly Durant  11-13-16

Matthew 21:8 And a very great multitude spread their clothes on the road; others cut down branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9 Then the multitudes who went before and those who followed cried out, saying:

“Hosanna to the Son of David!

‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’[e]

Hosanna in the highest!”

2. Today we will march in a parade! How many churches do you know that march in parades? I can’t name any! So why do we do it? Why does the Salvation Army seek to get involved in parades and why is it a part of our history?

It all began with the idea of the ‘open air’ service! William Booth had it right, he interpreted well what Jesus commanded. Luke 14:23 Then the master said to the servant, ‘Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. You’ve got to “go” to the streets!

The idea of marching in the streets with bands playing, and preaching on the street corners on a soap box, was to bring the church to the streets. The Salvation Army began as a church marching and preaching in the streets and in most countries this practice still continues! What a great tradition! What a way to bring others to Jesus!

3. When we think of copying Jesus style, we can recall that He preached more in the ‘open air’ setting than in the temples. He taught by the seaside, he taught on the hillsides, and he travelled to reach the people in the streets of all the different towns. He did not expect for people to come to where He planned to stay put, He took the message to the streets!

Jesus was always on the move and He would get a crowd no matter where he went. Sometimes the crowds came due to the miracles, but many times the crowds came because they just wanted to hear Him tell them about the Kingdom of God.

The best way of spreading the gospel is with a crowd of people. So how are we going to get a crowd? Sometime the best way is to just go where the crowds are, like crowds that are already in great numbers such as in parades.

4. When we reflect on the verses of today, Jesus is marching through a crowd gathered in a line in the streets, and it is basically a parade made up of Him and His disciples! He was an extraordinary phenomenon! He was being honored as the Son of David, or the Messiah, and that was a historical event that was for once in all of time!

9 Then the multitudes who went before and those who followed cried out, saying:

“Hosanna to the Son of David!

‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’[e]

Hosanna in the highest!”

The interesting thing was Jesus had enough humility to not be bothered by large crowds, all the crowds during His whole ministry were people who were gathering to witness the power and love of God through Him. We should love crowds because in them are people who will witness the love of God and be touched. Not everyone is touched but quite a few are!

 5. The example Jesus left was that of God’s message getting out to the streets. All religious movements that have followed His example have done so in obedience and in history we see that God’s blessings does come to them.

The churches that have obeyed this method of going to the streets have a record of winning many souls. The Catholic church in the Americas is active in many parades. In Bolivia you can observe that the catholic Church just joined in on the Native Festivals and mixed in the religious statues with the other pagan worship. At least the people could observe and wonder what the man on the cross was all about! The message needs to get out somehow especially with people who never read a Bible.

We can conclude, however, that the dimensioned churches, being the dead and stagnant ones, are those who over confidently expect the people to just come to them. This is arrogance and not God’s way. So how did the disciples do it?

6. Remember the day of Pentecost? The fist disciples with the power of the Holy Spirit did not go out looking for a temple where to preach! They stepped right out of their upper room doors to preach right there in the streets of Jerusalem.

Sharing Jesus has always been about us, the believers, being a spectacle for the world to see. As someone once said, “Set yourself on fire for God and the world will come out to see you burn!” The fire is the passion and the holy Spirit in us shining through our eyes and beaming through our smiles.

A true Christian longs for the precious moments for when they can shine the light of Jesus into the dark cruel world. You need to ask yourself, do I long to be a witness for Jesus? If not, you had better repent because God can’t stand the lukewarm!

7. If any of you are going into the public setting and you are not ready to love on the people, it would be better you stay home. The world has several million too many a Christian that has a frowny face and indifferent eyes! Some whole congregations are lifeless and indifferent like that. I wonder sometimes why some people claim to be Christian when there is little evidence of it on their face, in their witness, or in their deeds of love. Psalm 19:8

The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.

Some people would rather sit on their couch at home than go out and march in a parade for Jesus but, what a shameful witness! What a lack of love for Jesus and a love for the lost!

Thank God for the Salvation Army and for all Christians who take advantage of every opportunity to be a witness for Jesus, whether it be in a parade, or if it be a witness one on one with a friend. Let’s get out there with our bands playing Christian songs and us smiling and waving! Let’s take the gospel to the streets as Jesus did! The thrill you will get is that of the Holy Spirit power flowing through you! Come experience the love today!