Greetings in the name of Jesus!

 

It doesn't seem possible but 2010 has already mostly flown by and we're getting ready to celebrate Thanksgiving Day again. The original idea was to set aside a particular day for American families to acknowledge their gratitude to God for all His wonderful blessings. In fact, the people in American history who're thought of as responsible for originating and perpetuating the idea of observing a Thanksgiving Day were all strong Christian Believers who had God in mind and wanted to encourage society and the Body of Christ to HONOR Him in a special way.

 

After several centuries now,  most people in the U.S. are still looking forward to celebrating Thanksgiving Day including a lot of non-believers now who don't really understand why. But real THANKSGIVING is way bigger than just one special day out of the year because the Bible says it's God's WILL that we give thanks to Him for EVERYTHING (1 Thessalonians 5:18). In other words Thanksgiving Day is a nice idea and we can have fun with it; but according to the Bible, the people of God ought to be involved in a daily, ongoing process of GIVING THANKS. Indeed, there're a lot of scriptures that encourage us to do this including these key examples from the New Testament:

 

Ephesians 5:20 - Give thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus

                                  Christ.

Philippians 4:6 - Let your requests be made known to God with thanksgiving for everything.

Colossians 3:17 - In all that we do we are to do it in the name of Jesus giving thanks to the Father.

Colossians 4:2 - We are to devote ourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of

                                 thanksgiving.

1 Timothy 4:4 - Everything created by God is good and should be received with thanksgiving.

Hebrews 13:15 - Let us continually give thanks to the name of Jesus.

 

Many Believers tend to gloss over these scriptures when they come across them in their studies. But when the Bible says it's God's WILL for us to involve ourselves in something then we need to come to the realization that all the related scriptures aren't just suggestions for Christian behavior; they're instructions that have behind them God's plans and purposes. Through His Word the Lord is instructing us to become involved in a lifestyle of THANKSGIVING so the Kingdom of God can be expanded on the earth. And of course He wouldn't tell us to do something we aren't able to do.

 

Years ago I used to wonder why the Bible was so insistent on God receiving our THANKSGIVING all the time. Why was that so important to Him, in fact so important He had to emphasize that it's His WILL for us to do it? For a long time I just didn't get the point until I finally started to realize that one of the main reasons we do tend to gloss over important biblical concepts is that it'll take a little work on our part to get the understanding so we postpone meditating on them until some unscheduled later date when we have more time. As long as we don't make the effort to understand those important concepts, we'll continue to gloss over and ignore them. 

 

Fortunately for me though I did eventually come to understand this particular issue a lot better, and it turned out that there's a really good reason behind all the THANKSGIVING. The reason is that you and I are the real beneficiaries of it and over the years I've learned that every time the Bible is instructing us to do something, it's ALWAYS for our own good. Now there're a lot of good reasons to be THANKING God, and one of them is that it HONORS Him. Any time we HONOR God the benefit always winds up coming back to bless the ones who're doing the HONORING.

 

Giving Thanks Honors God

    

As we saw last week, HONORING God Is another one of those Bible subjects that features a lot of instructions. It's mentioned a bunch of times and like THANKSGIVING, we tend to speed read all the related scriptural instructions without paying very much attention. But it turns out that God wants us to HONOR Him and the following scripture confirms that we can use our THANKSGIVING as one of the means to do it:

 

 "He who offers a sacrifice of THANKSGIVING, HONORS Me" (Psalm 50:23).

 

God says that if we make it a point to THANK Him, He will receive it as HONOR. And that's important because of the following scripture:

 

"Those who honor Me I will honor, and those who despise Me will be lightly esteemed" (1 Samuel 2:30).

 

One of the basic principles we can take away from these scriptures is that God by His Word is leading us to HONOR Him because there's something special we can receive in return: we can receive His HONOR. We can also see that the two subjects of HONORING God and GIVING THANKS to God are linked. Therefore, by continuous and ongoing acts of THANKSGIVING to God, we can receive HONOR from God. Maybe now by having an awareness of that possibility we'll want to find out what's included in the THANKSGIVING and HONORING process instead of just continuing to gloss over the related instructions..

 

The Hebrew word (kawbade) translated into the English word HONOR means to glorify, value or esteem someone which is to say that by our sacrifice of THANKSGIVING we demonstrate that we value and esteem God. It's called a sacrifice because our flesh never wants to THANK God for anything since it's pretty much focused on ourselves and on all the negative circumstances we're trying to deal with in our lives. But when we make the effort to bypass those distractions and we go ahead with THANKING God for all the GOOD things He's already done for us, it's called a sacrifice. And we know that God sees it as a sacrifice because the scripture presents it that way.

 

Now God said He'll HONOR us in return for our placing VALUE on Him and certainly we could expect His ways of HONORING us to be different than our ways of HONORING Him. That same Hebrew Word also conveys a few other meanings: to prevail, to promote and to be rich and these are available to us in "heaviness" or abundance. So we could say that when God HONORS us, it's to help us prevail over our circumstances and the World so we can be promoted to a higher level in the Kingdom of God where we receive His abundance in BOTH spiritual and material things.

 

By the way if we try to exclude material abundance from this definition we'll have to change the meaning of the Hebrew word; it is what it is. But, God doesn't HONOR us with riches just so we can consume them on our own lusts or so we can accumulate possessions and big bank accounts. No, according to scripture the purposes of the riches that come from God's HONORING of us are to expand His New Covenant on the earth and to be a blessing to other people. This is the true Bible-based PROSPERITY message, not the one we've heard mischaracterized all over the Body of Christ that has made so many Christians incorrectly close their ears and thinking to just the mention of the word PROSPERITY. The truth according to scripture is that God wants His Kingdom to PROSPER and by GRACE and FAITH we can be a part of that plan.

 

God Requires Sincerity

 

Nevertheless, we can't HONOR Him just so we can get something in return because it wouldn't be sincere. We should want to HONOR God because we love and VALUE Him. It has to be real HONOR and real VALUE: 

 

"Then the Lord said, because this people draw near with their words and honor Me with their lip service, but they remove their hearts far from Me, and their reverence for Me consists of tradition learned by rote, therefore...I will deal with them...the wisdom of their wise men will perish, and the discernment of their discerning men will be concealed" (Isaiah 29:13-14).

 

So just going through the motions won't fool God and it won't work. What our insincerity does is cause us to lose whatever amount of wisdom and discernment we've been able to accumulate through the teaching of the Holy Spirit. No, it has to be sincere HONOR and then He'll respond by HONORING us. But the truth is, HONORING God doesn't come naturally; the Flesh will fight us every step of the way trying to hinder us from HONORING anything other than ourselves or things in and from the World. We have to work at HONORING God sincerely, we have to learn how to HONOR Him sincerely by going through multiple occasions of overriding our Flesh and forcing it to operate in agreement with the Word. And, the best and quickest way to learn to do that is by cultivating a lifestyle of THANKSGIVING. In short, sincerity in HONORING God is developed from ongoing and continuous THANKSGIVING.

 

God has Already been Honored

 

It occurred to us recently that left to ourselves it could take most of us a really long time to learn how to HONOR God sincerely. The Flesh is strong and it takes time to retrain it and renew our thinking. Fortunately though Jesus has already taken care of HONORING God and He's already HONORED (glorified) Jesus in return. As a result the related blessing and favor and grace were released from the moment the blood of Christ ratified the New Covenant. Now all we have to do is take possession of those benefits by FAITH In Christ TRUSTING that we can participate in the HONOR God has already released.

 

THANKSGIVING teaches us how to receive the HONOR that Jesus died for us to have access to. THANKSGIVING is something to HONOR God with every day, and when we do we'll soon see His HONOR showing up in every area of our lives: spirit, soul and body. That's what the Word of God actually says and that's the way the New Covenant works if we have the FAITH for it.

 

So let's all have fun on Thanksgiving Day and eat too much and watch football too much and do all the other things we're accustomed to doing.  But it would do us well to try to keep in mind that real THANKSGIVING is way more than just the one day or even the whole weekend. If the Body of Christ could just come to a real understanding of what THANKSGIVING is really all about and could actually come into a "Lifestyle of Giving Thanks and Honoring God," the favorable results for individual Believers and for the establishment of the New Covenant on the earth would undergo a rapid acceleration. Make no mistake about it: THANKSGIVING is a big deal and we're just beginning to discover how big.

 

Thanks again for dropping by today and have a blessed Thanksgiving Day. We'll be looking for you again in three weeks on December 3.  

 

Sinners' Prayer

 

If you've never invited Jesus to be the Lord of your life, you need to and you can do it today just by saying out loud the following simple prayer:

 

Jesus I declare today with all my heart that I believe in you and that God raised you from the dead. I receive forgiveness for my sins and I ask you to come into my life today and be my Lord and Savior. Thank you for salvation and eternal life.

 

If you were sincere as you prayed this prayer, God has already come into your life and you are a new creation, a totally new species recreated in His image. Now ask the Lord to lead you to a good faith-based, bible-teaching church where you can be equipped to fulfill your potential in the Kingdom of God.

 

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Prayer Requests

 

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