It doesn't seem possible but 2011 has already mostly flown by and here we are already in Thanksgiving weekend. The original idea for Thanksgiving was to set aside a particular day for American families to acknowledge their gratitude to God for all His 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. still look forward to celebrating Thanksgiving Day including a lot of non-believers who don't really understand why they're celebrating. It's always been a special day and a special weekend for families to get together and enjoy each other's company. But real THANKSGIVING is way bigger than just one special day 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.
Now having a special day is directionally a good thing because most of the time we're focusing on the difficulties we're living through and forgetting to be THANKFUL for the all the good things. You probably know this already but according to scripture EVERYTHING that's truly GOOD comes from God (James 1:17). You and I don't originate anything good. And certainly Satan never gives any good things either. No, the Bible says ALL of the GOOD things in life come from God and that He ONLY gives GOOD things. Indeed, the truth is that the number of good things in our lives is far greater than the number of bad things even though it may not seem like it sometimes. So at least on Thanksgiving Day we can CELEBRATE all the good things and make a point of being thankful.
But being grateful for God's goodness is really only the start of biblical THANKSGIVING. I used to wonder why the Word of God was so insistent on me THANKING God all the time. Certainly He deserves to be thanked; He's obviously worthy of our THANKSGIVING. But why are there so many scriptures about it? Does God need our THANKSGIVING for some reason? Or is He on some kind of ego trip that makes Him be so insistent about us being THANKFUL to the Lord God Almighty? What I finally realized is that what the Lord instructs us to do and then insists on us doing, EVERYTHING like that is for our own good. In this case it's about the BENEFITS that come from HONORING God, HONORING Him with our THANKSGIVING as much as possible because it's WE who benefit from it and He loves us too much to let us miss out on all His benefits simply because we forget to HONOR Him or we're too busy blaming Him for a bunch of bad stuff the devil did. No, God insists that we learn to THANK Him and the result of honestly and sincerely THANKING Him is something to really celebrate.
The Principle of Honoring God
There is a great scripture in the Old Testament that we'll build on today because it so clearly illustrates that when God tells us to do something it's for our own good:
"Those who honor Me I will honor, and those who despise Me will be lightly esteemed" (1 Samuel 2:30).
Now to really understand this scripture takes a few minutes of looking up the Hebrew words behind the English and then doing some meditation to hear what the Holy Spirit wants to teach. To HONOR someone means to put VALUE on that person or to ESTEEM them. We VALUE or ESTEEM the person we're HONORING and we consider the relationship to be VALUABLE. All through the Old Testament God observed that His people VALUED other gods and other things ahead of Him. That was important because He LOVED His people (God IS love) and He wanted their highest VALUE to be their relationship with Him because it was for their own good. He had something to give back to them that was (and still is) triggered by HONORING Him in Faith.
Notice that God also said that if you don't HONOR Him it goes by default to "despising" Him. It's not like you can say, "God I HONOR you second best." Or "God I like you almost as much as I love my money (or my security or whatever)." No, God says that "if you don't HONOR Me, if you don't VALUE Me, then you despise Me. And by the way, if you despise Me, I will despise you." God doesn't deal much with in-between stuff. It's either one way or the other: HONORING or despising.
But on the other hand, if we HONOR God He will HONOR us. What does it mean to be HONORED by God? Looking more deeply into the Hebrew, one of the meanings of that word conveys the bestowing of RICHES and not just a few RICHES but heavy riches. Now check this word (kawbade) out for yourself in your Concordance and draw your own conclusions but I can tell you before you jump to the wrong conclusion that this Hebrew word is talking about money-and-possessions-riches, about the VALUABLE physical benefits He blesses folks with in the natural realm when they VALUE Him. It's certainly true that this word might also be used for "spiritual blessing" but there's no way you can exclude financial blessing from the definition of this word because it's the key point. If we put VALUE on Him, He'll put VALUE on us. If we give VALUE to Him, He'll give VALUE to us and it'll be heavy, overflowing VALUE. The way I see it, if we HONOR God consistently and continually and honestly, we put ourselves in position to receive financial blessing NOW.
Connecting to Thanksgiving
We should want to HONOR God because we love and VALUE Him. You can't HONOR God just so you can get something back from Him. No, it has to be real HONOR, 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 it does is cause us to lose however much wisdom and discernment we've been able to develop through the teaching of the Holy Spirit. No, it has to be sincere HONOR and then He'll respond by HONORING us. HONORING God doesn't come natural either; in fact, the Flesh will fight you every step of the way trying to keep you from honoring anything other than yourself or things in and from the World systems where everything can be assessed by the five natural senses. We have to work at HONORING God by overriding our Flesh and forcing it to go along with what we know is right. And the best way to learn to HONOR Him is by cultivating a lifestyle of THANKSGIVING:
"He who offers a sacrifice of THANKSGIVING, honors Me" (Psalm 50:23).
Sacrificial THANKSGIVING occurs when we THANK Him over the objections of our Flesh which is almost always. It also occurs when we THANK Him in FAITH which means to THANK Him for the manifestation of His HONOR towards us before the fruit of it actually shows up. You can be sure it will show up because Jesus has already taken care of HONOING Him. The 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 to take possession by FAITH of the HONOR He has already released. THANKSGIVING by FAITH teaches us how to receive the HONOR Jesus died for us to have. THANKSGIVING is something to give back to God every day and soon we'll see those heavy riches showing up in every area of life: spirit, soul and body. That's the way the New Covenant works if you have the FAITH for it.
But, God doesn't HONOR us with His riches just so we can consume them on our own lusts, so we can accumulate possessions and big bank accounts. No, the purposes of the riches that come from God's HONOR and GRACE, according to scripture, are to expand His Covenant on the earth (Deuteronomy 8:18) and be a blessing to others (2 Corinthians 9:8). This is the true Bible-based PROSPERITY message, not the false one we hear portrayed all over the Body of Christ, the one so many Christians close their ears to just at the mention of the word PROSPERITY. The truth according to scripture is that God wants His Kingdom to PROSPER, to expand and multiply and increase. And by FAITH we can all be a part of the plan of God. Friend, this is something to celebrate and it all starts with a desire to HONOR God simply by THANKING Him for all the great things He's done. Add these thoughts to your Thanksgiving Day celebration this weekend, purpose to make your THANKSGIVING a part of your life from now on and watch God increasingly HONOR you in return.
