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      LIVING UNDER THE NEW COVENANT       
Study #11: Cultivating a Lifestyle of Thanksgiving  

"By grace you have been saved through faith...it is the gift of God, not as a result of works..." - Ephesians 2:8-9 
 .
 Dr. Bill Miller                                  Volume XVIII Number 47                            November 22, 2015
  
Greetings in the Name of Jesus and welcome to the PLN Sunday Night Bible Fellowship!
 
Thanks for joining our bible study tonight as we continue discussing life under the New Covenant. Sometimes we lose sight of the WONDERFUL NEWS that when Jesus paid for all the sins of all mankind for all time, a completely NEW covenant was begun that is the BEST covenant God has ever offered. In sum, it has better promises and better benefits, and they've been made available to those who'll simply BELIEVE and endeavor to learn how to operate under it as God intends. Indeed, there are CORRECT ways to live under the New Covenant according to how God designed it and the related instructions can be found only in His Word. Meanwhile, a number of man made religious traditions are at odds with those CORRECT ways and we wind up receiving less than what's available.
 
As we continue the discussion tonight, we have a perfect opportunity to talk about a particular way of living God wants us develop In view of the Thanksgiving Day holiday later this week. The Lord God almighty says clearly in Scripture that He wants each Christian believer to learn how to live a "lifestyle of THANKSGIVING." We're to be grateful to Father God for what He's done for us, to Christ for the sacrifice He made out of His love for us and to other people for how they benefit our lives. And the reason God wants us to do this is because GRATITUDE is one of those character issues that has within itself the POWER to connect us to the GRACE that we need to be victorious in every area of life. Tonight we'll discuss this character issue in the context of the THANKSGIVING season we're just coming into.
 
To start with, the original idea almost four hundred years ago was to set aside a particular day for American families to express 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 have all been 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 the rest of us are 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 enjoy it; but according to the Bible, the people of God ought to be involved in a daily, ongoing process of GIVING THANKS. Indeed, there are a lot of scriptures that encourage us to do this including these key New Testament examples:
 
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 idea 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 already know this but according to scripture EVERYTHING that's truly GOOD comes from God (James 1:17). You and I don't originate anything good; in fact we're not able to. And certainly Satan never gives any good things either; he would refuse to even if he were able. No, the Bible says ALL the GOOD things in life come from God and that He ONLY gives GOOD things. And the truth is, 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.
 
I used to wonder why the Word of God was so insistent on me THANKING Him so much. Certainly He deserves to be THANKED for all those good things He's doing. But why are there so many scriptures about it? Does God need our THANKSGIVING for some reason? Is He just bossing us around because He's God?
 
What I finally realized is that EVERYTHING the Lord instructs us to do 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 living under this wonderful New Covenant of ours 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's a great scripture in the Old Testament that we'll build on tonight 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).
 
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 the Holy Spirit. To HONOR someone means to put VALUE on that person or to ESTEEM them. We ESTEEM the person we're HONORING and we consider the relationship to be VALUABLE. All through the Old Testament God observed that sometimes His people VALUED other gods and things ahead of Him. That was important because God LOVED those people 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 oh 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.
 
On the other hand though, if we HONOR God He'll HONOR us. What does it mean to be HONORED by God? Looking more deeply into the Hebrew, the principal meaning of the word used in this verse (kawbade) conveys the bestowing of RICHES and not just a few RICHES but HEAVY riches. By all means check this word 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 material benefits He blesses folks with in the natural realm when we VALUE Him. It's also certainly true that this word could include the concept of "spiritual blessing" but there's no way you can exclude financial blessing from the definition of this word because it's the key concept. 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.
 
Connecting to Thanksgiving
 
Now 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 New Covenant 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 will respond by HONORING us. HONORING God doesn't come naturally either; in fact, your Flesh will fight you every step of the way trying to keep you from honoring anything other than yourself or things from the World where everything is assessed by the five natural physical 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 even when our Flesh doesn't want to which is pretty much 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 HONORING Him. The blessing and favor and grace were released from the moment the blood of Christ ratified the New Covenant. So 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 or accumulate possessions and big bank accounts. No, according to scripture the purposes of the riches that come from God's HONOR and GRACE are to establish/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 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.
 
In conclusion, celebrating Thanksgiving Day is about HONORING God, about thanking Him for our New Covenant and the blessings that come to us out of His love, mercy, favor and empowerment. We who believe have a LOT to be THANKFUL for and this is a good time to rededicate ourselves to the process of becoming GRATEFUL people who're full of love and faith for our Creator and each other. We wish you a special THANKSGIVING season this year full of God's love and blessing.
 
Thanks for joining our discussion tonight. We'll be looking for you again NEXT Sunday night on November 29. In the meantime may the Lord bless you with every spiritual blessing (Ephesians 1:3), pushing you to VICTORY in every area of life!
 
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Sinners' Prayer
 
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Jesus I declare today with all my heart that I believe in you and I believe that God raised you from the dead. I acknowledge that my sins have been forgiven for all time and I ask you to come into my life today and be my Lord and Savior. Thank you for salvation and eternal life.
 
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When you get a moment have someone help you look up the following scriptures because they confirm what you've done by saying this prayer and believing what you said:
 
Romans 10:9
2 Corinthians 5:17
Ephesians 2:8
 
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