Heart of Thanks

Tonight we had ladies fellowship. I was the assigned person to speak and it being Thanksgiving, I naturally talked about that. I am not going to give my entire outline, but I just talked about how this time of year tends to be our busiest and most stress full ( guilty) time of year. We have a lot of shopping, cooking, decorating, and cleaning to do. I tried to encourage the ladies with Psalms 46:10 - Be still and know that I am God. Sometimes our busy schedules leaves little time to do our daily devotion. Little time for prayer. God is not the God of hustle and bustle and over crowded schedules. Maybe this time of year, we should schedule some extra time of prayer and Bible study.

Hebrews 13:15 was my key verse - By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise continually that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name. I just talked about how we should always have a spirit of thankfulness. First to God, and then for others. How sometimes we don't thank God enough because we are too prosperous. We have so much. Each one of us have more clothes in our closet right now than our ancestors probably had in their entire life. There is nothing wrong with prosperity because all good things come above, but sometimes our prosperity can be our stumbling block. We also forget the past blessings that God has given us. What He did last week, last month, or last year. We forget so easily. I also talked about being thankful for the things others do for you. I can remember when my mom died, my dad said he regretted how he didn't help my mom more than he did. Now he had to do the dishes, clean, buy groceries, and basically run the household. He never realized how much work she did to keep things running smoothly. Now he had a newfound gratitude for all she did for him.

I ended by giving everybody a sheet of paper and asked them to list 3 things under these categories:

3 things you have never thanked God for

3 things you have never thanked your spouse for ( or parents for unmarried )

3 things you have never thanked anybody for

I then went around the room and let people read their answers - and what a sweet spirit we had as we each read our answers. I had never thanked God that my children were born without any birth defects or that I wasn't born in a Muslim faith family. I have never thanked my husband for keeping my oil changed in my car or keeping firewood cut. I have never stopped a random soldier to thank him for his sacrifices or thanked a police office for keeping us safe. There were so many great answers, but hopefully it made us aware of the blessings that we just overlook on a daily basis.

So as we approach Thanksgiving, let's be sure to give thanks - to our Creator. As children of God, lets give him the praise that is due Him.

What can you thank God for in your life?