Thanksgiving: by Henry Blackaby

And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, returned, and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell down on his face at His feet, giving Him thanks. And he was a Samaritan.      Luke 17:15-16

Thankfulness is foundational to the Christian life. Thankfulness is a conscious response that comes from looking beyond our blessings to their source. As Christians, we have been forgiven, saved from death, and adopted as God’s children. There could be no better reason for a grateful heart!

Lepers in Jesus’ day were social outcasts. Their highly contagious condition ostracized them from those they loved. When ten lepers encountered Jesus, they desperately implored Him to show them mercy. Jesus sent them to the priest. As they obeyed, they were healed! These ten men had been forbidden to enter their own villages, to live in their own homes, to work in their own jobs, or even to touch their own children. Imagine what unrestrained joy must have filled them as they ran back home again!

One of the lepers, a Samaritan, stopped and ran back to thank Jesus. Samaritans were normally shunned by the Jews, but Jesus had healed him! Jesus asked him, “Where are the others?” Ten lepers had been healed. Ten lepers were reveling in their new found health. Ten men were joyfully rushing to share the good news with those they loved. But only one considered the Source of that blessing and stopped to thank and worship the One who had given him back his life.

We, too, have been healed and made whole by the Savior. We are free to enjoy the abundant life the Savior has graciously given us. Could we, like the nine lepers, rush off so quickly to glory in our blessings without stopping to thank our Redeemer? God looks for our thanks. Our worship, prayers, service, and daily life ought to be saturated with thanksgiving to God (Phil. 4:6).

A Thankful Heart Cannot Also Be Cynical: by AW Tozer

Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Ephesians 5:20

Let me recommend the cultivation of the habit of thankfulness as an effective cure for the cynical, sour habits of faultfinding among Christian believers.

Thanksgiving has great curative power. The heart that is constantly overflowing with gratitude will be safe from those attacks of resentfulness and gloom that bother so many religious persons. A thankful heart cannot be cynical!

Please be aware that I am not recommending any of the “applied psychology” nostrums so popular in liberal circles. We who have been introduced to God through the miracle of the new birth realize that there is good scriptural authority for the cultivation of gratitude as a cure for spiritual sourness. Further, experience teaches us that it works!

We should never take any blessing for granted, but accept everything as a gift from the Father of Lights. We should write on a tablet, one by one, the things for which we are grateful to God and to our fellow men.

Personally, I have gotten great help from the practice of talking over with God the many kindnesses I have received. I like to begin with thanking Him for His thoughts of me back to creation; for giving His Son to die for me when I was still a sinner; for giving the Bible and His blessed Spirit who inwardly gives us understanding of it. I thank Him for my parents, teachers, statesmen, patriots.

I am grateful to God for all of these and more—and I shall not let God forget that I am!

The One Who is Life, Brings Rest: by Sarah Young, Jesus Calling

 

John 11:25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live,
Matthew 11:28-29 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

    I AM the resurrection and the Life; all lasting Life emanates from Me. People search for life in many wrong ways: chasing after fleeting pleasures, accumulating possessions and wealth, trying to deny the inevitable effects of aging. Meanwhile, I freely offer abundant Life to everyone who turns toward Me. As you come to Me and take My yoke upon you, I fill you with My very Life. This is how I choose to live in the world and accomplish My purposes. This is also how I bless you with Joy unspeakable and full of Glory. The Joy is Mine, and the Glory is Mine; but I bestow them on you as you live in My presence, inviting Me to live fully in you. 

1 Peter 1:8-9 Whom having not seen, you love; in whom, though now you see him not, yet believing, you rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory: Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.

The Unrelieved Quest: by Oswald Chambers

Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.” John 21:17

This is love in the making: Peter, having confessed how deeply he loves Jesus, is told to add action to emotion and feed God’s sheep. The love of God was not created; love is God’s very nature. When we receive the Holy Spirit, we are united with God so that his love is manifested in us. But this isn’t the end of the story. The ultimate goal is that we may be one with the Father as Jesus is. “Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one” (John 17:11). What kind of oneness is this? Such a oneness that the Father’s purpose for the Son becomes the Son’s purpose for us: “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you” (20:21).

After Peter recognized the depth of his love for Jesus, Jesus made his point: Spend it. Don’t declare how much you love me. Don’t testify about the marvelous revelation you’ve had. “Feed my sheep.” This is a challenging request, because Jesus has some extraordinarily funny sheep! Bedraggled, dirty sheep; awkward, headbutting sheep; sheep that have gone astray (Luke 15:3–7). God’s love pays no attention to such quirks and differences. If I love my Lord, I have no business being guided by personal preference. I simply have to feed his sheep. There is no relief and no release from this part of the call.

Beware of letting your natural human sympathy decide which sheep you’ll feed. You are called to spend God’s love, not pass off a counterfeit version of it. That would end in blaspheming the love of God.

Waiting on God: by Andrew Murray

On Thee do I wait all the day. Psalm 25:5

Waiting on God—in this expression we find one of the deepest truths of God’s Word in regard to the attitude of the soul in its communion with God.

As we wait on God—just think—He will reveal Himself in us, He will teach us all His will, He will do to us what He has promised, and in all things He will be the Infinite God.

Such is the attitude with which each day should begin. In the inner chamber, in quiet meditation, in expressing our ardent desires through prayer, in the course of our daily work, in all our striving after obedience and holiness, in all our struggles against sin and self-will—in everything we must wait on God to receive what He will bestow, to see what He will do, and to allow Him to be the almighty God.

Meditate on these things, and they will help you to truly value the precious promises of God’s Word.

“They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles” (Isaiah 40:31). In this we have the secret of heavenly power and joy.

“Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord” (Psalm 27:14).

“Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him” (Psalm 37:7).

The deep root of all scriptural theology is absolute dependence on God. As we exercise this attitude, it will become more natural and blessedly possible to say, “On Thee do I wait all the day.” Here we have the secret of true, uninterrupted, silent adoration and worship of God.

Has this book helped to teach you the true worship of God? If so, the Lord’s name be praised. Or have you only learned how little you know of it? For this, too, let us thank Him.

If you desire a fuller experience of this blessing, read this book again with a deeper insight into what is meant, and a greater knowledge of the absolute need of each day and all day waiting on God. May the God of all grace grant us this.

“I wait for the Lord, my soul doth wait, and in His word do I hope” (Psalm 130:5).

“Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him.…and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart” (Psalm 37:7, 4).

GOD’S JUDGMENT: by Martyn Lloyd Jones

. . . should not perish . . . John 3:16

Jesus taught about God the Father by showing God’s wrath against sin. “But what about John 3:16?” asks someone. Listen to John 3:16, my friend. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believeth in him should not perish”—but apart from Him they would have perished; that is the only way to avoid perishing. Indeed, we also find in John 3 a statement that if a man does not believe, “the wrath of God abides on him” (verse 36).

Part of our Lord’s teaching about the Father is that the Father is absolutely holy, that He hates sin and had pledged to destroy it and punish it with everlasting destruction. “Blessed,” He said, “are the pure in heart: for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). No one else can see God because only the pure in heart could stand the sight of Him. To look at God is hell to a man unless he has been made pure in heart—“. . . holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14). So He revealed the character of the Father as a holy Father.

But Christ also told us about the Father’s love and compassion. That is why, He tells us, He came into the world—it was because of the love of God. He shows us this same love and compassion in His life. That is why He worked His miracles, not simply to heal the people, but to reveal, to manifest, His glory and the love and compassion of God. He said in effect, “If you do not believe My words, then as I do these things, see the Father in Me.” For this holy God is a God of love and compassion. As our Lord went about healing the sick and doing good, He told us that God is like that.

The Source of Life: by TA Sparks

This is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. 1 John 5:11

It entirely depends upon our apprehension of the Lord as to what our testimony is. If we are turning to teaching, to tradition, to interpretations, to human associations, to Christianity, we are going to miss something, but if we are turning to the living God, in the realization that He is the living God, we are going to come into Life; everything is going to be all living in our experience right from the beginning. It is not unnecessary to say a thing like that. We said at the outset we wake up, and some of us awoke too late. The thing that kept us asleep – though we did not know we were asleep, except that there was a restlessness, a sense of dissatisfaction, a turning from side to side, and a sighing and groaning – was the fact that we had been associated with Christianity and the things of the people of God from so early in our lives. Our Christianity and our relationship with the Lord was something into which we were brought in infancy, and it had all become a matter of a system of the things of the Lord around us, with which we were quite familiar. We had been taught to say prayers, and go to meetings, and so on. One day we awoke to the fact that this God was a living God. We had been associated with Him in a way for a long time, but He was not personal to us, not a living God.

Forgive me for going back to such an elementary stage, if it is necessary to ask forgiveness, for it is just possible there are some among us whose relationship is of that kind. Maybe you are associated with things related to the Lord, but what about this question of your own personal, inward enjoyment of the living God, of His really being to you a living Person? We must begin back there, and all this is nothing to you unless the Holy Spirit has made it real, or does make it real, in your experience. I do know that it is true to fact in the life of a great many, that the day comes when, though they have been associated with the things of the Lord for a long time, they suddenly wake up to the fact that the Lord is a living Person. That contains so much for us as we come to realize it. It means everything to us from every point of view. We are the Lord's now! We know the Lord!