A Season for Thanksgiving - Dr. Steve Elwart - http://www.khouse.org/enews_article/2015/2455/print/
While retailers like to start the Christmas season early (as early as before Halloween), America usually marks the start of the holiday season with Thanksgiving.
With all that is going on in the world, the threats from terrorism, persecution of Christians and other innocents, and a changing worldview, we need to be especially mindful of the many blessings God has still chosen to give this country.
Historical Roots of Thanksgiving
While colonists gave thanks to God for their very survival from the time they first arrived on these shores over four centuries ago Cape Henry, Virginia as early as 1607, it is from the Pilgrims that we derive the current tradition of Thanksgiving. This "First Thanksgiving" was celebrated by the Pilgrims after their first harvest in the New World in 1621. This feast lasted three days, and it was attended by 90 Native Americans (as accounted by attendee Edward Winslow) and 53 Pilgrims. The New England colonists were accustomed to regularly celebrating "thanksgivings"-days of prayer, thanking God for blessings such as military victory or the end of a drought.
Governor Kieft proclaimed a public thanksgiving, to be held in February 1644, on account of a victory over the American Indians; and again in 1645, because of the making peace with the tribes.
Thanksgivings were appointed in several colonies, and early in the Revolutionary War the Continental Congress adopted the practice. During the Revolutionary War Thanksgiving Day was declared on a year-by-year basis by the Continental Congress, in the form of recommendations to the executive heads of the several state governments. General George Washington issued a proclamation for a general thanksgiving by the Continental Army on Thursday, Dec. 18, 1777; and again, at Valley Forge, May 7, 1778.
The first national Thanksgiving occurred in 1789. According to the Congressional Record for Sept. 25 of that year, immediately after approving the Bill of Rights: Mr. Elias Boudinot said he could not think of letting the congressional session end without offering an opportunity to all the citizens of the United States of joining with one voice in returning to Almighty God their sincere thanks for the many blessings He had poured down upon them. With this view, therefore, he would move the following resolution:
Resolved, That a joint committee of both Houses be directed to wait upon the President of the United States to request that he would recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer...
Mr. Roger Sherman justified the practice of thanksgiving not only as a praiseworthy one in itself but also "as warranted by a number of precedents in Holy Writ... This example he thought worthy of a Christian imitation on the present occasion."
The resolution was delivered to President George Washington, who agreed with the congressional request, declaring:
Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor... Now, therefore, I do appoint Thursday, the 26th day of November 1789... that we may all unite to render unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection.
National Thanksgiving proclamations occurred sporadically after this one, and most official Thanksgiving observances still occurred only at the state level. Much of the credit for the adoption of an annual national Thanksgiving may be attributed to Mrs. Sarah Joseph Hale, the editor of Godey's Lady's Book. For thirty years, she promoted the idea of a national Thanksgiving Day, contacting president after president until Abraham Lincoln responded in 1863 by setting aside the last Thursday of November, declaring:
We often forget the Source from which the blessings of fruitful years and healthful skies come... No human wisdom hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God... I therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States... to observe the last Thursday of November as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.
For the next 75 years, Presidents followed Lincoln's precedent, annually declaring a national Thanksgiving Day.
Thanksgiving Becomes a National Holiday
In 1939 the last Thursday in November fell on the last day of the month. Concerned that the shortened Christmas shopping season might dampen the economic recovery, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a presidential proclamation moving Thanksgiving to the second to last Thursday of November. As a result of the proclamation, 32 states issued similar proclamations while 16 states refused to accept the change and proclaimed Thanksgiving to be the last Thursday in November. For two years two days were celebrated as Thanksgiving - the President and part of the nation celebrated it on the second to last Thursday in November, while the rest of the country celebrated it the following week.
To end the confusion, Congress decided to set a fixed-date for the holiday. On Oct. 6, 1941, the House passed a joint resolution declaring the last Thursday in November to be the legal Thanksgiving Day. The Senate, however, amended the resolution establishing the holiday as the fourth Thursday, which would take into account those years when November has five Thursdays. The House agreed to the change, and President Roosevelt signed the resolution Dec. 26, 1941, therefore establishing the fourth Thursday in November as the Federal Thanksgiving Day holiday.
The Biblical View of Thanksgiving
Seven texts are scattered throughout the four chapters of Colossians, using the words thank, giving thanks, thanksgiving, thankful and gratitude. These give Colossians an unmistakable aroma of thanksgiving, and each passage makes a distinct contribution to the total emphasis on thanksgiving. Each instance and the composite even more so, models a pattern of thankfulness from which contemporary Christians may take lessons:
We give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus, the Messiah, praying always for you, because we have heard about your faith in the Messiah Jesus and the love that you have for all the saints, based on the hope laid up for you in heaven. Some time ago you heard about this hope through the word of truth, the gospel that has come to you. Just as it is bearing fruit and spreading all over the world, so it has been doing among you from the day you heard it and came to know the grace of God in truth.
- Colossians 1:3-6, (ISV)
We are called to thank God for individual lives and for corporate life, for what the Gospel is producing in them (quite apart from asking God to fix, change or help them).
"You are being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might, so that you might patiently endure everything with joy and might thank the Father, who has enabled us to share in the saints' inheritance in the light. God has rescued us from the power of darkness and has brought us into the kingdom of the Son whom he loves, through whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins."
- Colossians 1:11-14 (ISV)
Thanks can stem from reviewing God's actions in the style of Psalms that rehearse God's saving deeds, including specific instances up to the present.
So then, just as you have received the Messiah Jesus the Lord, continue to live dependent on him. For you have been rooted in him and are being built up and strengthened in the faith, just as you were taught, while you continue to be thankful.
- Colossians 2:6-7 (ISV)
Let thanksgiving arise out of a personal inventory of life in Christ, roots and growth, responding out of what has been experienced.
Let the peace of the Messiah also rule in your hearts, to which you were called in one body, and be thankful.
- Colossians 3:15 (ISV)
The church needs to acknowledge and celebrate that Christ is making community possible. Specific instances of Christ's personal intervention in our lives are reasons for responses of thanks.
Let the word of the Messiah inhabit you richly with wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, and singing to God with thankfulness in your hearts.
- Colossians 3:16 (ISV)
With the word of Christ within, voice and heart, mind and spirit engage in a concert of praise and gratitude. Without that inner source, outward expressions lack integrity.
And whatever you do, whether by speech or action, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
- Colossians 3:17 (ISV)
Thanksgiving is not to be separated from faithful living. In addition to individual praise-living, communal worship is the counterpart of the scattered witness.
Devote yourselves to prayer. Be alert and thankful when you pray. At the same time also pray for us-that God would open before us a door for the word so that we may tell the secret about the Messiah, for which I have been imprisoned. May I reveal it as clearly as I should!
- Colossians 4:2-4 (ISV)
Thanksgiving in the church is rightly coupled with recognition of privileges and opportunities, with acceptance of God's help, with acknowledgment of dependence, and with affirmation of those witnessing for Christ.
The True Meaning of Thanksgiving
As people begin to get ready for the secular "Christmas rush" and all that goes with it, we need to remember we have a season of spiritual Thanksgiving as well.
Thanksgiving should be more than a "one day a year" holiday recognition on which we eat too much then settle down for a game of football on TV... or whatever happens to be the Thanksgiving tradition for a particular family. As Christians we should have a spirit of thankfulness on a daily basis throughout the year and if we stop and think about what the Lord has done for us, it should not be difficult to do.
As Paul wrote in Philippians:
Never worry about anything. Instead, in every situation let your petitions be made known to God through prayers and requests, [and] with thanksgiving.
- Philippians 4:6 (ISV)
May God add His richest blessings to your life during this Thanksgiving season as you continue to look to Him as the source of all blessings.
God's Blessing Game - Commentary by Jack Kelley -
https://gracethrufaith.com/topical-studies/holidays-and-holy-days/gods-blessing-game/
Every year at Thanksgiving I'm reminded of the holiday's origin, the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles. It was the crowning event in Israel's cycle of fall feasts that also included Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. It was a celebration of the harvest, of God's mercy in forgiving their sins for another year, and a remembrance of the time when He lived among them in the wilderness, setting them apart as His people.
When the Pilgrims had experienced their first successful harvest in the New World, they decided to give thanks for the Lord's provision, even though half of them had died in the year since their arrival. Inviting the neighboring natives to join them, they held a three-day celebration patterned after their knowledge of the Feast of Tabernacles.
Here's How It All Began
The Jews were about to enter the Promised Land. The Lord had Moses tell them that in the future they were to set aside a tithe (1/10th) of their production each year and bring it, along with all their other voluntary offerings, to the place He would choose for them to worship Him. They were to eat them there in a gigantic national feast. Think of it, 1/10th of all the lambs, goats and cattle born that year, 1/10th of the grain, vegetables and fruit from throughout the land, breads and cakes and barrels of wine.
Each fall, after the harvest, everyone in Israel came to Jerusalem to celebrate. It was the biggest Thanksgiving dinner ever. The sounds of laughing and singing and the aroma of exotic foods filled the air for a whole week as the people gave thanks to God for blessing them (Deut. 12:8-12, 17-19).
Every third year they gave their tithes to the Levites and stayed home. This assured that there was always enough to take care of the Levites (who were the teachers and doctors and lawyers and had no land to till) and all the widows and orphans, the indigent, and the aliens among them. Each year they celebrated His provision and the Lord blessed them with more so that their abundance grew. He commanded them to do this every year so that He could "bless them in all the works of their hands." (Deut. 14:22-29) By setting the Lord's share aside and then using it to give thanks to Him, they found that each year their blessing increased.
But after their return from the Babylonian captivity, the Lord caught them cheating Him. He warned them that they had put themselves under a curse because they weren't setting aside their tithes properly. They were giving the Lord their worst, not their best, and even this was being done resentfully as if it was a great burden. Because of this they were not being blessed but were working harder and harder for less and less. "Return to me and I'll return to you," He told them. "Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse. Test me in this and see if I don't throw open the flood gates of Heaven and pour our so much blessing that you won't have room enough for it." (Malachi 1 & 3:7-10)
And that's always the way it is with the Lord. No hard feelings, no resentment, just return to Him and He'll return to you. All is forgiven, because His mercies are new every morning. We can always begin right where we are and He'll respond as if the past had never happened.
The Rules Of The Game
So by these two passages we learn the rules of what I call God's Blessing Game. We show our gratitude by giving God His due and He blesses us with more. We increase our giving and He increases His blessing, allowing us to give still more. And on it goes. But when we become stingy or resentful and try to short-change God, then the blessings are curtailed accordingly.
The Israelites proved beyond all doubt that by following the rules of the game they could win every time. And they demonstrated the futility of cheating. But is there any New Testament version of God's Blessing Game? Of course there is, because God is the same yesterday today and forever. Luke 6:38 tells us "Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."
Show a little gratitude and get a little blessing. Show a little more and the blessings increase. The more generous we become the more abundant our blessings will be. Paul gave us the ultimate outcome in 2 Cor. 9:11. You'll be made rich in every way so you can be generous on every occasion. Every time we feel moved to help someone out, we'll find the money's there to do it. And it will all result in thanksgiving to God.
Treasure In Heaven
Lots of people overlook the last half of this promise, and find that because they do it doesn't come true. The Lord didn't promise to make us rich so that we could have bigger houses and more cars, He promised to make us rich so that we could be more generous. As one commentator has put it, "God's blessings are not to increase our standard of living. but to increase our standard of giving." We're supposed to be a distribution center for His blessings, not a warehouse. The blessings we receive are supposed to flow through to others, not stop with us. The riches we store up are for Heaven, not Earth. Good thing too, because here they only last a little while, but there they last forever. (Matt. 6:19-20)
This is God's Blessing Game. It's a game that He developed and that everyone can win. The rules are clear and don't ever change. We establish the level of blessings we'll receive by the gratitude we express through our generosity toward others. The Lord loves a cheerful giver and will reward us accordingly.
So the Pilgrims decided to take a lesson from the Israelites. They took the little they had and gave thanks, inviting the natives in their midst to join them to show their generosity. In return the Lord blessed them. And so it began. To one degree or another, it's been going on ever since and look how we've been blessed. Americans are the richest people on Earth. If you don't believe that, try living somewhere else, anywhere else, for a while.
It's Our Little Secret
It's a testimony to God's understanding of the human condition that the Thanksgiving Holiday's roots have been obscured. You see, he longs to bless us but the rules of the game require an expression of gratitude on our part. By allowing Thanksgiving to be perceived as a secular holiday instead of a religious one, He can receive our thanks without risking the same demand that He be taken out of the loop as there is for Christmas. There's no public outcry by the pagans, no suits by the ACLU, and no attacks by other religions against its origin. Very few people are even aware of the Biblical roots of this "American" holiday. But being devout Christians, the Pilgrims knew Who they were thanking, and why. You and I do, too. It's our little secret. Ours and God's.
I pray that your Thanksgiving was a happy one, and that throughout the holidays you'll remember the rules of God's Blessing Game and always play to win.
Thanksgiving Heritage - Bill Wilson - www.dailyjot.com
Note: I want to share with you some of my heritage which has become part of the heritage of America. My grandfather 13 generations back was William Bradford, co-writer of the Mayflower Compact, inventor of the free market system, and governor of the Plymouth colony for over 30 years. I would like to share some insights of and from his writings in "Of Plymouth Plantation."
In the days leading up to the first "Thanksgiving" of the Pilgrims, they had dispatched a group of ten men to "explore the bay and trade with the natives." They were guided by the English speaking Squanto, who also served as an interpreter. When the men returned, they were very impressed with the land around the bay and wished they could have settled there instead of Cape Cod. William Bradford, wrote however, "But it seems that the Lord, Who assigns to all men the bounds of their habitations, had appointed it for another use. And thus they found the Lord to be with them in all their ways, and to bless their outgoings and incomings, for which let His holy name have the praise forever, to all posterity."
This "Thanksgiving" to the Lord offered by Bradford in his history "Of Plymouth Plantation" indicates that Jesus was at the center of his thoughts about all things--even the land they were allocated by God to begin their colony. It also forebear's testimony to the very positive Christian witness and relations the Pilgrims maintained with the Indians. This comment was followed immediately by Bradford's account of the harvest in October 1621. Bradford writes, "Each person had about a peck of meal a week, or now since harvest, Indian corn in that proportion; and afterwards many wrote at length about their plenty to their friends in England--not feigned but true reports."
One of those true reports is found in "Mourt's Relation" by Pilgrim Edward Winslow--the only account of the first "Thanksgiving." Winslow writes: "our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruits of our labors...at which time amongst other recreations, we exercised our Arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest king Massasoyt, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the Plantation and bestowed on our Governor, and upon the Captain and others."
Winslow concluded, "And although it be not always so plentiful, as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plenty." Thanks to the godly men and women who came before us, even in our decline we remain blessed more than any other nation on earth. Jeremiah 4:2 says that if God's people return to Him, "And thou shalt swear, The Lord liveth, in truth, in judgment, and in righteousness; and the nations shall bless themselves in Him, and in Him shall they glory." This is a promise to the nations. So today, as should be our practice each day, may you have a Psalm 103:2 day, "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits."
The Thanks We Owe - Greg Laurie - www.harvest.org
Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for His goodness, and for His wonderful works to the children of men! -Psalm 107:21
How like us to forget to give thanks. We are so quick to come to God in times of need. We pray, "Lord, get me out of this" or "Lord intervene" or "Lord, provide for me." We call on the Lord and then when He answers, we don't offer up a word of thanks.
Worse yet is when we chalk it up to dumb luck. It reminds me of the guy who was on the roof of a three-story house, nailing down a loose shingle. Suddenly he lost his footing and began to slide. Knowing he was about to fall to his death, he cried out to God, praying, "Help me! Save me! God, don't let me die! God, do something! Save me!"
Then, as he was nearing the edge of the roof, his belt loop suddenly caught on a nail, which stopped him. This allowed him to grab hold and then climb back up again. Reaching safety, he called out, "It's okay, God! I got caught on a nail!"
That is how we are sometimes. We say, "Oh, Lord, provide for me. I have this financial need. Lord, You've got to come through for me."
Then the next day, a rebate check for the exact amount arrives in the mail. "It's okay, Lord," we say. "The rebate check showed up."
Do we ever stop and think, however, that God has provided that for us?
Are you giving God the glory for what He has done? We are so quick to ask for His help. But let's remember to give Him the praise when He comes through. We should be as definite in returning thanks as we are in requesting help. Far too often we call on God in times of crisis, but we don't follow through with our thanks.
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