LORD, WE ARE GRATEFUL

Lord, we are grateful for all You've given;
shelter and clothing, good food and health.
All these are gifts we rarely do treasure.
We are most wealthy, thanks to Yourself.

Lord, we are grateful for those who love us;
those we call family, those who are friends.
Loved, we can face the pressures life sends us.
Through those we cherish, Your love descends.

Lord, we are grateful for Your creation;
trees in fall splendor, dark stormy skies.
Nature reminds us of Your strong power.
Majestic beauty dazzles ours eyes.

Lord, we are grateful for Your rich mercy,
fresh as the morning, new every day.
Sin is forgiven. Guilt has been buried.
Gone is the debt we never could pay.

Lord, we are grateful that we can worship,
often and freely here in this place.
Harvest our praises, hear our thanksgiving
as we reflect on Your awesome grace.

Copyright 2003 by Rev. Greg Asimakoupoulos


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THANKSGIVING DAY by Henry Alford, 1810-1871

Come, ye thankful people, come,
Raise the song of Harvest - come!
All is safely gathered in,
Ere the winter storms begin;
God, our Maker, doth provide
For our wants to be supplied;
Come to God's own temple, come;
Raise the song of Harvest-home!

What is earth but God's own field,
Fruit unto his praise to yield?
Wheat and tares therein are sown,
Unto joy or sorrow grown;
Ripening with a wondrous power,
Till the final Harvest-hour;
Grant, O Lord of life, that we
Holy grain and pure may be.

Come, then, Lord of Mercy, come,
Bid us sing the Harvest-home!
Let thy saints be gathered in!
Free from sorrow, free from sin;
All upon the golden floor
Praising thee forevermore;
Come, with thousand angels, come;
Bid us sing thy Harvest-home.

WHAT THANKSGIVING SHOULD BE

Fighting historical vandalism

"How wonderful it is, how pleasant when brothers live together in harmony!
Psalm 133:1 NLT"

" In an article in Focus on the Family's Citizen magazine, Douglas Phillips describes how he took his family to Plymouth, Massachusetts, a few years ago and was shocked at what he found. Atop Cole's Hill, the burial ground for Pilgrims who died that first hard winter, Phillips was startled to see a city truck pull up and men pile out carrying shovels. They told Phillips the city was placing a new monument.

"Most revolutions are staged at night," Phillips wrote, so he wasn't surprised the next day to find stone markers all over Plymouth designating Thanksgiving as a day of mourning—a day to recall how the Pilgrims murdered and stole from their Indian neighbors. That afternoon, demonstrators—mostly white college kids—celebrated their victory by defacing the traditional monuments. Plymouth had transformed a tale of religious freedom into a story of genocide.

The historical reality is totally different. While it's true that later settlers abused the Native Americans, the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians lived together in peace for 50 years. They signed covenants, bought and sold property, and fought against mutual enemies.

The modern obsession with group identity and victimhood encourages us to see those assigned to other groups as our enemies. When we interact with them, we ought to recall the relationship between the Pilgrims and the Indians and model not hostility and hatred but brotherly love. As the psalmist notes, a willingness to get along with others makes for a pleasant and peaceful life.

[adapted from How Now Shall We Live? Devotional by Charles Colson (Tyndale) pp 631-32]

SEEKING WHAT IS REALLY THERE

How do things look for you today?

"Life under Louis XIV was not easy for the French Huguenots. They loved to sing psalms, but the king made an edict that forbade the singing of the Psalms almost everywhere. So the Huguenots went out to the fields and forests and continued their singing. Psalm 125 was a favorite of theirs, maybe because it said that the wicked would not rule the godly. Or maybe it was because the Huguenots could see something that Louis XIV couldn't see.

Remember the story of Elisha and his servant (2 Kings 6:8-23)? The servant couldn't understand why Elisha wasn't bothered about the hordes of enemy soldiers surrounding them. It looked like disaster, but Elisha could see horses and chariots of fire surrounding the enemy soldiers.

The same has been true for many other saints, including Paul and Silas, who sang at midnight in the Philippian jail, and Shadrach, Meshech, and Adednego, who calmly entered the fiery furnace.

When John Woolman, a Quaker missionary to American Indians, was faced with danger, he wrote, "I found my soul filled with comfort as I meditated on the love of God."

John Paton, missionary to South Sea Island natives, was surrounded by men seeking to assassinate him, but he wrote, "I never left without hearing, 'Lo, I am with you always.'"

How does it look for you today? Hopeless? Then take another look.

The wicked will not rule the godly, for then the godly might be forced to do wrong.
(Psalm 125:3 NLT)

THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN

The people have spoken. Confidentially, it will not be the first time the majority have made the wrong decision...Remember, they overwhelmingly crucified our Lord Jesus Christ. THAT was God's Perfect Will....a plan for the salvation of all who call upon the Name of Lord. A majority have elected Barack Obama; I cannot help but believe this is God's Permissive Will. Can these beloved United States of America be truly united in hope and purpose? Only God knows, and as always, He's allowing us to "do our thing" before He pronounces judgment.

I voted for McCain/Palin...not because they were white Americans...but because they come a lot closer to adhering to the Holy Bible in their platform. I cannot fathom how any committed Christian could vote for a team that supports murder of children in the womb and the marriage of gay/lesbian couples.

Alexis de Touqueville hit the nail squarely on the head when he wrote:"America is great because America is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great."

And Theodore Roosevelt stated firmly my belief: “We can have no "50-50" allegiance in this country. Either a man is an American and nothing else, or he is not an American at all.”

My new president was elected as an African-American. If he can drop the "African" and state that he is simply an American, there is HOPE. However, if the racist overtones of this election are not denounced, America is doomed to destruction from within.I shall do all within my power to prevent that occurrence. That "all within my power" consists of placing my faith and trust, not in President Obama, but in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob!

May God bless America!

Blessed Are The Poor In Spirit

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3).

How can it be blessed to be poor in spirit? Surely poverty and blessing are opposites? That is how the unbeliever and the carnal believer thinks because their concept of being blessed is associated with possessing things or with worldly forms of pleasure and happiness. Even some, who think they are spiritual, find it hard to make the connection between spiritual poverty and blessedness.

This verse does not deal with material poverty, but rather, spiritual poverty. And this is not a statement about God loving poor people but rather that those who are spiritually poor are blessed. But how can spiritual poverty be blessed – surely we are blessed when we are spiritually rich?

The answer to this dilemma lies in the truth that we cannot hold onto what the world offers, or what we have in the flesh, and to what the Lord offers at the same time. If you want the world’s happiness and blessings then you cannot have God’s happiness and blessedness. We have to choose what we want. Do we want temporal happiness or eternal happiness? Do we want the riches of this world or the eternal treasures that are stored up in heaven? Do we want the happiness that God alone can give or the fleeting emotional highs that we get from some kind of sensory pleasure and that soon comes crashing down again?

Only those who are spiritually poor are willing to look to the Lord for blessing while those who think they have it all worked out have no need for the blessedness God offers because they think they can manufacture their own blessings and happiness. The truth is that it is impossible to manufacture or achieve blessedness or happiness apart from the Lord. All blessings flow from Him and from Him alone, and man cannot be happy until he finds himself in the perfect will of God and until God fills that void within man that God alone can fill.

But there is a problem with this verse. It should really say: “blessed are those who recognize that they are poor in spirit”. You see, all of mankind is spiritually bankrupt – no one has anything to boast of and every human being is in desperate need of God’s help and blessings. But very few recognize their poverty and that’s the problem. Many Christians do not recognize their bankruptcy before God and think that they can still achieve blessedness on their own merits or through their own effort.

The church of Laodicea was one such church. They said “I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing” but Jesus said: “[you] do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked” (Revelation 3:17). These statements were made about both their financial and spiritual status. The church in Smyrna, on the other hand, recognized their poverty and Jesus declared “but you are rich” (Revelation 2:9).

Those who recognize their spiritual poverty sufficiently to approach the throne of grace for help are the ones upon whom the Lord pours His grace and blessing. James says “you do not have because you do not ask” (James 4:2). And Jesus said “Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full” (John 16:24). It’s as simple as that. As long as we feel we do not have a need, we do not ask and when we don’t ask, we don’t receive. But when we recognize our desperate need of the Lord, and we begin to ask, seek and knock then He is able to pour all His goodness, grace, peace and joy into our lives.

I have never understood why so few of us are able to recognize our need and why we all seem to feel we can go it on our own until the Lord sends some calamity our way before we cry out for help. I suppose the answer lies in our overestimation of our ability at controlling our own destiny and our ignorance of our own weakness. I once heard about a blind girl who was convinced that she was not blind but that the world was always dark! It’s amazing how the problem always lies outside of ourselves!

Paul discovered this truth when the truth dawned on him that the Lord’s “strength is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2Corinthians 12:10). Thus the spiritually poor are blessed because they have discovered that the Lord’s strength is far more powerful than their own frailty and that it is much more blessed to have Him work through them, than their own puny efforts.

The second reason the poor in spirit are blessed is because “theirs is the kingdom of heaven”. The Kingdom does not belong to the proud, self-sufficient and arrogant. Such are not part of, and will not enter, the Kingdom as the only way into the Kingdom is by faith in Jesus Christ (Ephesians 2:8). Those who do not recognize their poverty do not put their faith in Christ as their faith is in themselves and their own abilities. Only the spiritually poor and needy have any use for the wonderful grace of God and find the need to call upon Him.

The Lord does not hear the prayer of the self-sufficient even if they should call upon the Lord. “on this one will I look, on him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembles at my word” (Isaiah 66:2). The Kingdom does not belong to the righteous, religious, self-made, and self-sufficient – it only belongs to the poor in spirit.

Thirdly the poor in spirit are blessed because God walks with such “I dwell in the high and holy place, with him who has a contrite and humble spirit” (Isaiah 57:15). What a wonderful privilege to dwell with God in His high and holy place. Once again the special seats in His presence are not reserved for the mighty, noble and wise but for the poor in spirit. What wonderful grace!

“For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence” (1Corinthians 1:26-29).

[Anton Busch Ministries (formerly Plumbline Ministries)]