For those outside America, today is Thanksgiving here. Thanksgiving was originally designed as a public holiday where we take the time to God for our blessings and for the daily protection God provides for us all. Don’t believe me read how George Washington’s originally commemorated this day.
Anyway, most of the posts here are designed to encourage and edify others, but since it is thanksgiving we would like to take this post and focus more on ourselves and the blessings God has giving us. Hopefully this will also encourage you to look at the God given blessings in our life as well.
First of all we are thankful today for Jesus that died for our sins. All of the other stuff is just worldly noise compared to the power, peace, love, and forgiveness that can and is found in Christ death on the cross for each of us individually.
Now for a list of some of the other things we are thankful for (in no particular order)
The health of our families
The freedoms / rights we have living in America
The opportunities we have living in America
Our homes that are warm and dry
Our pantries that are full and stocked
Our stomachs which are satisfied.
Our local churches / our Sunday school classes / our local pastors
Our close friends
Our spouses or significant others
The “kids” that roam our backyard
Our online friends that help support and encourage this site / ministry
Our online visitors that value our site enough to spend some of their time looking at what we do here.
The amazing life that we get to and have lead
Our parents that let us become who were are today
Our jobs, even when they are frustrating
Our cars that run
The amount of free time we have to choose how to help others with
The founding fathers for setting this nation in motion
Our ancestors for working so hard to give us such a great nation
Soldiers in harms way around the world that are standing in the gap to keep our freedoms
and us free.
That the “big” problems that we have would not be problems in most of the world
Missionaries that are carrying the message to Christ to the ends of the earth
Now this is just a partial list of all that we have been blessed with. Since you are reading this we can assume you are fairly well blessed as well.
If you are reading this you obviously live in a nice enough place where the Internet is available, and it is very likely you have a decently good life due to the fact that you are using (or own) a computer. Our point is that no matter your state at the moment (which could be bad admittedly) if you list all the good things in your life they will likely out number the bad.
The problem many of us have is that we allow a few bad things, or the rough times, to over shadow all the good and all the blessings we have in our life. The Bible is clear that it rains on the just and the unjust, but the Bible is also clear that God blesses all of His creation, even the members that reject Him. How great is the love of God that He pours out blessings on those that rejecting as a means of showing His love to all.
Sure we all have some rough times, some tough times, some bad times, some low times, some down times, etc, but if you will / can take a step back and look at all the good that is also in your world then you will likely find many more good things then bad.
Today we encourage you to really count your blessings and be thankful today, weather you are in the US and celebrating Thanksgiving or not, and remember that there are so many more good things in your life then bad and we should all rejoice in the blessings God has sent our way.
