Sunday, November 15, 2009

The True Meaning of Thanksgiving

Hello again everyone and welcome in the name of Jesus Christ.

  Well Thanksgiving is coming up pretty quick. Time to be thankful that we can get a couple of days off of school or work, and that we can eat like pigs for a day.... right? Although those three things aren't too bad, Thanksgiving is so much more. The following two paragraphs are an excerpt from a website I found when researching the true meaning of thanksgiving (there is a link at the end).

  On October 3, 1863, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed, by Act of Congress, an annual National Day of Thanksgiving "on the last Thursday of November, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens." In this Thanksgiving proclamation, our 16th President says that it is…



  "…announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations are blessed whose God is the Lord… But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, by the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own… It has seemed to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people…"
 http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/ednkc002.html 

  I could not agree more President Lincoln. Thanksgiving should be a time for all Americans to remember to give credit where credit is due. Who has brought us this far? Who made this such a great nation? Was it Mcdonald's or Starbuck's? Was it Ford or GM? Was it inventions like toilet paper or bubble gum or the airplane or artificial hearts? Although these companies and inventions are things we can be proud of, there is still something bigger.

  Think about this. If my parents wire me some money to help me pay a month's rent because I am behind on bills, who is more important to thank? The company that wired the money and earned a profit while doing it, or my parents who graciously sent my sorry butt the money in the first place even if I may not have deserved it? I will give credit where credit is due. I will thank my parents. I'm not saying it is wrong to thank the person behind the counter who handed me the money, but I am saying that I had better thank my parents lest they feel uninclined to help me in the future.

  So, who should we thank this Thanksgiving for our nation that we live in, for our jobs, for our families, for our lives and for our REDEMPTION!? It is the one true God in heaven our Father. Now, I am not implying that we should just forget about the people in our lives who make life better, such as the guy behind the counter at Western Union. But we should go a step further and thank God for those people as well.

  If President Lincoln was right back then, how much more right is he now? We as a nation have lost sight of the true meaning of Thanksgiving. No wonder our nation has struggled to prosper as it once did. We are forgetting as a nation who the one true God is. We are so wrapped up in how WE can fix this and how our GOVERNMENT can fix that, that we have forgotten that it is God who is the answer and not our own abilities. The answer is simple. Thank God for the wonderful nation He gave our forefathers this Thanksgiving, and pray that He will fix it for us.

  I know that this is a small blog and not many people read this, but it is still my earnest prayer that all Americans can some day soon unite and humble ourselves in giving our nation back to God so that He can lead us, and not twisted politicians.

  Speaking of twisted politicians, this reminds me of a verse we read today in fellowship. It is 1 Timothy 2:1-2. "I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; for kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty." So we should give thanks to God for our President and others in authority (even if we do not agree with them) so that we can lead peacable lives. It would be a great benefit to our nation also to pray for all of those in authority, that they can make wise decisions and look to God for that wisdom. Much love and God Bless all of you in the name of our Saviour, God's only begotten Son, Jesus Christ.

Monday, November 9, 2009

Verse of the Week

Hello again and welcome in the name of Jesus Christ!

I would like to take a moment and offer a verse to think about for this week.....

Philippians 4:6-7 "Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God: and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guide your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ."

Isn't that an amazing couple of verses! I italicized "with thanksgiving" because this part of the verse is a great reminder to thank God for all He has done when we pray. It is very important that we give God all of the credit for the wonderful things He has done for mankind and for what He has done for each of us individually.

Of course, I cannot forget the topic of the passage. "Be anxious for nothing" but pray and give thanks and "the peace of God" will guide our "hearts and minds through Jesus Christ". If we are nervous, scared or frightened, our God in heaven will give us peace and comfort through His Son Jesus Christ. All we have to do is pray and believe in this promise from God, believe that He will take our burdens, fears and insecurities and conquer them for us. We know this because it is written in John 16:33: "These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." - Jesus Christ

So pray, give thanks, be of good cheer and have a great week! God Bless you all!

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Want to listen to our fellowship?

Hello again. Just trying to get some more resources on this page. If any of you are interested you are more than welcome to follow this link to CBS Herald and listen to archived fellowships as well as a live stream every Sunday morning at 10:30 CST. Take care!

Sunday Morning Fellowship

Welcome! Fellowship this morning as always was an absolute blessing and I am very thankful to be able to share what I learned with you.

Today we learned about how God sees us. We began in Deuteronomy 34 where Moses, after a long life of 120 years, died without losing any of his sight and without even looking old. He had served God the best he could and accomplished much. Not only because he was a great man of God, but mostly because God saw what was in his heart and gave him great abilities to perform the tasks that God asked of him.

In the next book, the book of Joshua, Joshua is "handed the torch" so to speak. God gives him the huge responsibility of leading the children of Israel across the River Jordan and into the land which God had given them. This must have seemed like an insurmountable task! Just  imagine, your mentor and leader is dead and now God is asking you to finish his work. Are there tasks in your life that seem too big, yet God is asking you to accomplish them anyway? More on that later.

Another similar account comes earlier, before Moses' death, in the book of Exodus (Exodus 3:1-11). When God comes to Moses, charging him with the task of bringing the children of Israel out of Egypt. Now Moses, seeing himself through his own eyes, through the eyes of our five-senses world that so often discourages us, is immediately inquisitive as to how a simple man such as himself is going to accomplish this seemingly impossible task. However, God being the amazing God that He is, assures Moses that He will guide Moses and that He will never let him down. Apparently, God saw Moses as being bigger than he thought himself to be. God saw Moses' heart. Even though Moses did not believe that he could perform the task, God saw that he could and convinced him otherwise. Does God not see us the same way? We have something in us that was not even available in Moses' day, and that is Holy Spirit. Are we not just as capable as Moses was in carrying out the tasks that God asks of us?

Knowing this, we jumped forward to II Corinthians 12:7-10. Paul, through inspiration of God, tells us that by ourselves indeed we are weak, but having God in our lives through Christ we are much more. Paul even goes further to say that he even takes pleasure in infirmities, reproaches and needs so that he can glorify Christ when he overcomes these adversities and experiences deliverance through Him.

Next we looked at I John 4:16-18 where we learn that we must be bold in knowing God's love, for God's love is perfect and knowing that love gives us boldness in the day of judgment.God's love never fails us, it gives us strength in times where we would otherwise fail. With God's perfect love, anything is possible.

So what did I take from this teaching? We all have times in life where we are asked to perform tasks that seem bigger than us. There are times when these tasks are brought to us by God, and there are times when these tasks are brought upon us by ourselves or the world. It is when God is asking us to perform these seemingly insurmountable tasks that we CAN rise to the occasion knowing that God will not let us fail if we only believe in His love. We must believe that God will help us rise to the occasion when He asks us to. It is important that we are able to discern however when it is God asking us to rise to the occasion. Otherwise believing will not help because God is the prime mover of our believing.We respond to God's good Will for us, we do not dictate what God does for us. So we should learn to listen to God's still small voice, and I believe that we will quickly learn that we are capable of so much more than what the world out there tells us! God Bless!

The Sky is the Limit!

Hello all and welcome in the name of Jesus Christ! I just wanted to share with you how exciting this new venture is for me and how I plan on conducting this blog. I am a believer. I study God's Word and go to fellowship three times a week with my family in Christ. The last year and a half has been AMAZING since I have found a fellowship of believers that truly believe in learning about the Bible the right way, a way that makes it simple yet complete.

My intentions here on this blog (bear with me now this is my first attempt) are to reach out to those of you searching for answers, and spreading the Gospel of God's Grace, Mercy and Love. I am not here to try and persuade you into any certain denomination (we are non-denominational). I am here to connect with all of you through God's Word.

How this is going to work is that at least twice a week (I have not yet decided which days but I will keep you posted) I am going to report on this blog the things we have learned in our fellowship. I will post, and I invite anyone to make comments or add questions. I will reply the best I can. I do not claim to know everything about the Bible (as it is inexhaustible) so I am welcoming input from anyone who would like to share some info with myself and the other readers. As the blog develops I may add or change some things around but it will always be about God! Well, I have to head over to my fellowship now so God Bless!