God gives good gifts to us. In fact, every good gift comes from God (James 1:17).
We misuse God’s good gifts. The Bible actually has a word for the twisting of the good—“iniquity.” God does not prevent the squandering or evil use of his good gifts.
God continues to give to us despite our misuse of his good gifts. In fact, we are surrounded every day by the good gifts of God who provides all things for us to enjoy.
I cannot fathom this amazing grace of God though I experience it every day. I “wonder how he could love me, a sinner, condemned, unclean” (from the hymn “I Stand Amazed in the Presence” by Charles Gabriel).
I have discovered this kind of undeserved love to be the greatest and most powerful force in my life. God sends his refreshing rain on the just and on the unjust, as Jesus said. This truth about God compels us to love our enemies and do good even to those who do evil toward us (Matthew 5:45). In fact, the good giving of God to unjust people is a core teaching of Christ and the Bible.
Sometimes I imagine myself a deserving recipient of God’s amazing grace, and I sense my own generosity withering like paper in a furnace of pride. Those in need around me I imagine as less deserving than myself. I find no good reason to transfer my hard-earned and well-deserved resources to those around me with such glaring moral failings.
I want to follow in the footsteps of the divine Giver, but I hesitate in fear that my own good gifts will be wasted or misused. Acts of charity sometimes appear to be counter-productive. How can I give in this environment of uncertainty and sin?
Love is tough as well as tender. All parents experience this truth. All human giving occurs from one needy person to the other. The needs of the giver may skew the giving so that it harms rather than helps. This is no fault of love. This is just more evidence of the caregiver’s limitations and needs.
The gift of good intention may be misused through the moral failings or limited understanding of the recipient. No caregiver can be absolutely certain that their expression of love will not be twisted for some evil purpose.
We do not escape this potential moral failure by giving to institutions. Individuals and institutions alike are susceptible to the temptations of greed and sloth.
I myself am comforted by the moral accountability of the recipients of charity. The giver of the gift is a moral partner with the recipient. I feel both sides of this responsibility as the pastor of my church. I will give an account on judgment day of my own generosity or lack thereof. I will also give an account of how I used the gifts of others.
The act of charity involves two parties, and each has their own unique opportunity and responsibility. Neither one can be held morally accountable for the other.
The closer the gift is to my own hand and eyes the more likely I am to evaluate correctly the impact of my gift. If I give my money where my hands are working, I know with some measure of comfort what my gift will do. We encourage our working volunteers to support with their money what they support with their time and energy.
Sometimes we feel compelled to respond to urgent needs far away. But we should always request—and even require—minimal financial accountability from those institutions we support including budgets, financial statements, and financial endorsement by watchdog groups (e.g., the seal of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability).
The loving gift is not minimized by asking hard questions about its use—it is affirmed and enlarged. Resources are limited. Therefore we are obliged to evaluate carefully the direction of our giving in order that we may do the most good with what we have to give.
May this holiday season find us generous of heart, active with helping hands, and wise in our loving gifts to those in need.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Monday, November 21, 2011
Thank You is Something You Say
I worked as a high schooler on several turkey farms in central Texas. In the 1970s farmers in Mills County raised hundreds of thousands of turkeys mainly for the eggs. They shipped those eggs all over the world.
Sometimes a turkey would be injured, and the owner would want to cull it out of the flock. On one such occasion, the owner suggested that I kill a turkey with a stick and take it home to my family for Thanksgiving. I was eager to do so. I grabbed a stick about six feet long, ran after the turkey, and took a big swing, breaking the turkey’s neck. But then I realized, somehow, that I had taken too big a swath, for there were two turkeys down, killed instantly by my single blow. I felt terrible and wondered what was about to happen. The owner was amused rather than upset. Knowing the size of my family, he suggested that I take two turkeys home for thanksgiving. Is it correct to say that the Lord provided abundantly for our Thanksgiving that year?
God gave a calendar of events to his people in Leviticus 23. He scheduled seven events annually for his people. They are called “feasts.” These seven feasts are celebrations of the bounty and goodness of God. God invites his people to be his guests at the feasts.
My thanksgiving is threatened by anxiety and fear. It’s not that I am ungrateful. It is, rather, that I have no emotional energy left for gratitude because fear consumes it all. I am grateful for what I have but fearful that I will lose it.
My thanksgiving is also threatened by forgetfulness. I too often forget the grace of God in which I stand. When I overlook grace, I also overlook gratitude.
These observations are intended to help preserve and cultivate the spirit of gratitude:
First, thanksgiving is something you do: “Enter into his gates with thanksgiving” (Psalm 100:4). Thanksgiving was an event in the OT. It was an activity that humans engaged in—the giving of thanks. Jesus gave thanks over and over again on many different occasions including the night in which he was betrayed.
Among the Jews, the table blessing is always a blessing of God rather than of the food. It is not so much, "Bless this food," but "Blessed be God who gave this food." The little prayer, "God is great, God is good. Let us thank Him for our food" captures the essence of the Jewish table blessing and the blessing as Jesus spoke it.
We are commanded to give thanks. Perhaps your situation is very bleak and you feel that you cannot give thanks. I suggest you set aside your feelings for a moment. Just do it. Do it in obedience. Give thanks to God. Think of things to say thank you for. Deliberately, meditatively give thanks. Feelings follow obedience in this matter of thanksgiving, not the other way around.
And thankful is something you are: “Be thankful unto him” (Psalm 100:4).
Those first pilgrims in Plymouth Colony almost had a day of mourning in 1621. They had suffered through a terrible winter and lost many of their friends and family members. Their little village was surrounded by the graves of children and parents and grandparents who had not survived. Mourning seemed appropriate. Instead, though, they turned their hearts to gratitude and celebrated a day of thanksgiving.
The first time that the Thanksgiving holiday was uniformly celebrated throughout these United States was in 1863 by presidential proclamation. The country could easily have observed a day of mourning then as well, given the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans during the War Between the States.
Every day can be a day of mourning or a day of gratitude. Perhaps a little of both is mixed into every day. But we must decide if we are going to receive each day as a gift or as a burden. Will we focus upon our loss or upon our blessings? It is up to us.
The Lord’s Supper could have been a meal of mourning. It is about the shed blood and broken body of our Lord. Instead, though, it is called the “cup of thanksgiving” which we drink, the Eucharist, which means “thanksgiving.”
Gratitude is a sign of spiritual health.An ungrateful spirit is a sure sign of spiritual sickness. Note these words of the Apostle Paul from Romans 1:21: For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.
Futility is the companion of the ungrateful spirit. You will never know such a downward spiral until you sink into self-pity and miserable contemplation. That sort of thinking is the true bottomless pit.
Darkness is the companion of the ungrateful spirit. Their foolish hearts were darkened when they refused to give thanks. Gratitude is the declaration that life is a gift to be received with thanksgiving. Darkness settles on the soul which cannot see life as a divine gift.
My father had a farm on Hogg Creek near Crawford, Texas, not far from the ranch of President Bush. One evening I was sitting in a deer stand with my rifle when a flock of buzzards came in and landed high up in the trees above me. There were dozens of the nasty birds, and I was disgusted with them.
Just before dark, though, a flock of wild turkeys came noisily through the woods. They decided that they liked these trees, too, and began to flap their way into the lower branches and limbs. They startled the buzzards, which took flight and found another perch for the night. Maybe your Thanksgiving turkey will run off the buzzards!
One more observation about Thanksgiving:
Thank you is something you say: “for the Lord is good...” (Psalm 100:5). God deserves to be thanked out loud.
The spoken “thank you” touches the speaker. Jesus said “thank you” so often to his father in Heaven, as noted in the Gospels. Think of the thousands of times that Jesus said thank you that are not recorded. It was a habit of his life to speak his thankfulness to God.
I find that my spoken words are important to my own well-being. Sometimes I have to talk to myself. The spoken word has a power to touch and change even the one who speaks.
The spoken word also touches the hearers. Others about you will be touched and encouraged by your verbalization of gratitude. This is one reason why public prayer is so important. The public prayers of Jesus were full of thanksgiving. Offer a public prayer of gratitude at your family gathering this year. Do not lunge into the meal without first pausing and acknowledging the great God who has given every good thing to us.
You will never know the full impact of your prayers of gratitude upon the hearts of your children. Children are inclined to be grateful and to offer their prayers without inhibition unto God. Yet when they hear your gratitude they learn that God is glorious and that all of our lives we are dependent upon him. They learn the proper posture for living.
So speak out loud that “thank you” to God this Thanksgiving. It will bless you and your family and friends. And it will bless the Eternal God who made all things for us to enjoy.
Sometimes a turkey would be injured, and the owner would want to cull it out of the flock. On one such occasion, the owner suggested that I kill a turkey with a stick and take it home to my family for Thanksgiving. I was eager to do so. I grabbed a stick about six feet long, ran after the turkey, and took a big swing, breaking the turkey’s neck. But then I realized, somehow, that I had taken too big a swath, for there were two turkeys down, killed instantly by my single blow. I felt terrible and wondered what was about to happen. The owner was amused rather than upset. Knowing the size of my family, he suggested that I take two turkeys home for thanksgiving. Is it correct to say that the Lord provided abundantly for our Thanksgiving that year?
God gave a calendar of events to his people in Leviticus 23. He scheduled seven events annually for his people. They are called “feasts.” These seven feasts are celebrations of the bounty and goodness of God. God invites his people to be his guests at the feasts.
My thanksgiving is threatened by anxiety and fear. It’s not that I am ungrateful. It is, rather, that I have no emotional energy left for gratitude because fear consumes it all. I am grateful for what I have but fearful that I will lose it.
My thanksgiving is also threatened by forgetfulness. I too often forget the grace of God in which I stand. When I overlook grace, I also overlook gratitude.
These observations are intended to help preserve and cultivate the spirit of gratitude:
First, thanksgiving is something you do: “Enter into his gates with thanksgiving” (Psalm 100:4). Thanksgiving was an event in the OT. It was an activity that humans engaged in—the giving of thanks. Jesus gave thanks over and over again on many different occasions including the night in which he was betrayed.
Among the Jews, the table blessing is always a blessing of God rather than of the food. It is not so much, "Bless this food," but "Blessed be God who gave this food." The little prayer, "God is great, God is good. Let us thank Him for our food" captures the essence of the Jewish table blessing and the blessing as Jesus spoke it.
We are commanded to give thanks. Perhaps your situation is very bleak and you feel that you cannot give thanks. I suggest you set aside your feelings for a moment. Just do it. Do it in obedience. Give thanks to God. Think of things to say thank you for. Deliberately, meditatively give thanks. Feelings follow obedience in this matter of thanksgiving, not the other way around.
And thankful is something you are: “Be thankful unto him” (Psalm 100:4).
Those first pilgrims in Plymouth Colony almost had a day of mourning in 1621. They had suffered through a terrible winter and lost many of their friends and family members. Their little village was surrounded by the graves of children and parents and grandparents who had not survived. Mourning seemed appropriate. Instead, though, they turned their hearts to gratitude and celebrated a day of thanksgiving.
The first time that the Thanksgiving holiday was uniformly celebrated throughout these United States was in 1863 by presidential proclamation. The country could easily have observed a day of mourning then as well, given the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans during the War Between the States.
Every day can be a day of mourning or a day of gratitude. Perhaps a little of both is mixed into every day. But we must decide if we are going to receive each day as a gift or as a burden. Will we focus upon our loss or upon our blessings? It is up to us.
The Lord’s Supper could have been a meal of mourning. It is about the shed blood and broken body of our Lord. Instead, though, it is called the “cup of thanksgiving” which we drink, the Eucharist, which means “thanksgiving.”
Gratitude is a sign of spiritual health.An ungrateful spirit is a sure sign of spiritual sickness. Note these words of the Apostle Paul from Romans 1:21: For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.
Futility is the companion of the ungrateful spirit. You will never know such a downward spiral until you sink into self-pity and miserable contemplation. That sort of thinking is the true bottomless pit.
Darkness is the companion of the ungrateful spirit. Their foolish hearts were darkened when they refused to give thanks. Gratitude is the declaration that life is a gift to be received with thanksgiving. Darkness settles on the soul which cannot see life as a divine gift.
My father had a farm on Hogg Creek near Crawford, Texas, not far from the ranch of President Bush. One evening I was sitting in a deer stand with my rifle when a flock of buzzards came in and landed high up in the trees above me. There were dozens of the nasty birds, and I was disgusted with them.
Just before dark, though, a flock of wild turkeys came noisily through the woods. They decided that they liked these trees, too, and began to flap their way into the lower branches and limbs. They startled the buzzards, which took flight and found another perch for the night. Maybe your Thanksgiving turkey will run off the buzzards!
One more observation about Thanksgiving:
Thank you is something you say: “for the Lord is good...” (Psalm 100:5). God deserves to be thanked out loud.
The spoken “thank you” touches the speaker. Jesus said “thank you” so often to his father in Heaven, as noted in the Gospels. Think of the thousands of times that Jesus said thank you that are not recorded. It was a habit of his life to speak his thankfulness to God.
I find that my spoken words are important to my own well-being. Sometimes I have to talk to myself. The spoken word has a power to touch and change even the one who speaks.
The spoken word also touches the hearers. Others about you will be touched and encouraged by your verbalization of gratitude. This is one reason why public prayer is so important. The public prayers of Jesus were full of thanksgiving. Offer a public prayer of gratitude at your family gathering this year. Do not lunge into the meal without first pausing and acknowledging the great God who has given every good thing to us.
You will never know the full impact of your prayers of gratitude upon the hearts of your children. Children are inclined to be grateful and to offer their prayers without inhibition unto God. Yet when they hear your gratitude they learn that God is glorious and that all of our lives we are dependent upon him. They learn the proper posture for living.
So speak out loud that “thank you” to God this Thanksgiving. It will bless you and your family and friends. And it will bless the Eternal God who made all things for us to enjoy.
Monday, November 14, 2011
Give Thanks with a Grateful Heart
Thanksgiving is the only official holiday which we celebrate which is strictly of Christian origin. It has been from its beginning a day of turning to God and giving thanks for his goodness.
Gratitude is a central Christian virtue, indispensable for those who wish to be spiritually and emotionally healthy. We cultivate gratitude on a daily basis by a consciousness of God’s grace extended to us without limit. The reality of God’s forgiveness and bountiful provision for our eternal future is reason enough to give thanks “in all circumstances” (1 Thessalonians 5:18).
The holiday itself prompts us to seek and follow the will of God. Giving thanks is “God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:18). The family and friends will enjoy a special sense of God’s presence in their group and in their lives as they give thanks to God for his wonderful blessings.
I suggest that you treat Thanksgiving as a celebration of the goodness and bounty of God--as a Harvest Celebration, so to speak. This is practice of long-standing among the people of God. You can do this in your gathering of friends and family in several ways:
First, make the reading of Scripture a part of the family gathering. I suggest reading one or more of these passages: Psalm 100; I Chron. 16:7 12, 23 36; Psalm 105:1 7; Psalm 118:19 29; Psalm 136:1 9; I Thess. 5:12 24; and Phil. 4:4 13.
Second, rehearse the wonderful works of God within your own family. Give testimonies of God's goodness around the table.
Third, sing around the table a song of thanksgiving such as the Doxology, Count Your Blessings, We Gather Together, Give Thanks with a Grateful Heart, or Thank you, Lord, for Saving My Soul. If your group will not sing, try quoting the Doxology or another familiar hymn.
Fourth, make much of the bounty upon the table, acknowledging it as a gift from God. Millions of people in our world have never seen such a feast as you will enjoy this Thanksgiving season.
Fifth, consider making a special offering to the Lord your God in connection with Thanksgiving as a concrete expression of your praise and gratitude.
Finally, the spirit of this holiday requires prayer. When your family and friends gather for a feast, someone in the group should offer a prayer of thanksgiving. While this may be a little unusual for your group, it will likely be well-received by all present on this day of gratitude.
This celebration of God’s goodness will lift our spirits, turn our thoughts heavenward, and fight back the powers of darkness that always seek to creep into our families and our own hearts. We do well by everyone around when we give thanks.
Gratitude is a central Christian virtue, indispensable for those who wish to be spiritually and emotionally healthy. We cultivate gratitude on a daily basis by a consciousness of God’s grace extended to us without limit. The reality of God’s forgiveness and bountiful provision for our eternal future is reason enough to give thanks “in all circumstances” (1 Thessalonians 5:18).
The holiday itself prompts us to seek and follow the will of God. Giving thanks is “God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:18). The family and friends will enjoy a special sense of God’s presence in their group and in their lives as they give thanks to God for his wonderful blessings.
I suggest that you treat Thanksgiving as a celebration of the goodness and bounty of God--as a Harvest Celebration, so to speak. This is practice of long-standing among the people of God. You can do this in your gathering of friends and family in several ways:
First, make the reading of Scripture a part of the family gathering. I suggest reading one or more of these passages: Psalm 100; I Chron. 16:7 12, 23 36; Psalm 105:1 7; Psalm 118:19 29; Psalm 136:1 9; I Thess. 5:12 24; and Phil. 4:4 13.
Second, rehearse the wonderful works of God within your own family. Give testimonies of God's goodness around the table.
Third, sing around the table a song of thanksgiving such as the Doxology, Count Your Blessings, We Gather Together, Give Thanks with a Grateful Heart, or Thank you, Lord, for Saving My Soul. If your group will not sing, try quoting the Doxology or another familiar hymn.
Fourth, make much of the bounty upon the table, acknowledging it as a gift from God. Millions of people in our world have never seen such a feast as you will enjoy this Thanksgiving season.
Fifth, consider making a special offering to the Lord your God in connection with Thanksgiving as a concrete expression of your praise and gratitude.
Finally, the spirit of this holiday requires prayer. When your family and friends gather for a feast, someone in the group should offer a prayer of thanksgiving. While this may be a little unusual for your group, it will likely be well-received by all present on this day of gratitude.
This celebration of God’s goodness will lift our spirits, turn our thoughts heavenward, and fight back the powers of darkness that always seek to creep into our families and our own hearts. We do well by everyone around when we give thanks.
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