When to Give Thanks

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Series:

Leslie Basham: Do you remember salvation with a sense of wonder? Here is Nancy Leigh DeMoss.

Nancy DeMoss: My Dad was not a very emotional man. But when he would talk about where God found him as a young man, a rebel in his mid 20's and how God saved him, he would get weepy because he never got over the wonder of what it meant that God had saved him.

Leslie Basham: It's Thursday, November 21st. You are listening to Revive our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss. And we are celebrating Thanksgiving.

Now don't worry, we aren't playing the wrong program. And we haven't made a mistake on our calendar. We know that the holiday commonly called Thanksgiving is still a week away. But why wait. Today can be a Thanksgiving Day too. Here is Nancy.Nancy DeMoss

That's what was true of each of us. That's the condition we were born into. And then God in His great mercy and grace saw fit to save us, to redeem us, to purchase us out of sin, to deliver us, to send Jesus for us, to give us His Holy Spirit, to give us His Word, to give us His body and His people--to give us the hope and the promises of eternal life. It's unthinkable that we should be anything other than grateful.

Guilt, grace and gratitude--that's the Gospel. And we so often for some reason fall short on the gratitude part. I think we just need to be reminded, I know I do, of the grace of God and where God found us--and where we were apart from Him, and what a wonder it is that He would save us.

My Dad was not a very emotional man. But when he would talk about where God found him as a young man, a rebel in his mid 20's and how God saved him Friday, October 13, 1950, he would get weepy because he never got over the wonder of what it meant that God had saved him.

I don't ever want to get over the wonder. I think a grateful heart is the way to help keep the wonder. And keeping the wonder is a way to help keep a grateful heart.

We have been talking over the last several sessions about the attitude of gratitude--what it is, why it's important, reasons we have to be thankful, the characteristics of a grateful heart versus an ungrateful heart--and how to know which we have.

And then we talked in the last session about how we should give thanks: that we need to thank the Lord out loud, we need to speak our thanks (not just think it), that we thank Him with music, singing to the Lord with thanksgiving.

We thank Him with our prayers as the apostle Paul often did in the New Testament epistles. We talked about thanking God privately and about thanking Him publicly, but some of us are more comfortable with the private aspect of that than with the public aspect of that.

But it's a good thing in the congregation of the righteous to give thanks to the Lord, to remind each other of how great God is.

I can remember last Thanksgiving at the church I've been attending here in Little Rock. The night before Thanksgiving there was a special Thanksgiving eve service--an opportunity was opened up for people to just share out of the past year their testimony of God's faithfulness and God's greatness and what He had done for them.

And one after another man, woman, one little girl, some older people, some younger people, some who had known the Lord for years, some who had known the Lord just a short period, they came up to the microphone and just gave their personal testimony of what God had done for them over the past year.

And my heart was so encouraged as I listened to their testimonies from different walks of life, so many different life experiences over this past year. And yet I heard them in unison giving thanks to the Lord. And it just caused thanksgiving to well up in my own heart because those people were willing to come to a microphone and say, "God has been so good. I give Him thanks."

We want to talk today about not just the how of giving thanks but the when of giving thanks. When should we give thanks to the Lord? Now let me just start by saying, "All the time we should give thanks to the Lord." And we are going to talk about that.

But there are some particular times that we should give thanks to the Lord. And I want to point out several of those. First I think there are some special occasions when it's especially appropriate to give thanks to the Lord.

Holidays, for example, that word really came originally from two words: Holy days. So as we think about Thanksgiving, about Christmas, about some of the holy days on our church calendar, reformation day, the last day of October, some of these holy days that are intended to be opportunities for us to stop and think about our Christian faith and about what it means to us and what God had done for us, to stop and take stock and in a special way set aside time to give thanks to the Lord.

And I love taking time around holidays to give thanks to God as I reflect on His goodness. I love doing that on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.

In fact, for several years one of the great blessings of my year has been a special New Year's Eve service that we have held in my home. And we have families come together. They just bring snacks and just kind of potluck; put them on the table and we have children, teenagers and parents.

We have a great time of just fellowshipping and enjoying each other. And then we come together toward the close of the evening and have a time of praise and Thanksgiving. We give testimonies of what the Lord has done over the past year and His goodness. We read scriptures together.

We praise in and pray in the New Year. We praise God for the mercies He has shown us over the past year and for the faithfulness that we anticipate over the next year. And that has been such a precious time, special occasions for thanking the Lord.

In the Old Testament the Jews had their own Holidays. There were three times every year, for example, that all the Jewish males were to make a pilgrimage primarily for the purpose of thanking the Lord.

Two of those occasions were at the beginning and at the end of the harvest. So at the beginning of a harvest, they would offer up their first fruit of their harvest to the Lord and say, "Thank You, Lord, for what You have provided and for what we know You are going to provide."

And then at the end of the harvest, when all the grain and the wheat and the food provision had been gathered in, they would stop and take a time to reflect on God's goodness--to say, "Thank You, Lord, to offer up their tithes and their offerings and their thanksgiving to the Lord. Special times of the year, special times in our lives for offering thanks.

There are times in the Scripture and times in our own lives when we stop to give thanks to God at the completion of a task or an undertaking. Think about how when the Temple was built, the people had a wonderful Thanksgiving service.

And when the wall was rebuilt in Jerusalem after the seventy years of exile, the people stopped. They worked hard and long; then they stopped to say, "Thank You to the Lord, to praise Him. In fact there were people whose job it was to be thankers, to lead the people in thanksgiving. These were musicians, instrumentalists and singers and they helped in the offering of thanks to the Lord.

As we have undertakings in the course of our lives, it's a good thing to stop at the beginning and at the end to say, "Thank You, Lord, for what You are going to do. And thank You, Lord, for what You have done."

I remember when I built my home and at the end of that time we had a house dedication. We offered it to the Lord but we gave thanksgiving. At the end of the first year of recording Revive our Hearts, we had a special gathering. And we just gave thanks to the Lord for what He had done in giving birth to this ministry and for the people who had been a part of that.

Weddings and even funerals are occasions (when there are believers involved) for giving thanks. When my Dad went home to be with the Lord, we had a celebration service--a time of celebrating his life and God's goodness in giving that Dad and husband and friend to those of us who were present. So all of these different occasions provide opportunities to give thanks to the Lord.

But not only on special occasions, the Scripture says that His mercies are new to us every morning and that every day the Lord loads us down with benefits. So if He is gracing us and giving us gifts everyday, He's giving us new mercies everyday, doesn't it seem that our gratitude should be daily?

Every morning and every evening there were Levites in the Old Testament who were assigned to stand every morning to thank and to praise the Lord and likewise at evening, 1st Chronicles tells us. And then the Psalmist said "even in the middle of the night I will rise to give thanks to You" (Psalm 119:62). Three times everyday Daniel bowed and prayed and thanked the Lord.

Continually we are to give thanks to God as He blesses us continually. So Ephesians 5:20 says "giving thanks always for all things" and in 1 Thessalonians 1:2, Paul says, "We give thanks to God always for you all."

And Hebrews chapter 13:15 "Let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name. "Continually," Psalms chapter 34 "I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth."

You know that doesn't mean that things are always going well at all times from our human vantage point. It doesn't mean that circumstances are always to our liking, are always comfortable or easy or convenient. The Psalmist said, "As an act of my will, I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise will continually be in my mouth."

And you know what, it's not just in this life. But Psalm 30:12 says, "O Lord my God, I will give thanks to You forever," forever. This is what we will be doing for all eternity, giving thanks, worshipping, honoring the One who has poured such grace into our lives.

So thanksgiving is not just a day in the year, not just an event in the year. And it's good to have those special occasions when we do stop and in a conscious way give thanks. But you know, thanksgiving really should be thanks living--a way of life, day in; day out, morning, noon and night continually, forever giving thanks to the Lord.Leslie Basham:

The booklet will take you through scriptures on gratefulness and will offer questions and exercises to help you discover ways you can express thanks.

The booklet comes with a set of note cards so you can put your thankfulness into action and encourage others.

Why don't you call us and ask for the booklet The Attitude of Gratitude. It's available for a $7 suggested donation. Just call 1-800-569-5959 or visit ReviveOurHearts.com.

We are so grateful for the notes and e-mails we receive offering words of encouragement and telling us how God is using the Revive our Hearts radio ministry in so many lives. We would love to hear from you too.  And would you consider including a donation when you write? We need your support.

Now if you are having a hard time coming up with a list of things to be thankful for, join us tomorrow and have pen and paper near by. Now again, here is Nancy.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Father, Your mercies and Your grace to us never cease. Morning by morning, they are new. Day after day, You load us with benefits. So I pray that our gratitude might ever and daily and continually forever spring forth. From grateful hearts may our lips give thanks to You. I pray in Jesus' name with thanksgiving. Amen.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss is a ministry partnership of Life Action Ministries.

Nancy DeMoss will be right back. But we want to help you give thanks to the Lord like Nancy was just talking about. Nancy has written a booklet called The Attitude of Gratitude which you can use in your personal Bible study to learn more about becoming a thankful person.: You know, I think that an unthankful Christian is really a contradiction. There shouldn't be any such thing when you think about it. We were guilty, condemned sinners--no relationship with God--cut off from Him, no hope.

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