This week in America is Thanksgiving. For some people, Thanksgiving means food and football. For others it means spending time with family and friends. The real reason we celebrate Thanksgiving is to remember how giving the Native Americans were to the Pilgrims and saving them from death due to starvation. Then the descendants of Pilgrims who were saved by Native Americans, rejected the Native Americans, took their land and their sometimes their lives. Not exactly the Thanksgiving theme portrayed in a Norman Rockwell painting.
This scenario has parallels to how I’ve treated God. I remember when I rededicated my life to God. The re-dedication came around my first year of marriage. It was during a tough time of my life. I was incredibly sad and lonely in a new city with a husband who traveled 3 to 4 weeks out of every month. I was working at a job where the common theme was to choose unethical over ethical. My relationship with God was sketchy at best.
I remember calling my mom in tears complaining about how sad and lonely my life was. I was expecting sympathy and a shoulder to cry on, instead the first thing my mom said to me was, “When is the last time you attended church?” This took me by surprise. It wasn’t the sympathy I craved, instead I was challenged to surrender my life and my circumstances to God.
I wish I could say I immediately picked up the phone and started calling around looking for a church that met my beliefs and biblical values. Instead of calling, I attended one church after another looking for the right fit. It took me quite a while to find a church to match my needs. But when I did find the right fit, it made me realize my loneliness stemmed from not having a meaningful relationship with God.
This wasn’t a religious obligation where I checked the church box on Sunday and then did what I wanted the rest of the week. It became a necessary part of my day to spend time with God to cure my loneliness, God was saving me from death and starvation of my soul, like the Pilgrims were saved by the Native Americans before and during the first Thanksgiving. God continues to give me reasons to be thankful. I challenge you to use this Thanksgiving to keep the giving in Thanksgiving. Here are three ways God puts the giving back in Thanksgiving.
God freely gives us the ability to choose a relationship with Him or to reject it. The choice is ours. God rejects no one. In the past, I’ve been the one to turn my back on Him, only to turn around and see Him waiting for me to return with open arms. God wants us to know Him and He is at work in everyone’s life. In Acts 17:27, (NIV) it says, “So that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us.” I challenge you, if you’ve strayed from God, turn back to Him and choose a relationship with Him.
God freely gives us forgiveness. More than once in my life I’ve strayed from God thinking I was wiser and had better timing than Him, but when I’ve returned to God, not only was He there with open arms, but with an abundance of forgiveness. We have all sinned. There is no getting around it. According to Romans 3:23 (NIV) “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” We desperately need the forgiveness which God gives. Is there forgiveness you need to ask for from God first and then those around you? Or is there forgiveness you need to extend to someone? I challenge you to accept and/or freely give the forgiveness God first gave us.
God freely gives us love. Nothing we do can earn us this love. We need to relate to God by what He did for us, rather than what we can do for Him. When we begin to tell God all we’ve done for Him, it no longer becomes about the sacrifice of the cross, but about our works to earn the cross. The Bible says in Ephesians 2: 8-9, (NIV) “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.” I challenge you to examine whether you are working for God’s love or only working because of God’s love.
God is the ultimate giver. By using these three challenges, we can keep the giving in Thanksgiving. Please share in the comments if there are ways you see God as a giver in your life.