~The Mission Foundation~

The Mission Foundation Letter

Happy Thanksgiving, friends!

Today some of you are traveling while others are preparing to host friends and family. Tomorrow all of you (with the exception of our friends in other countries) will be gathering around a table for a special time of giving thanks. Someone will be asked to say a prayer of thanksgiving, and everyone will proceed to enjoy the abundance God has provided. Hopefully, as we eat and drink, we will do so in a state of emotional and mental connectedness with our God Who is with us, our God who is watching, listening, and ever working within us and around us. May we be counted among those who are truly givers of thanks!

Genuine thanksgiving is one of the primary manifestations of our redemption. When we fell into sin against God in the Garden of Eden, Paul says that we “did not honor him as God, or give thanks.” We became ungrateful creatures! We refused to give thanks to our God Who had given us our very existence and had provided so perfectly for us. But Paul says that “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Jesus suffered the death that we ungrateful men and women deserved so that we might be forgiven and that we might be restored from our ingratitude and become a part of a new community that is alive with ongoing, loving communication with our dear Heavenly Father!

How do we cultivate this new spirit of thanksgiving that we have received by the grace of our Redeemer? There are of course a number of things that might be mentioned, but may I suggest two.

First, prolonged meditation on the Psalms. Meditating on the Psalms in stillness before the Lord will energize your soul. As you quietly ponder words of the psalms, you will be filled with desire to give thanks to God. You will also be enabled to express your thanksgiving by taking up the language of the Psalms on your own lips. In the Psalms, the Lord has blessed us with a means of communicating our gratitude to Him in ways that are beautiful and are full of meaning. This beauty of expression will bring joy to your heart and will of course be a delight to God as you pray in private and when you pray with others (for example tomorrow in your season of prayer before your meal.) Your meditations on the Psalms will also guide your heart into thanksgiving that is much broader in its content as you thank God for the many, many physical, emotional, mental, social, and spiritual blessings that He has showered on you. As I write this note to you, I give thanks to God for the Psalms!

Then secondly, I think of the hymn-writer’s words, “Count your many blessings; name them one by one.” In your prayers tonight or tomorrow morning, how long will you name your blessings before God? How long could you? May I suggest that you try doing what the hymn writer said. Just start counting them out before the Lord. When you kneel, sit, or stand before Him, at first you will find that you are able to name your blessings rapidly one after another. But at some point those flowing prayers of thanksgiving will slow to something of a trickle and at last give way to silence. But if you will wait and think and listen, suddenly your heart will begin to recall other blessings, and sometimes you will realize that there are whole categories of blessing for which you had not previously been careful to regularly give thanks. So let’s count our blessings out before the Lord.

Well, I hope that you will find these two suggestions to be helpful. I also hope and pray that believing families all over our country will remember to give thanks to the Lord not just on Thanksgiving Day but every day for everything. I hope they remember to reverently thank God for His provision when they pick up their breakfast at the drive-through window at McDonald’s on Friday. May we be those people who are constantly, lovingly, and thoughtfully giving thanks to God for every single blessing.

Giving thanks to Him most of all for His forgiveness of my sins,

Rodney