THANKSGIVING DAY 2012

19 Monday Nov 2012

Posted by Rev. Nadine Drayton-Keen in Praises and Thanks

Tags

365-day lifestyle, annual national holiday, authentic thankfulness, cheerful spirit, expressed gratitude, fake thanksgiving, God's Perfect Will, thankful spirit, thanks, Thanksgiving

The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth by Jennie A. Brownscombe (1914)

In everything give thanks, for this is what God wants from you who are united with the Messiah Yeshua. ~ 1 Thessalonians 5:18, CJB

Every day is a day of thanksgiving./God’s been so good to me,/every day He’s blessing me./Every day is a day of thanksgiving;/take the time to glorify the Lord today. ~ the chorus from the Gospel song “Every Day Is a Day of Thanksgiving” as sung by GMWA Mass Choir

The apostle Paul’s God-inspired words and the Gospel Music Workshop of America (GMWA) Mass Choir’s lyrics both remind us that God is a good God and that, in some way every day, He keeps blessing us. For these reasons, both the above Scripture and lyrics recommend to us that we ought to live like every day is a day of thanksgiving. In other words, Thanksgiving Day is not just an annual national holiday, but it is a day in which we who believe in Christ Jesus ought to be praising and thanking our Father God for all He has done for us and for all that He has given to us, instead of just waiting for the fourth Thursday of every November to offer up to Father God our praise and thanksgiving.

While Thanksgiving Day is indeed a time to reflect and a time to give praise and thanks for everything God has done for us and for everything God has given to us, the truth is that on every day of every year we ought to celebrate our God’s gifts of Mercy, Grace, Regeneration, Salvation, Sanctification, Faithfulness, Love, Kindness, Forgiveness, Life, indeed, every one of His countless blessings. Put differently, we not only ought to be thankful but also we ought to demonstrate our thanksgiving (our expression of gratitude to Father God) every day of every year, and not just on the established annual Thanksgiving Day!

Why should offering God our thanksgiving be a 365-day lifestyle? Well, if we are God’s children, then the Divine Truth is that we have received salvation and so much more from God. For these reasons, every day should be a day of thanksgiving for us. In fact, the psalmist tells those of us who are God’s children that we ought to: “Offer thanksgiving as [our] sacrifice to God, pay [our] vows to the Most High” ~ Psalm 50:14, CJB (the inserted bracketed words are this blogger’s emphasis).

There can be no denying that, based on both Old and New Testament Scriptures, God has made it very clear to His children what He wants from them. God not only wants His children to have a cheerful spirit (heart) but also He wants them to have a thankful spirit (heart). God daily wants His children’s thanksgiving or thankfulness (gratitude).

It is God’s Perfect Will that every child of His who has received anything from Him should give God thanks for what He has done for him or her, as well as for what He has given to him or her. In fact, God knows that there is no true/sincere thanksgiving, if a person has not received anything for which he or she can be thankful. In other words, God knows that human being’s natural and spiritual tendency to give thanksgiving only comes as a result of that person having received “something” from someone else.

Thus, since God’s saved children constantly receive “something” from Him, “something” over and above their salvation, that’s why their salvation and every other “something” He gives to them are the reasons why daily thanksgiving is really a 365-day lifestyle, and why authentic thankfulness is the first thing God wants to receive from His children’s worship. Second to their thanksgiving is their surrendered obedient will. Just like people cannot be thankful for “something” they have not received, people also cannot be willingly obedient to God’s Perfect Will for them to offer Him thanksgiving, if people feel like they have been forced to give God their thankfulness, when that is not what they want to do. The end result of people’s forced will is fake thanksgiving, and God doesn’t want people’s pretend (phony) thanks.

The bottom line is this: Unless His children willingly are obedient to the Perfect Will of God, especially where their thanksgiving is concerned, they never will have a genuine attitude of gratitude for everything, including all of their pleasant and unpleasant situations and circumstances. Furthermore, unless His children become aware of the fact that their God constantly is giving them “something” that is priceless, they will continue to whine because they will think that God has not given them anything for which they should be thankful.

So then, if God’s children never are able to discern spiritually that God continues to give them valuable things, then they also will not be able to discern spiritually God’s revealed purpose, meaning, and reason for every situation and every circumstance they encounter. As a result, His children also never will be able to discern spiritually what God can and will do with every situation and every circumstance. In the end, being able to discern spiritually what God can and will do with every one of His children’s situations and every one of their circumstances is the only way that God’s children learn the importance of willingly, genuinely, and daily expressing their thankfulness in everything! A word to the wise should be sufficient!

Have a HAPPY THANKSGIVING Day on November 22^nd, and on every day for the rest of your life.

How Beautiful Is Your Soul?

14 Wednesday Nov 2012

Posted by Rev. Nadine Drayton-Keen in Spiritual

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Christ Jesus' disciples, condescension, disapproval, disgust, envy, Food For Thought, godly love, hatred, Household of Faith siblings, jealousy, partiality/favoritism, resentment, Saint Augustine

I am giving you a new command: that you keep on loving each other. In the same way that I have loved you, you are also to keep on loving each other. Everyone will know that you are my talmidim by the fact that you have love for each other. ~ John 13:34-35, CJB

When I think about Saint Augustine’s words, my eyes fill up with tears and my spirit (heart) becomes deeply grieved, because I just can’t wrap my head around the fact that there are so many professed believers in Christ Jesus who deliberately show partiality/favoritism, condescension, disapproval, disgust, rejection/slap in the face, resentment, jealousy, disrespect, envy, and hatred, etc., toward other Body of Christ believers. That truth just boggles my mind!

Food For Thought:

How many people on your email lists have you taken the time to share the love of God with on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis? When is the last time you showed every child of God (that you know) just how much you love him or her?

If God has commanded you to love each other as He loves you so that the world (everybody) would be able to see that you truly are the Lord’s disciples, then why hasn’t the world (everybody) been able to see you showing godly love to everyone, especially to every Household of Faith sibling? More important, why hasn’t every brother and sister in Christ Jesus received that SAME love that God commands you to show to every person who is a disciple of Christ Jesus, and why hasn’t every brother and sister in Christ Jesus received the SAME love God commands you to show to every person who is His (or your) enemy?

If or when you really think about the above questions, with the aid of the Holy Spirit I am sure that you will come to the same conclusions I have come to, which first off is that most of us who have received God’s love have failed to love every believer in Christ Jesus like He loves us! Secondly, I also have concluded that the reason why the world (everybody) has not seen the beauty of most of our souls is because the love of God (godly love) either is reserved only for those people we love as our spouses or as “privileged” family members and “privileged” close friends, or else the love of God (godly love) really just isn’t in us at all!

Even the apostle John agrees with this last reason, for he writes:

If anyone boasts, ‘I love God,’ and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won’t love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can’t see? The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You’ve got to love both. 1 John 4:20-21, MSG

Bottom line is that some of our souls just aren’t that beautiful, and that is not just because some people have made it clear, by their lack of involvement in our lives, that they don’t think our souls are beautiful, but more because most of us don’t show love to everyone! Last time I checked, LOVE was an action word, which means we don’t just tell people that we love them; we demonstrate to people just how much we love them!

Besides the Word of God and the leadings, promptings, and teachings of the Holy Spirit on the issue of demonstrating godly love to everybody, there also is one particular Contemporary Christian Rock song that forced me to re-examine my failure in showing the God kind of love to everyone, and this song also moved me to make an immediate radical change. This song is Casting Crowns’ “If We Are The Body.” I have loved this song from the first moment I heard it back in the spring of 2006, in spite of the fact that this song made me look inwardly at myself and see my shortcomings where godly love demonstrations are concerned.

“If We Are The Body” actually was first released in 2003, but since I didn’t listen to Contemporary Christian Rock music that much back then, I never heard this song until several years after its release. However, I am so glad that I was led to listen to a Contemporary Christian Music radio station in the spring of 2006, because every time I have listened to this song, from that time forward, I have been profoundly moved. Please check out the below YouTube video presentation of “If We Are The Body.”

If you’ve never heard Casting Crowns’ song before today, or if you have heard it but the lyrics just haven’t resonated that much in your spirit and soul, then listen to the song again, and again, and again, for as many times as it might take for you to understand the message of the song. The message of Casting Crowns’ song is that every person who calls him or herself a Christian is supposed to be demonstrating God’s kind of love to every human being, and especially to his or her brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus. No Exceptions! No Acceptable Excuses!

Is God’s love saturating your whole body, spirit, and soul? Is God’s love in you causing you to show the whole world the beauty of your soul? Is God’s love in you demonstrating to the entire world that you are indeed Christ Jesus’ disciple? Shalom!

Veterans Day 2012

11 Sunday Nov 2012

Posted by Rev. Nadine Drayton-Keen in Praises and Thanks

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Act of 1938, active duty, Armistice Day, Basic Military Training, enlisted Airmen, Lackland Air Force Base, servicemen, servicewomen, Squad Leader, Squadron, Veterans Day, Veterans of all wars

1971 Basic Military Training Squadron 3743; WAF Flight 013

Accept your share in suffering disgrace as a good soldier of the Messiah Yeshua. No soldier on duty gets involved with civilian affairs, since he has to please his commanding officer. ~ 2 Timothy 2:3-4, CJB

November 11, 2012 is the legal public holiday for Veterans Day. According to the United States Department Of Veterans Affairs,

The United States Congress officially recognized the end of World War I when it passed a concurrent resolution on June 4, 1926, with these words:

Whereas the 11th of November 1918, marked the cessation of the most destructive, sanguinary, and far reaching war in human annals and the resumption by the people of the United States of peaceful relations with other nations, which we hope may never again be severed, and

Whereas it is fitting that the recurring anniversary of this date should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations; and

Whereas the legislatures of twenty-seven of our States have already declared November 11 to be a legal holiday: Therefore be it Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), that the President of the United States is requested to issue a proclamation calling upon the officials to display the flag of the United States on all Government buildings on November 11 and inviting the people of the United States to observe the day in schools and churches, or other suitable places, with appropriate ceremonies of friendly relations with all other peoples.

Originally, November 11^th first was called Armistice Day—a day dedicated to the cause of world peace, and a day set aside to honor the veterans of World War I. After World War II, a war in which Army soldiers, Navy sailors, Marine Corps marines, and Air Force airmen had to be battle-ready, the amended Act of 1938, which established November 11^th (Armistice Day) as an annual legal holiday, was changed on June 1, 1954 from Armistice Day to Veterans Day. Veterans Day, thus, is a day to honor American veterans of all wars!

In the above picture is this blogger with her 1971 Air Force Basic Military Training Squadron. This military basic training took place on Lackland Air Force Base and this base is located in San Antonio Texas. Furthermore, Lackland Air Force Base currently is the only site for enlisted basic military training for all non-prior service Airmen of the regular Air Force, Air National Guard, and Air Force Reserve.

This blogger is the African-American woman who is down front and in the center of the picture. Since she was one of her squadron’s four squad leaders, she and the other three squad leaders were placed on the first row and in the center of the picture. The squad leaders are easy to pick out, as they are the four tallest women grouped together in the first row.

It is this blogger’s prayer that God Almighty will continue to bless those families who have lost loved ones during any war, or during peacetime. Even though this blogger is a veteran herself, she still prays for and gives honor to all of the fallen military heroes, all of the living veterans, and all of the current active duty servicemen and servicewomen.

May God give every American a fresh and renewed spirit of love for his or her veterans and for his or her nation, as a whole. In Jesus’ name . . . Amen.

Happy Veterans Day!