Prepare Your Heart

Prepare Your Heart
In two days, we will celebrate Thanksgiving, 2018, on November 22. In many ways, the holiday has lost its original significance.

Yes, it is a time for gathering family and friends together, and yes, it is a time of great feasting, but many of us have lost the original intent of the celebration.

A lot of us think the Pilgrims were gathering to thank the Indians for helping them through the rough early days of their settlement in the harsh environs of New England. Although the friendly Indians were invited to the feast, they were not the object of the thanks of the surviving settlers.

Those in attendance on that first Thanksgiving Day were gathered together to thank and praise GOD for HIS grace and mercy toward them as they eked out a life in this hostile environment.

Many today are in a wilderness, in a hostile environment of some sort. Perhaps they are battling relational issues. Perhaps the faith in CHRIST that makes them whole and new is an offense to those around them.

Perhaps they are battling health issues.

Perhaps they are in dire financial straits.

Perhaps they are perplexed as to how they can rescue children who are involved in drugs or promiscuity.

Whatever problems may confound your Thanksgiving celebration, be mindful of the BIBLICAL admonition that you are to give thanks in all things. Your expression of faith at the point of your profoundest need shouts to the world and reaches the very ear of GOD. Your faith in the midst of your trial proclaims your complete faith in the ONE who has promised, "All things work together for good to those who love the Lord..."

The first American Thanksgiving was celebrated by the early settlers of the Plymouth Plantation (in present-day Plymouth, Massachusetts) after their first harvest in 1621.

Autumn or early winter feasts continued sporadically in later years, first as an impromptu religious observance, and later as a civil tradition.

Abraham Lincoln announced Thanksgiving would be an official holiday in the US on November 26, 1863.

If it is merely a civil tradition to you, please search the recesses of your heart to find a genuine prayer of thanks to the LORD who has saved you from the eternal penalty of sin and who has allowed you to abound in the good things of life.