Happy Thanksgiving!

November 28

Thoughts for Thanksgiving

Psalm 34:1 I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth.

Through all the challenges of life, may we employ Psalm 34:1—His praise shall continually be in my mouth.

Two words go hand-in-hand in the Bible. The one we’re thinking about today, “THANKSGIVING,” is inextricably tied to “PRAISE” in God’s Holy Word. We who love the Lord understand that we are to “Thank and praise Him in all things.” ( I Thessalonians 5:18, Ephesians 5:20.)

We do so out of hearts that love Him and recognize the fullness of His goodness and mercy to us. We do so because we know that apart from the sacrifice of Jesus for us we are bound for an abysmal eternity. We also do so because we know “God inhabits the praise of His people,” Psalm 22:3.

It might be interesting to consider the psalm in context:

Psalm 22 New International Version A psalm of David.

1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from my cries of anguish?
2 My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
by night, but I find no rest.[b]

3 Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One;
you are the one Israel praises! You inhabit the praise of Your people![c]
4 In you our ancestors put their trust;
they trusted and you delivered them.
5 To you they cried out and were saved;
in you they trusted and were not put to shame.

6 But I am a worm and not a man,
scorned by everyone, despised by the people.
7 All who see me mock me;
they hurl insults, shaking their heads.
8 “He trusts in the Lord,” they say,
“let the Lord rescue him.
Let him deliver him,
since he delights in him.”

9 Yet you brought me out of the womb;
you made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast.
10 From birth I was cast on you;
from my mother’s womb you have been my God.

11 Do not be far from me,
for trouble is near
and there is no one to help.

12 Many bulls surround me;
strong bulls of Bashan encircle me.
13 Roaring lions that tear their prey
open their mouths wide against me.
14 I am poured out like water,
and all my bones are out of joint.
My heart has turned to wax;
it has melted within me.
15 My mouth[d] is dried up like a potsherd,
and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth;
you lay me in the dust of death.

16 Dogs surround me,
a pack of villains encircles me;
they pierce[e] my hands and my feet.
17 All my bones are on display;
people stare and gloat over me.
18 They divide my clothes among them
and cast lots for my garment.

19 But you, Lord, do not be far from me.
You are my strength; come quickly to help me.
20 Deliver me from the sword,
my precious life from the power of the dogs.
21 Rescue me from the mouth of the lions;
save me from the horns of the wild oxen.

22 I will declare your name to my people;
in the assembly I will praise you.
23 You who fear the Lord, praise him!
All you descendants of Jacob, honor him!
Revere him, all you descendants of Israel!
24 For he has not despised or scorned
the suffering of the afflicted one;
he has not hidden his face from him
but has listened to his cry for help.

25 From you comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly;
before those who fear you[f] I will fulfill my vows.
26 The poor will eat and be satisfied;
those who seek the Lord will praise him—
may your hearts live forever!

27 All the ends of the earth
will remember and turn to the Lord,
and all the families of the nations
will bow down before him,
28 for dominion belongs to the Lord
and he rules over the nations.

29 All the rich of the earth will feast and worship;
all who go down to the dust will kneel before him—
those who cannot keep themselves alive.
30 Posterity will serve him;
future generations will be told about the Lord.
31 They will proclaim his righteousness,
declaring to a people yet unborn:
He has done it!

As so often with the writings of David, the great wordsmith begins with a lament. His circumstances have weighed him down. He feels hopeless. Then, he begins to factor in the wonder and majesty of God and his writing does an ‘about face’! Verse 22, where David begins to praise the Lord and to recount His mercy is the pivot point of the psalm where David literally turns on his heel from despair to fervency of commitment and optimism!

The conclusion we can draw from this is that our praise of and thanksgiving to God are important not only because HE IS WORTHY and deserves all our thanks and praise but because there is a benefit accrued to us when we choose to focus not upon the negativity of our circumstances but upon the faithfulness, the worthiness, the transformative power of our God!

A wonderful book, POWER IN PRAISE by Merlin Carothers, was published about 40 years ago. In it, Carothers, a military chaplain at Fort Benning, Georgia, recounts numerous vignettes where the military people to whom he is ministering come to him with terrible circumstances that they are unable to overcome—or to pray through.

Chaplain Carothers applies David’s tactic to their situations—he tells them to thank and praise God for their circumstances. Invariably, these burdened and weary people stomp out of his office, fully convinced that he has a hole in his head.

Invariably, they reconsider, applying Carothers’ logic, “You’ve tried everything else, why not try this?” The good chaplain stresses the reality that the overcoming of the problem is not contingent upon the believer being ‘good enough,’ nor does it require the believer to ‘do anything.’ Why? Because it’s all based on the goodness Christ purchased for us at Calvary, not ours; and it’s all based on what He’s done, not what we can do!

A couple of examples of the Psalm 22 principle at work are these:

A young woman had been committed to a mental institution for the hopelessly insane. Her parents had prayed fervently to no avail when they were counseled by Chaplain Carothers to praise and thank God for her condition. Ultimately, in spite of originally thinking his counsel to be blasphemous, they followed his advice. The next morning, they received a phone call from the hospital telling them there had been a remarkable change in their daughter. Within two weeks, she was released, whole and well, from the hospital.

A second example touched me profoundly enough to remember it through the forty years since I first read the book. A military mother came to him with the sad tale of her daughter who had fallen away from the faith in which she had been raised. Her husband was deployed, so he could not partner with her in prayer about their daughter who had become a topless ‘go-go dancer’ in a notorious nightclub. Typically, the mother stormed out when Chaplain Carothers counseled her to thank and praise God for her daughter’s job choice. Ultimately, she took his advice because she had indeed tried everything else. That day, a young man went into the bar and slipped something into the cage where the daughter was dancing. She thought it was money—lots of guys slipped money into her cage. When her shift was over she picked it up along with the cash and discovered it was a Bible tract. She left the nightclub and never went back. She turned back to Christ—and since this was written over forty years ago, we can presume she is today someone’s godly grandmother.

Returning to Psalm 22…did you notice as we read it that it is a prophecy of the death of Jesus at the hands of the Roman ‘gentile dogs’? Go back and read it again to see how specific it is to the crucifixion of Jesus. Consider that it was written a thousand years before Jesus was cruelly tortured by this method of execution that the Romans had not even yet devised at the time of its writing!


The Lord led David to praise in the midst of the horrific details of the crucifixion—and that event of pain and ignominy and scorn and torture and death became the springboard for the most glorious event in the history of mankind! It became the springboard for the RESURRECTION OF JESUS FROM THE DEAD!

Do you suppose God is perhaps attempting to tell us something today about the power of thanksgiving and praise? Do you suppose we might see His amazing provision of our needs if we will but thank and praise Jesus in the midst of our trials?

Can we employ this wondrous principle to our circumstances NOW? Will YOU try it?