Weekly Devotional (October 9)

Did you remember that this weekend is Thanksgiving? How are you planning on spending it? A lot of people will take advantage of the day off on Monday from school and work to catch up on things at home or go out and enjoy activities in the comfortable fall weather. There will be families and friends getting together at some point over the weekend to have a meal together with turkey and pumpkin pie as the favoured entrees. But how many people do you think will take time to truly be thankful for what they have?

Don’t you think that most of us tend to take for granted every day what we have? It’s easy to forget how being a Canadian gives us access to so many things that people in many parts of the world don’t have – freedom, opportunities to pursue our dreams, daily food, clothing, housing and material provisions to name a few. I hope that a lot of people will take an opportunity at some point to express appreciation for these blessings.

But that should be a given for you and me as followers of Christ, shouldn’t it? I mean, we realize that all of these daily blessings didn’t just fall into our laps but have been provided to us by God himself. While some folks won’t know who to thank for what they have, we do know the source of our daily blessings and we are ready to thank him. But not just for these things alone – we have so much more. As children of God through faith in Christ we have been given everything we need for living this life to the full and the assurance of living forever with God in heaven.

So how should we respond to all of this blessing as Christians? We should be the most thankful people on the planet at all times. Remember, you and I are decidedly different from the world – we are transformed by Christ and we choose to live as full time worshipers of God in view of his abundant mercies to us. Let’s set the standard for acting grateful to the Lord for who we are and what we have in Christ.

I’m really looking forward to meeting with you this Sunday. The whole service is going to be one of praising God. My message is called Transformed Praise and I will be speaking from 1 Peter 1:1-12. Take some time over the next few days and make note of four significant things that you and I have as believers in Jesus, things that we need to praise him for. I will focus in on them with you and we will take time to sing songs of praise about them as part of the message. We will then take Communion together as a further expression of our thankful worship. Above all, let’s prepare ourselves to meet with God and ask him to impact us with his holy presence. To God be the glory, great things he has done!

Have a terrific day and see you Sunday.

Pastor Del