Skip to main content

Give Thanks, by Pastor Kevin Feder

By
Give Thanks

Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name! Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s. Psalm 103:1-5

Psalm 103 is a psalm of thanksgiving. The reason why giving thanks and being thankful is so important is because it might be the single most distinctive characteristic of being a Christian. This is most plausible when we look at the way the atheist is described in Romans 1:21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him. Thus, if the refusal to give thanks to God marks the atheist, giving thanks ought to mark the believer.
And for good reason. The believer, afterall, has good reason to give thanks to God. The believer has good reason and many reasons to give thanks to God. This seems simple enough, doesn’t it? Believers should be thankful. Not too much resistance there. Yet, most believers would admit that grumbling, complaining, worry, anger, doubt, anxiety, bitterness, apathy, to name a few, creep in and choke out thankfulness. What should a believer do to be more characterized by thankfulness and less like this list? Here are two responses:
First, being thankful means giving thanks, which means it is up to you to be thankful. You are not a passive recipient of thankfulness. Rather, you are active in pursuing it by faith. If you are a Christian, you have the Holy Spirit empowering you to walk by faith, you have God’s Word to speak truth to you, and you have God’s Son that gave his life for you so that you can be a child of God. You have everything you need to be a thankful person.
Second, being thankful means you must preach the truth to your soul. In Psalm 103 David preaches to his soul (Bless the LORD, O my soul). He doesn’t wait until he feels thankful. By faith, he presses the truth into his mind. Living by faith and being thankful is primarily not a feeling but the will to live in accordance with what is true. David models what this looks like. He preaches to his own heart. He rouses his emotions to the memory of God’s work. He refuses to be controlled by what he feels, he insists on living according to God’s love.

That we would be thankful people, Pastor Kevin




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

To Have My Soul Happy in the Lord, by George Muller

By Anonymous
To Have My Soul Happy in the Lord By George Muller “It has pleased the Lord to teach me a truth, the benefit of which I have not lost for more than fourteen years. The point is this: I saw more clearly than ever that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to be concerned about was not how much I might serve the Lord, or how I might glorify the Lord, but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished. “I saw that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the Word of God—not prayer, but the Word of God. And here again, not the simple reading of the Word of God so that it only passes through my mind just as water runs through a pipe, but considering what I read, pondering over it, and applying it to my heart. To meditate on it, that thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed. And that thus,...
Post a Comment
Read more

Reflective Glory: How the Moon Displays the Mercy of God

By
Our sun is a fitting metaphor for the glory of God. In the context of our solar system, it is massive, bright, beautiful, powerful, self-sufficient, heat-producing, life-giving, and dangerous. It is, by far, the dominant feature of our solar system and without it the system would fling apart and all living things therein would die.  On the other hand, our moon is a fitting metaphor for human beings, especially for those who believe in Jesus Christ. First, compared to the sun, the moon is tiny and dim. The sun is 400 times larger than the moon, its mass is 27 million times greater than the mass of the moon, and from our perspective its light shines 450,000 times brighter than that of the moon. The sun is so much greater than the moon that it’s difficult to quantify and express the difference. Likewise, the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, is so much great than each and all of us that it’s impossible to quantify or express the difference. Indeed, the Lord is very great and greatly...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sermon Questions - April 10, 2016

By
Exiled in Faithfulness 1 Samuel 26:1-27:12 April 10, 2016 Study Questions 1.       Read 1 Samuel 26:1-5. Why did the Ziphites betray David? Had they done this before? How did Saul respond and why? How did David learn of Saul’s location and what did he do? 2.     Read 1 Samuel 26:6-16. What did David first do? What did Abishai encourage him to do? How did David respond? What did David assert about Saul’s future? What did David then do and why did his plan work? 3.      Once the plan was executed, who did David call out to and why? Of what did David accuse him? Was David right? 4.      Read 1 Samuel 26:17-25. How did Saul know it was David speaking? Specifically, what did David say to Saul? How did Saul respond? What did he promise? 5.        Read 1 Samuel 27:1-4. Despite Saul’s words, what did David think about his future? Why did he decide to flee to the Philistines and where in pa...
Post a Comment
Read more