Pat
Well-Known Member
WHAT mATTERS – Show God Your Faith
Thanksgiving should be the start of a season of reflection and gratefulness. For many though, it is simply a day off to start a season of greed and selfishness, where football, turkeys, and over-eating prevail. If thanks is given, it is most often given for the things we have. Things are good to be thankful for, but things break, or get lost and lose their luster as soon as the next new thing comes along. More meaningful thanks is sometimes given when our reflection turns to the people around us. Our family, friends, work mates, neighbors, postmen and store clerks, all who add blessings and reasons to give thanks. But even people disappoint us, fail us, and take advantage of us, making us question why we should be thankful for them. So, we end up alone in our own little world, ungrateful and lonely, surrounded by things that don’t satisfy and the only people we want to be around are ourselves. If that’s where we are, it is because we have abandoned God or relegated Him to an insignificant place in our lives.
Job started out with much to be thankful for. He had riches, health, and was surrounded by a loving family. Then God allowed all of that to be taken from him except for a wife that told him to curse God and die, and three self-righteous friends who accused him of not being religious enough. At the end of all his reflection on what life and death was about, Job concluded that God was the only thing, and only person to be thankful to, for he knew the grace of God saying, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.”[1] Job couldn’t explain his circumstances, but he was grateful that God was in control.
The word “grace” means both gift, and thanksgiving. “For by grace are you saved through faith.”[2] Jesus is the gift that God gave, for which we should be most grateful. Thanksgiving is the sign of the heart that shows God our faith. What matters is, if we have received the gift of salvation, are we sure He is in control, and have we thanked Him for it? Job did.
[1] Job 13:15
[2] Ephesians 2:8
