"HAPPY THANKSGIVING !"

While you are "gobbling down" the wonderful turkey and all the trimmings, remember how he gave his life that you might eat hearty and gain a few pounds! LOL~ As a personal note, I DO want to Give thanks To and For All of my Blog Family. It would be a lonely and discouraging task getting God's Word out without knowing for sure that there are people out there who truly are hungry for His Word and Guidance. I would definitely keep on doing it, because this is my way to "witness", but it is wonderful to know someone cares to read and listen. Thank you again!



BUT, MOST OF ALL, Give thanks to GOD for what He has done for you, what He is GOING to do for you in years to come. EVEN MORE SO, GIVE THANKS to GOD JUST for WHO HE IS, no strings attached.

Too many times we think we have to have reasons to thank HIM. We DON'T. We can thank Him just for being who He is, our Father in Heaven, Our Creator. Our Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father and Prince of Peace.

Have you ever thought about "who He is", or have you just concentrated on what He has done? Yes, He GAVE HIS LIFE FOR US, and that was the ULTIMATE, but He IS our Physician, Our Provider, our Supplier of our need. He IS our advocate with the Father, He is our Lawyer. He is our Confidant. HE IS the ONE who will Never let us down.

Yes, I know you are thinking "she's talking about "Jesus". I AM. Jesus said, "I AND MY FATHER ARE ONE".


Have a Wonderfully Blessed Thanksgiving!

One Hundred Things To Be Thankful For, and According to Most God Wasn't A Priority

Good Evening to All!

We had a very nice Thanksgiving Service at church tonight. We usually have service on Wednesday, but being that Thanksgiving is this week, our Pastor thought it would be a good idea to have service a day early so we could get our Thanksgiving preparations started tomorrow. Anyway, tonight, we had 3 speakers. All were young men of our church. They each did a fine job. One was more experienced I believe because I think he had helped preach in another church before coming here. One was a bit more humorous in his presentation on Thankfulness, which fit his personality perfectly, and the other was a more serious logical approach. He and I were more intuned, I think. While I really enjoyed the others, Dustin spoke on something that really caught my ear. He had done some research on different sites of 100 things to be thankful for, and none had God in the top portion of their list. That floored me so, I came home and did some investigating on my own.

I surveyed ten different sites. Here are the numbers:

1-----Mentioned the "ability to love God" as number 13. I do not consider that being thankful to or for God.

1-----Listed having God in their life as number 51. I don't see a word about being thankful to or for God. Just glad He's in their life.

1-----Lists having faith in God as number 39.

7-----NO MENTION OF GOD AT ALL

Now as I said, I only checked out a few, but it blew me away that God is SO LOW on people's priorities. As Christians we should be thankful to and for God everyday, and He should be number one on our "thankful" list. After all if it weren't for Him we wouldn't be here. Let alone all the niceties that He provides for us. Such as everything everyone mentioned.

I have a thought on that. To me that is "thanking the creation, instead of the creator." Don't get me wrong. I do believe we should be thankful for everything everyone mentioned; family, friends, love, and so on, but I think first on everyone's list should have been thankful to God who made all these other things possible.

After spending the last 30 minutes looking for pictures of "thanksgiving" or giving thanks, I found only 2 "cartoons and one photo portraying the real meaning of Thanksgiving, I mean people praying. The rest were of food, or the pilgrims and Indians. I understand that the Pilgrims and Indians are who started the Holiday, per say, but I would think I would have at least been able to find more pictures of people giving thanks to God. Of course I only looked on Google Images, that the only other place I know to look other than Zemanta. Zemanta had pictures of people eating, people at the parade, marching bands and so forth. No one praying or giving thanks to the ONE who deserves it.

Well, I guess this is going to be a short post as I need to get busy on some household duties before I start preparing for Thanksgiving.

Considering the reason we originally broke away from England was for freedom of religion, and our nation was founded on Christian principles, we seem to have drifted far from our founding fathers values, or at least our priorities have been forgotten. God First, Family Second and then everything else. What Happened?

Good night to all and May God Bless!

Thanksgiving Eve's Thoughts

Psalm 100
Make a joyful noise unto the Lord all ye lands!
Serve the Lord with gladness;
Come before His presence with singing.
Know ye that the Lord, He is God;
It is He that hath made us, not we ourselves;
We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.
Enter into His gates with thanksgiving
And into His courts with praise.
Be thankful unto Him and bless His name.
For the Lord He is good;
and His mercy is everlasting.
His truth endureth to all generations.

This was my favorite Bible verse when I was a child, so I thought I would share it with you on this Thanksgiving Eve.

What I am Thankful for: I am thankful for a loving husband that will put up with my mood swings, lousy attitudes and moans and groans. I am thankful that God is changing my heart and working on me to be more patient and understanding. I am thankful that He has convicted me of thinking too much on the negative side of things. I'm thankful for the normal things such as my health, my wonderful church family, and loving friends. I have the best kind of friends anyone could ask for. Friends who will tell me when I am wrong about things, friends who will remind me about what God says about thinking negative and just general all around keeping me on the "straight and narrow". They do it with a loving tone and attitude, not judgemental. Therefore, I take it as "constructive criticism" rather than "destructive".

I am truly blessed in my life, and I hope that when I come into contact with others, I pass on the love that God has in my heart to others. I pray that I am a "shining example" of God's love to others as my "church elders" and friends are to me.


Bible Seeds

Everything We Need

Today's Seed: "His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of Him who called us by his own glory and goodness." 2 Peter 1:3

Hidden in the middle of this seed is a powerful little phrase that can be easily overlooked as we hurry through our daily Bible reading. Three little words, "everything we need."

It doesn't say that God gives us some of what we need or part of what we need. It is a firm commitment; we are given "everything we need." God has given us "everything we need" through Jesus Christ. it tells us that we have been given all that we need to live life, and to live it in a godly manner.

Stop and thing--what do you need right this moment? According to this promise, whatever that may be is available to you. Now there are some qualifiers to the promise; What we need comes to use from Gods "divine power." Therefore, we must have received Jesus Christ as our Savior. and with that the presence of the Holy Spirit, who dwells within us, giving us power. That is the first qualifier. The second is getting to know Jesus Christ, who he is, how he lived and the example and instructions he left for us. So our needs must also be in accordance with the teachings of Scripture.

Dig Deeper: The Greek word for "knowledge" is ginosko. it means to take in knowledge, to come to know, recognize, and understand,. In the New Testament, ginosko often indicates a relationship between the person knowing and the person being known.

Weed & Water: Because everything we need will com3e through our relationship with Jesus Christ, we need to know him. The only way we can really get to know a person is to spend time with him or her. We also need to converse with him or her. So spending time with Jesus will include our reading the Bible to learn about his attributes, commands, and promises. It will also include our talking with him about our needs. In listening to him, we may find him clarifying the difference between what we see as our "needs" and what he sees as our wishes, wants, and desires. Have you ever stopped to consider that God might view your "needs" differently than you view them?

Sprout & Scatter: Many people get discouraged when they feel that God does not keep his promises. At such times they have confused their needs and God's view of their needs. As you begin to get to know God in a relationship you will understand the difference between needs and wishes or wants. Then you may be able to bring encouragement and hope to others. Matthew 6:33 reminds us: "But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well."

Think about it:

• How can you get to know God better?
• What is one "need" you have that God might see as a wish or want?

Prayer Pot: Dear God, show me the difference between my needs and wants and help me to .....

Image by jspad via Flickr

To my "friends" out in "Blogland" I thank you and wish you all a Very Happy Thanksgiving. ( Don't eat til you get sick, just happy).

Good Night to All and May God Bless!

PJ