Transformational Tip
Thanksgiving Day is a great holiday. A four-day weekend helps, but it’s the day on which mostly everyone tries to journey home…or to be with those they love. Thanksgiving Day is filled with parades, football, family traditions, memories, and great food. Above all else…and even if none of these other things exist in our lives…Thanksgiving is a time that provides the opportunity for us to be, yes, thankful…to lift ourselves and others out of the dungeon of ungratefulness.
We live in an age of entitlement…and it’s difficult to be thankful when you feel “entitled” to all things. We focus on what we want and don’t have vs. all the blessings we should be so thankful for. We need to work hard to counteract the glut of propaganda proclaiming we deserve more. Every Christmas commercial, ad, self-help book, well-meaning friend, and small voice from your flesh will scream to you that you deserve everything. Really, we are all sinners, and the wages for sin is death. Everything more than death…all that we have…is such a tremendous gift of powerful grace that is granted to us by the one we offend, disappoint, reject, deny, and grieve on a very regular basis. You see, I hate to be a downer, but unless you really know what you really deserve, it is impossible to see how any gifts and unbelievable grace you really have.
Today, when you are feeling thankless, ask God to open your eyes and release you from the dark dungeon of ungratefulness. Before you eat, go around the table, holding hands, and tell each other what you are thankful for and ask for something bigger than you or for someone else. Remember that the secret of being thankful is learning to see everything from God’s perspective. Then you will truly thank Him for loving, pursuing, and giving you so much. Click here to share with the Stepping Stones community your Thanksgiving thoughts.
The staff at Lighthouse Network wishes the Stepping Stones community a blessed Thanksgiving Day and future.
Prayer
Dear Father God, I come to You Father in prayer. I ask You Father that You set me free from the prison of ingratitude. Release me, Lord, to enjoy the pleasures of having a thankful heart. It’s easy for me, Father, to be grateful when I wake up on the right side of the bed and encounter no major problems. At other times, thankfulness feels totally unreachable. I need a perspective-lift Father; help me see things from Your viewpoint. I pray in the name of the one who is the source and reason for my thankfulness, Jesus Christ; and all God’s children said – AMEN!
The Truth
To open blind eyes, to bring out prisoners from the prison, those who sit in darkness from the prison house.
Isaiah 42:7
In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
Thessalonians 5:18
Comment (1)
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Happy Thanksgiving to the lighthouse network stepping stones community. I am thankful for the encouragement I receive from the daily devotions.It is true that if we were to focus on our blessings we would realize we have so much. I thank the Dear Lord for the lives of my children and for His provision for my family. Amen.