Governor
Bradford of Massachusetts made this first Thanksgiving Proclamation three
years after the Pilgrims settled at Plymouth:
"Inasmuch
as the great Father has given us this year an abundant harvest of Indian corn,
wheat, peas, beans, squashes, and garden vegetables, and has made the forests
to abound with game and the sea with fish and clams, and inasmuch as He has
protected us from the ravages of the savages, has spared us from pestilence
and disease, has granted us freedom to worship God according to the dictates
of our own conscience.
Now
I, your magistrate, do proclaim that all ye Pilgrims, with your wives and ye
little ones, do gather at ye meeting house, on ye hill, between the hours of 9
and 12 in the day time, on Thursday, November 29th, of the year of our Lord
one thousand six hundred and twenty three and the third year since ye Pilgrims
landed on ye Pilgrim Rock, there to listen to ye pastor and render
thanksgiving to ye Almighty God for all His blessings." -- William Bradford
We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven.
We have been preserved, the many years, in peace and prosperity.
We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever
grown. But we have forgotten God. We
have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied
and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the
deceitfulness of our hearts that all these blessings were produced by some
superior wisdom and virtue of our own.
Intoxicated
with unbroken success, we have become too self- sufficient to feel the
necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to God that
made us! It behooves us, then to
humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and
to pray for clemency and forgiveness.
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April 30, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln's Proclamation for a
National Day of Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer
Psalm 50:14 (KJS) Offer unto
God thanksgiving; and pay thy vows unto the most High:
15 And call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou
shalt glorify me.
16 But unto the wicked God saith, What hast thou to do to declare my
statutes, or [that] thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth? 17 Seeing
thou hatest instruction, and castest my words behind thee. 18 When thou
sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him, and hast been partaker with
adulterers. 19 Thou givest thy mouth to evil, and thy tongue frameth deceit.
20 Thou sittest [and] speakest against thy brother; thou slanderest
thine own mother's son. 21 These [things] hast thou done, and I kept
silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether [such an one] as thyself:
[but] I will reprove thee, and set [them] in order before thine eyes. 22 Now
consider this, ye that forget God, lest I tear [you] in pieces, and [there
be] none to deliver. 23 Whoso offereth praise glorifieth me: and to him that
ordereth [his] conversation [aright] will I shew the salvation of God.
Psalms
50:14 (NLT)
What I want instead is your true thanks to God; I want you to fulfill
your vows to the Most High 15
Trust me in your times of trouble, and I will rescue you, and you will give
me glory.” 16 But
God says to the wicked: “Recite
my laws no longer, and don’t
pretend that you obey me. 17
For you refuse my discipline and treat my laws like trash.
18 When you
see a thief, you help him, and you spend your time with adulterers.
19
Your mouths are filled with wickedness, and your tongues are full of
lies. 20 You sit
around and slander a brother— your own mother’s son. 21
While you did all this, I remained silent, and you thought I didn’t
care. But now I will rebuke
you, listing all my charges against you.
22 Repent,
all of you who ignore me, or I will tear you apart,
and no one will help you.
23 But giving thanks is a sacrifice that truly honors me. If you
keep to my path, I will reveal to you the salvation of God.
Why should we give thanks?
1.
We have a creator
(the most High) who has a plan for our lives.
2.
We have a purpose for being.
3.
We have a deliverer or a Savior.
4.
We have a promise (covenant).
God says if you will join with me then I will join with you. I will be your God and you will be my people.
5.
We have a strong God who is strong enough to make us his own through his promise.
6.
We have the Lord who is love
and forgives and forgets.
7.
We have the Lord who wants us for his very own.
Oh Lord our God we thank
you that you forgive all those who come to you and want to be your people.
We thank you that you hear our voice and know who we are and continue
to love us. We ask your
forgivness because we have not been the people you have wanted us to be.
How should we give thanks?
1.
We should give thanks to God
with our love.
Our love that says to him we live for you and with you.
We will follow you all of our lives.
We will deny our ungodliness and worldly lusts.
We will not say one thing and do another.
But, our life and our lips will be together.
Our desire will be for you.
2.
We should give thanks to God
with our lips.
We sing our songs of praise. We
bow our heads in prayer to you. We
thank you for what we eat and what we have. We thank you for life.
Will we tell our your wondrous works and not use our lips to slander on
another. We will uplift you by
uplifting one another.
3.
We should give thanks to God
with our life. By following the
Lord’s directions for our lives we can bring him thanksgiving that is
acceptable. By being who we
should be with the Lord 24/7 then we can say that we are seeking to truly
follow the Lord. It’s when we
say that we are following and serving, but in reality we are still following
ourselves then we bring dishonor and displeasure to the Lord.
One
student who I was speaking to recently described the adults in her church as
saying that they don’t drink and curse but in the real world they do.
Their talk didn’t match their walk.
Thanksgiving is Thanksliving. Are we living thanks to God?
1Sam 15:22 (KJS) And Samuel said, Hath the LORD
[as great] delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice
of the LORD? Behold, to obey [is] better than sacrifice, [and] to hearken than
the fat of rams.