Brownsboro F.U.M.C.
by The Elliots

Giving Thanks to one's fellow mankind and to the Lord is often overlooked as a powerful instrument for reaching oneness with God. From now until Thanksgiving Day, why don't you try this three-part experiment designed to increase your thanksgiving capacity.

Every day, surprise someone: How long has it been since you thanked the newspaper person? Opportunities to surprise people with gratitude present themselves all day long. Most of the time you will not know what effect your thanks have on the recipients (sometimes they'll be more important than you might dream, arriving at a low point in another's life), but the effect on your own life is certain. You'll be training yourself day by day to seek out the good around you, rather than the more attention-catching bad.

Every day, thank God for something you have never thanked Him for until now: It is good to start any prayer of thanksgiving to God with some statement of over-all indebtedness, "For our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life." But try to add each day some different, perhaps very tiny blessing: the gift of sight on a colorful autumn morning, warm clothes as the days grow colder. The discipline of thanking God for a different blessing each day could go on for a lifetime without repeating, but your thanks will not be confined to little things all the time, of course. There will be days when as a Christian you will be overwhelmed by the magnitude of Christ's sacrifice for you. By then, the habit of giving thanks will have been established. You'll be ready to express your deepest feelings of gratitude.

Every day, thank God for something you're not happy about: This is both the hardest exercise in thanksgiving and the one that comes closest to the heart of the spiritual life. To the oppressed Ephesians an imprisoned Paul wrote, "Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." (Ephesians 5:20)

Thanking God for seemingly bad events has been called the first step of faith in action. If you can stand before a financial setback, a disappointment, even death itself, and thank God for what in His hands these circumstances will become, you are acting out your conviction that He can bring good when you yourself do not see it.

Try these three suggestions until Thanksgiving Day - and maybe every day after.

Please remember our Community Thanksgiving service is Sunday, November 18th at 6pm at the High School Little Theater. Please mark this date and give it top priority on your things-to-do list and you will be blessed.