So today is Thanksgiving Day.
I hope you have a happy Thanksgiving.
Hope this day is a great day of a lot of joy
and a lot of celebration.
What are your plans?
Maybe you are hosting at your casa,
so you are busy, busy, busy.
You are cooking and you are cleaning
and you are prepping and you are preparing
for all the crazy that is your family coming over
to your house
or maybe you're the one bringing your crazy
someplace else and you're going to be driving somewhere
and now you're kind of regretting
agreeing to make the green bean casserole
because that's something you can't just buy
from the store like you know,
that slacker person bringing the pumpkin pie.
That would be me.
I'm not a baker.
Maybe today you're stuck working.
Those are your plans and you are just not happy about it.
No matter what your plans are today,
no matter where you're going to be celebrating Thanksgiving,
the who of Thanksgiving hasn't really changed.
And I know this is a secular holiday
and so some people don't like it being part of the church
but what a great day to pause,
to reflect, to give thanks
for all the incredible ways
that God blesses us.
Sometimes it's obvious and sometimes it's small.
And whether you've got plenty right now or less,
man, you could always find reason to give thanks to God.
Even if your burdens are a little bit bigger this year,
even if your weight is a little heavier this year,
even if your wallet is a little thinner this year,
again, we can always find reason to give thanks.
And that's exactly what we hear about in 1 Thessalonians.
We hear this in chapter 5
where God's encouraging us and He says,
Give thanks in all circumstances.
So that's the good and the bad
and when things are just kind of boring,
thank God for boring times
because that means that everything is just nice and smooth.
God says, Give thanks in all circumstances
for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.
God's will for us
is that we just always always always be thankful.
I think on Thanksgiving Day we do
a pretty good job of thanking God for the big things.
Thanking God for faith and for family,
for friends, for our job, for our house, for our car.
Some of those bigger things we tend to remember
and that's all great.
But I want to challenge you today
to give thanks in all circumstances.
To give thanks for those small little things.
The things that we, we just overlook
but make our lives so much better.
Like, indoor plumbing.
It hit me the other day that my grandpa
did not have indoor plumbing.
My mom, dad, when they were born,
they didn't have indoor plumbing.
My grandpa went to church in a horse and buggy
when he was a little kid.
We have advanced so so far.
And we forget about all these things.
Today I'm going to challenge you to do
the ABCs of Thanksgiving,
a cool little thing that you can do on this day
to be intentional on giving thanks.
This is something you can do on your car ride over
to wherever you're celebrating, around the dinner table
or during halftime at the football game,
before the tryptophan of the turkey sets on in,
I want you to do the ABCs of Thanksgiving.
What's that?
Everyone that's with you, the dinner table,
on the couch, wherever you're at.
Everyone thinks of something
that starts with the letter A
that they're thankful for.
And everyone goes around and says what that is and why.
And then you go with B, around the table,
what that is and why.
And C.
Eventually it gets a little hard:
X, Y, Z, Q, U.
(laughs) You have to get a little creative in there.
But it's a pretty cool thing to do
and to just pause and reflect.
So for example, it might go something like this.
Someone says A.
Man, I'm thankful for apple pie
because it just, it reminds me of Grandma.
And then a teenage girl at the table goes,
I'm thankful for Applebee's
because it reminds me of my first date with Brad.
And then the teenage daughter's dad goes,
Anyone but Brad.
(laughs) I'm thankful for anyone but Brad.
Hopefully that doesn't happen but you get the idea.
It's a really cool powerful thing.
Now here's the other challenge with this.
When anyone says anything
that's like of the Bible, from the Bible,
like you get to J and someone says Jesus.
Rather than going, yeah, that's obvious,
I want everyone to say amen.
G, God.
Amen.
Forgiveness, amen.
'Because amen, thank You, God.
Thank You, God, for all Your goodness
and all Your blessings to us.
I guarantee you that little exercise,
the ABCs of Thanksgiving will cause you to be thankful,
to give thanks as God says in all circumstances.
That's God's will for you
and it's a cool little exercise to do it.
Have a happy Thanksgiving, have a joyful day
and remember, give thanks to God.
So I am really curious.
What really touched your heart?
If you had the ability to do the ABCs of Thanksgiving
and you're coming back and watching this video again,
please share below.
Like, what just wowed you of how someone gave thanks?
Or maybe you haven't done it.
You're just watching the video right now.
You're not coming back.
So my challenge for you then is
U, Q, X, Y or Z.
List one of those below
of what you are truly thankful for.
And thank God for the ABCs of Thanksgiving,
not just maybe this idea
but that we could fill and fill and fill
the ABCs of how awesome God is
and how great He blesses us.
Have a happy Thanksgiving.