Giving Thanks

Speeding through the life of Jesus and the birth of the early church has really been refreshing.  There are so many great scriptures, I have actually have had a hard time narrowing down what and how to say it.  After two other drafts that I scratched, I decided to write a Thanksgiving themed post.  This is my Top 7 Thank You List.  Why 7?  Because it’s a holy number!!!  Hee hee

Disclaimer: This has been ordered by those scriptures that spoke most powerfully to me last week.  In no way is this meant to imply a value judgment of one scripture over another. 

7.    Thank you, God that you give practical, simple advice.  Sometimes I focus on passages that are not clear to me and get so consumed with them.  My pastor and other pastors have asked their congregations, “How are you doing with the passages you do understand?”    Here is one I find simple and straight forward.  I Thess. 4:11 “We urge you, brothers and sisters… to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.”   

6.  Thank you that our gospel is not just words, but power, the Holy Spirit and deep conviction. I Thess. 1:5 (my paraphrase)

5.  Thank you that you give us armor of protection for both our mind and our hearts, “putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet”.  I Thess. 5:8  Discussion point:  “How does God’s faith and love protect our heart?  How does the hope of salvation protect our mind?

4.  Thank you for 1.  making the world, 2.  giving all men life, 3.  making every nation and 4.  determining the times and exact places that they should live so that we would seek you and find you, even though you are not far from us.  Acts 17:24-27 (paraphrase mine)

3.  Thank you for giving us explicit scriptures to tell us what your will is for us.  According to I Thess. 5:16-18 Your will is that we would be joyful always, pray continually and give thanks in all circumstances.  Giving thanks helps me to remain joyful, and I cannot remain joyful without praying continually.  Please accomplish this is me.    

2.  Thank you for those in my life who have shared not only the gospel but their lives, as mentioned in I Thess. 2:8 Help me do the same when you lead. 

1.  Thank you for your grace.  Help me never to “set aside the grace of God” Gal. 2:21.  I have been picturing myself holding a priceless power.  I have been asking God when I set this power down and pick up something else.  Or perhaps I just set this God given gift down to admire my treasure, instead of using the powerful gift of grace for the purposes God has planned.  
  
This is my top 7 scripture thank you list. 
Happy Thanksgiving!!