This week we have our national celebration of Thanksgiving so it is appropriate to briefly discuss the holiday and it's greater significance for believers in Jesus Christ.
The first Thanksgiving is considered to have occurred in 1621 one year after the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock on the Mayflower when Governor William Bradford stated in his Thanksgiving Proclamation:
Therefore, I, William Bradford by the Grace of God today, and the franchise of this good people, governor of Plymouth, say' through virtue of vested power 'ye shall gather with one accord, and hold in the month of November, thanksgiving unto the Lord.'
President Lincoln established the national holiday an annual holiday that we observe on the last day of November on October 3, 1863.
Thanksgiving Day is therefore a national holiday that is celebrated by both believers and unbelievers but for believers thanksgiving is not only a national holiday it is an integral part of the spiritual life so today we will briefly consider thanksgiving as it relates to the spiritual life of Church age believers.
In William Bradford's Thanksgiving Proclamation we see that the founders of our nation were believers in Jesus Christ. He stated that they would "hold in the month of November thanksgiving unto the Lord." "The Lord" he is referring to is the Lord Jesus Christ.
This means that our national Thanksgiving celebration is rooted in the Christian faith that is the basis for the nation's founding principles no matter how much propaganda the deceivers use to try to contradict that truth today. Freedom, privacy, and self-determination are establishment principles that come from God's Word for both believer and unbeliever.
In addition to the establishment principles God's Word also contains spiritual principles for believers only. One of these spiritual principles is the mandate to have grace orientation that results in capacity for gratitude that results in thanksgiving to God.
Remember the unbeliever functions exclusively under a natural system based on hard work, merit and achievement but in addition the believer functions under God's grace system that is based on capacity from positive volition to Jesus Christ that results n God imputing grace blessings.
True blessing comes from God's grace system that results in the expression of gratitude and thanksgiving to God. William Bradford was noting God's grace system in his proclamation to "hold in the month of November thanksgiving unto the Lord."
William Bradford institution of a day of thanksgiving unto the Lord was a response to the capacity in his soul from God's Word that caused him to recognize the grace blessing from God that the Pilgrims had received since they had arrived on the Mayflower.
1Thes 5:18; "In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you." It is God's will that you thank Him for everything.
Eph 5:20; "Always be thankful with reference to all things to God even the Father through the person of our Lord Jesus Christ."
Col 2:7; "Having been rooted and grounded and having been edified in Him (Jesus Christ) and being stabilized by means of doctrine as you have been taught, overflowing with thanksgiving."
Col 1:12; "Giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us for a share in the endowment of the saints."
No one can comply with these verses without grace capacity from God's Word circulating in their stream of consciousness. Gratitude that is expressed in thanksgiving only exists where there is grace capacity from metabolized doctrine circulating in the stream of consciousness.
We see from this that thanksgiving expressed from an attitude of gratitude is first directed toward God who is the continuous source of every perfect gift (James 1:17;) and everything we need in life. Phil 4:19;
When your relationship with God is correct your relationships with others automatically falls into line. All blessings start with God's grace so gratitude that is expressed in thanksgiving is an indication of one's grace capacity for fellowship with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Capacity for life, happiness, love, integrity and ability for problem solving is measured by our relationship with God.
Our spiritual life is measured by our relationship with God. Therefore, the gratitude in our soul reflects the capacity of our rapport with God that is based on the amount of metabolized doctrine circulating in the stream of consciousness under God the Holy Spirit's filling ministry.
As gratitude increases capacity for fellowship with God increases under the principle of. "He must increase, I must decrease." As capacity for integrity in the soul increases virtue-love and true happiness increases. Love and happiness are the basis for integrity love.
Minimal capacity for gratitude is indicated by ingratitude and unthankfulness resulting in maximum vulnerability to OSN control of the soul with its mental attitude, verbal and overt sins. This is the problem we have in our country and the entire world today and we see the results in the unhappiness and chaos it is creating in the world. 2Tim 3:2-5;
Thanksgiving comes from gratitude that comes from having true happiness. True happiness requires that Bible doctrine be more important than ourselves. True happiness is the deployment of problem solving device of sharing the happiness of God in the stream of consciousness.
The only true happiness in life is sharing the happiness of God. Things in life will not make you happy. Happiness has nothing to do with the things that you want.
Happiness is in the soul. It is not in your body so happiness does not depend on circumstances outside of the soul. It depends on circumstances inside of the soul under the principle of "as a person thinks in their heart so they are." Happiness does not depend on the lust pattern of the sin nature.
The unhappiness that comes from trying to pursue happiness is one of the reasons why many people are miserable all of their lives.
Maximum happiness comes from maximum gratitude that comes from feeding the soul with God's Word. Only as you metabolize doctrine daily will you find true happiness in life.
Gratitude is the basis for true happiness in life. No one can have true happiness without gratitude. The lower the attitude of gratitude the less happiness you have
Happiness requires believers to put God's Word above and beyond themselves (Psa 138:2;), happiness belongs to those who listen to God's Word and keep it (Luke 11:28;) , and in everything give thanks for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus. 1Thes 5:18;
Happiness comes from waiting on God not from trying to achieve or acquire things in life.
Gratitude in soul comes from the deployment of +H or sharing the happiness of God that is the basis for true happiness in life. Gratitude in the soul is the entrance into the maximum blessing of occupation with the person of Jesus Christ.
There is no blessing from God unless there is capacity for blessing. Capacity comes from Bible doctrine in the soul that is reflected in gratitude and expressed in thankfulness and thanksgiving.
The more there is gratitude in the soul there is the more there is blessing from God. When blessings are taken for granted there is no gratitude and the soul dries up. People go through life exposed to maximum blessing, but have no gratitude. Their dried up soul makes them unhappy.
+H or God's happiness is the happiness that Jesus Christ used to endure His suffering on the Cross, Heb 12:2; "Be concentrating on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our doctrine, who because of His exhibited happiness, He endured the cross, disregarding the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God."
The happiness of the humanity of our Lord solved the problem of staying on the Cross while God was judging Him for our sins and people were ridiculing Him. True happiness has the capacity to endure the most horrible things in life with complete tranquility of soul and contentment.
True happiness is the only real and lasting "safe space" because when you are happy you are self sustaining and you don't care about what other people think or say.
Without gratitude to God from grace orientation there is no happiness for the believer, even if all of your desires are fulfilled, because without gratitude there is no capacity for happiness.
Gratitude that is expressed in thanksgiving is one of the great productions of the spiritual life. 1Tim 6:6;
The believer in a perpetual state of carnality suffers two great disasters. The first great disaster is to have no happiness because of no gratitude even after years of being a Christian. A believer in perpetual carnality cannot be distinguished from the unbeliever because there is no gratitude that is expressed as thanksgiving to God. The second great disaster is dying under the discipline of the sin unto death.
When the OSN controls the soul there is zero gratitude. Zero gratitude in the soul creates a vacuum that sucks in bitterness and irrationality. Believers in the function of the arrogance complex of sins are emotional wrecks.
Without the deployment of grace orientation, doctrinal orientation, and a personal sense of destiny, there is no capacity for happiness. There is nothing that can make such a person happy. The lack of a happiness status quo results in self-pity, which opens the door for the function of the arrogance skills of self deception, self justification and self absorption.
It is impossible for anything to make a person with no capacity happy. They may have moment of stimulation but there is no lasting happiness. Their lack of gratitude results in accumulated venom from bitterness in the soul. It is impossible to be happy with venom from bitterness in the soul.
The Exodus generation of the children of Israel was the poster children for no gratitude. God gave more miracles to them than to any other group of people in history, but they had no gratitude and therefore no capacity for happiness so they were always whining and complaining.
One of the greatest miracles that they received from God was the manna that God provided for them for their food every day. Exod 16:4; But the Israelites rejected this manna as food because they rejected both God and Moses.
Num 21:5b-6; "The people spoke against God and Moses, For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this miserable food (manna). Therefore the Lord sent poisonous snakes among the people and they bit the people so that many died."
The venom of the poisonous snakes matched the poisonous venom that was in the souls of these negative believers, so that they died a miserable death after a meaningless and useless life. They rejected the manna God gave them because they rejected God, they rejected God's Word, they rejected Moses, and they had no gratitude in their souls only bitterness and implacability.
Because of their negative volition to God this entire generation of believers was wiped out during the next forty years. The principle is that if you do not function under the rebound technique of (1 John 1:9;), there is no way you can persistently stay in fellowship with God so you can execute the spiritual life after salvation.
They had the best leadership and doctrinal teaching in all of human history, but they never understood it or appreciated it because at the time Moses was the most positive believer on the entire earth.
Exod 16:4; "Then the Lord said to Moses, `Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for your sake; then the people shall go out and gather a day's portion every day, that I may test them, whether or not they will walk in My instruction (Torah)."
Psa 78:17-19; "Yet they still continued to sin against Him and to rebel against the Most High in the desert. And in their heart they put God to the test by demanding food on the basis of their lust. Then they spoke against God and said, `Can God prepare a table in the for us in the desert?'"
God's graced them out in every way but they were not be happy regardless of what God did for them. We see from this that no one can make anyone happy when they have no capacity for gratitude.
No believer will ever be happy without grace orientation. Nothing outside of the spiritual life can make anyone happy. Stimulation in the body for a few moments briefly distracts from unhappiness but never actually makes anyone happy.
This is because true happiness is located in the soul, not the body. Therefore true happiness is based on capacity in the soul. Capacity in the soul originates from God's Word that is resident and circulating in the soul so no believer can have true happiness without gratitude in his soul.
No two believers have the same capacity for happiness because they do not have the same amount of doctrine in the soul so they have a different capacity for gratitude. Unless the doctrine is metabolized, it is not available as capacity. If you have no capacity for gratitude nothing will make you happy and you will spend your whole life blaming others for your unhappiness.
Unhappy believers cannot solve problems. They can only make problems and accumulate problems and be miserable because they do not have any gratitude.
Divine discipline does not alert such a believer to the fact that that they are out of fellowship. Because of the lack of metabolized doctrine circulating in the stream of consciousness, they blame others for their adversity and do not respond to God's discipline.
If they never respond to God's reproof they are in the worst trouble that anyone can get in because all that remains for them is the sin unto death.
Problem solving devices are capacity for life, love, and happiness, as well as for problem solving. When you deploy problem-solving devices, you are simultaneously deploying happiness in the soul and capacity for gratitude and thanksgiving.
Happy people are the only people who can solve their problems without creating problems. You were designed to solve your own problems.
Except for Joshua and Caleb the entire first generation of the Israelite client nation rejected Bible doctrine and therefore could not be happy no matter what happened to them. They did not use their spiritual life and as a result nothing could make them happy.
In contrast, Moses left Egypt sharing the happiness of God and occupation with the person of Christ so he could endure all of the antagonistic fire that these negative believers continuously directed at him.
There are two laws that judge the perpetually carnal believers who have no gratitude toward God. The law of volitional responsibility: Hosea 8:7; "For they sow to the wind, and they reap the whirlwind."
Gal 6:7-8; "Do not be deceived. God is not mocked. Whatever a person sows that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh (old sin nature) from that he will reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life."
Col 3:25; "For he who does wrong will receive the consequences of that wrong, and there is no partiality."
The second law that judges negative believers is the law of divine punitive action. Believers are the most miserable people in the world as long as they persist in rejecting God when He deals with them under the law of divine punitive action.
Prov 3:12; "For whom the Lord loves, He disciplines, even as a father disciplines the son in whom he delights."
Heb 12:6; "For whom the Lord loves, He chastens, and He skins alive with a whip every son whom He receives."
1Cor 11:30-31; "For this reason many are weak among you and sick, and a number sleep. If we would judge ourselves, we will not be judged."
Both laws are stated in Prov 22:8; "He who sows wickedness shall reap trouble, and the rod of His wrath shall be ready."
Under these law two laws, and the principle of as a person thinks in their heart so they are, negative volition to God's Word creates bitterness, implacability no capacity for gratitude and thanksgiving in the soul that sucks disaster into your life.
But positive volition to God's Word creates capacity for gratitude and thanksgiving in the soul sucks grace, blessing and prosperity into your life Psa 23:6;
This is why God commands us to be thankful in everything because of Jesus Christ.1Thes 5:18;
Happy Thanksgiving.