Title: Giving Thanks
One Thanksgiving day, Snoopy thought that he was going to get a nice plate of food.
In a Peanuts comic strip, it’s Thanksgiving Day.
Charlie Brown’s dog, Snoopy, is hoping for a plate of food for his dinner.
But instead, he gets his normal bowl of dog food.
Later, he’s laying on his doghouse in complete disgust and says to himself,
“It stinks being a dog on Thanksgiving Day.”
But then he follows with, “But I guess I can be thankful I’m not a turkey.”
Snoopy is reminding us of the fact that we should always be able to find something to be thankful for.
For a believer, even on our worst day, we can be thankful that this is as close to hell that we’ll ever get.
We’ll look this morning at how being thankful is key to worshiping God and how it allows us to worship
Him more.
Giving thanks to God is an important aspect of our relationship with Him.
It’s important to our personal and corporate worship.
I’d argue that giving thanks should be a part of our life-worship (worshiping God with our actions and
focus).
All these reasons are why we take a Sunday to share how we’re thankful to God.
You might be too nervous to share while holding a mic and having your voice go out over the sound
system.
But I still hope that you’ll take the time to share with your loved ones what you’re thankful to God for.
Giving thanks is a biblical response that we owe God for His presence and gracious work in our lives.
First I want you to see this morning that –
1. GIVING THANKS IS A VALUABLE PART OF WORSHIP.
We can basically say that worship isn’t complete without thanksgiving or that it’s lacking if it’s without a
thankful heart.
Did you know that offering thanks to the Lord was central to OT worship?
It was intended to be central in the attitude of the worshiper.
Some of the offerings prescribed in the Law were called “Offerings of Thanksgiving.”
Worship of Sacrifice and offerings were to be made not reluctantly but were to be full of thanksgiving
Thanking God is also described as an offering of worship that didn’t have to be made in the temple.
As we find David writing about in -
Psalm 50:14 14 Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the Most High,
And he goes on to describe God as saying -
Psalm 50:23a The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me;
He also described how worshipers entrance into God’s presence should be marked by thanksgiving.
Psalm 100:4–5 4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to
him; bless his name! 5 For the LORD is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all
generations.
We also see in the New Testament that giving thanks to God should characterize our life-worship.
Colossians 2:6–7 6 Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, 7 rooted and
built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
I’m hoping that this message helps to make your Thanksgiving more meaningful.
But I’m more so hoping to help you to see that we should be making everyday thanksgiving.
In fact, as followers of Christ, our lives should look like Thanksliving.
But, the fact is this.
We don’t give thanks if we aren’t thankful.
2. GIVING THANKS REQUIRES BEING THANK-FULL.
Colossians 3:15–17 15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in
one body. And be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one
another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to
God. 17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks
to God the Father through him.
Worshiping God with our everyday lives should involve a state of thankfulness.
And this is only possible when our hearts are full of thanks.
These verses show that being full of thanks to God is an aspect of living-out who we are in Christ.
Thankfulness should flow from the “peace of Christ” in our hearts
Thankfulness should accompany having the “word of Christ” dwelling within us.
Lastly we see that giving thanks should be a part of “whatever we do” being done in the name of Christ.
When I say that giving thanks requires being thank-full or full of thanks, there’s something to that.
So, the suffix “-ful” means “full of” or “characterized by.”
A person who’s full of joy is joyful.
We call a person who’s full of care “careful.”
And when something is full of wonder, we call it “wonderful.”
So, if follows that a person who is thankful is “full of thanks.”
?- If I take my cup and shake it about, what’s going to come spilling out? – Whatever it’s full of.\
In the same way, in everyday life, we’re only going to show thankfulness when we’re truly thankful.
Or you can say that giving thanks only happens when you are full of thanks.
Often we need to stop and consider all that we have to be thankful for in order to become full of thanks.
This can look like regularly counting your blessings.
It can look like keeping a record of God’s faithfulness to you and your family.
There’s lots of different ways.
For sure, we won’t be thankful unless we’re full of thanks and that may take some intentional thought.
Up to now I’ve just tried to help you to see how Giving Thanks is central to following Christ
But rather than just hearing about how we should be giving thanks more,
let’s just focus on how it helps to stop and intentionally give thanks as we will today.
If someone would give something to one of my kids, - What do you think I make sure my child would do?
This is because saying, “Thank you” is polite,
but hopefully, I was teaching them something by having them say, “Thank you.”
Scripture is helping us to do something by telling us to regularly stop and say “thank you” to God.
Lastly, I want to encourage you with how thanksgiving cultivates you relationship with God.
3. GIVING THANKS MAKES GOD “BIGGER” FOR US.
So, let’s keep in mind that giving thanks flows out of being full of thanks.
And being full of thanks can come from meditating or ruminating on all the ways that God has blessed.
Before we get into how we make God bigger through thankfulness,
we need to talk about what I mean by “making God bigger.”
I’m talking about making God bigger in the sense that of -
Psalm 34:3 3 Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together!
?- So, does God need us to magnify Him because He’s small? – No
We need to magnify Him because He’s huge!
!- There’s 2 ways that we can “magnify” something.
!- You can use a microscope or a magnifying glass to make something relatively small very big.
This is one way to magnify something.
And it’s NOT the way that we need to magnify God in our lives.
The way we magnify God in our lives is in the same sense as we would if we wanted to study the moon.
If we wanted to study the moon, we’d magnify it using a telescope.
A telescope doesn’t take something small and make it BIG in our vision
A telescope brings something huge and far-off into better view.
And this is what it means to magnify God.
It means to look upon His grandeur and glory and study the shape of His character.
The Psalmist describes how we can bring God closer into view and exalt His character and person.
Sadly, we spend much of our lives taking what is relatively small and looking at it under a microscope.
It might be a physical feeling that we are having.
It could be a concern about the future.
It could be a part of our life that is not meeting our expectations.
We will often fixate on a small aspect of life,
But what happens when you sit a microscope? - Something very small fills your entire vision.
Can you see how this can keep us from magnifying God and how magnifying God is the solution to our
myopic worries?
And we’re also told that we are specifically able to magnify Him with thanksgiving.
Psalm 69:30 30 I will praise the name of God with a song; I will magnify him with thanksgiving.
Obviously, this isn’t taking something small and making it big.
It’s about sitting at the “telescope” and drawing God closer into our view through giving thanks to Him.
?- So tell me. Which are you going to sit at?
?- Are you going to allow relatively small things to become bigger by sitting and examining them?
Guess what? - They always seem bigger than they are.
And they only end up causing us to think we need to look at them longer.
?- Or are you going to sit at the telescope and gaze on God?
You can do this by meditating on His Word, by talking with Him in prayer, and many other ways.
Whatever allows you to gaze on who He is as He’s revealed Himself in His Word.
Sometimes, when Kelly and I want to fill our minds with who God is, we’ll go through the alphabet.
And we’ll list off as many attributes of God that we can think of for every letter of the alphabet.
?- Why do we do this?
So that we can enjoy stepping up to the telescope and remember who He is and be filled with thanks.
As we turn again to give you the opportunity to share offerings of thanksgiving, keep these things in
mind.
So, living a Thank-FULL life will better ensure living a worship-full life.
Living a Thank-FULL life is easier with your heart is full of gratitude.
Living a Thank-FULL life is going to better help you to fill your vision and your mind with who God is and
grow closer to Him.
