An Attitude of Thanksgiving

This past week, I hosted a Ugandan pastor and his wife in my study. We talked about his testimony. Pastor Mukambi had been a witch doctor in Uganda, like his grandfather before him. He told me that he has often heard the horrible voice of demons in trees and in the mountains and in animals. And people would come to him and pay much money to be healed, but the price was always demon possession. But he said that he learned from his grandfather and from his own experience that no power could touch a believer in Jesus. And that the name of Jesus was more powerful than the demons. He knew little of Jesus except he said, "He is the God of gods, the Lord of Lords." But that was the beginning of his journey. He then found that this God lived inside of His followers and He learned that this God was a God of grace who showed His love not by demanding a price of a person, like the demons, but by giving His only begotten Son. So Pastor Mukambi repudiated witchcraft, and turned to Jesus and the demons fled. He publicly burned down his hut where he practiced witchcraft, and he began preaching Christ Jesus and built a church, where today the demon-possessed are finding freedom and many Muslims are also being saved by this God of grace. The very nature of God stirred this man to salvation. And his response was to turn from the lesser gods and follow Jesus, the Lord of lords.

And the response is "your steadfast love endures forever." God's very Person is grace. We come today before a God who loves us. It is right that the psalmist begins with thanks for who God is for all other blessings flow from His Person. We can know love, for He is love. This Thanksgiving is God's time for all of us to repudiate all pretenders to His primacy in our lives and fall in love, again, with the God who is love and grace personified.

2. For we are shown that we may thank Him for His grace in creation (read vv. 4-9 responsively).

to him who alone does great wonders,

for his steadfast love endures forever;

to him who by understanding made the heavens,

for his steadfast love endures forever;

to him who spread out the earth above the waters,

for his steadfast love endures forever;

to him who made the great lights,

for his steadfast love endures forever;

the sun to rule over the day,

for his steadfast love endures forever;

the moon and stars to rule over the night,

for his steadfast love endures forever;

We thank God for what He has made.

The psalmist calls us to thank God for His wonders and then lists them: His wisdom in making the heavens, His stretching out the earth above the waters, His creation of the moon and sun and stars, which he calls the "great lights."

And I draw your attention to the wonder of it all: God's wisdom in creation.

Recently I had the opportunity to go through a major surgery with one of our physicians in our congregation. As the patient was before us, opened up, surrounded by unbelievably gifted medical personnel and led by a brilliant surgeon, my friend, progressing methodically through every procedure to bring healing, suddenly stopped. He drew all of our attention to an artery. The artery was beating with the pulse of life. The eyes of this Christian surgeon looked out above the surgical mask and with child-like wonder twinkling in his eyes, he said, "This is God." For a moment, all of the doctors and interns and nurses and this visiting pastor were stopped in our tracks. We were in the presence of supernatural power beyond this world and yet filling this world.