Give Thanks with a Grateful Heart

Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

There is so much for which to thank God. Thank God that we still have our freedom in America and that we worship Him without government interference. Thank you Lord that you set your plan for mankind into motion long before you created the world. Thank you for revealing yourself and your plans for us through your Word. Thank you for your love, your redemption plan, your patience and for your forgiveness.

Lord Jesus, thank you for coming to earth and taking on flesh and blood. Thank you for your sinless life and your sin bearing death on a cross. God made you to become sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in you Jesus. Thank you for being our substitute, paying the price that we owed for the penalty of our sins. Because of your sacrifice we can come boldly and with confidence to the throne of grace to obtain mercy and grace to help in time of need. Thank you Lord for enduring the cross, scorning its shame, and now you sit at the right hand of the throne of God, ever making intercession for us. Now God has exalted you to the highest place and given you the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Thank you Father for my spouse who is the perfect complement for me, thank you for our children, our extended family and our church family. Thank you for our Christian friends and for those friends who have yet to join your family. Thank you for life, health and strength, for the activity of our limbs, for the experience of our senses. Thank you for the beauty of the world around us, the sun, moon and stars, all of nature and the beautiful colors we experience each year. Thank you for food, clothing, shelter, material blessings, for our jobs and the ability to do our work for your glory. Thank you Lord for giving us a future and a hope. We eagerly await the day when the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise. Then we who are still alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.

Our hearts are filled with gratitude because we are called, chosen and kept by the power of your Holy Spirit. All glory, praise and honor is due to you O God our Father, in the matchless name of Jesus our wonderful Lord and Savior, Amen.

Jesus Christ is our hope!

I grew up in Philadelphia in a very dysfunctional family. My father was a verbally and physically abusive alcoholic. There were many times my mother, my sister and I had to flee for safety to a relative’s house.

My mother put us in Catholic school to get a good education. We also got a good dose of religion. Catholic school taught me that if I was good enough, I would get to heaven. So I tried to please God by doing good. Only problem was I wasn't very good at being good or doing good.

In 1969 we moved to New Jersey and I started attending public school. That was around the time when both my parents became Christians but I became disillusioned with organized religion. So I turned to drugs and alcohol and lived a very wild and self-destructive life for many years.

At 21 years of age, a Christian bookstore owner invited me to church where I first heard the gospel and gave my life over to the control of Christ. Jesus Christ can bring hope to an otherwise hopeless life.

When you become a Christian, something supernatural happens! You receive the Holy Spirit. This physical body becomes the temple of God. The Holy Spirit gives us assurance that we're in God’s family.

The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. Romans 8:16-17

When you're a member of God’s family, you're an heir to a spiritual inheritance.

In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory. Ephesians 1:13-14

The Holy Spirit is the earnest, the down payment, the guarantee of our inheritance. Now you have the Spirit living within but one day we get to cash in the Holy Spirit for our full inheritance, living eternally with God.

I know what it’s like to be without hope. Maybe you feel hopeless today. You may have a degenerative or terminal disease. Your marriage may be on the rocks. You may be a drug addict or alcoholic. You may be on the brink of financial failure. You may have given up all hope and want to end it all. That’s not the answer. Jesus is the answer. There is no problem so big that God can’t solve it. Your life may be a chaotic mess but there is hope in Jesus Christ. Stop running from God. Turn and run to Him!