Covid, Death, and Heartbreak? I SAID HAPPY THANKSGIVING! - Purity 1205

To see today's photo, go to mt4christ.org or follow me, M.t. Clark, on Facebook or Twitter. Good morning. Today's photo of my canine pal Harley looking into the distance while the sun roars in its glory in the west comes to us from yours truly as I captured the scene while walking down Wells Road homeward bound last Saturday. Well, it's Thursday and it's the day that our nation celebrates Thanksgiving. So happy Thanksgiving, everybody. It is my prayer that you are able to spend today with the people you love and that you— that your focus be on the many things that we can all be thankful for this year. Thanksgiving is a choice, so let's look at the good things we have, we may take for granted, uh, appreciate the calamities we didn't suffer, and choose to be thankful to God for others and ourselves. For all we have. If you need an icebreaker for Thanksgiving dinner, we offer the following joke: What do you call the ghost of your Thanksgiving turkey? A poultrygeist. Oh, okay, that was horrible, but I think it's actually better than the original that I stole from a list of 87 Thanksgiving Day jokes on countryliving.com. It was like, what do you get when you mix a turkey with a ghost? You get a poultrygeist. I like the fact that your dead turkey is a ghost and it's a poultrygeist. Anyway, the link— I'm actually sharing the link of those 87 horrible jokes from countryliving.com on the blog today as my gift, my Thanksgiving Day gift, a gag gift for sure, to you. Um, but be careful, uh, where you joke about death today. Some may be grieving a recent loss or the anniversary of the loss, um, and may not be in the mood to joke or give thanks. Believe me, uh, when I say that I can understand if some of you may not be in the mood to give thanks this year. I have several people that I know who have recently lost loved ones to death, have broken relationships, have financial problems, or have health concerns. Just this morning, my son Brennan, uh, messaged me that both he and his sister Haley have tested positive for COVID. So they'll be home eating who knows what. I don't know what they're going to do for Thanksgiving. They were supposed to go to a friend's, and, you know, Brennan was supposed to go to his mother's, and, and so now I don't know what they're going to do. Stay home or go infect people. The decision is theirs. I wish them a happy Thanksgiving. And, um, I'm— yeah, so I can understand, uh, why some of us might be a little bitter towards life in general as of late. And that is why I would stress all the more the need for deep personal relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ. Without God in your life, life is chaos, because without him you struggle to understand the meaning and purpose of life. If you deny the gospel of Jesus Christ, you effectively remove Remove yourself from the God who loves us, and you will suffer the consequences for your sin and pride. The Bible isn't just a story. It's his story, the story of God and man, and the history of his interactions with us. And the Bible tells us that, uh, tells, tells how he sent Jesus to reconcile us to him. The Bible is true, and it guides us to a place to place our faith in Jesus to be forgiven and given eternal life in God's kingdom. The Bible tells us that God loves us and plays an active role in the course of human events, our individual destinies, and the culmination of existence itself. It paints a big picture, and the Lord invites us to be with him. Forever. You know, with God in our lives, we have hope for today, tomorrow, and forever. We tried to give good advice regarding setting our mindset for Thanksgiving with our previous messages this week. On Tuesday, we suggested we could— you could at least be thankful for the bad things that didn't happen, or those things that didn't happen, you know, how they could be— or the things that did happen, how they could be worse. And yesterday we shared Lauren Roskillie's thoughts from a 2020 message that encouraged us to always give thanks for God, for others, and ourselves. But today I'm pushing for more than general thanks to God. Have you ever seen that? Ever hear someone who has seemingly no relationship with God and give— lives contrary to his principles for living say, thank God? It gives you an experiential sense of blasphemy, like, dude, you're living in darkness, you need to know him. Or even if it's the sweetest, nicest person in the world who denies Jesus, I'm like, oh Lord, open their eyes. These very nice people don't believe, have— they've abandoned Christianity or believe in themselves or another religion or philosophy that will send them to hell. Of course, I won't necessarily be verbally condemning people to hell. That tactic didn't work for me, and so I'll be silent with my fear and outrage and try to encourage people to seek the Lord through Jesus. Okay, you know, we can't save anybody. Uh, that's up to God. He opens the eyes of the blind and causes people to put their faith in Jesus. But as Christians, we can encourage people. With the truth, that they don't have to earn their way into heaven. People need to know and understand that the only thing that they have to do to be saved is to place their faith in Jesus. We can encourage people with the message of God's love for us and how being right with God can happen in a moment. That was the game changer for me, knowing I didn't have to be good or earn my way into God's good graces. So when we give thanks today, let's be sure to be specific and name the name above all names, Jesus Christ, and be ready to tell anyone who is curious about why we are so crazy in love with Jesus. Right now it's a dark period in many people's lives, and I know and I understand that while the Lord may not solve all their problems in an instant, I know that having the light of the world in their life to guide them will lead them to a better place on earth and one day in heaven. So be intentional and specific today when you give your thanks, and be ready to give a defense of your positive outlook by letting everyone know that you have a relationship with God through the one who overcame the world, Jesus, and that COVID, heartbreak, or even death cannot separate you from his love. With that good news defining our lives, there is always something to be thankful for. So give thanks, rejoice, and love the people you encounter today. And as always, keep walking and talking with God, and have a very happy Thanksgiving. Today's Bible verse comes to us from the Quick Scripture Reference for Counseling by John G. Cruis. This morning's meditation verse comes from the section on the Church, Communion of the Saints, and the verse is Ephesians 5:25. Uh, from the NIV, the Word of God says, Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Today's verse falls under the 8th point of our Counseling Reference Guide's resource section on the church, or communion of the saints, and that 8th point is Christ loves the church. Today's verse points to the love relationship we have with the Lord Jesus. Jesus loves us. He died for us. He extends an invitation to be forgiven of every bad thing we have ever done in our lives and to be with him forever. He gives us wisdom for living and hope of life everlasting. The analogy of, uh, Christ as the husband to his bride The church is made because he loves us. Christ proved his love for us, and we should prove our love for him by following him in the way we live our lives and by telling about the new life we found because of him, telling others. As always, we invite all to go to mtforchrist.org, where we always share insights from prominent Christian theologians to assist our brothers and sisters in Christ with their walk. Today we're going to share from, uh, God, God Is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. If you didn't know, I'm a big Bonhoeffer fan. We've done a teaching on Bonhoeffer's discipleship. It's on YouTube and the podcast if you want to see some PowerPoint presentations as we read through the entire book. Um, but today, you know, we got towards Christmas here. I know it's only Thanksgiving, um, and when it's not Christmas yet, um, but, um, I wanted to share this, uh, share this Advent devotional. I wanted to read through it as a devotional practice for myself. And, um, I often share resources on the blog and just put the text out there for someone to read, I suppose, but, you know, enough for nothing, I, I usually don't end up reading it myself. So I decided to step out and do an Advent devotional, and then— but then I did the math because I only do 6 days a week of the, of the blog. Basically, that would only give me— I don't know, basically I had to count, count back the 28 days that would lead up to the Christmas message. And guess what? Today's the day. We have to start today. So today we're doing an Advent devotional. For God Is in the Manger by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. And today is Advent week 1. It's not, guys, Advent actually doesn't start until December 3rd, so don't freak out. So we're getting way ahead of the— way ahead of things, but it'll set your minds and hearts for Christmas. That's, that's what I'm thinking. So it's Advent week 1, day 1. Waiting. And, um, Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes, the Advent season is a season of waiting. Jesus stands at the door knocking. In total reality, he comes in the form of the beggar, of the desolate human child in ragged clothes asking for help. He confronts you and every person that you meet. As long as there are people, Christ will walk the earth as your neighbor. As the one through whom God calls you, speaks to you, makes demands on you. That is the great seriousness and great blessedness of the Advent message. Christ is standing at the door. He lives in the form of a human being among us. Do you want to close the door or open it? It may strike us as strange to see Christ in such a near face, but he said it. And those who withdraw from the serious reality of the Advent message cannot talk of the coming of Christ in their heart either. Christ is knocking. It is still not Christmas, but it is also still not the great last Advent, the last coming of Christ. Through all the Advents of our life that we celebrate runs the longing for the last Advent, when the word will be: See, I am making all things new. The Advent season is a season of waiting, but our whole life is an Advent season, that is, a season of waiting for the last Advent, for the time when there will be a new heaven and a new earth. We can and should also celebrate Christmas despite the ruins around us. I think of you as you now sit together with the children and with all the Advent decorations as in earlier years you did with us. We must do all this even more intensively because we do not know how much longer we have. That's from a letter to Bonhoeffer's parents written on November 29th, 1943. And that's it, written from Tegel Prison Camp. And then he shares finally Revelation 3:20. Listen. I am standing at the door knocking. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come into you and eat with you, and you with me. And that's the end of day 1 of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Christmas Advent devotional, Christ in the Manger, or God is in the Manger. And so that's, that's everything we got to share today. There's nothing on the blog other than an encouragement to go, uh, below that, uh, but an encouragement to go check out our Victory Over the Darkness and Bondage Breaker, um, and Freedom in Christ series of discipleship classes. Um, we do wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas as we begin Advent a little earlier on the blog than the rest of the world. Um, but we usually get ahead of ourselves, so that's not really too surprising, I guess. Um, let's pray. Lord God, Heavenly Father, we thank you for today. Um, Lord, we just, uh, we thank you for Thanksgiving, and we give thanks to, to you, and specifically for Lord, our Lord Jesus Christ, who opened our eyes and saved us and brought us into your kingdom. Lord, we pray for anyone who's listening or reading today's message, that they be blessed that you come alongside them and their prayer requests, and that you would fill their heart with thanks and the gospel, the good news that they can share with others as they gather for, for, you know, Thanksgiving celebrations today. Well, we just pray for you to go before us today. Um, we do pray for Haley and Brennan, um, Lord, that they would draw close together as brother and sister for whatever they decide to for Thanksgiving today and just pray for you to heal them and keep them safe. Um, and we do pray for, uh, well, all our friends who are suffering, all the law— you know, all our friends who've suffered loss either this year or the last year, um, or who are suffering broken relationships or illness right now. There's a lot of people out there, Lord. You know who they are. And, um, Um, we brought them— so we're bringing them to you in prayer today. So we pray for you to bless all the— all the— all those people and to bring them closer to you. And also, Lord, we pray for you to go before us today, um, to be safe and to have a happy Thanksgiving. Um, we just pray for you to be with us. In Jesus' name, amen.