Thanksgiving 2011

Oh LORD, sovereign creator of the universe, we now give you thanks. You, you alone are responsible for the blessings that are before us not. You are responsible for all the blessings that followed us this whole year.
In fact all things are given from your hand the obviously good and the apparently bad. You are never not working in our lives. You are ever calling us to find our delight in you. You are the source of everything we have.

You know every heart in this room. I beg you to draw all to you. You have been lifted up and displayed as a payment for our sin. And Sin we have.. If we were to count them they would fill this room and spill out for blocks around. Even in this nation is filled with people who have trampled your name actively or by ignoring it all together. Even we have done this actively by our outright anger, malice and selfishness. And internally, we've done it by our silent pride, covetousness, and discontentedness. Further, we are guilty of ignoring you all together at times.

For these sins and all others, we ask for your grace.
For the time being, you overlook our sins. We thank you for that.
May your kindness bring us to repentance.

And your kindness has been overwhelming to us and for that we thank you.
For these friends and family here today, we thank you.
Not for just one turkey but two, we thank you.
Father, we are here. Our heart is beating, we have oxygen to breath. We thank you.

You have provided our needs. It looks like all these things come from our hands; do we drive the semis to Cub Foods to fill the shelves? Do we plow the interstates so the trucks can travel, Did we lay asphalt and concrete roads? Do we labor in the hot sun to farm vegetables or animals? No, you have worked through all these people.
You have rained blessings down on us. Like Scrooge McDuck we are swimming in prosperity. But we don't even realize it. For this Prosperity I thank, no, WE thank you. MAKE us truly thankful. Not with our lips only but in our hearts. And let us be thankful not in a general sense, but thankful to you, because you are Jehovah Jireh, our provider.

In the name of Jesus, through whom all things come to us. Amen.