Thanksgiving

Greetings All,

     I could not send out this week's 'thought' without offering you a few insights on the need, beauty, duty, pleasure, healthiness, and attitude-altering effects of thanksgiving. 
     It's an attitude encouraged repeatedly throughout the Bible, and is so necessary in every aspect of the believers life -- including worship. For as the writer of Hebrews tells us (12:28): "Let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably..."

     Therefore I offer you these words of wisdom from various sources and authors -- the Bible, secular philosophers, inspirational speakers, Christian and non-Christian authors, therapists, and every day people. Nearly everyone who has any degree of wisdom at all knows how imperative a truly grateful heart is to a more healthy outlook and the nurturing of inner joy -- especially when that gratitude is offered to the One who gives us all good things to enjoy.

     "If you need help, ask God. If you don't, thank Him."

Anonymous

     "The more we understand God's sovereignty, the more our prayers will be filled with thanksgiving."

R. C. Sproul

     "There is a calmness to a life lived in gratitude, a quiet joy."

Ralph H. Blum 

     "If anyone would tell you the shortest, surest way to happiness and all perfection, he must tell you to make it a rule to yourself to thank and praise God for everything that happens to you." 

William Law 

     "None is more impoverished than the one who has no gratitude. Gratitude is a currency that we can mint for ourselves, and spend without fear of bankruptcy."

Fred De Witt Van Amburgh

     "If there is one thing that will make all the difference to how you feel when you go to sleep and how you feel when you get up, is how grateful you are for everything that you have." 

Josh Brendan

     "Practicing gratitude is a very powerful tool to shift your attention on the things you don't have to the things you do have and this alone will make you feel better."

Noelia Aanulds

     "We can always find something to be thankful for, and there may be reasons why we ought to be thankful for even those dispensations which appear dark and frowning."

Albert Barnes

     "Thanksgiving, after all, is a word of action."

W. J. Cameron 

     "Give thanks not just on Thanksgiving Day, but every day of your life. Appreciate and never take for granted all that you have."

Catherine Pulsifer

     "When someone gives you a gift that he's already sacrificed and paid for, you don't try to pay him back; you just receive the gift with thanksgiving and spontaneously lavish love on the giver."

Ron Larson, Seeing Jesus: Restoring His Brilliance

     "Often I'll speak my thanksgiving aloud. Hearing the long list of good gifts God has given me is usually just what I need to restore my joy."

Lori Hatcher, Hungry for God ... Starving for Time

     "It is literally true, as the thankless say, that they have nothing to be thankful for. He who sits by the fire, thankless for the fire, is just as if he had no fire. Nothing is possessed save in appreciation, of which thankfulness is the indispensable ingredient. But a thankful heart hath a continual feast."

W.J. Cameron 

     "If there is one thing that will make all the difference to how you feel when you go to sleep and how you feel when you get up, is how grateful you are for everything that you have."

Josh Brendan

     "What would happen in my own life if thanksgiving became the main thing for me?"

John Juneman

     "A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue, but the parent of all other virtues." 

Cicero

     "For flowers that bloom about our feet; 

       For tender grass, so fresh, so sweet; 

       For song of bird, and hum of bee; 

       For all things fair we hear or see, 

       Father in heaven, we thank Thee!" 

Ralph Waldo Emerson

     With prayers that you will truly pause, take time away from the food and football, count your many blessings, and offer to God the gratitude He above all others is worthy of and deserves.

     In His Service, Pastor Jeff

Puritans

Greetings All!

     This week's "thoughts" come to you from a selection of different Puritans. Yes, Puritans!  I know many are prejudiced against the Puritans from the start (often by exposure to exaggerated and untrue propaganda) but I would ask you (if you are such a person) to let them speak for themselves and not read them through the filter of another person's opinion of them.  Ryken's Book "Worldly Saints" is a wonderful corrective to many of the common myths.
Overall (with a few minor exceptions) they were a very gospel-centered and grace-oriented group of people. Yet you would only know that if you took the time to read the things they actually wrote themselves, instead of things others have written about them (often without ever having taken the time to do what I just suggested)!  After all, wisdom and fairness would say we should never formulate an opinion of someone until we get to know and interact with them personally.
     So, with that said, here are some "Puritan" thoughts! In terms of a time frame, the vast majority lived between the years 1600 - 1690.   Enjoy.

     "The man whose heart is endeared to the woman he loves... dreams of her in the night, has her in his eye and apprehensions when he awakes, muses on her at he sits at table, and walks with her when she travels... She lies in his bosom, and his heart trusts in her, which forces all to confess that the stream of his affection, like a mighty current, runs with full tide and strength." 

Thomas Hooker

     "There is no relationship more near, more entire, more needful, more kindly, more delightful, more comfortable, more constant, more continual, than the relationship of a man and his wife, the main root, source, and origin of all other relationships." 

Thomas Gataker

     "Creatures, like pictures, are most beautiful from a distance.  But it is not so with Christ. The nearer the soul approaches Him, and the longer it lives in the enjoyment of Him, still the sweeter and more desirable He becomes... He is bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, a garment to the naked, and healing to the wounded. Whatever a soul can desire is found in Him."

John Flavel

     "What is the Gospel itself but a merciful moderation, in which Christ's obedience is esteemed ours, and our sins laid upon Him, wherein God, from being a judge, becomes our Father, pardoning our sins and accepting our obedience, though feeble and blemished."

Richard Sibbes

     "Men would sooner believe that the Gospel is from heaven, if they saw more of its heavenly effects in the hearts and lives of those who profess it."

Richard Baxter

     "One word of seasonable, prudent advice, given by a minister to persons in need, may be of more use than many sermons."

Richard Baxter

     "It is the same impossibility for a thing to be created out of nothing, as to be created by nothing." 

William Law

     "He only that stills the stormy seas, can quiet the distressed and tempestuous soul."

John Flavel

     "A man may easier see without eyes, or speak without a tongue, than truly mortify one sin without the Spirit."

John Owen

     "Humility is a strange flower -- it grows best in winter weather and under storms of affliction."

Samuel Rutherford

     "There are two aspects to love; the one is to give, the other is to forgive." 

John Boys

     "In marriage a husband must choose his love, and then he must love his choice." 

Henry Smith

     "God commands nothing but what is beneficial...  To obey God is not so much our duty as our privilege." 

Thomas Watson

     "If you neglect instructing your children in the way of holiness, will the devil neglect to instruct them in the way of wickedness? No. If you will not teach them to pray, he will teach them to curse, swear, and lie.  If ground remain uncultivated, weeds will spring up on it."

John Flavel

     "Prayer will make a man cease from sin, or sin will entice a man to cease from prayer."

John Bunyan

     "All married persons must above all things, love, respect and cherish grace in one another."

Thomas Taylor

     In the Bonds of Christian Affection, Pastor Jeff

10 Authors from "101 Quotable Christians"

Greetings All,

     Unlike the more lengthy "thoughts" of the last two weeks, I chose to offer you a few smaller thoughts that I came across while reading a book entitled, "101 Quotable Christians," published by Barbour Publishing and listing no author.  I trust you might find some of them to be insightful and encouraging as I myself did when I first read them. They cover a variety of topics, and come to you from ten of the 101 different authors. Enjoy!

"The goodness of God breaking forth into a desire to communicate good, was the cause and beginning of the creation."  William Law (1686 - 1761)

"Catch a man at the moment when he is really poor in spirit, and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, "By love! I'm being humble," and almost immediately pride -- pride at his own humility -- will appear."   C. S. Lewis (1898 - 1963)

"I need Christ, not something that resembles Him."   C. S. Lewis

"If our lives are easy, and if all we ever attempt for God is what we know we can handle, how will we ever experience His omnipotence in our lives?" Anne Graham Lotz (1948 -     )

"Satan cannot create anything new, cannot create anything at all. He must steal what God has created. Thus he twists love and God's wonderful gift of sex into lust and sadism and myriad perversions.  He disfigures the heart's deep desire to worship God and persuades us to bow before lesser gods of lust, power or money."     Catherine Marshall  (1914 - 1983)

"Truth is objective because God exists outside ourselves; it is universal because God is above all; it is constant because God is eternal.  Absolute truth is absolute because it originates from the Original."   Josh McDowell  (1939 -      )

"Because God is holy, He cannot look on sin with indifference."   Josh McDowell

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D. L. Moody (1837 - 1899)

"The moral man is as guilty as the rest. His morality cannot save him... It is a favorite thing with infidels to set their own (moral) standard and to measure themselves by other people. But that will not do in the Day of Judgment. That aside, now let us use God's law as a balance weight..." 

"Satan is willing to have us worship anything, however sacred -- the Bible, a crucifix, the church -- if only we do not worship God Himself." 

"I believe the memory is "the worm that never dies"... the memory is never cleansed (entirely) of obscene stories and unclean acts.  Even if a man repents and reforms, he often has to fight the past."

"Just like the moon's light, our light is borrowed light."

"The world can get on very well without you and me, but the world cannot get on without Christ, and therefore we must testify of Him... It seems to me that if we get one look at Christ in His love and beauty, then the world and its pleasures will look very small to us."

"Some people tell us that it does not make any difference what a man believes if he is only sincere.  One church is just as good as another if you are only sincere.  I do not believe that any greater delusion ever came out of the pit of hell than that."

"Pentecost isn't over yet."

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"Christ counted it no humiliation to be able to do nothing of Himself, but to be always and absolutely dependent on the Father."   Andrew Murray (1828 - 1917)

"You are in danger of substituting prayer and Bible study for living fellowship with God, the living interchange of giving Him your love, your heart, your life, and receiving from Him His love, His life, His Spirit.  Your needs and their expression, your desire to pray humbly and earnestly and believingly may so occupy you, that the light of His countenance and the joy of His love cannot enter you."  Andrew Murray

"If our hearts are full of our own wretched, "I am________...," we will have no ears to hear His glorious, soul-satisfying, "I AM."   Hannah Whitall Smith (1832 -1911)

"Put together all the tenderest love you know of, multiply it by infinity, and you will begin to see glimpses of the love and grace of God."  Hannah Whitall Smith

"The only thing of my very own that I contribute to my redemption, is the sin from which I need to be redeemed."   William Temple (1881 - 1944)

"Before the first star was kindled, before the first living creature began to sing the praise of its Creator, he loved His Church with an everlasting love."  Charles Spurgeon (1834 - 1892)

I trust that that a few were helpful or encouraging!     In His Service, Pastor Jeff