Trial Run

Last night my wonderful bride cooked up a practice run for next weeks Thanksgiving dinner. Now she's been doing this for a good 20 years but she went ahead and did it anyway. It was fantastic and it got me to thinking about Thanksgiving, the response to God's goodness. If Melany's been cooking up fantastic Thanksgiving meals for 20 years but still thinks she needs the practice perhaps we who have been following Christ for a long period of time will not be offended if I challenge you to join me on a little experiment today (or whatever day your reading this) and keep track of all the things that you are thankful for in a day. Identify the things that God brings to your attention and give thanks and write it down. I think if you'll do this you will have a Thanksgiving like you've never had before.

So I ask....Whose with me?

Oh, and please don't be shy. I encourage you to post your responses or what your thankful for today. To do so, just click on "comments" and post away!
Let's get going!


What say you?

Christmas Lights

It's Wednesday! Over the Hump day we used to call it. Just a few short days until the weekend. We have begun an initiative called "Christmas Lights" for the purpose of leveraging the Christmas season to connect with friends, neighbors, coworkers and family members in hopes of presenting the love of Christ to them. We have challenged people to begin asking God to direct them to the person or persons we ought to engage for the gospel's sake and to write the persons name on a piece of paper and put it in an ornament on the Church Christmas tree. Each time they connect with this person (shine their light) we ask that they put a light bulb on the tree. My hope and prayer is that, working together, we will see people take steps towards the truth in response to God working through us. Just by sending a card, giving a gift, taking someone out to lunch or having a cup of coffee we trust that God will provide, through our intentional relationship building, an opportunity to hear and respond to the gospel.

So, what are you doing for Christmas?

Gee, Thanks

It's Tuesday and while I have been planning for this coming Sunday for a while, today I jump in with both feet. This coming Sunday is our Thanksgiving Sunday and the text is 1 Thessalonians 5:18. ¹⁸ give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. This is yet another one of those texts that challenge me in a big way. I would say that I'm a thankful person in that I consistently identify things for which I am grateful but this verse says that's not enough. "Give thanks in all circumstances", like when you get a nail in your tire when your on vacation, or when you stubb your toe in the middle of the night trying to discover what that noise was. These are times when thanksgiving doesn't come natural. Why do you think God wants us to be thankful for things we are not naturally thankful for?

What say you?