The Gathering Place Where Family Matters

Here we have another reason to give thanks to the Lord in the days leading up to Thanksgiving.

“Sing unto the LORD, O ye saints of His, and give thanks at the remembrance of His holiness” (Psalm 30:4).

I love that wonderful hymn written by Reginald Heber (1788-1826), a pastor, hymnwriter, and missionary to India. The first verse of the lyrics proclaims,

Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty
Early in the morning Our song shall rise to Thee
Holy, holy, holy! Merciful and mighty
God in three persons, Blessed Trinity!

I am sure we won’t be able to get that wonderful hymn out of our minds today, will we? Good! That’s just what I was hoping would be the case! Love you folks and truly, give thanks with me at the remembrance of His holiness today.

The countdown to Thanksgiving Day is on and we are thinking about a few verses of Scripture that speak of being thankful.

“O give thanks unto the LORD; for He is good; for His mercy endures forever” (1 Chronicles 16:34). David used beautiful word pictures to express the extent of this wonderful rejoicing. He speaks about the heavens being glad and the earth rejoicing (16:31). He says the fields are rejoicing and the trees sing at the presence of the Lord (16:32,33).

Then he writes of himself giving thanks. Of the hundreds of reasons why this thanksgiving should take place, he chooses two wonderful blessings about our awesome God. First, He is good. Second, He is merciful.

I needed to stop and let that sink in for a bit. Good and merciful. That’s what causes me to be thankful today. How about you?

From now through Thanksgiving Day, each day, Lord willing, we will look at a verse that deals with being thankful.

The Lord has delivered David from all of his enemies. Now he lifts his voice of praise and says,

“Therefore I will give thanks unto Thee, O LORD, among the heathen, and I will sing praises unto Thy name” (2 Samuel 22:50).

In this season of Thanksgiving, it is a great idea to think of the many things the Lord has done for us. Maybe it would even be a good idea to use a little imagination and think about potential things from which the Lord delivered us. For instance, did you drive a car today? Imagine how many potential crashes from which the Lord delivered you. Did you walk into a grocery store today? Imagine how the Lord protected you from falling. How many times did you walk up and down your steps today? On and on it goes. We often do things with little or no thought as to how the Lord has protected us.

When we really stop and think about it, we join King David by giving thanks unto the Lord and praising His name.

You may not have thought much about him.

Most folks don’t even know he existed.

His name is Epaphras (ep-af-RAS) and he was a dear brother in the Lord and faithful partner to the Apostle Paul. He’s mentioned in Colossians 1:7-8, “As you also learned of Epaphras our dear fellowservant, who is for you a faithful minister of Christ; Who also declared unto us your love in the Spirit.”

Again Paul shares the outstanding work of this dear brother in Colossians 4:12-13, “Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ, salutes you, always laboring fervently for you in prayer, that ye may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God. For I bear him record, that he hath a great zeal for you, and them that are in Laodicea, and them in Hierapolis.”

He was faithful in his partnership.
He was faithful in his prayer life.
He was faithful in his purpose.

He didn’t care about the spotlight. He didn’t promote himself. He only desired to serve and to help others to grow and mature. Oh that there were an additional 10,000 men and women just like Epaphras today. Think of what our churches, homes, schools, and neighborhoods would be like if that were the case. We might not have 10,000 additional folks right at the moment, but we do have you and me. That is at least a starting point. Bless you, dear friend. Thanks for making Dr. Mike’s Daily Prescriptions part of your routine.

Think of the number 5,073 and silly excuses!

You realize that an excuse is the attempt to assemble reasons why I should be released from this proposed or present situation. We offer reasons why this won’t work. We explain why we are not the person to do this thing. We even present a list of obvious conclusions as to why someone else should do this, but not me.

I take you back thirteen years to a staff meeting at Baptist Church Planters. The dear folks in our IT ministry and administration were encouraging me to launch my own website as part of the websites of Baptist Church Planters. One of the men was “crazy” (or so I thought!) enough that he even suggested I write a daily devotional. This wouldn’t be designed to replace believer’s reading of the Bible. Rather, it would serve as an encouragement or spiritual vitamin in addition to reading the Scriptures.

Oh, the excuses I made. No one would read it. Only my mother would read it. Come to think of it, my mother didn’t have a computer so even she would never read it. I would run out of things to write about. This would never work.

Today you are reading post number 5,073 and no one is as amazed as I am. I honestly thought that I would run out of things to write about by the end of the first month. Wrong! Daily I still have the privilege of coming to dear people throughout the United States and the far reaches of the world, including restricted access countries. What a great blessing I would have missed these years if I had kept on making excuses.

“Ah Lord GOD! Behold, Thou hast made the heaven and the earth by Thy great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for Thee” (Jeremiah 32:17).

Oh friends, if the Lord is bringing an opportunity to you, certainly pray much about it, discuss it with others, think it through carefully, BUT….don’t make excuses and disobey! I’m glad the staff laughed at my excuses and assured me they knew it would work!