FBC Daily Devotional

Thanksgiving and the Challenge of Remembering God’s Benefits

Back, or I guess it's welcome back for me, seems like forever since I've connected with you on these daily devotionals. It's only been, what, maybe four weeks or so, but four weeks on one end, you know, at the front end, it seems like it's going to be a long time, but on the back end, looking back, seems like those four weeks have gone by pretty quickly.

Well, I'm glad to be back at this and doing it, and I hope that these devotionals are a blessing to you and will be in these days ahead. So welcome to a new series of daily devotionals and to a new week as we begin our work week on this Monday.

I hope you're doing well and staying healthy. There's a lot of people suffering with this COVID sickness to one degree or another. Had a lot of it go around, even among some of our families in the church.

Fortunately, nobody has been infected, to my knowledge, as a result of connecting someone at church, connecting with someone at church, but nevertheless, church people have contracted this virus, and also thankfully and fortunately, nobody has been really seriously sick with it, just some discomfort and a lot of, you know, flu-like stuff.

So we thank the Lord for that. So it's a new week, a new work week. It's also a new month, 2nd of November, and November is kind of the Thanksgiving month. That's the way we ought to think about it, and I'll say more about Thanksgiving in just a few minutes.

So a I've seen these Facebook posts about, you know, we can't wait for 2020 to be over, for 2021 to come in, you know, 2020 has been such a disaster, and all the rest of this stuff, as if the turning of the calendar page on December 31st to January 1st is really going to make any difference.

Nevertheless, I understand the sentiment. It's certainly a sentiment that we would be glad for this pandemic stuff to be passed, and November and this week is also election week, tomorrow, election day.

I don't know if you've voted yet. If not, I hope you can get out to vote tomorrow. Do it in person and exercise that right that we have as citizens in this free land, and certainly we need to be praying for the outcome of that election, that God would be gracious to our nation and merciful.

I'll also be praying for the quelling of any violence. You know, there's all kinds of threats that as a result of the election, there's going to be a bunch of violence. It's just insanity these days, but nevertheless.

Cultivating Daily Gratitude in November

So here we are, back at it. So as I said, you know, the month of November we think of as Thanksgiving month because it's coming here in just a few weeks, and I want to encourage you to, if you're not already in the practice of every day stopping to think about three things that you're thankful for, let me encourage you to start doing that this month.

Make that a new habit during the month of November, and maybe to help you out with that for this week, I think I want to focus on the 103rd Psalm, and the psalm begins this way. It says, Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me.

Bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. And then the psalmist is going to go on to express what some of those benefits are, but notice how this begins. He's calling upon us to bless, or give thanks, or praise the Lord with all of our being, O my soul, and all that is within me, with my whole being, to give thanks and to bless the Lord.

But then the next verse I find interesting, but I think we can understand why he says what he says. He says, Bless the Lord, O my and forget not all his benefits. Now, does that seem strange to you? If these benefits are so wonderful, why does he need to tell us not to forget them, but to remember them?

Well, I think because it's so easy to do so. It's so easy to forget them, to not keep them in the forefront of our mind. And why is that? Well, because we do have a tendency to forget the blessings and the benefits of yesterday when we're focusing on maybe something we're not too happy about today.

Let me give you an example of this. So when I got back from our trip the other day, I went to get my haircut. I hadn't been there in a month. And the last time I was there, the person cutting my hair said, What's coming?

What's happening? And I told her we're going to go on a trip and so forth. And I think I even told her we were going to Florida. But anyway, so when I went the other day, got back from the trip, went to get my haircut, came in, and she said, Hey, welcome back.

How was your trip? And I said, Short. Yeah, those of you who know how long it was, you know that was a stupid answer. But anyway, I said, Short. And she says, Oh, did you have to cut it short? Did some come up?

You have to come back quick or early? I said, No, it was a full time. It just went by so quickly. It seems like it was short. She said, Well, how long were you gone? A week? I said, No, actually, it was.

And I had to sheepishly say it was it was four weeks. And she said, Oh, shut up. What are you talking about? What are you complaining about? And I said, Yeah, I'm not really. I'm really not complaining.

I know it sounded like I was complaining. But you know, my point was, my problem with that answer was the day I went, it was Thursday afternoon, late afternoon, about 430 in the afternoon, it was cold outside and it had turned gray and cloudy.

And, you know, it's that time of year when the days are getting shorter and everything. And I got out of the car and I'm walking to the place to get my hair cut and just feeling that cold. And it made me think of, you know, a week earlier when, you know, I'm in Fort Myers and it's 82 degrees and the sun shining and it was feeling pretty good.

And, you know, so I wasn't remembering the blessing. I was forgetting the blessing. And instead, I was focusing on the, you know, the thing that I wasn't too pleased with at the time. You see how easy that is to do?

And I think that's why the psalmist has to exhort us not to forget his benefits. I think there's another reason for that, and that is when we go on in the passage, and we'll look at some of these things tomorrow, but when you go on in the passage, the benefits that he wants us to focus on and not to forget are not physical, tangible benefits.

You know, we do tend to easily remember the material blessings, you know? So oftentimes, every year we have a Thanksgiving praise service at church, and it's right for us to take some time in that praise service to thank the Lord for, you know, the food, the provisions that we have for our families, for our shelter, homes, and so on and so forth.

Those things are all well and good. But those are not the things the psalmist gets us to focus on. The things he wants us to remember are the spiritual benefits that are ours in Christ. So why does he have to remind us to remember those and tell us not to forget them?

Well, again, because if I'm today feeling some sense of lack on a physical, you know, tangible, material way, my focus is on what I'm doing without, what I don't have, what I'm not enjoying, rather than on what I really do have to enjoy and what I do have to be thankful for, these spiritual benefits that we're going to look at in the days ahead.

So for today, let's just hear this exhortation. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. Let's remember. Our Father in heaven, we thank you so much for the benefits that are ours because of Christ Jesus, because of our relationship to him.

For those of us who know him as our Savior, the benefits far outweigh any any discomfort, any lack that we might experience on a physical, tangible plane in this world. How easily we forget. Father, forgive us for our forgetfulness.

Help us, I pray, to remember. Father, we also pray that as tomorrow, election day in our land, we do pray that you would be merciful to us as a people and that you would be gracious. You would give us leadership in this land that will uphold law, uphold righteousness, have a concern about the sanctity of life, and Father, would be gravitating toward righteousness and justice for all.

So we commit these things to you today, and we ask them all in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen. All right, well, I trust you'll have a good rest of your Monday, first day of the week, and look forward to seeing you again throughout the course of the week.

Thanks for being here, thanks for tuning in, and so glad to be back with you. God bless.