Dear Church Family –
We’re less than a week away from what many Christians consider the greatest holiday of the year—Thanksgiving. It’s a great holiday because it has not been as commercialized and secularized as Christmas and Easter, it centers around family, and it emphasizes one of the key qualities of godly living—gratitude.
Gratitude is, perhaps, a test of how well we accept God’s ways and will for our life. This was brought to my attention recently by my reading of “Daily With the King,” by W. Glyn Evans. He writes:
One of the tests of my spiritual health is: How well do I accept God’s ways? It is one thing to accept God’s Word, but it is quite another thing to accept Hs ways. That is because His ways strike me directly and, sometimes, contrarily. Yet however I like or dislike God ways, “the ways of the Lord are right” (Hosea 14:9). That means He always deals with me in righteousness (or fairness, justice). Not in partiality.
The next paragraph is what really arrested my attention.
If God’s ways are not pleasing to me, it is because He is righteous and I am sinful. To the extent that I am ‘righteous,’ that is, agree with God’s character, I will find His ways to be perfectly delightful. If I stumble over God’s ways it is because there is an element of sin in me that has not been judged.
But I must remember that while God always deals with me from righteousness, it is always through love. “I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely” (Hosea 14:4). Love makes it possible for a righteous God and sinful people to find a common ground of meeting. Because I know God loves me, I know I can trust His ways even though they may seem painful and irksome and foreign to my nature. Love is God’s way of telling me that His ways are not meant to crush but to lift me….
God’s love does not change the content of His ways. They may still be bitter or heavy, but love guarantees me that however rough those ways may be, they are leading me to something better, something glorious in the days to come. So love is not only my protector; it is my hope and inspiration. How thrilled I am to be serving a God who is absolutely right in all He does, yet absolutely tender in how He does it! Let His name be praised!
Hmmm. Three thoughts from that last paragraph cause me to pause and reflect:
1. His ways are leading me to something better. We’re seeing that dramatically in our Sunday series from the life of Joseph. This Sunday, we’ll be in Genesis 41 and Joseph’s dramatic rise from prison to power.
2. Let’s praise and thank God that He is always right and always loving. Our annual Thanksgiving service next Thursday is a great time to do that!
3. God is right in all He does, tender in how He does it. That’s a model for you and me and how we act and talk in our families, our church, and our community.
“The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)
“When a man's ways are pleasing to the Lord, He makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.” (Proverbs 16:7)
See you Sunday! – Pastor Tim
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