Thanksgiving is a favorite holiday for many. First of all, Thanksgiving doesnt cost you and arm and a leg. It doesnt require hours of shopping and wrapping. It doesnt involve big decorations, although a center piece does look nice on the table and its easier to give everyone what they want a turkey dinner!
Thanksgiving is also a favorite holiday because it reminds people of all the reasons they have to be thankful. Unfortunately many of us lose that perspective the other 364 days a year. We tend to focus on what else would make us feel blessed rather than how we have already been blessed.
Pastor Bradley Dodson of Nashville Church of Christ thinks many of us lose sight of exactly how blessed we really are compared to the rest of the world. Dodson has been preaching a sermon series this month entitled, Living a Blessed Life and thinks sometimes we lose sight of how blessed we really are.
If you ask a group of people if they think they are blessed or not, a majority of the people would recognize that their lives are not completely hopeless and they are (indeed blessed), he said. The problem comes when you ask, how many think life would be a little better if they had a little more time, money and stuff? A majority of the individuals would respond with a resounding, yes. The fact is we are blessed beyond measure. With at least eighty percent of humanity living on less than $10 a day, we are considered very blessed.
Dodson believes we are blessed for a reason and that II Corinthians 9:6-8, 11 reveals that reason. You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.
As followers of Christ we are made rich in every way (relationships, houses, jobs, finances, etc) to be generous in order to be thankful to God, he shared. We so often look at our material items, achievements, and blessings as a right instead of a gift from our master. We lose sight of the blesser and focus on the blessings.
Pastor Roberta Fuller of Killbuck United Methodist Church agrees with Dodson.
It seems we lose sight of the blessings in life because we focus on our wants not our needs, she said. We often times prefer things to relationships and we want instant gratification. We feel entitled to happiness and wonder why all our stuff does not make us happy.
Feeling entitled, as Fuller puts it, is something Dodson thinks has occurred within society and our minds over a period of time.
Satan has twisted our minds and society to view the things in our lives as an entitlement instead of a blessing, Dodson explained. As we grow in Christ he allows our perspective to change in how he provides for us and what is important. For instance, when I took some youth on a mission trip to Mexico in 2008 they could not wait to get back to their comfortable beds, large entertainment centers, and refrigerators stocked with food. Two years later we returned to Mexico with many of the same youth. This time when it was time to leave tears ran down their face because they had learned what it was like to be blessed. They learned that sharing their lives was living a blessed life more than the comforts of modern America.
Fuller believes there is nothing like a mission trip to another country to get the I Am Blessed concept in full swing!
One of the greatest changes I have observed in people and their satisfaction level is from those who have gone on a mission trip or volunteered with some local charity, she said. When you get out of your own comfort zone and see what is happening in other parts of the world and other socio-economic status it changes your perspective greatly. When you visit another culture where people live a substandard lifestyle (to us), but still exude joy and share their limited resources then your perspective changes.
Fuller also thinks giving of yourself, your time and your resources to other in need is the best way to really understand how blessed you are.
I read an article recently in the paper about the slums of Mamba, India where ten thousand people live with no running water, no sanitation and the nearest toilet is ten minutes away and you pay to use it, she recounted. The poorest person in the United States fares far better than that! All I ever have to do to count my blessings is to go camping for a week! I think deep down we all know how blessed we are, we just get tired or overwhelmed and we forget.
And making God number one is another way to stay aware of all the blessings in your life whether its Thanksgiving or just another day when twenty little things have gone wrong.
To live a blessed life and experience these blessings we must first begin with prioritizing who God is in your life, Dodson said. If we continue to live according to our desires, our needs, and our goals then we will be left empty. We are created to be blessed, but in order to do this we must use our lives with God as our first priority. Focus on the blesser and ask yourself how you are honoring him with your life.
Both Fuller and Dodson hope everyone in the area realizes their many blessings everyday of every year.
