We gathered this week to celebrate Thanksgiving, a time to reflect on our blessings. I have to ask myself, why are there so many in our “realm of influence” who are out to cancel this holiday? Their commentary, they paint with broad strokes, black ink, dark schemes…attempting to erase the very nature of the word…Thanks – Giving. Thanksgiving is about giving thanks. It’s about being thankful. And to whom do we need to lift our thanksgiving? He, our Father God, is the target of their distain. The father of lies, our adversary, Satan, works continuously to destroy the good name of God. He spins the story to take our attention away from what our very soul cries out for, relationship with God.

Do you think it is possible to be genuinely happy without having an attitude of gratitude? When we are grateful, we are expressing thankfulness. Last week I wrote about my health issues and my pending medical scans. My recent x-rays showed a spot on my heart, and I was waiting for my results to come in. My breathing has been more labored, and I have been short of breath more. While I waited, Satan began his attacks! My mind would start to wonder and started imagining all kinds of scenarios…what if’s…. what will I do…what will happen…. will I die? You get the picture. But thankfully, God strengthened my mind, through His word and what I have been studying, and He kept me centered on His truth. I stayed focused on Him and that stopped my mind from scrolling through the endless lists of “what if’s.” The day before Thanksgiving, my results were back. Guess what? There isn’t anything to account for the spot they saw on the x-ray. No lesions, no adenopathy (cancer) and no cardiac mass! My “what if’s” were not truths in the hands of an Almighty God! My numbers were steady and although I may have had a setback, I do not have the lie that Satan was trying to sell me!

Let me just stop there for a minute. What lie is Satan trying to sell you? See if you can relate to a couple of mine.

1. I am not good enough.
2. I am smaller and less valued than others, because of my education or job title.

Now, I am being painfully honest here. I struggle with these lies and I am working to correct this fleshly way of thinking. But even in that statement, I can hear the lie pronounced. I, myself, do not have the ability to fix this! I am not able to pull myself out of this quagmire of lies and set my feet on the rock of truth. Only Christ has the power to change me. Do you see the battle plan? Satan’s whole desire is to erase anything good that God has created.

1. I am not good enough.
   • “In Christ, there is no earthly condition that can make God more accessible to me or make me more acceptable to Him.” Christ did the work on the cross and ONLY through His shed blood, do we find forgiveness. I cannot work harder to make God love me more. He as already given everything for me at the cross!         
   •  In saying I am not good enough and I need to work harder to earn God’s love, I am diminishing Jesus’s death—His pain, His extreme suffering. His death has fully reconciled me to God. What value can my work add to His sacrifice?
2. I am smaller and less valued than others, because of my education or job title.
   • Look throughout the Bible and what type of people do you see God using? Moses was a slave. David was the youngest of his family. He was so insignificant that his father didn’t even acknowledge him when the prophet asked to assemble all of his sons so God could choose a king. Peter was an uneducated fisherman, who denied knowing Jesus, in order to save his own skin. Rahab was a prostitute. And Jesus, born to poor and common people; “Does anything good come from Nazareth?”

When our focus is only on ourselves, we will always stumble and fall. It’s like the people we all see, attempting to cross the street, while glued to the screen of their phone. You can’t do both! We must lift up our faces to God and make Him our focus, so that through His Spirit, we will grow and mature, and bear fruit for His kingdom.

So, if you want to cancel something—how about we cancel Satan! Turn your discontentment to gratitude. Stop trying to prove yourself and earn your way into heaven. Turn off the lies that Satan is trying to make you believe and burrow into God’s word, so that you will become like a tree planted by a stream of water. -Amen

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
but his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.

He is like a tree planted by streams of water
that yields its fruit in its season, its leaf does not wither.
In all that he does, he prospers.
The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away.

Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;
or the LORD knows the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.
Psalm 1