On a week typically full of family, friends, and Thanksgiving celebration, this usually is one of the favorite holidays of the year. Enter 2020.
Instead, many families, friends, businesses, and churches yet to even know how they will handle the week upon us. Families and friends still churn over the final details of visits or non-visits. Many have cancelled their traditional plans. Years-long annual traditions will be broken by either fear of a world-wide pandemic or under the scrutiny of government mandates.
If you are a follower of Jesus Christ though, let me suggest there are three things at the beginning of this week for which you can be grateful despite the complications of 2020.
The Model Prayer Helps Us See Them
Jesus taught His disciples (which ultimately includes us as well) how to pray. In this prayer, He provides three things for which we can be immensely grateful for this Thanksgiving week (and every week). Here is Jesus’ prayer:
2 So He said to them, “When you pray, say:
Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
3 Give us day by day our daily bread.
4 And forgive us our sins,
For we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
And do not lead us into temptation,
But deliver us from the evil one.” (Luke 11:2-4)
After Jesus acknowledges God’s glory and majesty of His character and plan, He asks three requests. In these three requests we see what should make us grateful.
For What Should We Be Grateful?
Our Daily Essentials
Jesus invites us to ask God to provide for our daily essentials, “day by day our daily bread.” Implied of course in this request and further implicated in Jesus’ teaching later in the text (cf., Luke 11:5-13) is the fact that God answers this request for His children. We ask and God provides for our daily essentials like food, water, air, clothing, and safety. God does this over and over and over and over and over. Jesus does not promise us the world; He directs us to ask for our essentials. God answers this prayer regularly.
The Joy of Fellowship
Jesus also instructs us to ask God, “And forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.” This points to the joy of true uninhibited fellowship between God, others, and us. Whenever there is forgiveness (cf., 1 John 1:5-2:2), there is also fellowship. As forgiveness takes place, all the impediments of sin that break fellowship between God and us or between others and us are removed. Friends, this is a great reason to rejoice this Thanksgiving season. Forgiveness and thus authentic, joy-filled fellowship is available to us.
God’s Grace in the Midst of Pressure
Jesus concluded by inviting us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation.” The idea here of “temptation” is of overwhelming pressure that is beyond the will of God. Jesus asks us to pray that God will not allow us to be overwhelmed by our circumstances. My friends, He invites us to ask that because He knows that God will in fact answer that request for each one of us (cf., 1 Cor 10:13). God limits the strength and weight of your pressures while at the same time providing you grace that is equal to the tasks set before you. Therefore, this week, you can be grateful for God’s grace in the midst of your pressures.
Therefore, as we take on a new day and week, let’s choose to be grateful for these blessings for which God invites us to ask and promises to answer. In this crazy time with all kinds of craziness around us, we can be grateful for these three very powerful things in our lives: our daily essentials, the joy of fellowship, and grace that is up to the challenge.
Image Credit Adam Nieścioruk
KevinCarson.com | Wisdom for Life in Christ Together
