We Give Thanks by Jason G. Lutz

We Give Thanks by Jason G. Lutz

We give thanks to You, O God, we give thanks! For Your wondrous works declare that Your name is near.”
‭‭(Psalms‬ ‭75:1‬ ‭NKJV‬‬)
With this being the end of the month of Thanksgiving I would like to share three things I believe Christians in the United States have to be thankful for:

1.  The Bible translated into our languages, I include Spanish here because I love it.  I have read accounts of brothers and sisters in Christ who have found salvation by way of a few scriptures written hastily on notebook paper.  I have also read accounts of pastors in far off lands longing for a commentary on the Old Testament or even a complete Bible.  We are overwhelmingly blessed with good translations and good commentaries.  For this I am thankful.

2.  Free exercise of our religion in public.  We can be Baptist or Presbyterian, reformed or hipster (which oddly enough seems to correlate highly).  I honestly think variety here is a good thing when built upon the Rock as related in the Bible.  I adore many Pentecostals, but I don’t think I could handle attending there.  I will not minimize the recent church shootings, but we must acknowledge that we do not face systemic oppression of our religion, nor do we face public hostility compared with Christians in Egypt or parts of Asia.  For this I am thankful.

3.  We have numerous amazing missional organizations: World Vision, Medi-Share, and Cure International to name a few.  I encourage each of you to check out the websites for these organizations and see what they are doing for God’s Kingdom.  It is amazing and for this I am thankful.

This is about thankfulness.  What I don’t want is for anyone to to feel guilty.  My guess is that all of us could spend more time in our Bible, volunteer just a bit more at Church, and send just a little more overseas.  What I do hope that you will consider is just how easily we can lose all of these things.  These things seem common place to us but they are not common for many Christians.  Nor are these things common to most Christians throughout the ages.  All things revert to the mean, including history.  If we are not vigilant about what we have we will lose it.

Merry Christmas,

Jason

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