A Month of Fun and Finally Feeling Thankful
What a whirlwind! Over the past month we've done a church social/mixer; gone to Pheasant Fields Farm to do their corn maze in the dark; watched a movie and ate too much candy; gone bowling; and had a game night together at the church! Thank you for all the fun and memories made this past month!!
But it kind of felt good to get back to Bible study this past Wednesday, didn't it? This week we talked about "Thankfulness." Hey, it's Thanksgiving after all, right?! Romans 1:18-21 says that the godless are thankless people. Have you ever done something amazing for someone and didn't get a "thank you" in return? It doesn't feel very good does it? It also can lower your opinion of that person. Yet how many of us have done this very thing to others? How many of us are guilty of being thankless with God? Pretty much all of us at some point.
Thankfully God is in the business of transforming lives. And one thing He is really good at is taking our ungrateful natures and making them erupt with thankfulness over time as He works His power in us! He does it better than the Mentos mints we dropped into the diet soda outside on Wednesday night before the Bible study. They were pretty good at creating a volcano of fizz, but we just couldn't drop enough mints at one time into the soda to create a geyser that would make us say, "Wow!" Well, God can do that for us when it comes to being thankful people!
Colossians 3:17 says in Jesus we can do everything in a Spirit of gratitude. Ephesians 5:20 says to be thankful in all circumstances. Hebrews 13:15 says we can offer a continuous sacrifice of praise. Sometimes it feels like a sacrifice to do it, but it's totally worth it and totally rewarding. Jesus didn't always feel like being thankful for the situation He faced before dying for our sins. But He chose sacrifice for us. Will we choose sacrificing our ungrateful hearts to God every day in order to become transformed by His grace? If we are willing, we will sound more and more like the kind of people that truly are thankful and grateful for God and others.
This Thanksgiving, can you tell your family you are thankful for them? This Thanksgiving, can you say the same to God? It couldn't hurt to start practicing now. God has done SO MUCH for you and for me. Let's focus on that more than the problems of this world, and I think others will see how thankful we are and be inspired to be thankful too.
Thank you for reading this! Thank you for spending time with the Medford Youth Group! Thank you for having hearts open to our amazing God! Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!
