Thank you Lord!
Meditation for the week of November 21, 2010
Revelation 7:11-12 All the angels stood around the throne and the elders and the four living creatures, and fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying: "Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom, thanksgiving and honor and power and might, Be to our God forever and ever. Amen."
There is worship in heaven and that worship involves thanksgiving. Someday we will be there, and we will be worshiping God with thanksgiving if we have truly trusted in the Lord Jesus Who is the One who gave Himself for us (Galatians 2:20). He is the only One who ever walked this earth Who is truly worthy of our worship.
“Thank you” are words that do not come easy for many people. We would like to be self-sufficient. To thank someone tends to imply that we received a blessing we didn’t earn or maybe even deserve. But thank God, if we are saved, that is exactly what happened. Paul says that it is by grace that we are saved through faith in Christ. He says it is not of our own works of righteousness because then we could boast. (See Ephesians 2:8-10).
We need to be thankful that we have a Bible in our own language and that we have a country that demands that an attempt be made to teach us to read. While there are some people who never can learn to read and need help in order to know and understand God’s word, the rest of us are without excuse when it comes to our relationship with God. Bibles are freely available in most motels/hotels. They are available cheaply in many stores. Most of us have one or two gathering dust at home. Nearly all of us can read and understand John 3:16, and a person really wouldn’t have to have more than that to know how to keep from perishing eternally.
We need to be thankful that God sent His unique Son to this world to become the sacrifice that satisfied Him on our behalf. The day that the Lord was born was a very important day. It was a day that was filled with joy and promise. The day that the Lord died was probably the blackest day in the history of mankind and was filled with sorrow. The day when the Lord was raised from the dead turned sorrow into joy (John 16:20) and gives us assurance that Christ Jesus has satisfied God. Because of that very important day, we who trust Him are forgiven and go free. We know that we too will one day be raised from the dead because of that day.
But the most important day in our lives is our day of salvation. It is the day when we like Nicodemus in John 3 met the Lord and found out that we didn’t understand how God saves. We found out that we were lost but that the Lord Jesus did come to be our Savior. We can know all about that and not be saved. It is not until we personally rest on the truth that Christ died for us that we are saved. When we trust what a person says, we are trusting the person; and we must trust the Lord to be saved. The gift of eternal life that is offered must be received by faith. That happened for me in 1963 just before Thanksgiving.
I can truly say and I hope you can too:
Thank you, Lord, for saving my soul,
Thank you, Lord, for making me whole;
Thank you, Lord, for giving to me
Thy great salvation so rich and free.
Bruce Collins