Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving

"Thank God in everything [no matter what the circumstances may be, be thankful and give thanks], for this is the will of God for you [who are] in Christ Jesus [the Revealer and Mediator of that will]. 1 Thessalonians 5:17

For the believer, Thanksgiving day is not a one-day event. It is an everyday experience as we live out the victorious Christian life. A thankful heart is a heart that is pleasing to God.

The text from 1 Thessalonians 5:17 suggests that we thank God not just when there are good things in life, but we thank Him IN all things. It isn't an optional exercise, but a command. It is God's will for you and me to be thankful. Please note that it does not to thank Him FOR all things - but IN all things.

This year has been a year of challenges for America's KESWICK and our family. Many of you have stood with us in prayer as we have walked through some very challenging days. While I don't necessarily understand WHY we went through some of the trials, I am thankful that IN the process we were able to say "thank you" to the Lord for seeing us through.

Many years ago, songwriter, Dan Burgess, penned the words to the song THANK YOU, LORD

Thank You Lord for the trials that come my way in that way I can grow each day as I let You lead and thank you lord for the patience those trials bring in the process of growing I can learn to care

chorus
but it goes against the way I am to put my human nature down and let the spirit take control of all I do cause when those trials come my human nature shouts the things to do and god's soft prompting can be easily ignore

verse 2
I thank you lord with each trial I feel inside that you're there to help lead and guide me away from wrong cause you promised lord that with every testing that your way of escaping is easier to bear

verse 3
I thank you lord for the victory that growing brings in surrender of everything life is so worthwhile and I thank you lord that when everything's put in place out in front I can see your face and it' there you belong

Are you thankful this morning? I trust that today will be the beginning of a life of THANKSLIVING for you! I am very thankful today for you, my Freedom Fighter family. Thanks for being in the journey with me. - Bill Welte is President and CEO of America's KESWICK

God's WORD for YOU: Proverbs 27; Ezekiel 30-32; 1 Peter 4

Think About This: Very often when I haven't faith in my faith, I have to have faith in His faith. He makes me believe in myself and my possibilities, when I simply can't. I have to rise to His faith in me. A woman who was inwardly collapsed said to me, "Well, I have no faith of my own, but I do have faith in your faith." "Good," I replied, "take faith in my faith as a first step, and then you will go on to something infinitely better - faith in His faith." With faith in His faith you can do anything- anything that ought to be done. There is a passage which touches your need. "For the Eternal... will not let you go." Faith is not merely your holding on to God; it is God holding on to you. He will not let you go! As Walt Whitman puts it, "Not until the sun refuses to shine, do I refuse you." Then keep saying to your soul, "In quietness and in confidence shall be your faith." (Isaiah 30:15). Then repeat to your soul these words: "To say what ought to be cannot be is a brief and complete statement of atheism." It is. Say to yourself, "What ought to be can be, and I will make it so." And you will. And will go beyond yourself. Eli E. Stanley Jones