In celebration of Thanksgiving Day, here are some great quotes and thoughts from a a variety of great writers. Happy Thanksgiving to you!
- “Do you think, O Christian, that you can measure the love of Christ? Think of what His love has brought you—justification, adoption, sanctification, eternal life! The riches of His goodness are unsearchable! Oh, the breadth of the love of Christ! Shall such a love as this have half our hearts? Shall Jesus’ marvelous loving-kindness and tender care meet with but faint response and tardy acknowledgment? O my soul, tune your heart to a glad song of thanksgiving! Go through the day rejoicing, for you are no desolate wanderer, but a beloved child, watched over, cared for, supplied, and defended by thy Lord.” (Charles Spurgeon – Slightly modernized – From the Daily Help devotional.)
- “It is important to keep on giving thanks. Otherwise, as one continues to pray for the others who have not yet been relieved, one simply fails to notice how many of one’s intercessory prayers have been granted—never notices how the list of ‘Thank-you’s’ grows and perhaps outstrips the list of mere ‘Please’s’ ” (C.S. Lewis, in a 1955 letter to Mary Van Deusen)
- “But in the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving there can be no interruption without sin, since God does not cease to heap benefits upon benefits in order to impel us, though slow and lazy, to gratefulness. In short, we are well-nigh overwhelmed by so great and so plenteous an outpouring of good blessings, by so many and mighty miracles discerned wherever one looks, that we never lack reason and occasion for praise and thanksgiving.” (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion)
- “We are such weaklings and suffering “martyrs” when even one leg hurts or a small sore swells that we can fill heaven and earth with cries and howls, grumbling and cursing. We do not see what a tiny evil such a small thing is, compared to the countless blessings that God provides. Snorers that we are, God lets us experience these minor troubles so that we may be awakened from our deep sleep and be driven by knowledge and realization to consider what would happen if the great and countless blessings present to us disappeared because God’s favor turned away from us.” (Martin Luther, Commentary on Psalm 118)
- “If I have nothing else to rejoice in, I will bless Him that ever these words were possible: “Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners,” and that ever it could be within the compass of fact that such a thing should be true, that we should be here to hear it, and that our lips should be privileged to speak it. I will offer to Him the sacrifice of thanksgiving.” (Charles Spurgeon, from his sermon, “Giving God His Due.”)
- “Evidently we are fair game for the devil when we don’t abound with thanksgiving. Unless the song of thanksgiving is being sung in our hearts the enemy outside will deceive his way into the city of our soul, and the enemy sympathizers within will make his job easy. So for the sake of your own safety, strive to fill your heart with thanksgiving! Guard yourselves with gratitude!” (John Piper, 1985 sermon on Colossians 2 – “Guard Yourself With Gratitude”)
- “Of course you will all remain in my prayers. I think it very wrong to pray for people while they are in distress and then not to continue praying, now with thanksgiving, when they are relieved. Many people think their prayers are never answered because it is the answered ones that they forget. Like the others who find proof for a superstition by recording all the cases in which bad luck has followed a dinner with 13 at table and forget all the others where it hasn’t.” (C.S. Lewis in a 1952 letter to a Mrs. D. Jessup)
- “The offering of the heart is better than the gift from the purse. The praise and thanksgiving that come out of the very soul, these God will accept.” (Charles Spurgeon, commentary on Psalm 50)
- “Gratitude honors God. Gratitude is the echo of grace as it reverberates through the hollows of the human heart. Gratitude is the unashamed acceptance of a free gift and the heartfelt declaration that we cherish what we cannot buy. Therefore gratitude glorifies the free grace of God and signifies the humility of a needy and receptive heart.”
(John Piper in a 1983 sermon entitled, “Proud People Don’t Say Thanks.”)
- “Paul says, “And be thankful.” Into verse 16 he says, “We sing spiritual songs with gratitude,” and at the end of verse 17, he says, “giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Col. 3:17). What we’ve got is an emphasis on a heart of gratitude, a heart of thanks, a heart that’s overwhelmed with thanks to God for all He has given. When that is there, it has a huge affect on how we relate to each other when we’re thankful. It’s a big truth that we need to see, that thankfulness and gratitude to God is very much intertwined with the peace we have with each other. Promote the peace of Christ among others.” (David Platt in a 2007 on Colossians 3 called “The Disciple’s Relationships.”)
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