[notice]A monthly column by farmer, preacher and writer for Jesus, Angus Buchan[/notice]
How many of us have said thank you to Jesus for the rain that we have received? Maybe you say that you haven’t received enough and again we ask the question, “How much is enough?”
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When we call prayer meetings for rain in the town hall, or the farmers hall, or the church, it is normally filled to capacity. When the rain comes and we call another meeting for thanksgiving, the town hall is often nearly empty and there are very few people in the farmer’s hall, or in the church to give thanks to God. We need to learn gratitude and we need to be more thankful for the wonderful gifts from God. We forget that every breath of oxygen we take is only by God’s grace, we can do no good thing on our own — it’s all about Jesus.
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Let us change our mindset this year and start to be grateful for what we have got, and not focus on what we haven’t got. We need to start to thank the Lord Jesus Christ for each day that we have and it is not a bad thing to count our blessings.
Feast of Tabernacles
I really believe that the strength of the Israeli Nation is because of prologue (the past). They continue to remind their children with much gratitude where God has brought them from in the past. Every year they celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles, which I have the privilege of often preaching at.
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It is a seven-day national holiday and the main holiday in Israel, where no work is done and people build little “succoth’s.” It is a small shelter made of certain branches. The children go into the little shelter every day with their parents and they sit and talk about the wonderful things that God has done in their lives. They hang bunches of grapes, pomegranates, figs, olives in the succoth and they remember God’s goodness — how He took them out of slavery in Egypt and took them through the mighty Red Sea that opened for them to go through. The mighty army of Pharaoh at that time followed them through on dry land, but the Lord closed the ocean on top of them and destroyed the whole army. Then they went through the desert for 40 years. (I have been to that desert and I want to tell you as a farmer that nothing can live in that desert without the miracle working power of God.) The animals never died, their shoes never wore out and God fed them and gave them water every single day.
Thanksgiving for victories
The Feast of Tabernacles is to give thanks to God for the victory over their enemy, and settling them in the land of milk and honey that He had promised to give them. Because of their past history and thankfulness to God — He is preserving them. He made a covenant with a farmer by the name of Abraham and told him that He will be their God, and they would be His people.
I would encourage you as a family to give thanks to God, as often as you can just like the one leper that came back to Jesus and thanked Him for his healing. Jesus asked “Were there not 10 of you? Where are the other 9?” The amazing thing is that the one leper was not even a Jew — he was a Samaritan (a foreigner).
Give thanks to God for everything He has given to you and God will take care of the rest.
Yours in Christ’s service
Angus Buchan
