Happy Thanksgiving week!
I hope you can see and feel how God is blessing you. I don’t pray that God “might” bless us or simply thank God for the ways he has already blessed us. Instead, I’m trying to be watchful for how God is blessing us now. Because he is. Always.
James 1:17 says that “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of Lights…” (ESV). If that’s true (and I believe it is), and if it applies to us (and I’m convinced that it does), then God is blessing us right now as we think and see and breathe. Sometimes we forget those “little” blessings like thinking, seeing, and breathing. 😉
But there are “big” blessings that we sometimes forget, too. If we read our bibles we learn stories about how God did amazing things for people like Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, Moses, David, Ruth, Mary and so many others. We read those life-changing and history-impacting stories and feel left out. Which is too bad, because those events are part of the fabric of life into which we, too, have been woven by God. His fingerprints are all over our lives, but sometimes we have to look closely and intently to see them.
So I hope you’ll do that today. I hope you’ll look closely at your life and see how God has been a blessing to you even if you didn’t notice until now. Because he has.
And once we realize that truth, then we begin to learn how to live a life with more joy, more hope, more peace. Because if God really notices us, then that’s an incredible reason to remember him and give thanks.
I preached about these themes yesterday at the East Point Church of Christ in Wichita, Kansas. If you’d like to hear that sermon, click here: Seeing God’s Blessings.
Have a great Thanksgiving week. God bless,
Patrick
PatrickBarber's Blog 
Seeing God’s blessings includes discerning the true blessings God gives now. For the blessings God gave to Old Testament people, especially Israel–blessings like the promised land, prosperity, and fruitful families (if they obeyed God’s commands)–are different from the blessings Jesus gives in his new covenant. Jesus’ blessings for faithful disciples include his new international kingdom (of disciples), his Spirit (who empowers us to obey Jesus’ commands), and the fruit of the Spirit.
Yes, God’s promises under the new covenant are different than the promises he gave those who lived under the old covenant. But every good thing (blessing) we receive comes from God.
As I say in the sermon, we often recognize that God has blessed his people with things like forgiveness, his Spirit, and things like that. But we frequently forget that God is also involved in many other ways in our lives that we should recognize as blessings. So if we look back over our lives and try to see how God has helped and shaped us, then I believe we will find many more reasons to remember and give thanks.
God bless, and thank you for your comments.