"Blessings, Name Them ONe by ONe"

Blessings, Name Them One By One

Psalm 103:1-5 (ESV)

The Chamber of Commerce invited a pastor to offer the blessing at a banquet honoring elected officials. The master of ceremonies forgot to call for the prayer and did not discover his mistake until the meal was nearly over. He was embarrassed of course but asked the preacher if he would pray anyhow. Unperturbed by the slight, the minister rose and said, “Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all that is within me! Amen!”

For close to three thousand years God’s people have recited these beautiful lines yet seem never to have come to grips with a fundamental question. How can a person bless God? It is easy to see how Jesus blessed the little children who gathered around him but how could these children bless Jesus? It is easy to see how God blessed David but how could David bless God?
David answered the question in the next phrase: “Bless the Lord, O my soul; and forget none of his benefits.” A person blesses God by remembering all that God has done and thanking him for it. If God blesses people with life and giving them things, people bless God with gratitude and by giving him thanks.

Thanks that blesses God must be wholehearted. David called on “all” within him to remember “all” the Lord’s benefits. God’s all cannot be praised with less than our all. Thanks that blesses God must also be specific. David listed some of the things God gave for which he was grateful.

This Thanksgiving why not join David and thank God for the blessing of …

Forgiving (103:3a)

David needed forgiveness. Sin stained his past. He committed adultery with a sweet young woman he saw running around topless and bottomless on a next-door rooftop. When she turned up pregnant, he connived to cover that sin by ordering her husband’s death so he could make her his wife. Adultery. Murder. Surely David’s cheeks burned with shame and he must have died a little inside each time he thought of what he had done. He could not take it back. He could not fix it. All he could do was to call on God and ask forgiveness. When he did, God gladly and generously forgave him. No wonder he offered thanks for forgiveness.

Think back to the day when sin weighed heavy on your soul and shame made you hope no one ever found out what you had done. Remember the hot tears that spilled down your cheeks as you begged God for forgiveness. Remember how swift his coming, how loving his touch, how clean your soul when he washed away your sin. Rejoice like David. Praise God for sin forgiven and gone.

Not long before she died, an atheist friend said, “What I envy most about you Christians is forgiveness. I have nobody to forgive me!” But you have someone to forgive you. You have someone who has forgiven you.

When you count your blessings this Thanksgiving, thank God for forgiving!

Healing (103:3b)

King David declared that it was the Lord who healed all his diseases. The simple meaning of this is that whenever and wherever there had been healing, it was God who had done it. David gave God credit for all healing and blessed the Lord by praising him.

If people ask whether I believe in divine healing, I confess that I do. There is no other kind. There is no healing that is not divine. God usually heals by means of doctors and medicines and hospitals. God sometimes heals without doctors and medicines and hospitals. God sometimes heals in spite of doctors and medicines and hospitals. But always, and only, it is God who heals. More than four hundred years ago a French doctor, Ambroise Pare, confessed, “I dress the wounds but God heals them.” If a person takes an aspirin and their head stops aching, God did that. Thank him for it.

Some are alive and here today because God healed them. When disease sapped their strength and robbed them of health or injury left them broken and dying, God touched their bodies and healed them. Some could have died from flu, measles, mumps, heart attack, cancer, COVID, fever, infection, and embolism or one of a thousand other medical problems but you are alive for one reason and one reason only. God healed. Give him thanks today.

Do not limit this healing to physical healing alone. David said God heals all diseases, including those of mind and soul.
At a church revival I attended as a child, I heard a woman tell how God healed her of shame, shame that she had grown up poor, with fewer privileges than others seemed to have. Others testified that God healed them of addiction, bad temper, depression, memory loss, and hate.

When you count your blessings this Thanksgiving, thank God for healing!

Protecting (103:4a)

For David, the “pit” was the place of death and destruction, and “redeem” meant not so much bringing back his life from that realm as keeping him from it. David praised the Lord for rescuing him from premature death. In dark moments when tragedy threatened and calamity confronted, God stepped in to save his life.

From David’s earliest days, he had been a child of providence. He had cliff-hangers and narrow escapes by the dozens, but he seemed to lead a charmed life. From the jaw of the lion and the paw of the bear; from the sword of Goliath and the javelin of Saul, from the armies of Absalom and the forces of the Philistines, God delivered him. Time and again, God stepped in to snatch David from the clutches of death. No wonder he sang a song of thanks: “He redeems my life from the pit!”

Every person alive is a child of providence. Every person here leads a “charmed” life. You are alive today because God has protected you from danger and death. All the way from your earliest days, you have been a walking miracle. Often when you were least aware of it, God preserved you from deadly accidents and lethal illnesses. Have you stopped to bless the Lord by thanking him for protecting you?

When I was five years old, I was supposed to be riding my bike in the alley. Instead, I slipped off to play with a friend who lived the next street over. When I heard my mom calling, I knew I had better hurry home. I sped down the street, and without looking, darted out onto the intersection, straight into the path of an oncoming truck. That was the biggest, blackest truck I have ever seen, and it was coming fast! The horn blared and the brakes squealed as I first froze and then fell in front of it in the intersection. The truck slid to a stop with its right front tire a half foot from my head. I made it here today by six inches. How many other times God has saved my life I cannot count, because I do not know. He protected me.

When you count your blessings this Thanksgiving, thank God for protecting!

Loving (103:4b)

The Hebrew word for “crown” comes from a root that means “to circle, to surround, or to hem in.” David blessed God by praising him for his all-encompassing love. Old-time gospel choirs used to sing of being “within the circle of his love!” Contemporary musicians sing about how God “rings my life with so much love.” Yes, that is the idea. God’s love and compassion are on every side. There is no way to turn without meeting his love.

A farmer once mounted a weathervane on his barn with the words “God is love” painted on it. “Do you mean that God’s love is as changeable as the wind?” asked one of his neighbors who did not go in much for religious beliefs. “Oh, no,” said the farmer. “It means that God is love no matter which way the wind blows!” If the wind blows fair, God is love. If the wind blows foul, God is love. If the wind does not blow at all, God is love.

When you count your blessings this Thanksgiving, thank God for loving!

Satisfying (103:5a)

“God satisfies my wants with good things,” cried David. David may have meant that God always provided food for him to eat. That in itself is ground enough for thanksgiving and praise. As psalmist Walter Hawkins says in his song “Thank You”
It could have been me, Outdoors, No food, No clothes

Or left alone, Without a friend, Or just another number

With a tragic end, But you didn’t see fit, To let none of these things be, ‘Cause everyday by your power, You keep on keeping me, And I wanna say thank you for all you’ve done me.

But there are desires that groceries, even God-given groceries, cannot satisfy. What of those? God fills every longing and meets people’s deepest desires. Praise his name! This godless world runs here and there in search, crying about, “I can’t get no satisfaction.” Why? Because the emptiness inside is God-shaped and only God can fill it. Drugs, sex, and money cannot satisfy the deepest hungers of the heart. Only God can.

When you count your blessings this Thanksgiving, thank God for satisfying!

Strengthening (103:5b)

David meant God gave him “confident, tireless strength.” When his vigor faded and his strength had almost gone, God gave David new vitality to keep on keeping on.

There may have been times when you despaired of making it through, when you felt you had gone as far as you could, when it looked like you were about to go under, when your strength failed, but the Most High God lifted you up and gave you a new lease on life.

When you count your blessings this Thanksgiving, thank God for strengthening!

Conclusion: ‘Praise God from whom all blessings flow!’

David’s list is suggestive rather than exhaustive. These are not all the things for which he owed God thanks. These are only some of the most important things. Find time this Thanksgiving to get alone with God and think of all he has given and of all you owe him, then bless him by thanking him!

Man Hosts A Free Thanksgiving Dinner

For his first Thanksgiving alone in 1985, Scott Macaulay was thinking that he would have to heat up a frozen turkey dinner and turn on a football game to stifle the silence in his apartment. With his parents recently divorced and “nobody talking to anybody,” he said, “I was looking at a pretty rotten Thanksgiving. And I absolutely hate to eat alone.”

Then Macaulay had an idea: What if he took out an ad in the paper and invited 12 strangers to join him for Thanksgiving dinner? It seemed like a manageable number to host at the First Baptist Church he attended—and, yeah, it was a little crazy, but it had to be better than being lonely.

Since those 12 strangers gathered around his table for turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie 33 years ago, Macaulay has made his free feast an annual event. Through the years, he has fed plenty of widows, widowers, homeless people, and college kids who can’t make it home.

One year an elderly woman paid $200 for an ambulance to drive her to the church from her nursing home. She arrived decked out in fancy clothes and said she hadn’t been out in seven years. She cried when dinner was over. Infants have spent their first Thanksgiving with Macaulay, and more than a few elderly people have sat down for their last.

Because Thanksgiving wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without giving thanks, Macaulay always asks people to write what they’re thankful for on a slip of paper and leave their thoughts in a basket. He saves the submissions and reads them throughout the year, long after the table has been cleared and the dishes washed.