Give Thanks To God

[intro]Every year, Riverview has an annual Thanksgiving drive that provides 100 or more meals to families throughout the Lansing area.

Many individuals, families, and Life Groups come together to contribute supplies. Teams of volunteers work behind the scenes to coordinate, facilitate, and work to collect, organize, deliver, and distribute the meals.[/intro]

So why do it?

While understanding the reasons for doing it is important, it can be equally important to understand wrong reasons for doing it.

Wrong Reasons

1. To earn favor (or right standing) with God

We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.

Isaiah 64:6

Nothing gains favor with God other than the atoning sacrifice of Christ. Only through His sinless life, death, burial, and resurrection are we able to stand holy and blameless before God. No amount of good deeds can atone for your sin.

2. To be a better person

Everyone has turned away, all have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one.

Psalm 53:3, Romans 3:12

There’s a real danger for Christians to have this perception where we’re entering the scene wearing a white hat that signifies being a “good guy” like in old westerns. The truth of the matter is that there was and is only one good guy—Jesus Christ—and it’s through faith by grace alone that we are loved and accepted by God.

3. To “help” those in “need”

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.

Philippians 2:3

This one is a little tricky. While it’s true that there are many places in the Bible where Christians are called to love and serve one another, sometimes your (and my) desire to help those in need creates an unhealthy “lesser vs. greater” chasm between those providing help and those receiving help. We can sometimes unwittingly widen the chasm as we feel better about ourselves through the “good” things we do, and the recipient feels worse by needing assistance.

So what’s the solution? Keep reading.

Right Reasons

1. To humbly serve

God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

Genesis 1:27

I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well.

Psalms 139:14

In the previous section, I painted a picture of a chasm created by seemingly good intentions and those on the receiving end of help. So what is the answer? How do we avoid what seems like an unavoidable situation?

We stop and remember that we are all created in the image and likeness of God. By the same token, we are all worthy of dignity, honor, and respect. There is no greater, lesser, better, or worse. We are all the same spiritually bankrupt in need of a savior. There are only sinners and Jesus.

2. To steward the gifts and resources that God has given to you

As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace…

1 Peter 4:10

We have been given much. Not only have we been given the promise of eternal salvation, but we have been given many different things in this life. Each person has been given unique gifts by God—not only spiritual gifts, but other gifts, like time or resources. Our part is not to be envious or boastful of the gifts that we do or don’t have, but to steward and be generous with what we have been given. Generosity is like a muscle that needs to be exercised.

3. To respond to God’s generosity

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus…

Ephesians 2:4-6

As a Christian, we are not loved because we serve, give, etc. We do these things because we were loved first. We were born with a sin-nature standing in direct opposition to God as his enemy. Rather than simply destroy or condemn us, God loved us so much that he provided a rescue plan in the form of the death of His own son.

I don’t know about you, but when I stop for a moment and really let the scandalous nature of God’s grace sink in, I’m moved to love and serve others not as payback, but as recognition and a proclamation of thanks to God.

 

Learn more about Riv’s 2015 Thanksgiving Drive.

Image Credit: Garry Knight