Thanksgiving has always been one of
my favorite times of year. But in November of 1981, I was especially excited
about it. In addition to the usual joys that accompany this wonderful season, I
had an extra reason to celebrate:
Our family had just moved into a
lovely new home! And though we still had boxes to unpack and pictures to hang,
we were feeling especially blessed.
There was just one nagging problem.
In the weeks since the move, various members of our family had started getting sick.
The illnesses were nothing serious,
just pesky ailments of different kinds. But they'd swept through the household
like a wave. First, both of our boys caught colds. Then, Anna's throat got sore
and raspy. Next, my youngest son's fiancé, who was living with us at the time,
came down
with something else entirely; and
finally my daughter turned up with a swollen gland on her neck for seemingly no
reason at all.
One night as we were getting ready
for bed, Anna realized that with Thanksgiving just a few days away, she needed
to get well quick. "Honey, I really want you to pray for me," she
said.
After we prayed together for her
healing, I laid awake in the dark for a while and pondered the situation. There
had to be a reason for this recent rash of sicknesses in our family. Something
is going on here, I thought.
Was it the house?
No, surely not. The spiritual atmosphere of our new home had been sweetly
cleansed even before we moved in. Members of our church who'd helped remodel it
had been flooding it with love and prayers for months. And though Anna and I
hadn't yet formally dedicated the house to the Lord (we planned to do so after
we were settled in) we had temporarily covered every room with prayers for
God's protection.
So, spiritually, everything seemed
to be in order. Yet it was obvious something was still wrong.
With Anna already asleep beside me,
I silently prayed for wisdom. "Lord, please help me understand this.
What's happening?" I asked.
The answer came immediately. In my
heart the Lord showed me a vision of what appeared to be a big inflatable
tent-the kind that's kept erect by a system of air pumps and fans. The middle
of the tent was partially collapsed. The top of it was sagging down.
I knew the instant I saw it what the
vision meant.
The tent represented the condition
of the temporary spiritual covering Anna and I had put over our house a few
weeks earlier. It was sagging and deflated. The reason? "There hasn't been
regular praise in this place since you moved in here," the Lord said.
It was a sobering revelation but it
carried no sense of condemnation. It wasn't like the Lord was saying, "You
didn't praise Me so now you're going to get it!" On the contrary, like a
loving Father, He was graciously reminding me of a vital spiritual truth:
Praise sets up a mantle of
protection around us! It produces a spiritual atmosphere that our adversary,
the devil, cannot move through. It serves as a powerful weapon we can use
against him and insulates us from his attacks.
You can probably guess what Anna I
did the next morning when we woke up. We walked through every room in the the
house praising the Lord.
As we did, we sensed the atmosphere
becoming more buoyant. We felt a little like we'd boarded the Goodyear blimp
and we were rising up higher and higher. Within a couple of days everybody in
the family was well.
That Thanksgiving I learned a lesson
I will never forget.
I learned that no matter how busy I
might be, I need to maintain a continual spirit of thanksgiving to God. I need
to keep praising Him because, for us as believers, praise and thanksgiving is
our very breath. It's our spiritual oxygen.
Just think how important oxygen is
to us physically. Our bodies absolutely must have it. We can survive for a
while without food and even without water, but we must have air all the time.
The same is true spiritually where giving thanks to God is concerned. We need
to do it on a constant basis. To be spiritually healthy, we need to live in a
sustained atmosphere of praise.
"But Pastor Jack," you
might say, "is that really possible?"
Yes! The Bible confirms it. It says
in verse after verse:
- From the rising of the sun to its
going down the Lord's name is to be praised. (Ps. 113:3)
- I will praise the Lord at all
times. I will constantly speak his praises. (Ps. 34:1, NLT)
- Let us continually offer the
sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to
His name. (Heb. 13:15)
Notice that last verse compares our
praises as believers to the sacrifices the Israelites made in the Old
Testament. That's significant! Why? Because in Leviticus 6:13 the Lord gave the
priests specific instructions about the altar upon which those sacrifices were
offered. He said, "A fire shall always be burning on the altar; it shall
never go out."
Personally, I find that command
encouraging because tending the fire wasn't all the priests had to do. They
also had to offer prayers for the people. They had to shovel the ashes off the
altar and take them outside the city and bury them. They had to wash and care
for their ministry
garments. In other words, the
priests had a very busy schedule!
Yet in the midst of it all, they
managed to keep the altar fire burning.
You and I as modern day believers
can do the same. We don't have to join a monastery where all we have to do is
praise the Lord. We can keep the flame of thanksgiving going in our hearts even
while we go about the business of our everyday lives.
We can have praise on our lips while
we're getting dressed in the morning. We can speak or sing out our
thanksgivings to God as we go to work or to the grocery store. Morning and
night, we can find opportunities to lift our hearts in worship to Him.
I'm sure you already do this to some
degree. But, loved one, I want to encourage you to do it even more. In this
special season, I want to challenge you to come up to new levels of
thanksgiving! That's why I've arranged for you to receive my 4-CD series, All Hail the Power and my 2-CD series,
Five Reasons for Thanksgiving and Thanks-Living as a thank you
gift for your support this month. It will stir within you a fresh fire of
gratitude toward God. It will help you live increasingly in an attitude of
perpetual praise.
Oh, what a marvelous way this is to
live! First and foremost, it blesses the Lord, and second, blesses us. It
surrounds us with a mantle of divine protection and enlarges us spiritually. It
changes our character, our countenance, and our lives.
Beloved, until I write you again,
let's ask the Lord to teach us more about this glorious lifestyle. Let's tell
Him more often how much we appreciate Him. Let's celebrate this holiday season
by constantly breathing the powerful oxygen of praise!
With a grateful heart,
Pastor
Jack
Jack
Hayford Ministries
PO
Box 92627
Southlake,
TX 76092
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