Monday Morning Encouragement -- Come Into His Presence With Thanksgiving

 

"Let us come into His presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to Him with songs of praise!" Psalm 95:2

On October 3, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation designating the fourth Thursday in November as a national day of thanksgiving. At the time our nation was steeped in a brutal civil war, yet Lincoln enumerated the many blessings God had bestowed on the American citizens.

An excerpt from the proclamation reads:

"No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union."

Much has changed in the 160 years since Thanksgiving Day was established in the United States, and for the most part the day has become a secular holiday at best. Rarely a mention of God is made in the public square.

All the more reason for His children to rise up and acknowledge Him and His many blessings. He deserves our thanksgiving and our praise, as well as our prayers that our nation will return to God and put Him first in all things.

Today's music video Come, Let Us Worship and Bow Down recorded by Courthouse Road Church is a sweet, gentle rendition of what is a familiar praise song to many of us. I pray you will take a few minutes to play this song and enter His presence with thanksgiving.

I love you, I'm thinking of you, and I'm praying for you.

Please continue to pray for Israel.