Celebrating God's Blessings on Thanksgiving

Alyssa suffered through 11 years of her husband's addiction and she feared the worst. After we had called Focus on the Family, that was really the journey where we started to see God moving and working. I know that Focus on the Family was just an answered prayer.

I'm Jim Daly. This season, help us give families hope. And when you give today, your donation will be doubled.

Donate at focusonthefamily.com slash gift. For today's episode of Focus on the Family, we invited our staff to share these comments. This year, I'm thankful for my sons.

They're three and five years old and they just add so much joy and fun to my life. I'm thankful that we can live in a state where we can hike and experience nature. I'm thankful this year for technology because I just moved away from my family, so it helps me keep in touch with them. This year, I'm thankful that my family is healthy and happy. I'm thankful for the opportunity each evening where I get to sit with my daughters before they go to sleep and talk with them.

Well, today we'll explore what thankfulness means, even in those situations where you might be struggling to say thank you. Your host is Focus President and author Jim Daly, and I'm John Fuller. Well, John, let me be the first to wish you and all the listeners a very happy Thanksgiving.

Of course, we're not in the studio today. We've pre-recorded this program so that we could be home with our families enjoying this great holiday. And I love Thanksgiving, getting together with loved ones, the great food. Thank you, Jean.

I know she's going to work really hard to get that accomplished. And of course, watching some football, just some football, a little bit of football, like just three games, no, four games. But it is a great day to reflect on everything that we should reflect on to be thankful for this great country we live in. But most importantly, it's a wonderful time to pause and thank God for all of his blessings toward us. As Psalm 95 verses two through three say, let us come into his presence with thanksgiving.

Let us make a joyful noise to him with songs and praise for the Lord is a great God and a great king above all gods. So I'd like to take this opportunity to say how thankful I am for all the ministry we get to do every day through Focus on the Family. And for your part in that, helping us to rescue marriages through our counseling team and Hope Restored, saving more than a half a million babies from abortion. That's incredible and helping their moms in that situation through ultrasound and providing homes and families for children in foster care. Just to name a handful of all the great things that are going on here at Focus on the Family.

Thank you for your generosity to get this done. And I can't wait to be in heaven as we look back on this generation, all the wonderful things that were accomplished. And of course, I'm thankful for my great family, Gene and our boys Trent and Troy. Well, I'm thankful as well, Jim, for the family God's enabled us to have.

And I see his work in and through each member of the family. This is a good time to just pause and really celebrate some of that. Someone once told me about these little kisses of God, these everyday graces, you know, the beautiful sunset, the fact that I can breathe in and out, I can move.

I mean, hey, I look for those simple gifts. And today is a day to really emphasize that. And hopefully, as a listener, we're going to help you open your eyes to the blessings of God in your life, big and small, as we feature former guests on this program who have offered some great insights about what Thanksgiving really means.

And here's a question to get us started, probably kind of a guy question, at least in my mind, but maybe you've wondered this yourself. Why should we say thank you, especially to God? He knows we're thankful.

So why do we have to say it? I think Dr. R.T. Kendall answered this question so beautifully in a conversation that we recorded with him just a while ago. And Dr. Kendall is an author, speaker, and former pastor. And here's how he began his reflections on thankfulness on today's episode of Focus on the Family. When I was still at Westminster Chapel, we were preaching through Philippians. When we came to chapter four, verse six, that says, Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, make your request known to God.

I was preaching on that. I can tell you, this does not happen to me every day. But that day, when I focused on those two words, with thanksgiving, I felt so convicted. And I thought, Lord, help me to get through this sermon, because I want to get down to the vestry and repent. It was as though my whole life came before me. And the Lord reminded me of one thing after another that he had done for me. And he said, R.T., are you thankful for that? I said, Well, yes.

You didn't tell me. And when I got back to the vestry, I made a vow that I would be a thankful man for the rest of my life. I keep a journal.

And I can tell you where I was at three o'clock in the afternoon, April 2, 1987. What I do now every day is read my journal for yesterday, go through every item, and thank the Lord for every little thing. You know how long it takes?

About 20 seconds. That's all. Just to write a few things down. But it's just a way of being thankful. So when you ask the question, you know, it sounded a little prideful or presumptuous, but I have vowed to be thankful. And something I found out, did you know medical science has shown that thankful people live longer? I believe that.

Yeah, it's been statistically proved. Thankful people live longer. Is gratitude a feeling or is it simply more than that? What is gratitude and thankfulness?

Well, it is a feeling, but it does need to be expressed. And I remember when we had a prayer meeting at Westminster Chapel, and we had done this for years, an hour before the evening service. And I said, tonight, we are not going to ask for anything. We're just going to be thankful. And we're going to spend the whole 30 minutes thanking God. No petitions, no requests. So let us pray. Total silence. I said, what's the matter with you people? Aren't you thankful?

And silence. I said, well, is anybody thankful for salvation? Oh, yeah. One man said, well, Lord, we thank you that you've saved us. And I said, what about Jesus?

Are you thankful for Jesus? Well, yes. Well, tell him. In other words, going through the most obvious things, people say, oh, he doesn't need to hear that. He knows. I said, wrong.

We take it for granted. Do you remember when Jesus healed 10 lepers? Only one came back and said, thank you. And the first thing Jesus said, where are the nine?

Where are the nine? So I've come up with these principles, Jim. God loves gratitude. God hates ingratitude. Gratitude must be taught.

R.T., do you think putting myself in that situation, trying to understand why people were hesitant, do you think it was an unfamiliarity with it or, as you said, they just didn't know how to express? Why is it important to express thanks to God? Let me ask it that way. Because he said to.

That's the reason. It's a command. The psalmist, again and again, give thanks to the Lord. Enter into his courts with praise, with thanksgiving. And God wants to be told this.

This is the thing that convicted me. When I was preaching that day on Philippians 4, 6, I saw it so clearly. It was as if the Lord said, R.T., you come from Kentucky. You make it to Westminster Chapel.

Not bad for a boy from Kentucky. Are you thankful? Well, yes, Lord.

You haven't told me. I said, well, Lord, you know, you know, I'm thankful. And this is a thing that was put on my heart for days. God just wants you to tell him. Such a good reminder of how important it is for us to be thankful and to have those conversations with God. You know, if we're being honest, it's easy to thank him when things are going well. But when things don't go our way, we often forget to say thank you, don't we? Here's a friend of Focus on the Family, Suzy Larson, who had to ask herself that question, Lord, where are you?

Why should I be thankful when things in her life kept going wrong? You know, coming into marriage, most of my friends were about four or five years older than me. And so they were a stage or two ahead of the game. They had nice homes. Their kids wore name brand clothes. Parenting seemed to come out of instinct for them. So I was quite sure that's how my life would be.

Now, is that real or is that what you perceived? No, that really, really had a lot going for them. And they were in good stages of life. They had their health.

They had good lives. And I'm sure they had their struggles. I know they did. And I'm sure they did. And I'm sure they had their struggles. I know they did. But really, they had good lives. And so, you know, I really went into marriage going, I want so much to raise authentic Christ-following kids who have a real faith. And that's something that they put a face on on Sunday morning. But I did not know that the way up would be down.

And God had a different plan for us all together. And the first seven years of our marriage were marked by unrelenting back-to-back crises. And, for example, just many months on bed rest with high-risk pregnancies, followed by many more years on bed rest with high-risk pregnancies. And by many more months in bed, I was bit unknowingly by the deer tick during my third pregnancy. So after six months in bed, I spent many more months in bed battling that terrible disease. My little ones, two of them had major respiratory issues. So we're in and out of the hospital with them. And things started to get better for me. My husband ended up with cancer. So we had our share. And I'll be honest with you, I battled jealousy.

I love my friends, and for the life of me could not figure out why I was a have-not. And on top of that, you have well many people who say things like, you know, loving God wouldn't let that many hard things happen to one family unless you were maybe hiding sin. So if you just come clean with whatever it is you're dealing with, and I truly would open my heart to say, speak into my life.

If you see anything, nobody wants out of this more than I do. Sounds like a Job experience. I mean, almost verbatim. It very, very much was.

In fact, I actually had a lot of people ask if we'd read the Book of Job. But God was getting at something in me because I've become a striver and someone who's really trying to earn my way. And so when the foundation was cleared, and it really culminated one day, our house was falling apart.

We had more debt than income with medical debt. I'm laying on the couch hooked up to IV therapy, hooked our broken mini blinds. Our dryer had been broken for the umpteenth time. So we had a rope hanging across the living room with all these clothes that I wanted to burn because they were all old, beat up, garage sale clothes. And so it was a constant reminder in my face of where my life was going. Our house was really falling apart.

Different people were taking care of my kids because I was so sick. My husband barrels in the door trying to keep the mood light, bless his heart, and he blows a hole right through the entryway. I mean, really, he stepped in and boom, the floor gave way and he was up to his armpits in a hole in our entryway. I'm hanging from this IV looking at these clothes. I looked down into the entryway at my shell-shocked husband who's standing up to his armpits in this gaping hole, and I said, we are pathetic losers.

We live in the money pit. You know, I was beside myself, and my sweet husband climbed out of the hole. And I wanted to break down and cry because it was such a such a terrible spot. But I opened up my journal and something inside inspired me to start writing the things I was thankful for. And so I said, Lord, I thank you that I have a husband who keeps coming home every day after work.

He doesn't keep driving, and he's so good. I'm 20-something, and I'm a debt. He married a lemon. I mean, I really felt like that.

He got the raw end of this deal. I thank you that I have three little boys down the hall who don't know we're in the crisis of our lives. And I have water.

I can get out of the faucet, and I have some food in the refrigerator. And before I knew it, I literally did fill three pages of my journal with things that I was so grateful for. And I was sobbing in gratitude. And at that moment, surrounded by that despicable mess, I was the wealthiest woman alive.

And I really did feel that way. You and I have, you know, amazing kindred spirits, I think because you're the mom going through it. I was a little boy going through it in our respective families. There were days we had nothing to eat. I mean, literally, I can only imagine the pain in my single mom's heart that I'd wake up and literally we'd have a little maybe some Cheerios and we had to put Kool-Aid on because we didn't have any milk. And they take one bite of that and you spit it out and you go to school because it's disgusting. You have a similar story, I think, with pancakes.

Yes, I remember that. Well, I am. We didn't have any food in the cupboards except a little bit of pancake mix. And I couldn't ask friends for help. Church had helped.

Friends had helped. I was at the end of myself. I was not going to ask one more person. It just I was at that point. And I didn't feel like God wanted me to either. And I woke up already under my circumstances already depressed because we had more bills than income, more mouths to feed than food. And I was battling this disease. I was in my 20s. I felt like I was 90. I had my face pulsated for numbness with numbness for about three months. And my eye twitched constantly for about three months. I had memory losses.

I couldn't remember at times who was the president at the moment. And so horrifying and so scary to be so young, have three active little boys and feel like I'm either going to die or I'm going to barely live. But this is killing me. I was walking down the hall, so depressed and something fluttered. And opportunity fluttered within me.

And it was just the Lord saying, there's an opportunity here. And I opened up the cupboard and saw my my little bag of pancake mix. And I made one pancake, a big large one, and put a candle in the middle. And I had my three chubby little boys sitting around the table on their phone books and booster chairs.

And their eyes lit up like, whose birthday is it, you know? And I put the plate in the middle of the table. And I said, guys, aren't we just so blessed? I said, Daddy's out there working so hard for us. We have this roof over our head. God is with us. We're just going to celebrate how blessed we are. And we're going to eat off the same plate right now. And they just leaned in and they blew up the candle and we ate together.

And then we went out and played in the sandbox. And that, again, was a landmark moment for me because I was so depressed when I woke up and God showed me that in every situation there is a cause for Thanksgiving. Well, that reminds me of the Apostle Paul's admonition in First Thessalonians to rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and give thanks in all circumstances. And that's certainly what we're encouraging you to do on this Thanksgiving edition of Focus on the Family. Please take a moment and visit our website if you need practical or spiritual help for your family.

The link is in the show notes. Now it's important for us to look back and remember where this holiday comes from. Many of us know the story of the Pilgrims, but we often forget how difficult their first years were here in the New World.

Let's take a closer look at the story of the first Thanksgiving and listen to a conversation I had with American historian Bill Federer, who explained the significance of that event. Well, in Europe, prior to the Pilgrims coming over, they had this philosophy that whatever the king believed, the kingdom had to believe. Well, in England, King Henry VIII was the head of the Anglican Church. He was not a very spiritual gentleman. He ended up having six wives.

Their fates were divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. So there was a group of people that thought they wanted to purify the Church of England. They were nicknamed the Puritans.

The king didn't think he needed any purifying thank you, so he persecuted them. And so they decided to come to the New World. When they got to the New World, they had been blown off course and did not land in Virginia. So they were north of there. They tried to come around, but the waves and the shoals were too great, so they decided to land at Plymouth Rock. When they got ashore, they were afraid that they would land in an area where the Indians would be hostile. Well, lo and behold, those violent Indian tribes had been wiped out by a plague that came through that area. So the one place on the English seaboard, New England seaboard, the Pilgrims landed.

There was not an Indian tribe there that they were displacing. When they were there, the first winter, half of them died. It got so bad, the men were out there chopping wood, building cabins, and they get sweaty. The sweat would turn into a fever.

They'd catch a pneumonia die. At one place, only three people were healthy enough to be standing. Now, you said half of them died. How many were there? There was about 102, and then the one born, the other died. So when they, at the end of the first winter, there were 52 of them, and they would bury them at nighttime because they thought if there were some Indians watching, they wouldn't notice how weak they were.

Then the next spring is when a miracle happened, and now this is where the story gets interesting. As it turns out, the same time the Pilgrims left England and went to Holland, an Indian was lured on a ship, taken captive to England, and lived there for nine years by these fishing men. His name was Tishquantum, later Squanto.

He finally got passage back to the New England coast when he landed there. He was reunited with his family, and this is what William Bradford wrote in his history of the Plymouth settlement. About the 16th of March, 1621, a certain Indian came boldly among them, spoke to them in broken English. His name was Samoset. He told them of another Indian whose name was Squanto, a native of this place who had been in England and could speak English better than himself.

About four or five days later came the aforesaid Squanto. He continued with them and was a special instrument sent of God for their good, beyond their expectation. Their third year there, William Bradford issued the first official Thanksgiving, and he said that all you men and you children and your wives shall assemble on the hill on Thursday, November 29th, in the year of our Lord, 1623, and the third year since the pilgrims landed at the Plymouth Rock, to hear ye pastor render Thanksgiving to ye Almighty God for his blessings. So it wasn't like the modern school textbooks that Thanksgiving was to thank the Indians. It was to thank Almighty God. Some great insights and passion from historian Bill Federer about the very first Thanksgiving celebration. As we close today's Focus program, we have one more perspective to share from our good friend, Johnny Eric Santata.

And after living most of her life stuck in a wheelchair, you'd think Johnny would be angry at God, yet she's chosen to thank him instead. Johnny, some people may not be familiar with your story, a powerful story, as a teenager, the accident that happened. Could you tell us again how that happened and then we'll go from there? Well, here we are in the middle of summer, and it was on a hot day like this that my sister Kathy and I went swimming on the Chesapeake Bay, and she was in the water. I swam out to this raft, took a stupid dive, hit bottom immediately. I don't know where my head was. I was doing a pike dive off of a raft.

Hello. I must have been 17 years old and thinking that I could recklessly do whatever I wanted to do with my athletic body and come out all the better for it. But this time, I hit bottom, and that snapped my neck, breaking my fourth cervical level and leaving me paralyzed. For the longest time in the hospital, I think I was just numb, and I was buoyed up by the well wishes of friends, telephone calls, get well cards coming out of my mailbox, just posters on the lots of visitors.

It was a novelty. For a while there, just being in the hospital, having this strange condition that had happened to me was a novelty. But when my friends began to go off to college that fall and other friends began to move out of town, get married, when I began to witness their lives going on and I was still stuck in that hospital, the visitors weren't coming by as frequently, no more get well cards. Boy, that's when the reality of the doctor's words, you'll never walk again or use your hands. Your hands and your legs are going to be paralyzed the rest of your life, Johnny.

That's when I began to just feel this overwhelming sense of despair, not just depression, but despair, hopelessness. God, I can't do this. I mean, you've got the wrong person. I'm not the bookworm type who's good at sitting in one place for a long time. I'm athletic.

Don't you remember that? I mean, I'm the girl who plays tennis who likes to hike and horseback ride and swim, and you've got the wrong lady here. I just could not understand God's thinking why he would allow this terrible accident to happen, especially since just a month or two earlier before my accident, as I was graduating from high school, I had prayed to be drawn closer to him, like, hello, if this is your idea of an answer to prayer, God, for a closer walk with you, man, you are not going to be trusted with any more of my prayers. This is just, you just took me too seriously. You couldn't have, didn't you understand? I mean, I wasn't thinking paralysis. So that's where I was stuck in a miry pit of despair, depression, hopelessness. I can't do this.

Oh, God, I can't do it. And thankfully, in the midst of that depression, it was Christian friends, young people from my high school who had heard about my injury, neighbors just from my church, Christian friends who didn't know a lot about disability. They didn't know whether to call me an invalid cripple, motion impaired, physically challenged, differently enabled. I mean, they didn't know all the fancy schmancy euphemisms, but they loved Jesus. They loved his word, and they knew that I was a kid in desperate need of help.

I remember a young person sat at my hospital bedside, opened up to me, 1 Thessalonians 5 18, and read to me, in everything, give thanks for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. And I felt like throwing up on his shoes. It was like, you've got to be kidding.

No way. And my friend said, stop. Let me read it again. Because it doesn't say, Johnny, you've got to feel thankful in all things. It says, give thanks.

You start small. You can't give thanks for a life of total paralysis, but you start giving thanks for those things for which you can give thanks. And so he challenged me.

And so I didn't feel like it, but I did it. Okay, God, tomorrow morning, I'm going to wake up and I give thanks that my, okay, my hospital bed is near the window. That means I can see the trees and the birds and, okay, they're serving my side of the hospital hallway breakfast first. That means the breakfast will be warm.

And let's see, Jesus, I give you thanks. Okay. That my friends occasionally they're coming.

My family hasn't deserted me. I can sit up in a wheelchair. I can go to physical therapy. I can think and see and feel and read. Oh my goodness. And about a month later, this miracle occurred suddenly out of nowhere. I had this emotion of thankfulness. God rewarded me for taking a step of faith when I did not feel like it getting into God's word and believing it and acting on it, doing it.

And he rewarded me with the power to overcome and actually feel thankful. So thank you for the life you give to me and every moment that our hearts still be. Thank you.

Thank you. Ah, that is such an amazing perspective from our good friend, Joni Eareckson Tada, describing her baby steps of faith to trust God and take him at his word, despite the pain and challenges that she continues to endure to this day. And maybe you're in that kind of situation feeling like your pain and struggles are unending and you don't have a lot of hope for the future. We know that a lot of people face this holiday season with dread because they don't feel close to anyone, not even God.

They may not even share Thanksgiving with somebody. And if that describes where you're at, please let us help. Focus on the family is here to encourage and support you and your family.

That's why we produce programs like this one and offer resources like our counseling team. I want to urge you to get in touch with us. I know we're out of the office today, but you know, when Jon gives the details, scribble that number down, put it in your phone and make that call on Monday. Yeah, the phone team will be happy to take your call when we're back in the office is here Monday.

That number is 800-232-6459. 800 the letter A and the word family. Now you can find help and resources and encouragement at our website and that link is in the program description. And let me remind you that, you know, this doesn't just happen. The Lord is counting on you as we are to help us financially to make this thing go here at Focus on the Family. And as we reflect back on 2023, there's been a lot of financial strain, social upheaval and pressure on families and we get it. But Focus is here committed to giving families hope and I hope you can stand with us in that. We'll say thanks in advance for your generosity.

And again, you'll find all the details in the program description. And while we're binging on football games today, tomorrow we have an antidote to that. We've got a show about how to limit the time your family spends in front of a screen. Yeah, we grew up in a family where if the, if we were awake, the TV was on. We started the day with the Today Show and we ended with the Tonight Show.

So screens were an ever-present factor in our family and I hated that growing up. Well, on behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team, thanks for listening today to Focus on the Family. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.

Feel that nip in the air? It's time to put on fuzzy socks, drink some hot cocoa and decorate your home with a new season of Focus on the Family's Christmas Stories podcast. This year, we'll talk about the Nativity story in the Gospel of Luke. Join us as we chat about how Christ's birth inspires us, how we celebrate the season and ways we find that childlike wonder again. Listen to the Christmas Stories podcast on your favorite podcast app.