Happy Thanksgiving: No Greater Blessing

Give thanks to the LORD for He is good;

His faithful love endures forever.

- Psalm 107:1

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone! I hope you are all having a wonderful day with your family and friends! Many of us have come to think that Thanksgiving has come to be a holiday to "get through" and really more about Black Friday than Thanksgiving. Most people, if they were honest, are more busy getting together their shopping lists for tomorrow than counting their blessings today and every day. (My family and I do not participate in Black Friday, just for the record.)

So you as you go about wishing everyone "Happy Thanksgiving" today, are you really giving thanks? Are you really thankful for all that God has blessed you with? Or are you so stressed by the storms of life that you just don't? Have you become so absorbed in your problems that you have forgotten to stop and truly have a grateful heart toward the love? To stop and pray every day? To read your Bible daily? To live according to what the Word of God commands? To thank the LORD for saving us, filling us with His Spirit, and paying the price to deliver us from every sickness and every disease (Matt. 8:17)?

While you're complaining about how you ate too much, there are people right here in this nation, in your state, in your city starving; people who would be grateful to have a stomach that was "too full" instead of aching from the emptiness. It truly pains me to thank of how people all across America are over eating today (HEY, I LOVE FOOD & CAN THROW DOWN WITH THE BEST OF THEM!), while there are people longing for just one good meal. That should bother you. If it doesn't, you need a heart check. It breaks my heart. It just doesn't seem right that the majority of people have spent hundreds of dollars making a feast, while there are people hungry. People with no family or friends to eat with. People without a home. People without a vehicle. People without clothing. It brings tears to my eyes. What a joy it would be to serve in a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and just because (any day)! To feed the hungry, as the Bible commands us to do (My meme, Mom, & I would love to make this a family tradition ASAP!!)

While you're making your Christmas list, there are people who cannot buy for the immediate members of their families, much less anyone else. If you have food to eat daily, a home to live in, have met  & given your life to Jesus Christ (TOP PRIORITY), clothes to wear, heating and air conditioning in your home, you have a lot to be thankful for. If you have a car that you can depend on not to break down, you are blessed. If you have health insurance, you are blessed. If you have a job, you are blessed. If you have an education, you are blessed.

If you are able to speak, hear, and see, you are blessed. If you are healthy, you are blessed. Before the LORD healed me, I had 6 miserable Thanksgivings and Christmases. When you are as sick as I was, you cannot enjoy anything. I couldn't enjoy food due to the constant nausea, and later severe food allergies. I was so sick, my family had to beg me to even eat a few bites of food. I lost so much weight that at one point, doctors considered putting in a port for daily IV fluids (due to the constant dehydration) and IV nutrition daily. There were Thanksgivings & Christmases where I was confined to a wheelchair or a walker. Or in the hospital. It took so much effort those holidays to smile for pictures and sit up for the meal and to spend time with the family (I was often bedridden and even sitting up was a huge feat for me during those years. It was exhausting). I spent a couple holidays where I was in so much pain I was not even able to be touched or hugged (any touch intensified the pain x 1,000). The holidays and birthdays never really felt special (though my family did everything in their power to make them special), because I was just critically ill & had little to no quality of life. Six birthdays where I could plan nothing special because my life totally revolved around whatever I felt "up to" doing, which was never much. This is my 2nd Thanksgiving healed by the blood of Jesus Christ. I GIVE GOD ALL THE PRAISE, HONOR, and GLORY for HEALING ME! HE RESTORED ME TO HEALTH AND LET ME LIVE! OH, MY LIPS WILL PRAISE HIM FOREVER! HE HEALED ME and SET ME FREE FROM THAT LONG LIST OF MEDICATIONS, OF THOSE LIMITATIONS, THE PAIN, AGONY, & MISERY of having 2 debilitating diseases. GLORY TO HIS NAME! PRAISE THE LORD, O MY SOUL, AND FORGET NOT ALL HIS BENEFITS-- WHO FORGIVES ALL OUR SINS and HEALS ALL OUR DISEASES!!!

Don't forget about the soldiers who cannot be with their families! We are fre because of their sacrifice and the sacrifice of their families!!! God Bless our troops!!!

The greatest blessing of all time is the opportunity to have a relationship with Christ. In God's abounding mercy, He sent His one and only Son to the cross to die and be raised again to pay the debt for our sins & sicknesses.... so that if we would only believe & live for Him, we could be free from sin & sickness! Glory! We are all infinitely blessed that Christ would do this, though not one of us is worthy. He did this BECAUSE HE LOVED US. HE WANTS US. Crazy amazing how God doesn't need us, but HE WANTS US. The Holy one.... wants us to be a part of His family. Did you know that once you get saved, Jesus calls you "Brother" and "Sister"? :) God calls you "Son" or "Daughter"! And there is no greater blessing than that.

Insanely Loved & Crazy Blessed,

Rachel Marie