Daily Thanksgiving: So Great a Salvation
14 Days of Thanking God for Saving Me
My heart is filled with your joy
While remembering all you do
- Cardiphonia Music, “I Will Give Thanks.”
The Hinge of the Christian Life
These past few years have been the hardest years of my life, but, if you were to ask me to compare and contrast the Joseph of today with the Joseph of, say, 5 years ago, I would immediately say I am in a far better state of being today than back then. At first glance that wouldn’t make any sense. “Joseph, you just told me that you went through the hardest few years of your life. How can you say that your life right now is far better than even before those years of hardship and pain?” Well . . . I’m glad you asked. The answer is “a lot of things,” but here are two of those many things: thanksgiving to God and meditating on my salvation. Let’s talk about thanksgiving.
Last year, my church’s men’s ministry finished reading through Practicing Thankfulness by Sam Crabtree, and it surprised all of us how gratitude was essential to the Christian life. Crabtree comes out of the gate swinging this first sentence:
Thankfulness is neither trivial nor inconsequential. On this one quality pivots the difference between maturity and immaturity.1
He later quotes Albert Mohler from an article about Thanksgiving Day:
Thanksgiving is a deeply theological act, rightly understood. As a matter of fact, thankfulness is a theology in microcosm — a key to understanding what we really believe about God, ourselves, and the world we experience.2
Since finishing it, I’ve seen more than ever before that a major sign of the Christian life’s health can be determined by the presence or absence of thanksgiving to God. Thanksgiving is theological because giving thanks to God is an expression of one trusting and resting in him and his providence over our lives, and part of God’s providence in our lives is in his work of salvation for us.
I'll Sing Thy Power to Save
Thanksgiving is not a warm fuzzy feeling that occurs when something good happens to us. It is an action of response to someone doing something for you. The reason why we feel “grateful” about something is because we are indebted to the kindness or efforts of another. So, if the Christian life is marked by thanksgiving, to whom are we giving our thanks, and for what? Psalm 118:1 rightly answers this with the psalmist’s words, “Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever!” Our God, the LORD, is good because his steadfast love never runs out. But how have we seen God’s steadfast love demonstrated towards us? Throughout Psalm 118, the psalmist expounds on how in his distress and when enemies surrounded him the LORD delivered him (vv. 5-7). In one verse, he summarizes God’s work in his life:
The LORD is my strength and my song;
he has become my salvation. - Psalm 118:14
God alone is our salvation and he has saved us from not just any foe, enemy, or power. He has saved us from his wrath against us for our sins. He sent the eternal Son of God to take on a human nature to live the perfectly obedient life we could never live, die in our place the death we deserve, rise from the dead triumphant over sin and death, and ascend into heaven to intercede for us, and will one day return to make all things new! The Gospel is good news that we can thank God for the rest of our lives!
Has the gospel grown dull to you? Does hearing, “Christ died for my sins” sound like a given? Has hearing the same old story become monotone to your ears?
The problem is not that the Gospel of Jesus has become irrelevant or boring. The problem is our hearts not marinading more and more in this good news. Furthermore, Soteriology, or the doctrine of salvation, when studied deeply, will expand the horizons of our vision of the Gospel to increasingly see how amazing God’s work in our lives is. If thanksgiving to God is the hinge on which the Christian life pivots, then our salvation accomplished by our great God is “nuclear-powered” energy that awakens our thanksgiving to him!
Think about all of the worship songs and hymns that demonstrate this pattern:
Jesus paid it all
All to him I owe
Sin had left a crimson stain
He washed it white as snow
- Elvina M. Hall, “Jesus Paid It All”
When this poor lisping, stamm'ring tongue
Lies silent in the grave,
Then in a nobler, sweeter song
I'll sing Thy pow'r to save
- William Cowper, “There is a Fountain Filled with Blood”
Your blood has washed away my sin
Jesus, thank You
The Father’s wrath completely satisfied
Jesus, thank You
Once Your enemy, now seated at Your table
Jesus, thank You
- Pat Sczebel, “Jesus, Thank You”
Every Day I Will Bless You
So back to my story. Since that men’s book study, I have sought to incorporate more intentional practices and routines to cultivate intentional thanksgiving in my life, and one of the suggestions Crabtree gives is to meditate and thank God for an aspect of my salvation (ie. election, justification, sanctification, regeneration, etc.). Immediately, an idea lit up in my brain like a lightning bolt: “What if I created a daily calendar where each day I would give thanks to God for a specific aspect of the doctrine of salvation?” So off to Microsoft Word, I went, and here’s what I came up with:
The idea is simple: Throughout every day, I will take time to meditate on and thank God for an aspect of his work of salvation for me. This will help me not only give thanks to him but also ground my heart and mind in who I am in Christ (notice the first salvation theme).
So for the next several posts, I will be sharing meditations/devotions regarding each of the following aspects of the doctrine of salvation. The goal is to get your heart and mind into practicing thanksgiving to God for your salvation. Every day, there is always something to give thanks to God for. Shouldn’t your everlasting salvation in Christ Jesus be an essential point of thanks to God?
So come along and join me as I unpack these themes of God’s work of salvation. May these meditations be only kindling to stoke the flames of thanksgiving to God in our lives. We don’t get over the Gospel once we become Christians; We dig deeper into the Gospel.
Or, let’s read what the Bible has to say about us in relationship to the reality of our salvation:
6 Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, 7 rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
Colossians 2:6–7
1 Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. 2 For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, 3 how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, 4 while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.
Hebrews 2:1–4
1 Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. 3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,
1 Corinthians 15:1–4
Sam Crabtree, Practicing Thankfulness: Cultivating a Grateful Heart in All Circumstances (Crossway, 2021), 11.
Albert Mohler, 2016. “Thanksgiving as Theological Act: What Does It Mean to Give Thanks?” AlbertMohler.Com. November 23, 2016. https://albertmohler.com/2016/11/23/thanksgiving-theological-act-mean-give-thanks.