From John Collins Ministries:
In the early 1600’s, a ship set sail to a free world called America. I think everybody knows the story of the Mayflower, but maybe they don’t understand what happened on the Mayflower that makes it just a very remarkable journey. The Mayflower ship was a ship that wasn’t equipped to hold people. It was for animals, and it was a ship that was meant to go from small port to small port, not to make a full journey across the ocean. They took these 102 people and other than the crew, they lived downstairs at the very bottom of the ship in very tight quarters with no privacy whatsoever, no bathrooms, restrooms, nothing. They were at sea for 66 days. For 66 days they wore the same clothes, they had to go to the restroom in wooden buckets, and those buckets had to be taken and thrown overboard to be cleaned. Certain days the winds were so high and so fierce that the ship actually went backwards in the ocean to lose them time. Where they lived down below was very moist, there was a lot of sickness there. But, only one person died! Unfortunately, that one person because there was no way to bury them was just thrown over the ship, put into the ocean, no formal burial, nothing. One person gave birth on the ship! But the problem arose because of the dampness of the bottom of the ship, they had oats (their drink was whiskey, wine and beer because they didn’t trust water) and they had coffee. Midway through the voyage, their oats developed maggots and so did their coffee grounds because of the moisture in the air. After a few days they got tired because of the darkness, they couldn’t really see down there real well. They say that the cabin was only about five feet tall, everybody was moving around if they moved at all in very tight quarters. So, they just started drinking and eating the maggots. That’s how bad this voyage was.
They were coming to a land in Virginia ( I know, you guys think ‘you’re not a very smart pastor if you think they landed in Virginia!’). They didn’t land in Virginia. That was their original destination. They blew off course. Now Miles Standish and William Bradford were very religious men, very prayerful men aboard the Mayflower. There was death, there was decay on that ship. But every day they bowed their heads and they thanked God for an opportunity like that. Could you imagine today thanking God for eating food with maggots in it, drinking coffee with maggots in it, and throwing your dead overboard, being sick constantly, living in the dark, not having any privacy, not having a rest room, having to go in front of people on a small wooden pail! But every day they thanked an almighty God for allowing them the opportunity to be free and to express their religious beliefs freely at the start of a new journey in a new world that they knew was going to be glorious!!
They land on Plymouth Rock. The first thing they do when they get off the ship is they find the biggest rock they could find, and they bent over it and they prayed and they kissed it. They prayed and thanked God! They thanked Him for everything they went through because it made them stronger. They thanked Him for what He’s going to do for them, good or bad, they thanked Him. They didn’t know what they were going to do, they had no clue. They heard about these fierce, rebellious Indians and they’ll have to learn their language. Lo and behold it wasn’t long after their prayer that an Indian approached them, speaking English. It just so happens that there were Indians over there that had been slaves in England and had made the trip over prior so they knew their language. So they had very few that they could communicate with. Now if you don’t think that’s an act of God, I don’t know what is. They knew to be thankful. That’s where we come up with the first Thanksgiving.
President George Washington, a lot of people don’t know, but Washington was a very religious man. After every victory, he prayed and thanked God. Before every battle, he prayed and asked God for help during that. He made it a point, win lose or draw, soldiers lost on either side, he made it a point to get on his knees with his troops to thank God! And that’s what we need to do. Thanksgiving isn’t about one day a year going “thanks God, appreciate it!” We should do that every day, every day of our lives should be a thank you to God for letting us enjoy that day of life!
Ephesians 5:20 (KJV) says: “Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” We have to be thankful to God for everything that He is given, everything that He is going to do!!
Colossians 2: 6-7 (KJV) says: “As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.”
Grab your family, hug them, pray with them, thank them, pray to God together, thank Him. He is the decision maker. So this Thursday, when you sit at your kitchen table with your family, don’t take it for granted, it may be the last one you get, we don’t know. If you love your wife or your husband, tell them. If you love your children, tell them, and that feeling of peace you get when you sit at that table and everyone is together and you say grace, you can’t tell me you can’t feel that, that you can’t feel that every day of your life! That’s called accepting God. It’s accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, every day, every day of your life! And we are all going to go through it, one day we are going to wake up and go “oh no, something is bad”, you’re going to worry about this bill or that bill, or some problem and we’re going to wonder what in the world can we to do?!?…get on your knees. Get on your knees and pray! It will be ok. And if you are in a church that loves you and that loves God, trust me, your family inside this church will make it ok. That’s church. Because we believe in the Thanksgivings that God gives us. Every day. George Washington proclaimed the first Thanksgiving ever. It didn’t catch hold until like in 1941 or 1942 when it was made a national holiday. Our presidents and the great men that wrote this country’s Constitution stamped this country a country of “In GOD we trust!” Not man! We trust God. We give our faith to an almighty God! Through Him we can’t fail. There’s no failure in God! There’s no failure in the blood of Jesus Christ. We are under grace. Don’t take it for granted. Thursday’s Thanksgiving. Don’t take it for granted. Thanks be to GOD!!
John Collins Ministries, www.johncollinsministries.com. Contact, pastor@johncollingministries.com
Pastor John Collins, Love That Cross 