Thursday, November 27th
Written By Michael Williams

Giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father(B) in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,” Ephesians 5:20

Thanksgiving is here, and so is Christmas apparently. I thought that Thanksgiving came before Christmas. Some how Christmas has swallowed up Thanksgiving and began before Thanksgiving was over. But I suppose that is the way it is. Why does it seem that Christmas lasts for 25 days, and thanksgiving lasts for only one? Well, lets be fair and say 5, we must include the week long sale when you can get corn and cream cheese for a quarter before thanksgiving, and the day after a big screen TV for 99 bucks. As soon as the sun goes down on the sale day after thanksgiving, up comes the Christmas décor. Christmas is 25 days of pure anticipation. The reunion of family, the preparation of a feast, the excitement that comes from the uncertainty of a gift that is under the tree, and the great feeling of satisfaction that comes when some one is satisfied with a gift you have given. This is basically a thanksgiving with presents and colors that clash, or is it? From this rises a question, are we thankful for the giver, the gift, or mutually both?

Salvation is a pretty big gift, wouldn’t you say? Jesus is our ransom and redeemer; He is both the gift and the giver. Sometimes I feel, because we are greedy little creatures, we often are more thankful for the gift than thankful to the giver. Take the early Christian Jews for instance. They devoted their lives to living to the letter of the law. And believe me, there are a lot them, circumcised and gluten-free, but they at times lost focus, so busy focusing on the giver and pleasing the giver and not taking time to appreciate the gift. The gift of freedom that Christ gives us from the tedious, meticulous standards that come with the law. It’s like being grateful to your boss for giving you a job when you need it, and then coming in to work on your days off. Then you have those who are so grateful for the gift that they disregard the giver. We’ve all been there. We ignore the standards that God has put in place for us and we live life the way we will to live it, with no consideration for the one who has given us all that we have. It’s the classic “get out of hell free card” scenario.

We are grateful for the gift, but not to the giver, and our lives at times reflect that. The ideal place to be is were we do not see these to things as two separate things. We are thankful to the one who has saved us and we live lives that reflect this thankfulness, all the while we are thankful for the gift and we appreciate it for what it is. We accept it and in no way do we make an attempt to earn it, because it has been freely given. In my mind, Thanks giving and Christmas aren’t two where one should over shadow the other. They are two that should go hand in hand. Thankful to the giver, never forgetting about or disregarding the gift.

Extra time in the Word Ephesians 5

Wednesday, November 26th
Written By Kyle Shultz

1 Thessalonians 4:1
As for other matters, brothers and sisters, we instructed you how to live in order to please God, as in fact you are living. Now we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more.

It is never the will of God that we should come to the point in our walk with Him where we feel comfortable where we are at and not want anything fresh. I personally love sports, so I can see this from a competitive standpoint. What separates the good athletes from the great athletes has nothing to do with physical talents. I have seen some of the most gifted basketball, baseball, or football players who could have been great but failed miserably. What made some good but others great was that the great ones were never satisfied with arriving where they were at. They always looked forward. If a baseball hitter could smash a ball out of the park but wanted to get better, he would train himself to wait for the perfect pitch. If a center in basketball had a knack for getting to the foul line, he worked on his free throws. The athletes that play at the top of their game for an extended period of time put time in perfecting their strengths, studied film on their weaknesses, and sought the opinions of great athletes who learned the lessons before them.

That is the way that God seeks for us to live our life in Christ. We are never to become complacent with just knowing that we will be taken care of. There is so much more than just living for ourselves! In Christ, there is no limit to the potential of His will being accomplished if we submit to Him! We are commanded by God to examine ourselves, have our motives checked by Him, being equipped in His armor daily, and letting Christ live through us. When we are living in obedience to Him, as today’s passage shows, we should allow Him to work through us more! Our walk is always meant to be looking up and forward. It can be very easy to lose sight of who God really is and how He wishes for us to live. His way is perfect, but never forced on us.

Extra time in the Word 1 Thessalonians 4

Tuesday November 25th
Michael Williams

James 2:3-4
If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, ‘Here’s a good seat for you,’ but say to the poor man, ‘You stand there’ or ‘Sit on the floor by my feet,’ have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

Tell me something, why is it so important that we talk about celebrities? Is the celebrity in your circle of friends? Is the celebrity someone who holds you accountable? Is the celebrity someone who you plan on ministering to on a personal level? If we are talking about someone who doesn’t fit into one of those categories, we really shouldn’t be concerned with them. It’s fine if we pray for them and of coarse there are exceptions when we are talking about the way they live their lives: The president, senators, congressmen, judges, policemen, all the people whom God has placed in authority over us. But is what the celebrity does in downtown LA club or who they are dating really affect my life? Nope.
Tell me something, why are celebrities, celebrities? What makes them anymore interesting than the next person? Is it because they live a materialistic life we shouldn’t wish we had or Is it because they are so good at pretending to be someone else that we absolutely must know who they really are? All that we need to know is this:

Is their life reflecting Christ?

If it isn’t, pray that it does. If it does, thank God that it does and pray that it continues.
We give celebrities way more attention than they deserve and the people in our lives who need us the most don’t here from us. Isn’t that funny? We know more about someone who lives in Hollywood than we do our own neighbors that live right across the street or sit across from us from the bus or lunch table. Something is wrong with that picture. Instead of celebrating a person who has no reason to celebrate, Show the one nearest to you the One who celebrates us. The One who delights in us. The one who loves us more than we love ourselves. Which is so hard to believe sometimes, isn’t it? Instead of being obsessed with ourselves, may we be all the more obsessed with our creator, and then see our creator in the very least of these, because there, he will be.

Extra time in the Word James 2

Monday, November 24th
Written By Jack Eason

John 3:20
Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.

My junior high school was heated by a huge coal-burning furnace. Entrance to the furnace room was down a dark, narrow stairway under the stage in the auditorium. One day when I got to school, I noticed the principal and several teachers standing near the top of those stairs. All of us students realized something serious had happened. We stood around our lockers trying to figure out what was going on. Soon after the bell rang for first period class, the principal called an assembly of the whole student body. He announced that the janitor had fortunately discovered a fire in a trashcan at the bottom of the stairs. After looking through the papers and other trash, the janitor had found the remains of a cigarette. Since neither the janitor, the principal nor any of the rest of the staff had been on the stairs that morning, he pointed out that a student must have thrown the cigarette away to keep from getting in trouble. Then, he warned everyone of the terrible danger we had all been exposed to and demanded that no one ever smoke in the building again.

This incident illustrates how evil hates the light. Whoever had been smoking on the stairs leading to the basement felt the need to hide. An adult would have simply gone outside to his car or walked around the block while smoking. Only a student would feel the need to hide in the darkness. He hid because he didn’t want his “evil deed” to be exposed. Nothing has changed since the very first sin was committed thousands of years ago. As soon as Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, they hid. Of course, we look at their action and think, “How stupid can you get? Surely they knew God would find them!” But, don’t we do the exact same thing? Instead of owning up to our sin and disobedience we try to hide it by making excuses or blaming others. Of course, our attempts at hiding our sins are about as effective as Adam and Eve’s. God sees right through us. He calls us out into the open and insists that we expose ourselves to his holy light. Then, he does the very same thing he did for Adam and Eve. He forgives us and hides our sin. God hid Adam and Eve’s nakedness by killing some animals and clothing them in their skins. He hides our sin behind the blood of His Son Jesus who died so we could be forgiven.

Extra time in the Word John 3

Sunday, November 23rd
Written By Bill Scott