Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy

Welcome to Day 176 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom.

Thanksgiving or Thanks-Living?

Thank you for joining us for our 7 days a week, 7 minutes of wisdom podcast. This is Day 176 of our Trek, and yesterday we shared additional details about the Blessings of the First Thanksgiving. Today we want to explore the concept of Thanksgiving or Thanks-living to determine what the difference is. If you miss any of our Wisdom-Trek episodes, please go to Wisdom-Trek.com to listen to them and read the daily journal.

We are recording our podcast from our studio at Home2 in Charlotte, North Carolina. This episode will air on Monday, and we are rapidly coming up on Thanksgiving this week. We still have much work and preparations that need to be completed before Thursday, but it is always such a special time of year.  We have so much to be thankful for. We are thankful that we can once again celebrate Thanksgiving with family and friends at The Big House. God has been gracious to allow us to be caretakers of this family heritage, and we are pleased that it can be shared by so many.

It is time to head out on our Trek for today. As we hike, we have time to remember all the blessings in our own lives, and we want to consider these two questions:

Do our lives only show thankfulness and gratitude during special times or seasons?

Do our lives reveal that thankfulness and gratitude are part of the very fabric of who we are?

Thanksgiving or Thanks-living

Our speech is a great revealer of what is in our hearts. It is from the abundance of the heart or mind that the mouth speaks. Jesus put it in these terms in Matthew 12:33-37, “A tree is identified by its fruit. If a tree is good, its fruit will be good. If a tree is bad, its fruit will be bad.  You brood of snakes! How could evil men like you speak what is good and right? For whatever is in your heart determines what you say.  A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart.  And I tell you this, you must give an account on judgment day for every idle word you speak.  The words you say will either acquit you or condemn you.”

Jesus said again in Matthew 15:8, “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” We can say we are thankful, but our attitude and action will give us away. To quote Jesus for a third time in Matthew 12:37 he says, “The words you say will either acquit you or condemn you.” If we are truly thankful in our hearts, it will be reflected in how we live. Our Thanksgiving will become thanks-living.

Thanks-living is about attitude. Zig Ziglar is quoted saying, “Attitude determines your altitude.” I believe that is true in our spiritual and natural life. I know some gifted and talented people who seem to stay perpetually grounded and go nowhere simply because they have rotten attitudes.

The Bible is full of people who lived a life of thanks-living. This attitude helped David endure years on the run, sleeping in caves and the wilderness, while being hunted like an animal to be slaughtered by Saul. Instead of becoming a victim or an old sour puss, David allowed God to use all this to make him into one of the greatest kings to ever walk the earth.

Thanks-living is not living in denial. It is not the same as denying the pain of a situation or pretending that everything is fine when it really is not. Thanks-living is being able to be thankful in spite of our circumstances because we choose to look at our life and circumstances through the filter of God’s love and goodness. Paul wrote in his letter to the church in Thessalonica 5:18,