Thanksgiving is this Thursday! We have everything to be grateful for, don’t we? Gratefulness is making known to God and others in what ways they have benefited our lives. I Corinthians 4:7 Thanksgiving Day is a perfect time to do this!
Thanksgiving weekend is full of traditions for our family, as I am sure it is in your home. It is the official beginning of the Christmas season. The Christmas trees go up, the Christmas C.D.’s fill the house with music, the wreaths are hung on the front doors, the garlands are placed around the house with care, and the lights from the bannister shine out from the second story as a welcoming beacon for all who enter over the coming days of celebration.
My bulging gift closet is opened up after a year of accumulating its secret chattels and the “to do list” is formally inducted into the hustle of Christmas giving. The stacked boxes full of gifts, just waiting to be wrapped, are pulled out and the forgotten person, item or the missing piece of a waiting gift is duly noted and one by one will be addressed and added to its appropriate package over the next few weeks.
“Making a List and Checking It Twice…”
In the book “A Royal Christmas to Remember” the princesses and young knights are busy checking off all that must be accomplished with all the activities that come with planning and preparing for the Holiday Season. Unexpectedly there is a disruption at the castle door. Fear silences their demanding schedule. Abruptly frozen in their tracks, their thoughts are focused on the pending danger and Christmas preparations are lost in the newly presented event at hand…
Who is knocking at the door? What could it be? What has happened?
Organizing activities requires lists! There are many kinds of lists. They can be the organizer that keeps us on track. They are the reminders that sustain us on our trek in a time crunch. They put our weekly menu together and they assure us that everything is packed in a lunch bag or backpack. They maintain our priorities. Lists are good things…Fresh reminders, motivators to keep us keeping on…
I have been thinking about a list that has been in a notebook next to my Bible for years. It accompanies my journal and is the key of the day and the lock of the night. It is a list of names and needs of …family members, missionaries, church families, people we are witnessing to, people we are mentoring, church leaders, leaders of our great nation, prayer requests…
“Watch and pray…” Matthew 26:41
“God heard them, for their prayer reached heaven…” II Chronicles
“So we fasted and petitioned our God about this and He answered our prayer.” Ezra *: 23
“The moment you wake up each morning, all your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists in shoving it all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view letting that other, larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in.” C.S. Lewis
“If you are a stranger to prayer you are a stranger to power”. If we are too busy to pray…then we are too busy! Hurry is the death of prayer!
“Satan laughs at our toiling but he trembles when we pray.
Will you join me this busy time of year to take time to enter your “War Room” with your prayer list and talk to God?
~Jackie Johnson - I am a former tribal missionary to the Kuna Indians on the Colombian border in Central America. Fluent in several languages, my husband and I currently pastor a Spanish-speaking church in Southern California. My passion is discipling and equipping dedicated young women for life, marriage, motherhood, and beyond. I am the mother of two daughters and the grandmother of three Princesses and four young Knights.
