Recently, I’ve been pondering this season… the question is often asked, “What are you thankful
for this year?” And if I’m honest I don’t stop to really consider something deeper to be thankful
for. While it is always true that I am thankful for my family, my ministry, my helpmate
Amberasia, my brothers and sisters in the faith, my wonderful children…
Is that All I’m supposed to be thankful for?
Something that for some reason I’ve never thought of before, Thanksgiving is the precursor to
Christmas… you cannot arrive at the day of Christ’s birth (or the day that we as believers choose
to celebrate His birth), without traversing Thanksgiving… we spend hours prepping and getting
our homes ready for company, and friends and relatives will spend a Thursday surrounded by
these people and gobs of food. I am struck by another question that comes to mind, “Can I really
even approach Christmas without being thankful for the sacrifice that Jesus Christ paid on
the cross?”
I just finished reading through Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, I love the resurrection
pictures painted in the later chapters, I love how these pictures are connected to the fact that
“We”will be resurrected because of the resurrection of Christ!!!! I mean COME ON!!! True life
can be an anchor around my feet in a sea of despair and disappointment, and without resurrection
we might as well adopt Frederich’s Nihilism and be done with ourselves. But I can stand and
write to you my listeners or readers that Christ is ARISEN! And of this I am thankful beyond
comprehension! I mean to consider that Almighty God looked at me, sinful wretch that I am, and
said to me, “Because I love you, I’ve died for you! Not because you’ve shown ability or prowess,
not because you are somehow a good person, but it is Christ who makes you able to be good, to
love!” And what more can there really to be thankful for?!

“Christ died so that I may live
Christ was resurrected so I can have assurance
of resurrection!”

So this thanksgiving and Christmas season, I am thankful for the aforementioned things, my
family both in the Body of Christ as well as those God has blessed me with outside, for my
amazing wife and children, I am thankful that a Holy and Awesome God Loves little
insignificant Matthew Phipps, in spite of my sins and my failures, that he died for me! And not
that he merely died, but that three days later, when hope was lost, Christ came bursting forth
from he grave! Death couldn’t hold Christ! And for this I am thankful