Not What I Have but Who I Know

I have so much to be thankful for! My wife, my daughter and son, their spouses, my two beautiful granddaughters, my church and my job would be the beginning of a lengthy list if I attempted to compose one. As I considered the many things that I have to be thankful for this past "Thanksgiving" day, it occurred to me  that what I was most thankful for was not what I had but who I knew. I am most thankful that I have been privileged by God to know Him and His Son Jesus! It is only because I know Him that I can begin to fully appreciate and enjoy everything else that He has blessed me with and that I am thankful for. As recipients of God's grace, believers in the Lord Jesus Christ should be the most thankful of all men. Knowing God and His Son Jesus Christ should never be taken for granted. We are of all men most blessed with this divinely given knowledge.

In the following passage of scripture found in Ephesians 1:3-14, the Apostle Paul was inspired to summarize much of what God has done on behalf of the believer in Christ:

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight He made known to us the mystery of His will,according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth. In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will, to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory. In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God's own possession, to the praise of His glory."

Praise and thanks be to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit!