Psalm 103:1-5 Praise the LORD, my
soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. Praise the LORD, my soul, and
forget not all his benefits— who forgives all your sins and heals all your
diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and
compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is
renewed like the eagles.
The Thanksgiving
Holliday comes to an abrupt halt less than 24 hours after the table is cleared
of the turkey and all the trimmings. Beginning when the stores open the day
after Thanksgiving an ominous trance covers the entire country, called “Black
Friday.” At that point, folks head to the malls and shopping centers and forget
about all the things they have that they are grateful for and begin searching
for all the things they wish they had.
This great Psalm
includes some wonderful blessings from our Lord and Savior, Christ Jesus that
all the gold and silver on the planet cannot buy. In years gone by, before the
digital age, everyone would look for the Sears Christmas catalog, to search and
daydream about all the neat stuff in its pages. This Psalm includes a
thanksgiving catalog of blessing from God that none of the Walmart.com,
Amazon.com or any other shopping websites can offer.
The first thing we
find in God’s Catalog is that He forgives all of our sins. Our sins are what
separates us from God, and He will not look on sin. For God to see us as
righteous, we have to have the righteousness of Christ Jesus dwelling in our
hearts, minds, bodies, and souls (Psalm 103:3). Christ Jesus took on the
shame, pain and ultimately death on the Cross of Calvary that should have been
ours. He took the punishment of our sins upon Himself because we could not pay
for our sins. We received the righteousness of Christ Jesus when we surrendered
our lives to Him and accepted Him as our personal Lord and Savior, through
faith.
The next item we find
in God’s Catalog of Blessings is that He heals all of our diseases. Sometimes
we pray for the healing of cancer or other diseases of our friends and loved
ones, but cancer does not subside, and the person goes home to be with the Lord.
In our minds, we might wonder why God did not heal this person. The most
devastating disease we can have it the disease of sin, which was healed when
our Lord and Savior took our place on the Cross. God does heal physical
ailments today; He has the power to heal them at any time. We have only to read
through the accounts of the earthly life of Jesus and after His resurrection
through His Apostles. There will come a day that all sickness and disease will
be eliminated (Revelation 21:4).
The catalog continues
with a promise to redeem our life from the pit and crown us with love and
compassion. Our pit could be the loss of a loved one, losing a job, rejection
by someone that results in a feeling of emptiness. You can rest assured that
there is no pit that God cannot reach His loving hand into and pull you out (Psalm
40:1-3).
Lastly, we are
promised that our youth will be renewed like eagles. When the eagle is
approximately five years of age it will go through a molting process. In this
it sheds all of its old feathers and gets new ones, it seems like a newer and
younger eagle. It is the same eagle but through this process, it will look and
feel renewed in its energy and strength. When we are saved our old feathers are
shed for new ones, a new life of renewed energy and strength.
There is an old
symbolic question that goes like this: What if all you had tomorrow was what
you thanked God for today? This Thanksgiving let us all make sure we are in the
right catalog, God’s Catalog of Blessings,” so that we will be thankful for
what we have, instead of fantasizing about what we want.
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