Thanksgiving

Since 1983 this Scripture has been important - vital - to my existence:

Oh give thanks to the LORD, for He is good,

For His lovingkindness is everlasting.

Let the redeemed of the LORD say so,

Whom He has redeemed from the hand of the adversary

Psalm 107:1-2 NASB

A friend challenged me with it, saying he believed God would give me as song from meditating on it. And He did give me that song…and so much more than I had expected. As I sang this verse through the years from 1983 until 1988, the Lord began to build in me the attitude of gratitude: learning to thank God for and in and through any circumstance by learning to view each circumstance from HIS point of view.

Because of fear of what others might think of me, I never publicly acknowledged my deliverance from homosexuality from the moment it occurred - November 7, 1981 - until July of 1988! What happened to give me the courage to declare God’s work in my life publicly?

During a time of worship I was leading that July in 1988, I became so overwhelmed by the burden of not having told others specifically what God had done for me to illicit such deep longing to worship and thank God publicly that I stepped down from the platform and knelt at the altar. My good friend, Wayne, saw me there and knelt beside me. As he pressed me for the reason for my anguish, fear rose up in me and I began to weep. His words to me? “God’s Word says ‘let the redeemed of the Lord say so’. If you’re redeemed, Dennis, what does it matter what you are redeemed from?”

It was soon after that encounter that I began to share my story publicly - and the walls of fear that had surrounded me were razed to the ground and the lies of the enemy placed under my feet! And I learned that gratitude - the public declaration of what God has done for me - would not only usher others into that same freedom but would usher me into the deeper places of God’s presence I had been longing for!

Gratitude, to me, is like a springboard - a diving board - into the deeper places of God’s presence and nature. When I take a deep breath and jump on the end of that springboard, I am instantly lifted into the heights of awareness of God’s presence and simultaneously plunged into the depths of His character and essence - fully aware of His place in my existence in spite of my circumstances!

As a dad, I love being near my children. I love just being in their presence. I love blessing them. But as much as I love being with them and blessing them, I am transported to deeper levels of fellowship with one of my children when they express gratitude to me. It is as if they are leaning into my heart with their own heart…and I can’t get enough of it…can’t get close enough! And I am an earthly father…so how much more is this reality magnified by our perfect heavenly Father when we express gratitude to Him?

Take a big jump on the springboard of gratitude and plunge into a deeper awareness and a deeper level of intimacy with Father this Thanksgiving. And by the way, this principle works with people, too…

Dennis Jernigan

Watch and worship with the song Oh, Give Thanks at https://youtu.be/UF-WjphaAE8 or download the mp3 at http://dennisjernigan.com/store/product.php?c=24&p=3625