{"id":2099,"date":"2025-11-25T16:09:33","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T16:09:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/empoweringaction.org\/?p=2099"},"modified":"2025-11-25T16:09:33","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T16:09:33","slug":"thanksgiving2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/empoweringaction.org\/es\/thanksgiving2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Thanksgiving!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As we prepare to celebrate the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, let me encourage you to reflect on the words of Psalm 95.\u00a0 In his book \u201cYour God is Too Small,\u201d theologian J.B. Phillips submits that, while there are many reasons for the deterioration of Christianity, the chief cause is the worship of an inadequate god of our own making.<\/p>

Conversely, Psalm 95 summons us to the true God, worthy of our humble and obedient worship, by highlighting the What, Why, Way, and When of worship*.<\/p>

The What of Worship<\/strong> (vs. 1\u20132): The psalmist calls for God’s people to sing and shout to the Lord.
Oh come, let us sing for joy to Yahweh,
Let us make a loud shout to the rock of our salvation.
Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving,
Let us make a loud shout to Him with songs of praise.<\/p>

The Why of Worship<\/strong> (vs. 3\u20135): Believers should worship God, who is the great King over all.<\/p>

For Yahweh is a great God
And a great King above all gods,
In whose hand are the depths of the earth,
The peaks of the mountains are His also.
The sea is His, for it was He who made it,
And His hands formed the dry land.<\/p>

The Way to Worship<\/strong> (vs. 6\u20137b): Believers should humble themselves before God in worship.
Come, let us worship and bow down,
Let us kneel before Yahweh our Maker.
For He is our God,
And we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand.<\/p>

The When of Worship<\/strong> (vs. 7c-11): The psalmist calls for God to be worshipped now\u2014today!
Today, if you hear His voice,
Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,
As in the day of Massah in the wilderness,
\u201cWhen your fathers tried Me,
They tested Me, though they had seen My work.
For forty years I loathed that generation,
And said they are a people who wander in their heart,
And they do not know My ways.
Therefore I swore in My anger,
They shall never enter into My rest.\u201d<\/p>

Commenting on the closing warning to those who reject God (vs. 7b\u201311), commentator Derek Kidner states, \u201cBy ending on this note the psalm sacrifices literary grace to moral urgency. If this is a psalm about worship, it could give no blunter indication that the heart of the matter is severely practical: nothing less than a bending of wills and a renewal of pilgrimage.\u201d<\/p>

Accordingly, this Thanksgiving, let us renew our pilgrimage to humble, obedient, and warranted worship of God.<\/p>

* Source:
<\/strong>Lawson, S., & Anders, M. (2004). Holman Old Testament Commentary – Psalms<\/em>. B & H Publishing Group.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As we prepare to celebrate the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, let me encourage you to reflect on the words of Psalm 95.\u00a0 In his book \u201cYour God is Too Small,\u201d theologian J.B. Phillips submits that, while there are many reasons for the deterioration of Christianity, the chief cause is the worship of an inadequate god of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2100,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ministry"],"acf":[],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/empoweringaction.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/thankagiving-600x400.png","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/empoweringaction.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/thankagiving-600x400.png","author_info":{"display_name":"Kent Husted","author_link":"https:\/\/empoweringaction.org\/es\/author\/khusted\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/empoweringaction.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/empoweringaction.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/empoweringaction.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empoweringaction.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empoweringaction.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/empoweringaction.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2099\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empoweringaction.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/empoweringaction.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empoweringaction.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empoweringaction.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}