Happy Canadian Thanksgiving

I spent some time on Saturday cutting up the last of the apples from our trees in preparation for our Thanksgiving celebration today. Susan makes the most phenomenal apple pies. In fact, she is a really good baker and made some great pumpkin pies, as well, from the pumpkins we had last year at Halloween.

As our family is gathering for the holiday celebration, including a birthday party for our eldest daughter, Kelly, and our grandson, Max, I am reminded of a not so unique principle I shared in my latest book, The Secret to Happiness.

For the last two Sundays, I've been teaching about the two kingdoms. One is the kingdom of darkness that all of us fell into when Adam and Eve sinned. We are born into this kingdom ruled illegally by satan. When we become believers in Jesus, he transferred us out of that kingdom He calls darkness, into the kingdom which He calls light. Even though we are still in the same world, we now have to live by new rules and a new culture and it is not always easy.

In the kingdom that we were brought up in we learn that $100 minus $10 equals $90. That's human mathematics. But in God’s kingdom, it doesn’t work that way. For example, thousands of people were following Jesus and had been for 2-3 days. There were perhaps 8-10 thousand people since the Bible says there were 5,000 men. So Jesus turns to His disciples and says “how are we going to feed these thousands of people that are here?”

Philip immediately began thinking the way he had learned in school and said, “well, lets just work this out. It would cost about $2 for a sandwich for everyone of these people and there are about 10,000 of them. That would be about $20,000. If we each of us count our money we have $43. There is no way."

So here is a kingdom problem trying to be solved by human reasoning, and it doesn’t work. The principle that Jesus is teaching, is one I call the Abundance Principle.

Next, Andrew comes up and very simply, almost naively says, “well, Jesus there is this young boy here and he has 5 little buns and 2 sardines.” That took a lot of courage for him to say that because it does sound absolutely stupid that a kid’s lunch, a couple of tuna sandwiches, would feed 10,000. But Andrew was seeing something that Philip never saw. Philip was looking through human thinking and Andrew was looking through kingdom thinking, the kingdom of light and he saw potential.

So that is the concept I have been teaching and I used the illustration of my travelling over the last month to all of the different cultures that we went to. When you go to a new culture you have to adjust your thinking process to think like they think. So, we have moved into the kingdom of light and now we have to learn live in this new kingdom by kingdom rules and this principle of abundance is the very principle I wrote about in my book.

Of course the secret to happiness, simply put, is giving. The Bible says it is more blessed to give than to receive and there is a blessing upon anybody that gives. So therefore if you give away you have more than you if you keep it for yourself. But this is completely opposite to what we have learned so it is very difficult to get that through our minds.

Now to practice what I preach, this morning in church I gave a copy of my book to anyone who attended. (If you are reading this blog and would like a copy, you may purchase it at cost, $6.00, plus shipping and handling.)

Since it is Thanksgiving, I wanted to use this book and the abundance principle to emphasize the power of thanksgiving and how it actually affects the health of our spirit, soul and body. Spiritually, being thankful releases the flow of grace in the kingdom of God because we get our eyes off ourselves and put our eyes on God. It also does something to our psyche/soul. Doctors tell us that 75% of our sicknesses and illnesses can not be cured through medicine or through surgery. They have always resisted the idea that spiritual values or a spiritual belief system helped but now many doctors, including a neurosurgeon I quoted this morning in my sermon, believe that the Christian thinking processes can actually improve our emotional and mental health. This process breaks the bondage, such as bitterness, unforgiveness, cynicism, gossip, jealousy, envy, and hate, that debilitates us. Physically when we break out of our negative thinking and begin to think with Christian values such as thankfulness, thanksgiving, giving or forgiving, those Christian virtues have a spiritual, social and emotional power. Puffs of nitric oxide are released in our brain and they facilitate the release of endorphins and dopamine which are the body’s natural painkillers and healers. So physical wellness, doctors are actually finding out through brain scans, actually comes through these spiritual values such as thanksgiving, giving and forgiving. This is an amazing concept.

As we gather this evening with family, including my brother-in-law Bob and his wife Nancy from Bellingham, we will be sharing about the things we are thankful for, giving gifts to Kelly and Max and ensuring we are living kingdom principles. Plus, I will be sure to have some of Susan's amazing pumpkin pie, with whipped cream. My favourite! I'm so thankful for my talented wife and my loving family.

Happy Thanksgiving,

Barry