You're listening to the Allender Center podcast with Dr. Dan Allender.

As we look ahead to Thanksgiving, Dan begins a three-part series about the connection between gratitude and repentance.

Repentance isn't something that's often thought about in relation to Thanksgiving.

But as you'll hear Dan explain, gratitude and repentance are in fact a reflection of one another.

First and foremost, let me say on behalf of the Allender Center staff and faculty and Dan and Becky and all the rest of us, a most well celebrated Thanksgiving to you and to your family.

And as we engage the category of Thanksgiving, gratitude, I want to make a link between

gratitude and Thanksgiving, obviously, and repentance.

It is not a category that is most often spoken about with regard to

Thanksgiving. If we think about what Thanksgiving is for most of us, it's a day off with family

and friends where we eat well and to some degree reflect on our blessings.

You know, it's a time of good food, drink, pleasant interactions, except when politics seem to be involved.

And after a season of dining and preparation and perhaps even cleaning up, it's a movement to football.

And at least we get to celebrate that we get

cold turkey for leftovers soon thereafter. But let me say what Thanksgiving seldom is.

And not actually saying it should be, but it's not a season for a context of confession.

I don't think I've ever been part of a Thanksgiving celebration where someone confessed

that it had been a brutally financially difficult ear and that I really am confessing. I don't know what it means to truly trust God

in the middle of this or that in some interaction between family members where there's the

ownership that there has been resentment of the fact that your life and family seems to be doing far better than we are in our world.

Again, please don't mishear.

I'm not saying Thanksgiving celebration ought to be a context for confession.

But you really can't have repentance without confession. And repentance, I'm going to

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