Thanksgiving is not just a holiday.

It is a way of life.

As we study the scriptures with Scott Pauley today,

we pray that God will help us learn how to develop grateful hearts and hopes.

Thanksgiving is a word that is frequently used and infrequently understood.

If you tear the word apart and reverse the wording, it is literally the giving of thanks.

And while it's been institutionalized, it needs to be individualized.

We have to come to the place where it becomes a part of who we are, always giving thanks to our God.

Let me show you Thanksgiving in Scripture. In Psalm 35 and verse number

28, the Psalmist said, my tongue shall speak of thy righteousness and of thy praise all the day long.

So, thanksgiving is to be done all through the day. The psalmist also wrote in Psalm 34, verse number one,

I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. Consider that.

Then in Psalm 71, we read these words, beginning in verse 22. I will also praise thee with the psaltery.

Even thy truth, O my God. Under thee will I thee with the psaltery. Even thy truth, oh my God,

unto thee will I sing with the harp, O thou holy one of Israel. My lips shall greatly rejoice when I sing unto thee and my soul which thou hast redeemed. My tongue also shall talk of thy righteousness all the day

long, for they are confounded, for they are brought into shame

that seek my hurt. So repeatedly, the psalmist says, Thanksgiving is to be done every day and then

all through the day. As a matter of fact, in Psalm 119, 164, he said seven times a day he would praise the

Lord for his wonderful word and for his works.

I wonder, how many times a day do you and I stop and give thanks and praise to God?

Now, Thanksgiving, of course, in history, goes back to our pilgrim fathers.

Plymouth, Massachusetts, 1621, at that first harvest when they paused to give

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