People all over the United States will gather on Thanksgiving Day with family and friends for a feast of food, fun, fellowship … and perhaps a little football. This legacy of Thanksgiving goes all the way back to the 1600s. Whether it was the Plymouth colonists and the Wampanoag Indians who shared the first Thanksgiving celebration or the British colonists in Berkeley Plantation, Va., the legacy of giving thanks to God has survived the centuries.

It is said of the British settlers that Captain John Woodlief knelt in prayer and proclaimed “thanksgiving” to Almighty God for their arrival after a long, arduous voyage across the Atlantic Ocean.

So how will you pass on this legacy of giving thanks to God?

The Apostle Paul exhorted the Christians at Ephesus to, “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32).

In this one verse of sacred Scripture we see the Gospel as it is to be lived out in the lives of those who profess Christ as Savior and Lord. Paul is instructing everyone who has been raised from death to life by faith in Jesus Christ to move beyond “thanksgiving” to “thanksliving” because of what God has done for us in Christ.

Thanksliving is a life lived out before the face of God, going from:
–