Never could get the knack of lying, even those innocent lies that everyone uses.  He didn’t think any lies were innocent.”
              –C.J. Petit  (The Debt)

    “For you are the children of your father the devil, and you love to do the evil things he does. He was a murderer from the beginning. He has always hated the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, it is consistent with his character; for he is a liar and the father of lies.”
              –John 8:44 (NLT)
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I trust that you had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  Speaking of that, Psalm 9 speaks of how we should be thankful unto the Lord.  It is a psalm of thanksgiving, of justice, and of celebration.  Today, the first ten verses from the HCSB:

            1  I will thank the LORD with all my heart; I will declare all Your wonderful works.
            2  I will rejoice and boast about You; I will sing about Your name, Most High.
            3  When my enemies retreat, they stumble and perish before You.
            4  For You have upheld my just cause; You are seated on Your throne as a righteous judge.
            5  You have rebuked the nations; You have destroyed the wicked; You have erased their name forever and ever.
            6  The enemy has come to eternal ruin; You have uprooted the cities, and the very memory of them has perished.
            7  But the LORD sits enthroned forever; He has established His throne for judgment.
            8  He judges the world with righteousness; He executes judgment on the peoples with fairness.
            9  The LORD is a refuge for the oppressed, a refuge in times of trouble.
           10  Those who know Your name trust in You because You have not abandoned those who seek You, LORD.

People often boast that they know such and such a person, or have met someone whom the world might call a celebrity (what is that anyway?).  Some will boast about their careers or about the possessions they own, or about the trips and cruises they have taken.  David says that he will boast about the Lord.  That is something that Paul echoes in 1 Corinthians when he says, that if we boast is should only be about the Lord (1:31).
    How can a person boast about the Lord if they do not know Him?  Whenever I’m at a church and am asked to teach a class I try to start, if allowed, with lessons about the Lord; Who He is and His moral and natural attributes.  You cannot boast about a person unless you know them.  The better you know them the truth comes out and it is more than just boasting.  Knowing the Lord is more than just saying a little prayer, hoping it will be answered by “someone” out there.  Daniel says that “the people that do know their God shall be strong, and do exploits” (11:32, KJV).  
    We get frustrated at times, at least I do, when I think the Lord should be judging as He did in the Old Testament.  Then I ponder what might have happened to me, except for grace.  However, do not think that the Lord is slack concerning judgment.  He is the righteous Judge.  He never stops judging.  We look at nations and wonder how God can allow them to do the things they do.  Makes me think of the last time I heard a sermon or teaching on the “judgment of nations.”  There will come a time when the “sheep” shall be separated from the “goats.”  Those nations that are judged by God will be in dire straights and there will be no remembrance of them in the New Jerusalem.
    In this holiday season, grasp hold of the promises of God.  Look at the promises of His Son that were fulfilled, then look at those that are waiting to be fulfilled.  Develop a profound trust in the Lord.  There is a hope that awaits those that wait for Him and trust in Him.  That trust is developed as a person comes to know Him.  George O. Wood said, “When we lost sight of the upperside, sometimes life becomes intolerable.”  Without trust life can be miserable and hope can be lost.
    People are most miserable when they blame God for things that happen in life.  They wonder instead of trusting.  Become a person of trust in this Christmas season.

Cold nights do one of two things.  It either keeps people snuggled down or it gets them up and feeding the fire.”
              –Rod Collins (Bitter’s Run)

    “He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning.  For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.”
              –1 John 3:8 (KJV)
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I am convinced that we do not take enough time to be thankful.  We either get too occupied with our blessings and don’t thank the Lord for them, or we just take them for granted.  We might even think we deserve them.  The sign of the believer in Jesus Christ is their joy.  Yet so many droop along, or they let the devil steal their joy, or they let the woes that befall them take away their joy.  Sometimes it is because of all we have.  The more we get, the more often we tend to forget to be thankful and therefore, lose our joy.
    How can our joy abound?  How can we walk through this world with our head erect and a smile on our face?  The first thing is to recognize that God loves each and every person.  Because of that love we can have joy unspeakable, and for that we should be thankful.  God’s love is always there.
    The second thing is to be thankful.  Count your blessings and recognize that they come from the goodness of God. I heard a good sermon yesterday by my former pastor.  He preached on Psalm 100; the psalm for giving thanks.  He said the basis of thankfulness is:  the grace of God.  Look at Psalm 100 (from the HCSB)

          “1 Shout triumphantly to the LORD, all the earth. 2 Serve the LORD with gladness; come before Him with joyful songs.  3 Acknowledge that the LORD is God.  He made us, and we are His–His people, the sheep of His pasture.  4 Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise.  Give thanks to Him and praise His name.  5 For the LORD is good, and His love is eternal; His faithfulness endures through all generations.”

Read that over a few times, contemplate it.  Make it a daily reading this week of Thanksgiving.
    One other thought.  In the Old Covenant, when sheep entered the Temple they were killed for sacrifice.  In this Psalm, we are called His sheep, but there is a major difference.  We can enter because of His sacrifice.  He was the lamb that became the final and perfect sacrifice and His faithfulness continues.
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         “Then your apples all is gathered, and the ones a feller keeps
          Is poured around the cellar-floor in red and yaller heaps;
          And your cider-makin’s over, and your wimmern-folks is through
          With theyr mince and apple-butter, and theyr souse and sausage too!…
          I don’t know how to tell it–but ef such a thing could be
          As the angels wantin’ boardin’, and they’d call around on me–
          I’d want to ‘commodate ’em–all the whole-indurin’ flock–
          When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.”
                   –James Whitcomb Riley

You can know a man if you follow his trail, if you follow long enough.  By his tracks on the land the ways of a man are made plain–his kindness or his cruelty, his ignorance or his cunning, his strength of his weakness.”
              –Louis L’Amour  (The Key-Lock Man)

    “Godliness guards the path of the blameless, but the evil are misled by sin.”
              –Proverbs 13:6 (NLT)
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Part of what makes a man, what makes a leader, is bearing.  How does the person handle himself through life?  Bearing can be described as the outward showing of the inward man.  While it may be true that clothes do not make the man, yet much about the man can be seen from the way he presents himself.
    Then we hear the excuse, “God looks on the heart.”  That is so true, but at the same time as He does cleaning on the inside it begins to appear on the outside.  Now, that doesn’t mean we go around wearing our finest all the time, but we do dress, work, speak, and present ourselves as representatives of the “King”!
    Follow a man.  Look at his house, see what he reads, what he watches, where he goes, what he listens to, how he spends his money, what he does for entertainment, how he takes care of his family, and I’ll tell you much about the heart of the man.  It won’t take long.
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    I read this many years ago and have used it a couple of times, but figured it would fit well here.  Next week of Thanksgiving many will have decorated their homes in falls colors and emblems of Thanksgiving, turkeys, pilgrims, pumpkin pies.  Maybe in our time of decorating it might be a good time to take some things down off the walls of our minds and do some redecorating.  One of the things to start with is the decoration of being thankful.  The following is by Clarence W. Cranford.

         “Have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark, every man in his room of pictures?”
                    –Ezekiel 8:12

         “If your mind was an art gallery in which your thoughts could become visible like pictures hanging on a wall, would you be willing for your mother to see the exhibit?
          This question was asked in a college chapel service.  Some of the students treated it lightly.  They joked about it afterward.  But some of the students knew it was no laughing matter.  The pictures we carry in the mind color the rest of our lives and affect our relationships to God, the greatest art critic of all.
          During exile some of the Jewish people fell into bad habits.  They adorned the walls of a room in their houses with ugly idols.  This they did in the dark, not permitting their friends to enter and see what they had in that room.  That room became a wall between themselves and God.
          The mind is our art gallery.  We adorn it with many pictures, some good and some bad.  Let us pray for God’s help in the selection of the pictures we imagine.”
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         “The husky, rusty russel of the tossels of the corn,
          And the raspin’ of the tangled leaves as golden as the morn;
          The stubble in the furries–kindo’ lonesome-like, but still
          A-preachin’ sermuns to us of the barns they growed to fill;
          The strawstack in the meddler, and the reaper in the shed;
          The hosses in theyr stalls below–the clover overhead!–
          O, it sets my hart a-clickin’ like the tickin’ of a clock
          When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.”
                       –James Whitcomb Riley

Whatever a man describes, that’s his word.  His promise.  A man’s word is everything.”
              –Cotton Smith  (Dark Trail to Dodge)

    “The Lord isn’t really being slow about his promise, as some people think. No, he is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent.”
              –2 Peter 3:9 (NLT)
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A man’s word, now that’s a quaint thought.  I’ve recently read from a number of our pseudo-leaders, our politicians, that is it okay to lie, in fact a lie is better than the truth if it gets what you want, no matter who may be hurt.  Lie to get ahead, lie to hurt someone, lie to get your agenda followed, lie even if the facts and the truth show that you are lying.  People who follow this philosophy (Machiavellian) follow in the steps of their father–the devil.
    A man’s word will show his character (and no I will use the term “man” and not be swayed by the nonsense in Europe that says a gender term can be a sign of discrimination and will not be tolerated).  A handshake used to be a bond between parties, that is no longer true.  If a man can lie, then his handshake means nothing.  Yet we have generations of people who believe there is no absolute truth, that truth is relative.  Being relative it is always changing and to the whim of the person who is involved.
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              “It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord.”
                      –Psalm 92:1

    In this season of Thanksgiving do not fail to give thanks unto the Lord.  It is good for us; it is of benefit to the mind.  I have heard so many people say don’t look at your past.  Nonsense!  I would say don’t live in the past but the past is so beneficial to us.  George Matheson said that “The remorse of conscience is the pain of having done wrong; but the remorse of memory is the pain of having failed to enjoy yourself.”  Have you ever looked back upon the past and learned how little you had valued it?
    How many times have we rushed hither and yon and missed beauty and wonder along the way?  We cannot escape the mistakes and memory of the past.  We may try to hide it in the mind, but it is still there and often the consequences haunt us.  Then how do we overcome?  By giving thanks!  Treasure today the “gems” that are strewn on the path and the “flowers” that bloom just off the trail.  Retrospective love is a painful thing; therefore, love today.  There will be no remorse of memory when we thank God for today.  Hearken to the words of George Matheson:
         “I should like to know that I had not defrauded myself of my birthright, that I made room for others because I had had my share.  It will be a great solace to me at twilight that I have basked with conscious joy in the heat of the day.  Therefore I shall bask in it now.  The cup of gladness which my Father has given men shall I not drink it, even unto the dregs!  I shall thank Him for every bird that sings.  I shall praise Him for every flower that blows.  I shall bless Him for every stream that warbles.  I shall love Him for every heart that loves….”
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              “They’s something kindo’ harty-like about the atmusfere
               When the heat of summer’s over and the coolin’ fall is here–
               Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossoms on the trees,
               And the mumble of the hummin’-birds and buzzin’ of the bees;
               But the air’s so appetizin’; and the landscape through the haze
               Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days
               Is a pictur’ that no painter has the colorin’ to mock–
               When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.”
                         –James Whitcomb Riley

Makes one just want to get out and thank the Lord for the cool, crisp air.  To thank Him for the unique and special design of the frost.  To thank Him for this special time of life.