Time For Being Thankful – And Why I Am

Our Mission

To present Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord to business and professional men and to develop Christian business and professional men to carry out the Great Commission.

James 4.4 warns, you adulterers! Don’t you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God? I say it again: If you want to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God.

What does it mean to be a friend of the world? Being a friend to anyone means liking them, possibly imitating them and wanting to be their constant companion. So why does God warn us about being a friend of the world?

Most people worship the world. We celebrate it with earth day. Some surveys indicate people are more concerned with climate change leading to world destruction than abortion leading to human elimination. World love is a big deal today and if God made it shouldn’t we care for it?

Didn’t God say it was good when He made it? Indeed God did say His work at creation was good but the globe we inhabit is not His warning in today’s verse. God warns us against loving the ways of the world, the wants of the world, the objectives of the world.

The world is a euphemism for the majority opinion, for the things the masses are doing, striving for and promoting as ‘god.’ What do people want most and first? Wealth. Power. Pleasure. Control. All of these things are constantly being pursued yet so many who obtain them are destroyed by them.

The latest example is the pop star Prince. He had wealth. He had opportunities for all sorts of pleasure. He had control over his destiny. Yet he died from drug overdose. Why? Apparently loving the world didn’t satisfy his heart. This is why God warns us against loving the world.

He created us to love Him. Loving anything but the limitless God is to love an unsatisfying thing because it is limited in its power or pleasure to satisfy. The limitless God of joy, love, peace, pleasure, beauty is the only One Who can consistently satisfy our deepest longings for those things. These are the real things we want and need but often become confused about believing the crowd that money, sex and titles will give us those things.

They never do and those who pursue those things for the things only God can truly give us, often wind up broken and destroyed by those very things they thought would bring them what they were truly after.

Being a friend of God, loving God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength is the means toward the limitless ends of love, peace and joy.

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A service to the business community
A Publication of CBMC International
November 28, 2016

Time For Being Thankful – And Why I Am

by Jim Mathis

We are in the midst of another Thanksgiving season, when people in many parts of the world pause from their hectic, demanding work schedules to consider reasons for being thankful. Thinking over my life and career, I have compiled a list of reasons for why I feel thankful:

• I am thankful that I was born in a place and time when education was valued and I had an opportunity to learn and develop a desire for life-long learning.
• I am thankful that I was born into a family that instilled a desire to seize every opportunity to experience life.
• I am thankful for parents that took me to church and allowed me to learn firsthand about God’s love, forgiveness, and what living in community was all about.
• I am thankful I learned to love all, serve all, and hate no one.
• I am thankful for a wonderful, beautiful and caring wife who has been my best friend for 46 years.
• I am thankful for the gift of music, not only for my limited singing and playing skills, but also the community of musicians I have the opportunity to know through church music, various bands, and jam sessions in all genres and styles of music.
• I am thankful for the gift of photography and growing up looking at photographs in magazines, dreaming of someday going to those places and making beautiful photographs like the ones I saw in the magazines.
• I am thankful that I can travel and enjoy the people and places that God created.
• I am thankful that I am not rich, lest I become arrogant and boastful.
• I am thankful I was not born into a rich family lest I develop an attitude of entitlement.
• I am thankful I am not poor so I do not I have to beg or be dependent on the generosity of others for my daily needs.
• I am thankful I was not born into a poor family so I did not grow up with the attitude that I was a victim of society.
• I am thankful that I live in a country that has mercy and compassion and is willing to help those in need, both through governmental and private and non-profit organizations.
• I am thankful that my parents did not tell me to not talk to strangers, to clean my plate, or that working hard was the key to success. Instead they taught me how to talk to everybody, eat healthy, and be creative and smart so I wouldn’t have to work so hard.
• I am thankful for friends from all social economic levels and faith backgrounds.
• I am thankful for my Evangelical, Protestant, Catholic, Pentecostal, and Mormon friends, as well as my Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu friends.
• I am thankful for the two groups of men I meet with for Bible study on Tuesdays and Fridays and the way they inspire, encourage and motivate me.
• I am thankful that I am a follower of Jesus Christ and that I can still have friends who have other beliefs.
• I am thankful that God made me just like I am and that I do not have to try to be anybody else.

If you were to draft a similar list of things for which you are thankful, what would they be?

Jim Mathis is the owner of a photography studio in Overland Park, Kansas, specializing in executive, commercial and theatrical portraits, and operates a school of photography. He formerly was a coffee shop manager and executive director of CBMC in Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri.

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