Pastor's Circle - Gil McKee

Gil McKee, Senior Pastor of the First Baptist Church of Tuscaloosa, joined the Pastor's Circle today to discuss thanksgiving. Here are the "CliffsNotes" of his segment.

What's the hardest thing about being thankful?

I think just getting over the things that are so easy for us to grumble about.

We all know it's easy to pick out the things that aren't going well, but our discipline as Christians is to focus on the things that are going well and be thankful for those things.

In America, does our prosperity work against us?

Absolutely. It makes no sense. But when you live in a land as prosperous as this, you begin to take things for granted.

God has promised to give us everything we need, but not everything we want. In America, we are very very confused over those things.

We've developed the feeling that we are entitled to all of this stuff. Of all people, we in the Church ought to know better than that. But nevertheless, we do it.

We allow the world to move into the Church, rather than the Church marching out into the world.

It's an incredibly powerful force in the life of the believer when we live in the peace of Christ.

How does thanksgiving work relationally?

I think the life of the Christian should be one of edifying those around us. The Scripture teaches often that we're to build up the body of Christ.

Can you think of anything that edifies the body more than just looking in someone's eyes and saying, "I am thankful for you."

I think it's like any other discipline in our life. The more we practice it, the more second-nature it becomes.

In a culture where we're just not interested in accountability, we've forgotten that there's some disciplines that we need to follow. Thanksgiving is certainly one of them.