[Darris McNeely] This news junkie has gone on a fast, from news, for a couple of weeks because of just other things coming into my own life and I've missed a lot of news that's been taking place. And you know what? I haven't missed it. Impeachment scandal, accusations, debates, politics. I haven't missed it. It's a rather dreary scene at times, but I'll get back to it because as I said, I'm a news junkie. But as I talk here today, just a few days away from the American Thanksgiving celebration I will certainly be glad to get to Thanksgiving and put my mind upon being thankful for the blessings of my own life, for the land in which I live, the freedoms, the liberty, and what I do have and help to put all of the other problems in our nation and in our world into a proper perspective.

There's a Psalm that I've always gone to at this time of year, actually, since I was a little kid, I read this in a school play one day. I guess I was meant to be a preacher from an early age because they picked me to actually do this particular Psalm. It's 95, Psalm 95 and it's a Psalm of thanksgiving. It's a call to worship. It says, "Come let us sing to the Lord, let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving and let us shout joyfully to Him with songs. For the Lord is the great God and the great King above all gods. And in His hands are the deep places of the earth, the heights of the hills are His. The sea is His for He made it and His hands formed the dry land."

I didn't quite understand all those words when I was in elementary school reading that, but I've come to appreciate them and understanding them a bit better since then.

As we keep Thanksgiving a national day that has been declared by past presidents as a day to give thanks for all that we have in America and wherever you may be watching this, give thanks as well with us and with each other for what you have and what God has done in your life. Because no matter what is going on in our world with the dangers, with the problems, with the evil that continues to crop up, anchoring our heart in a spirit of thanksgiving is always good. And anchoring our mind in the word of God is what helps us to transcend, to rise above all of these mundane problems.

And you know, sometimes we just do need to, as I said, take a fast, a period of restraint and we just kinda turn off the news in one sense and put our mind upon other things to get a proper perspective.

This particular Psalm goes on in verse 7 and it says, "Today if you will hear His voice." Today, if you will hear His voice.

What do you need to hear today? What do you need to hear from God to right your life, to help get a proper balance and perspective? Find that and think about that on a day of Thanksgiving, at a season of Thanksgiving to realign your own life. I fasted off of news, but when it comes to Thanksgiving, I'll chow down and I'll enjoy the turkey and the dressing and the cranberry. But most of all, hopefully, give thanks to God and hear His voice and what He is saying to me at that time.

That's BT Daily. Have a good Thanksgiving.