And what was Moses saying to this underdog nation, what you owe to God…what you are to be thankful for is not your power or skill or righteousness, but God’s grace and His power of God working in the lives of the least likely people, the underdogs. As we become more self-sufficient, we become less the underdog …less thankful for what God has given. More ill-tempered; more winy, more critical, more suspicious of people, the system and the work… forgetting that is Lord of our life! The truth that Deuteronomy communicates is that God wants us never to forget that it is not by our power and our strength that we exist as servants of God. How else could we believe that a man who was born to a poor, unmarried Jewish peasant girl in a backwoods province of an ancient empire, a man who was executed by a civil court for sedition against the state, was the Son of God?
Paul is perhaps, makes the underdog sound the most true to God in 1 Corinthians 1:27-29: God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, God has chosen what is low and despised in the world, things that are not to reduce to nothing the things that are, so that no person might boast before God. So my question to you today is, “Can you live as the underdog?” Can you submit to God and not forget from where He has brought you?
Friends, this Thanksgiving, will you be the underdog for this world, expecting the best, praying for wisdom over wealth? Leaning on God so much that people will even question what you are up to only to find, that you have taken that attitude of thanksgiving in all things as a way of life. You will rarely have a chance to play in the spot light and but because of God’s strength will you always be ready to score that basket when the time is right? Being the underdog ready to defend the faith and lean of Christ! Fools for Christ, why not! Powerless? On our own, yes. What if the way we live was to wake each day and feel a deep and profound sense of inadequacy. Feel like Moses as he responded to God's call, "Who am I that I should do this?" But serving the one true God, what if when you wake, because of God’s power in you…because you live as an underdog, when you put your feet on the floor, satan trembles. Now that’s God’s might and power! Now, that’s the kind of thanksgiving attitude I want. When we realize the magnitude of the task of spreading the Good News, yes, the proper stance is underdog.
