I hope you sweet friends had a wonderful weekend worshipping the King of kings and Lord of lords! What an awesome privilege we have to call Him Father! For the past 10 weeks our church has been going through a doctrine series on Who God is and I can’t begin to tell you how thrilling it’s been to peel back the layers of Scripture and be reminded of just how real He is! (I’d love to know what your church has been talking about lately!)
Well, today we are going to look at the 12th way we can make our eternities intentional and it falls right in line with the season we find ourselves in right now. Thanksgiving!
I LOVE this time of year! All the emphasis of being thankful and the intentional reflecting on all that we should be thankful for.
The Thanksgiving holiday we celebrate as Americans may be an important part of our history, but the need to maintain a heart of thanksgiving is essential to our eternity.
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“Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, And into His courts with praise. Be thankful to Him, and bless His name.”
“Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving.”
And in Philippians 4:6 we find a revealing relationship between peace, prayer and a thankful heart…
“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.”
In 2 Corinthians 4:14-15 we discover that God is glorified by thankful hearts who have received His glorious grace…
“We know that God, who raised the Lord Jesus, will also raise us with Jesus and present us to himself together with you. All of this is for your benefit. And as God’s grace reaches more and more people, there will be great thanksgiving, and God will receive more and more glory.”
Psalms 107:22 expresses thanksgiving as a sacrifice…
“Let them sacrifice the sacrifices of thanksgiving, And declare His works with rejoicing.”
We find in Psalm 26:7 that making Him known should stem from a heart of thanksgiving…
“That I may proclaim with the voice of thanksgiving, And tell of all Your wondrous works.”
Revelation 7:12 declares that thankfulness in not only an attitude of gratitude we should all have because of the eternal life our loving Father has secured for us, but we are to be thankful because He is worthy of a thankful people who will worship Him well.
“Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom, Thanksgiving and honor and power and might, Be to our God forever and ever. Amen.”
Thankfulness is in our DNA as Christians. How could we be anything else?
- How can we adequately worship Him unless we are thankful?
- How can we proclaim Him to the world if our lives aren’t overflowing with thankfulness for so great a love?
- How can we experience the peace of God if our hearts aren’t grateful?
Even in the painful places of our lives we can offer the sacrifice of a thankful heart and glorify God in the process.
Are you thankful? Is your thankful heart obvious to others? Are you willing to offer thanksgiving as a sacrifice even while your heart is hurting? Do you see why it’s so important to maintain an attitude of gratitude if we want to make our eternities intentional?