September 1
Ecclesiastes 6-8
Psalm 100
Proverbs 21:22-24
Ephesians 1
Thanksgiving and Praise
“Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him and praise His name. For Yahweh is good, and His love is eternal; His faithfulness endures through all generations.” Psalm 100:4-5 HCSB
Living in an instant gratification culture, I’m afraid that thanksgiving is often not our default position. When we don’t get exactly what we want when we want it, we tend to resort to grumbling and complaining instead of recognizing the many things that we have to be thankful for. We are bombarded with “have it your way” and “you deserve the best” and “don’t settle for anything less than what you want” messages everywhere we turn. We also have been conditioned by social media to see the “perfect” lives everyone else has and think that ours just doesn’t measure up. This leads to dissatisfaction and discontentment and does not foster thanksgiving and praise. I am convinced that to develop a grateful heart, we must be intentional. It does not come naturally. We have to train our minds to recognize our blessings and to look for the good in every situation. We can always find so much to be thankful for. We are abundantly blessed even during difficult seasons of our lives. We may be experiencing heartache and pain, but we have the love and protection of our faithful Heavenly Father who is good and never leaves us. He is always working on our behalf to bring about good for us.
There are lots of strategies to train our hearts to be thankful. Keeping a journal of blessings where you can regularly record things you are thankful for is a good place to start. Keep it somewhere that is easily accessible so you can enter things in it often and look back over it to remind yourself that you are abundantly blessed. I also write my prayer requests on small business cards and then record when it was answered. I keep them in a jar on my desk. Every Thanksgiving my family reads the answered prayers from the past year. We are always amazed at how many of the answered prayers we had forgotten about. God intervenes in our lives so often that it is easy to take it for granted and forget to thank Him for everything He does.
One of my favorite songs as a little girl was “Count Your Blessings.”13
When upon life’s billows you are tempest tossed,
When you are discouraged, thinking all is lost,
Count your many blessings, name them one by one,
And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.
Are you ever burdened with a load of care?
Does the cross seem heavy you are called to bear?
Count your many blessings, every doubt will fly,
And you will be singing as the days go by.
When you look at others with their lands and gold,
Think that Christ has promised you His wealth untold.
Count your many blessings, money cannot buy,
Your reward in Heaven, nor your home on high.
So, amid the conflict, whether great or small,
Do not be discouraged, God is over all.
Count your blessings, angels will attend,
Help and comfort give you to your journey’s end.
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