I was planning on writing this earlier but I wanted to do a word search before I wrote to make sure I knew what I was talking about. I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving, a time of fellowship with family and friends and realizing what we are truly thankful for. I had a wonderful day with family, but as I went through the day one thought kept coming to my mind. What am I truly thankful for? Many of us were probably thankful for the food, for friends, a day off of work :), a day to be home, and things like that. But what are we to be thankful for? I did a word search in my Bible on Thankfulness. Here are some things I found and some things that I thought of on Thanksgiving.
I found in the Bible that people praised and thanked God for Who He is and what He has done. I found that they thanked Him for His goodness and mercy. And I am thankful for Who He is, what He's done and His attributes. But I started to think, doesn't the Bible say something about trials and counting it all joy when we fall into them? Are we to be thankful for trials? Are we to be thankful that we were counted worthy to suffer for His name? The answer is yes! When we go through hard times we shouldn't just "suffer" through them because we know we have to, we are to be thankful that God is refining us, that He is making us more like Him, that He has counted us worthy to be refined for His name! I also thought about salvation, we can come boldly before the throne of God and accept His gift of salvation. We can pray to Him whenever we want, we can tell Him anything, and not only will He hear us, but He will answer our prayers, perhaps not the way we thought they should be answered, but He will answer them. What about the fact that we are in a country free to serve the Lord without fear. The fact that we have our own Bible and resources to study our Bibles to learn more about Christ and how we can correctly thank and praise Him. The list goes on and on, think about it! Let us be thankful for the things we can see, our families, houses, jobs, things like that, but let us be thankful for how God works in our lives, for the things He brings into our lives, the things that appear good and the things that appear bad!
I found in the Bible that people praised and thanked God for Who He is and what He has done. I found that they thanked Him for His goodness and mercy. And I am thankful for Who He is, what He's done and His attributes. But I started to think, doesn't the Bible say something about trials and counting it all joy when we fall into them? Are we to be thankful for trials? Are we to be thankful that we were counted worthy to suffer for His name? The answer is yes! When we go through hard times we shouldn't just "suffer" through them because we know we have to, we are to be thankful that God is refining us, that He is making us more like Him, that He has counted us worthy to be refined for His name! I also thought about salvation, we can come boldly before the throne of God and accept His gift of salvation. We can pray to Him whenever we want, we can tell Him anything, and not only will He hear us, but He will answer our prayers, perhaps not the way we thought they should be answered, but He will answer them. What about the fact that we are in a country free to serve the Lord without fear. The fact that we have our own Bible and resources to study our Bibles to learn more about Christ and how we can correctly thank and praise Him. The list goes on and on, think about it! Let us be thankful for the things we can see, our families, houses, jobs, things like that, but let us be thankful for how God works in our lives, for the things He brings into our lives, the things that appear good and the things that appear bad!
1 comment:
Mmmm...how true. Thank you for reminding us to have a truly thankful heart...even for the things that don't seem like the obvious thing to put on our "I'm thankful for..." list. If God works all things for His glory and our good, than everything in our lives should be worthy of a grateful heart! But I forget so easily. I thank you for faithfully bringing us back to these truths, Ana. He has done so much for us in bringing us to Himself...through Christ we have ACCESS to God the Father! A glorious thing...and I pray that I (we!) will continue to have more of that heart that is overflowing with the proper thankfulness for His abundant gifts!!
Much love, Katie Rose
(By the way...At a very true, yet different, level :), I'm thankful for YOU! You are one of His very good gifts to me...and of course one of the good ones that even feel good now ;)!)
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