Christian Living

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GIVE THANKS TO THE LORD!


It seems that we are more often urged to pray for something than to give thanks, while both are significant features of the Christian life. So if we neglect one, we diminish the composite. It is with this in mind that the following quotations are cited.
From Scripture. “I will praise God’s name in song and glorify him with thanksgiving” (Psa. 69:30). The psalmist adds that this will please the Lord more than sacrifice.
“Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations” (Psa. 100:4-5). Otherwise, we fail to honor him for his sustaining grace.
“Sing to the Lord with thanksgiving; (since) he delights in those who fear him, who put their hope in his unfailing love” (Psa. 147:7, 11). Here reverence (fear) and love are bonded together, as a motivation to render thanks to the Lord.
“Thank be to God for his indescribable gift!” (2 Cor. 9:19). Words fail the apostle as he reflects on God’s redemption in Christ.
Select quotations from William Sykes, The Eternal Vision. “Let us, therefore, be thankful for health and a competence, and above all, for a quiet conscience” (Izaak Walton, The Complete Angler).
“Thank God, carefully and wonderingly, for your continuing privileges, and for every experience of his goodness. Thankfulness is a soil in which pride does not easily grow” (Michael Ramsey, in Mararet Duggan, Through the Year with Michael Ramsey).
“Cultivate the thankful spirit—it will be to you a perpetual feast. There are, or ought to be, no such things as small mercies. A really thankful heart will extract motive for gratitude from everything, making the most even of scanty blessings”(Anonymous).
“Thank God that those times which strain faith so hard come only occasionally in life. For the most part we travel a sunlit road, and when we are unaware of the love of God it is often because we have not looked for it. To see the evidence of God’s mercies you have only to look” (W. E. Sangster, Westminster Sermons).
“I will thank and praise God for the strength of my body enabling me to work, for the refreshment of sleep, for my daily bread, for the days of painless health, for the gift of my mind and the gift of my conscience, for His loving guidance of my mind since it first began to think, and of my heart ever since I first began to love” (Edward King, Sermons and Addresses).
“Thank God every morning, when you get up, that you have something to do that day which must be done, whether you like it or not. Being forced to work, and forced to do your best, will breed in you temperance and self-control, diligence and strength of will, cheerfulness and content and a hundred virtues which the idle man never knows” (Charles Kingsley, Town and Country Sermons).
“Would you know who is the greatest saint in the world? It is not he who prays most or fasts most; it is not he who gives most alms, or is most eminent for temperance, charity or justice; but it he who is always thankful to God who with everything that God wills, who receives everything as an instance of God’s goodness, and has a heart already to praise God for it” (William Law, Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life).
“Certainly a marked feature of Christ’s character was his perennial gratefulness of spirit. Run through his prayers and you will be surprised how large a place that thanksgiving holds in them, how often he gave eager praise for what would have soured you and me, and made us feel quite certain that God had forgotten to be gracious. Did he not take the cup, that awful symbol of things so near and so fearsome, and even then give thanks? (A. J. Gossip, From the Edge of the Crowd). (Then, as a suggestion, compose your own comment on prayer and share it with someone.)

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