Saturday, September 17, 2011

Day 5 - Week 30 - Psalm 100:4 "Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him and praise His name."

Sometimes you can really overlook opportunities for thanksgiving and praising God.  Sometimes, like when you have a miserable cold, probably flu, and feel absolutely, ridiculously cruddy, you forget to thank God for all of your wonderful days, days full of health and good times. 

Here's my challenge to me...should I wake up in the morning not feeling any better than I have today, then I'm going to say to God, "Thank you, God, for this time when I am being forced to rest and be still.  Thank you for giving me a body that, through processes not understood by me, can almost always fight off the illnesses that come into it.  You have created me in an incredible way and I trust You to work within me to bring me back to health.  You are with me always, and I thank You for all that You are in my life.  I praise Your name because You alone are holy and worthy of my praise."

And if, and I pray tonight that this is the case, I wake up in the morning feeling incredibly better, then there will be a time of praising God for working His healing within me.  I will ask Him to strengthen me to do His will through me, and not to allow me to waste good, healthy days in ways that I can easily do.  I will again give Him thanks for all that He has done for me, past, present and future. 

The point that I'm trying to make, is that no matter how things in our lives turn out, God deserves our thanks and our praise...just as Paul tells us in 1 Thessalonians 5:18, "Give thanks in everything, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus."

Our thanksgiving and praise to God should never be conditional on our circumstances, for no matter what, we are blessed because of our Lord and Savior, Christ Jesus.  I know that a little case of flu is nothing compared to some medical trials that many are going through, and I know how hard it must be to find a spirit of thanksgiving and praise when you are in the middle of those kinds of trials.  But I hope that you can open your heart and ask God to show you what He is still doing in the middle of wherever you are that reveals His love for you. 

Hebrews 13:5 reminds us, "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you." That statement alone is reason for our thanks and our praise.  God is always with us...never leaving us...no matter what!

1 comment:

donna said...

God is always present and that is a reason for thankfulness. He never leaves our side. We can speak to him at any moment and He listens. I am thankful for Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior. He strengthens me. I praise His Name, God Our Heavenly Father.