Giving Thanks To God For All Things

November 2019

We have so much for which to be thankful. The Lord has richly and abundantly blessed us. In Ephesians 5:20, Paul wrote, “Giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” We should be thankful each day of our lives, not just on the fourth Thursday in November. It is always a good time to count our blessings. The hymnwriter wrote, “Count your blessings, name them one by one. Count your many blessings, see what God has done.”

When we look back over the year, we thank the Lord for the blessings of yesterday, the blessings of today, and forward to the blessings of tomorrow. When we start thanking the Lord, we can’t contain our joy and encouragement. Nowadays we have so many devices to count our steps, wouldn’t it be nice to have one to count our thanks? The familiar refrain says, “A thousand, a thousand thanksgivings, I bring blessed Savior to Thee.”

Barbara Ann Kipfer began keeping a list of her favorite things as a young teenager. Soon the list became second nature. She found herself making additions while riding the bus, eating breakfast, and even in the middle of the night. Twenty years and dozens of spiral notebooks later, her list was published as a book titled “14,000 Things To Be Happy About.” Why not write your own book? We shouldn’t live off the thanksgivings of others; we need to have our own. God wants to hear our thanks for what He has done for us and what He has given to us. Just like homemade gifts are superior to store bought ones, so too, our own personal gratitude exceeds that found in any book or other source.

Psalm 100:4 says, “Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise.” No believer in Jesus Christ will enter the gates of heaven without thanksgiving and into courts of His presence without praise. Why should we begin a day on earth without thanksgiving and end it without praise? Let us give thanks to God for all things all through the day.