Tag Archives: Thanksgiving

Psalms 100:4 Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise, give thanks to Him and bless His name.

Give thanks to Him and bless His name. This is the sixth command in this short, positive Psalms. O, to be truly grateful from the heart! God, give me such a heart.

Grateful people have recognized their dependence upon others.
Grateful people tend not to be presumptuous.
Grateful people have their pride and arrogance in check.
Grateful people tend to be pleasant to be around.
Grateful people recognize that others have given of their time, talents or resources to meet their need.
Grateful people are ‘others centered’, taking time to acknowledge the generosity of others.

I am mindful of a society’s ingratitude toward the Creator. From Romans 1, “…Because they did not see fit to acknowledge God or GIVE THANKS to Him…They became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened… He gave them up in the lusts of their own hearts to impurity…”

Ingratitude: the unwillingness to say “THANK YOU”, the refusal to acknowledge the generosity of God, the grotesque “Golem-like” attitude of “MINE”, all are UGLY in God’s sight. He delights in our gratitude and notes it publicly. When the healed leper returns, Jesus publicly acknowledges him.

Give thanks to Him. Bless His name. Enter His gates with thanksgiving. Enter His courts with praise. Come into His presence with singing… God is a great, generous God who gives and gives and gives to us again and again. He is the source of life, breath and ALL good things. Give thanks to Him and bless His name. Take some time today and purpose in your heart to say THANK YOU to those around you. Make a goal of saying “THANK YOU” at least 10 times today to those around you. See what verbal gratitude does to your soul.

4042 days ago Comments Off on 10 Thank You’s Psa 100:4 PERMALINK

Psalms 100:4 Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise, give thanks to Him and bless His name.

This verse has altered the way that I pray. This is a command verse describing how to approach prayer. The FIRST thing that we are to do in our times of prayer is to have a time of thanksgiving and praise. It can be a simple statement of acknowledging God. It can be a simple, “Thank You” for being there and for being available. It can be a verbal acknowledgement of His mercy, or grace, or kindness, or love, or a hundred other wonderful character traits of the Father.

Starting out prayer time in this way recalibrates my attitude towards God. It also slows me down from a ‘me-centric’ prayer life. Instead of coming to God with my needs, wants and desires, it forces me to think on God. It puts my petitions, intercessions and supplications in their proper setting.

Psa. 92 says, “It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to Thy name O Most High, to declare thy steadfast love in the morning and Thy faithfulness by night, to the music of the lute and harp, to the melody of the lyre…” Not only does this verse provide proper instruction on ‘how to approach the King of Kings and Lord of Lords’, but it is simply GOOD for us to do so.

When you add Psa. 100:2 to the mix, “Come into his presence with singing…”, the entry point of praying to the Father is to give thanks, praise AND to sing. I am trying to do this in my private devotions. It is definitely a major transformation of my Quiet Time. It also involves MORE than just my head or the saying of silent prayers. My devotional and prayer life is becoming more vibrant, involving my heart, my mind, my voice and my soul.

This is ultimately what God wants from all of us all the time. Jesus commanded us to “love the Lord your God with ALL your heart, soul, mind and strength…” Psalms 100 gives us a number of practical clues and instruction on worshiping this way. “Come into His presence with singing…Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise….”

4043 days ago Comments Off on How to Begin a Prayer PERMALINK