Encountering GodSample

Encountering God Through Thanksgiving

Expressing gratitude and thanks to God has a miraculous way of opening and changing our hearts. Today we’ll explore the discipline of thanksgiving and encounter God in response. May you take away from our time today timeless principles that quickly get your heart in the right place despite your season or circumstances.

Thanksgiving is a gift given to us by our heavenly Father’s good and loving nature. Every season of life, we have a reason to give thanks because we serve a wholly faithful, good, and loving God. We serve the only King who would lay down his life for his unworthy, rebellious servants. We serve a God perfectly worthy of all the thanksgiving and praise we could give.

Using the incredible gift of thanksgiving, we remind ourselves how truly good our Father is. In thanksgiving, we experience the joy of a proper perspective and have our hearts stirred by renewing our minds. Psalm 100:4 says,

Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name!

When we come before God with thanksgiving, we seek the face of our Father while grounding ourselves firmly in the truth of his perfect nature. When we begin our days, prayers, worship, reading, and fellowship with a heart of thanksgiving, we live out of a place of faith and reality found in the kingdom of God come to earth.

Our God is bigger and better than our circumstances, fears, wounds, misconceptions, and past failures. There is security and joy in declaring our Father’s goodness, kindness, loving, and eternal nature. We dictate our emotions by what we choose to dwell on and believe. Our minds are the battleground for our emotions, actions, and desire to dwell in communion with our good God.

Ephesians 5:20 says we are to be

giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High; to declare your steadfast love in the morning, and your faithfulness by night, to the music of the lute and the harp, to the melody of the lyre. For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work; at the works of your hands I sing for joy. How great are your works, O Lord! Your thoughts are very deep! Psalm 92:1-5

Our hearts become glad when we offer continual thanksgiving. Five minutes of thanksgiving and praise has the power to change the direction of each day. It has the power to stir our hearts and make us open to and aware of God’s will for us in every situation. It fills us with an atmosphere of joy and of the Spirit, and it can greatly assist us in choosing the life of communion with the Father over the pursuits of the world as temptations and situations arise. May you be empowered and filled with transcendent joy as you engage in continual thanksgiving.

Take time in guided prayer to practice thanksgiving and enjoy the fruits of a renewed mind and a heart filled with joy and truth.

Prayer

1. Meditate on the importance of thanksgiving. Allow Scripture to stir up your desire to offer thanksgiving in every season.

Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. Colossians 4:2

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. Psalm 103:2

Oh come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!”Psalm 95:1-2

2. Take time to give thanks to God. Think about how he sent Jesus to die for you. Think about how faithful he is and always will be. Think about how good heaven will be. Give thanks for any gift he’s given you.

I will praise the name of God with a song; I will magnify him with thanksgiving. This will please the Lord more than an ox or a bull with horns and hoofs.”Psalms 69:30-31

We give thanks to you, O God; we give thanks, for your name is near. We recount your wondrous deeds. Psalms 75:1

3. How do you feel after taking time to engage in thanksgiving? Have your concerns, desires, and perspectives shifted? Journal about the effects of thanksgiving on your heart and mind.