A PSALM FOR GIVING THANKS.
Psalm 100:1-5
Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth! 2 Serve the LORD with gladness! Come into his presence with singing! 3 Know that the LORD, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. 4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name! 5 For the LORD is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.
There is a cartoon of Snoopy getting dog food for his thanksgiving dinner and he is aware that everyone inside is having turkey. He meditates and talks to himself “How about that? Everybody else is eating turkey today, but just because I’m a dog I get dog food.” He trots away and positions himself on top of his doghouse and begins to think and ponder his poor dilemma. He concludes: “Of course it could have been worse. I could have been born a turkey.”
William Law once asked a question: "Would you know who is the greatest saint in the world?" His answer is fascinating: "It is not he who prays most or fasts most. It is not he who gives the most money ... but it is he who is always thankful to God, who wills everything that God wills, and who receives everything as an instance of God's goodness and has a heart always ready to praise God for it." Henry Ward Beecher said about gratitude, “Gratitude is the fairest blossom that springs from the soul.”
Throughout the Bible we are encouraged to give thanks. First Chronicles 16:8 urges us to "Give thanks to the LORD." Ephesians 5:20 emphasizes this, saying we should "always [give] thanks to God the Father." First Thessalonians 5:18 is even more direct: "Give thanks in all circumstances."
Thankfulness is one of the most beautiful, and spiritually strengthening, attitudes of a Christian. It is true that God deserves our thankfulness, but duty and obligation are hardly good motivators. Thankfulness, as an attitude of the heart; is like a fuel that powers the Christian life and keeps us moving on the pathway of spiritual growth, even when the climb is steep and the trail rough. Unless we learn how to cultivate a thankful heart, we become stuck in bitterness. An attitude of gratitude is power to the soul. God offers it to us to drive out the spiritually degenerative illness of bitter, negative thinking.
I like to think of thankfulness as God's "spiritual air freshener." It replaces the stale odor of resentment with clean, fresh smelling air for the soul to breathe. It is precious smelling to God and to all those who live with us. Gratitude comes from the word “gratis” that without price or payment. Gratis is from the same root word of grace. Thanksgiving comes from the same root as “think”, so that to think is to thank. Thinking is the key to a thankful heart. The Psalmist does exactly that in Psalm 100. Notice that the Psalm has even been given a title: “A Psalm of thanksgiving”. He addresses everybody in verses 1, 5. Everybody is encouraged to participate in giving God thanks.
There are three ways to give thanks according to Psalm 100
1. Shout (gladness, joyful) Why? Because they are so happy in Him and with Him. “Our happy god should be worshipped by a happy people.” Charles Spurgeon
2. Serve with a happy heart
3. Come (this refers to formal worship)
The reasons we should be thankful according to the Psalmist are emphasized by the word know. We are to know that God made us and is in control (3b); we are His people (3c). (Trouble, sickness, loss, death: WE ARE HIS. We will always be His. ( Read Hebrews 13:8; Matthew 28:20; Romans 8:37-39); God cares for us (3d); God is exceedingly good to us (5a); God’s mercy never ends (5b); God is wonderfully faithful (5c)
How can we learn to cultivate a thankful heart like the Psalmist?
1. Recognize the danger of not giving thanks
Ingratitude is one of the signs of the end times(2 Timothy 3:1-5). Paul warns in Romans 1:21 of a people who knew God but who failed to develop the discipline of thankfulness. The results were disastrous. "Because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” When we're not thankful, we rob God of His glory, lose sight of His beauty, our hearts become darkened, and we lose perspective. In other words if your heart does not respond to God with gratitude, your mind with be darkened. You surrender yourself to the blinding work of Satan. Gratitude is the guardian of the lamp of the soul. If the guardian dies the lamp goes out. Guard yourselves with gratitude!
It is spiritually dangerous to stop cultivating a heart of thankfulness. In Colossians 4:2, notice the connection between watchfulness and gratitude. "Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving." Or, more literally, "Being watchful in it BY thanksgiving." The idea of watchfulness is vigilance and alertness. You recall in the garden of Gethsemane how Jesus admonished the sleepy disciples (Matthew 26:41), "Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation." In other words guard your self from temptation by watching in your prayer, by being alert and vigilant. But now Colossians 4:2 says that the way we watch is "with thanksgiving." Guard yourselves with gratitude!
When Satan deploys his forces against the church he instructs them not to focus their energies on the prayer less believer but on the saint who perseveres in prayer. Whenever you go onto your face before God in prayer it is as though you put your knee into a bee's nest of evil. They swarm out around your head and do all they can to divert your attention, and dampen your zeal, and discourage your heart and diminish your faith. And so Paul tells us to watch out -- not to give in, but to cover ourselves with a net that the bees can't get through. And he calls the net thanksgiving: "Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving." Guard yourselves with gratitude! "In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will GUARD your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 4:6-7).
2. Arm yourself with verses that call us to give thanks like Psalm 100.
The Word of God is what we need to renew our minds and to redirect it into a positive thought-flow. (Romans 12:2) The Bible is full of verses that call us to give thanks. In the Old Testament, we find beautiful truths about God, on which to fix our minds: 1 Chronicles 16:34: "Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever."; Psalm 69:30: "I will praise God's name in song and glorify him with thanksgiving."
From the New Testament, I particularly like these soul-directing truths: Ephesians 5:18-20: "Be filled with the Spirit ... [give] thanks to God the Father for everything." Colossians 3:15: "Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.... And be thankful." These verses, and many others, remind us of an important spiritual truth: While we cannot control our circumstances, we can control the lens through which we view them.
3. Thank God for the easy things
To begin seasoning my soul with thankfulness, I start with things that are easy to give thanks for: the beauty of the natural world, God's goodness in sending His Son to be my Savior, and the blessing of my family. When life feels flat, and I don't feel thankful, I return to truth of Scripture, which directs me to invisible realities I can so quickly forget, such as Psalm 7:17, which says, "I will give thanks to the LORD because of his righteousness." I may be having a bad day, but does that mean God isn't righteous? I may lack the spiritual strength to thank God for the difficult day itself, but I can always thank Him for His righteousness and keep my soul from angling onto the wrong path. Thanking God for the easy things helps me to redirect my focus. There comes a time when thinking about a problem loses its constructive nature and becomes fretting. When this happens, there is no better medicine for me than to take a break from my relatively small world and set my mind on higher things. For me, that can mean a walk on the beach, in natures calming solitude. In prayer, I thank God for the beauty that's all around me. This is freeing, relaxing, and it returns me to the path of thankfulness toward God.
To be continued...
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