“A Prayer of Thanksgiving”
Psalm 95:1-8 11/10/2007
Rudyard Kipling, who was the author of “The Jungle Book”, was so popular that his writings were earning him about $ 10 per word. A few college students however didn’t appreciate Kipling’s writings, so they sent him a letter, enclosing with it ten shillings( or about $10). It read simply, “Please, send us your best word”. They received a letter back that simply read, “Thanks”.
Thanks. A word we are taught at an early age. A word we teach our own kids at a very early age. “What do you say?” is a question our kids hear all most as soon as they can talk. We encourage our kids at a very early age to say “Thank you”.
A prayer that I taught our kids and one that I over heard some of our AWANA kids repeating the other night goes like this. “God is good, God is great. And we thank Him for our plate. By our hands we are feed, give us Lord our Dailey Bread”. It is a simple prayer and a prayer of thanksgiving. We teach it to our kids but do we apply it to our lives?
So this week as we enter the time where we celebrate Thanksgiving, let me give you some things from this prayer that we can be Thankful for.
God is GOOD
Psalm 107:1Oh, give thanks to the LORD, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever.
You often hear the slag, “Good Lord” when it comes to someone being upset about something. There is another saying, “It’s all good”, but without God, nothing is good, and He is a “Good Lord” even when we are upset. And with God it is not just, “all good”, it is always good.
What makes God good? That is a sermon within it self. But let me give you just a few reasons that came to my mind as to why God is good.
God is good because of His MERCY.
The verse we read in 107:1 states to give thanks to the LORD, for His is good! For His MERCY endures forever. I thank God for His mercy. What is God’s mercy? First of all I think about His mercy for us by leaving Heaven and all of its glory to come to this earth and give His life freely for you and for me.
Romans 5:8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
While we still sinners. We didn’t deserve that. We hadn’t even been born yet. What we deserved is to die and spend eternity in a place called Hell. We all of sinned and because of that we deserve to die. Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
God in His mercy gave us a gift of His only son to pay the price that was ours to pay. That is mercy! God is good for His mercy. We should thank Him for His mercy.
God is good for His GRACE!
What is Gods grace? Grace and mercy go hand in hand. But when I think of Gods grace, I think about how He is always ready to restore our relationship with Him. We sin and we sever that relationship. 1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
That’s grace. We in our minds may have the mindset of “fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me”. We don’t have a very forgiving spirit. But we need to thank God for His forgiving grace.
The list goes on and on for Gods goodness. I asked my son why God is good and his reply was “Everything”. And the truth is that EVERYTHING is good about God, “it’s all good” as I stated earlier. Not only is God good and we should give Him thanks. God is good, but also…
God is GREAT
Titus 2:13 looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ,
God is Great, and the main reason that God is great is because of what He can do. We talk about great football plays, “That was a great play”. We talk about a show or a movie that we have seen and we think it was great. We even talk about food being great. As Tony the tiger says about “Frosted Flakes, There GREAT”. So what makes God so great?
Jeremiah 32:17 ’Ah, Lord GOD! Behold, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and outstretched arm. There is nothing too hard for You.
Nothing to hard for you… There is only one thing that I know of that God cannot do. Fail! The same God who created the heavens and the earth is the same God who can create in you a new creation.
2 Corinthians 5:17Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.
The God who made the lame to walk, the blind to see, is the same God that can heal you today. The same God that caused each one off the plagues and parted the Red Sea to free the Children of Israel free from their bondage is the same God who can free you from your bondages as well. The same God who walked on the water and calmed the sea is the same God who can calm the storms in your life as well.
My God is not just a good God, He is a GREAT God! He is able to do what ever He pleases. We should thank Him for His greatness that makes Him able to do the things He does for us for His glory.
God is good, God is great, and we thank Him for our plate… which leads me to my next point.
God deserves THANKS
Our prayer states that we are to thank Him for our plate. But we should not stop there.
Ephesians 5:20 giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
Always for All things. Always means all the time. All things would mean the good times as well as the bad. It’s easy to thank God in the good times. But it’s when we have those times that are not so good, and we are still expected to give thanks?
Philippians 1:29 For to you it has been granted on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake,
As Lynn Anderson used to sing, “I beg your pardon, but I never promised you a rose garden. Life can’t be all sunshine…you gotta have a little rain sometime.”
Just because you enter into a personal relationship with Jesus does not mean that you will never have storms to come in your life. It simply means that you have someone to get you through those storms. In this life we will always have problems, Christian or not. But you have the promise of the life to come, which will be perfect with Jesus for eternity.
How can we give thanks in those bad times? We can because we know that God can use whatever circumstances we are in at the time for His glory and our benefit.
1 Peter 1:6-7 In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ,
You wake up…get out of bed… trip over your dog on the way to the restroom…falling and chipping your tooth. Thank God! Some people go to sleep on a floor or under a bridge, or many other places other than a bed. They don’t have a dog to trip over and some don’t have any teeth to chip. Every time you think you have it bad, just look around and you usually don’t have to look very hard, and you can always find someone who is in worse shape than you.
If you are having problems thinking of someone who has it worse than you, let me give you some help. This person was born in a barn, not a hospital, or not even the privilege of a home birth, but a smelly, drafty, dirty barn. He was labeled the King of the Jews, yet his King never knew what it was like to live in a palace where He would have servants at His beacon call, but rather He come to serve. He went 40 days and nights without food and went threw some of the worst temptation known to man. From His birth till His death, people were always seeking to kill Him. Even though He Himself never did anything wrong to anyone, He was sentenced to the cruelest death known to man. He was beaten. He was spit on. He had His beard yanked from His face and a crown of thorns forced on His head. He was nailed by His hands and feet to a cross and died for not anything He had done, but for the sins of the world. Your sins and mine.
God deserves our thanks. Thanks for everything, which leads me to my next point.
God is good, God is great, and we thank Him for plate. By His hands we are fed, give us Lord our daily bread.
God gives us EVERTHING
James 1:17Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.
One time during a Thanksgiving service, I had a chalkboard and had everyone give me something that they were thankful for. Now it was easy for a while. But you could not repeat the answer of someone else. At first we heard things that were obvious, food, family, friends,... but then some thought had to be put into it. You then heard answers like water. I know we sell water now to drink, but just ask the city of Atlanta if they would give God thanks for some rain. We heard things like air, I mean after all think about the alternative, no air.
I did the same thing with the youth one year and one said, I’m thankful I didn’t get caught”.
We have a lot to be thankful for. So this year as we celebrate Thanksgiving, let’s remember how good God is. How He willingly gave His life for us so that we can spend eternity with Him in heaven forever. And His plan was designed for everyone to be thankful for His salvation.
2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.
If you are here this morning and have never entered into that personal relationship with Him, be thankful you still have the breath in your lungs to do so. Why don’t you accept Him today? He is a great God able to give you the power to overcome anything that would prevent you from doing so today. He deserves our thanks, because of what He has done for each and everyone of us. He gives us everything.
A simple prayer of thanksgiving for all of us. From the young to the old, we can give thanks, not just one day a year but always and in all things.
