Thankfulness

Psalm 100 is a Psalm for giving thanks.

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! 

Serve the Lord with gladness! 

Come into His presence with singing!

 

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.

 

Enter His gates with thanksgiving

and His courts with praise! 

Give thanks to Him; bless His name!

 

For the Lord is good;

His steadfast love endures forever

and He is faithfulness to all generations.

Being in the season of Thanksgiving recalls the time when we gather together with family and friends to feast and to celebrate and give thanks for all the blessings we have received.  Giving thanks and being thankful are very important characteristics of Discipleship.  In fact, giving thanks or being thankful are mentioned over 100 times in the Bible.  We are to continually be thankful, grateful and appreciative towards the Lord for giving us life and for giving us all the blessings and substance we have needed in our life, as well as giving His Son to take on all the sins and burdens of the world so that we might believe upon Him and have an everlasting, eternal and thankful and loving relationship with Him in the heavenly kingdom.

No one understood the concept of giving thanks better than King David of the Bible.  In his Psalms, the word “thanks” is used no less than 38 times.  David understood that forgiveness was tied to being thankful.  He opens Psalm 136 by giving thanks three times – giving thanks for the Lord’s steadfast love and giving thanks for his goodness and for his righteousness.  The Bible suggests that we give thanks to the Lord 62 times.  Thankfulness has always been at the center of the life and worship of God’s people.

Under the law of Moses, there were not only sacrifices offered for the forgiveness of sins, but there were offerings of thanksgiving to the Lord, as well.  Songs of thankfulness and praise are at the heart of Christian worship.  Thankfulness is directed towards God, who gives and sustains our livelihood.  Being thankful for life helps us to remember and lets us know that life is a gift; it did not happen by random chance.

The Gospel of Luke (Luke 17:11-19) tells the story of the ten lepers, where all lepers were miraculously healed from the disease.  You might remember they all went away excited to tell others in the village what had occurred; but, remember, there was only one of the ten lepers who actually came back to Jesus to personally give and offer Jesus his thanks for the healing of his affliction, and Jesus told the thankful former leper that his faith healed him.

Faith is a part of being thankful.  You cannot be thankful to God if you do not have faith in God and all that has been given to you.  Even Jesus gave thanks to His Father many times (Matthew 11:25; Luke 10:21; 22:17-19; John 6:11; 11:41).  Jesus recognized that His livelihood, His authority and His dependence were completely at the mercy of His Father God.  And that influenced Jesus’ whole life and His ministry and mission to us.

Thankfulness from us to God should be a wholehearted response that should stem from being conscious of God’s gifts and blessings given abundantly to us.

Paul frequently encourages us to be thankful (Colossians 3:15), to give thanks in all circumstances (1 Thessalonians 5:18) and says that our lives should overflow with thankfulness (Colossians 2:7).

For all Christians, the greatest of all acts we can do in worship is simply praise and give God our thanksgiving.

Pastor Mark

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Meet the Disciples

First Christian Church is a Disciples of Christ congregation. Learn more about the Disciples on our Kansas region site and our main denomination page.

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First Christian Church

319 W. Laurel St.
Independence, KS 67301

620-273-2525