Thanksgiving Every Day

“I will praise You, O LORD, with my whole heart; I will tell of all Your marvelous works.”


Psalm 9:1


Thanksgiving is more than a day of the year that we celebrate on the fourth Thursday of November each year. Thanksgiving is a way of life in the believers life. We read in the book of Psalms, “I will praise You with my whole heart; Before the gods I will sing praises to You. I will worship toward Your holy temple, And praise Your name” (Psalm 138:1-2). In other words, if we know God and love God, thanksgiving is something we do each and every day and for good reason. We have so much to be thankful for. Our oldest child came down with Covid earlier this year and due to being in a higher risk group she naturally was a little anxious about how her body would respond. Knowing stress only magnifies the problem I encouraged her to do something at night when she laid down and her mind began to fill with all the negative possibilities associated with contracting the virus. I encouraged her to count her blessings instead of counting sheep as she laid down to go to sleep. She wrote me the next morning and said it helped her sleep better as she focused on all the blessings of God and thanking Him for the hundreds and thousands of little things God does each day to care and provide for us.

Being thankful to God doesn’t just help eliminate worry and stress from our lives, being thankful helps to protect us from the deepest and darkest sins known to mankind and why it’s so important to focus on being thankful each and every day. If there was one sin that is at the core of every other sin what would you say it is? Many say pride and I too believe that the sin of pride is right there besides this even deadlier more sinister sin. The sin I am thinking of is the sin that Romans chapter 1 reveals as the core of the most openly abominable sins ever committed by mankind. Romans 1 teaches us that the sin of ingratitude, failing to be thankful is at the core of the most deplorable acts human beings commit.

From careful reading of Romans 1:18-23 we understand how dangerous the sin of ingratitude really is, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, 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. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.”

Living a life of gratitude, being thankful for who God is and who He created us to be helps to keep us from what many believe are the two greatest sins plaguing the world today, the sin of idolatry and the sin of sexual immorality. Being thankful to God helps keep our hearts and mind centered on God and prevents the sin of idolatry from finding root in our soul. Simply put, the sin of idolatry is placing anything, a person, a place or a thing in front of God. It appears from Reading Romans chapter 1 that the downfall of the most powerful nation on the earth at the time, the Roman Empire was due to the sin of ingratitude. When the people of Rome were no longer thankful to God for who He is and for who He created them to be as their Creator, the people began to worship anything and everything other than the one and the true and living God. And when they did they eventually collapsed from within. The sin of ingratitude led to the fall of the Roman Empire as in their ingratitude God gave them over to a reprobate mind and their hearts were darkened. Basically God said, “have it your way” and just as Scripture says, “The ways of a man seem right in his own eyes but its end bring forth death.”

Remember, the Roman Empire didn’t fall in battle to a greater and more powerful country coming along. The Roman Empire fell because of moral bankruptcy from within. The Roman Empire collapsed from the inside out and it all began when they were no longer thankful. Don’t let what happened to the Roman Empire happen to you. Guard your heart and mind by staying thankful to God. Don’t wait for the fourth Thursday of the month of November to sit down and give thanks. Make it a daily habit in your life. When you lay down to go to sleep tonight don’t count sheep, but instead count your blessings and then make sure to thank God from whom all blessings flow.

“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

1 Thessalonians 5:16–18

I LOVE YOU!