I could not send out this week's 'thought' without offering you a few insights on the need, beauty, duty, pleasure, healthiness, and attitude-altering effects of thanksgiving.
It's an attitude encouraged repeatedly throughout the Bible, and is so necessary in every aspect of the believers life -- including worship. For as the writer of Hebrews tells us (12:28): "Let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably..."
Therefore
I offer you these words of wisdom from various sources and authors -- the Bible,
secular philosophers, inspirational speakers, Christian and non-Christian
authors, therapists, and every day people. Nearly everyone who has any degree
of wisdom at all knows how imperative a truly grateful heart is to a more
healthy outlook and the nurturing of inner joy -- especially when that
gratitude is offered to the One who gives us all good things to enjoy.
"If you need help, ask God. If you don't, thank
Him."
Anonymous
"The more we understand God's sovereignty, the
more our prayers will be filled with thanksgiving."
R. C. Sproul
"There is a calmness to a life lived in
gratitude, a quiet joy."
Ralph H. Blum
"If anyone would tell you the shortest, surest
way to happiness and all perfection, he must tell you to make it a rule to
yourself to thank and praise God for everything that happens to you."
William Law
"None is more impoverished than the one who has
no gratitude. Gratitude is a currency that we can mint for ourselves, and spend
without fear of bankruptcy."
Fred De Witt Van Amburgh
"If there is one thing that will make all the
difference to how you feel when you go to sleep and how you feel when you get
up, is how grateful you are for everything that you have."
Josh Brendan
"Practicing gratitude is a very powerful tool to
shift your attention on the things you don't have to the things you do have and
this alone will make you feel better."
Noelia Aanulds
"We can always find something to be thankful for,
and there may be reasons why we ought to be thankful for even those
dispensations which appear dark and frowning."
Albert Barnes
"Thanksgiving, after all, is a word of
action."
W. J. Cameron
"Give thanks not just on Thanksgiving Day, but
every day of your life. Appreciate and never take for granted all that you
have."
Catherine Pulsifer
"When someone gives you a gift that he's already
sacrificed and paid for, you don't try to pay him back; you just receive the
gift with thanksgiving and spontaneously lavish love on the giver."
Ron Larson, Seeing Jesus: Restoring His Brilliance
"Often I'll speak my thanksgiving aloud. Hearing
the long list of good gifts God has given me is usually just what I need to
restore my joy."
Lori Hatcher, Hungry for God ... Starving for
Time
"It is literally true, as the thankless say, that
they have nothing to be thankful for. He who sits by the fire, thankless for
the fire, is just as if he had no fire. Nothing is possessed save in
appreciation, of which thankfulness is the indispensable ingredient. But a
thankful heart hath a continual feast."
W.J. Cameron
"If there is one thing that will make all the
difference to how you feel when you go to sleep and how you feel when you get
up, is how grateful you are for everything that you have."
Josh Brendan
"What would happen in my own life if thanksgiving
became the main thing for me?"
John Juneman
"A thankful heart is not only the greatest
virtue, but the parent of all other virtues."
Cicero
"For flowers that bloom
about our feet;
For tender grass, so fresh, so sweet;
For song of bird, and hum of bee;
For all things fair we hear or see,
Father in
heaven, we thank Thee!"
Ralph Waldo Emerson
With prayers that you will truly pause, take time away from the
food and football, count your many blessings, and offer to God the gratitude He
above all others is worthy of and deserves.
In His
Service, Pastor Jeff
