Happy Thanksgiving! We should be thankful each and every day! One thing that we should be thankful for here in the United States is that we live in a country that has proclaimed a national time of giving thanks to God as an a official holiday (holy day)!
Thanksgiving is a wonderful time of family, friends and celebration but, spiritually and scripturally speaking, it goes far deeper than that. Especially for those of us who are students of the Word and endeavor to live the life of faith, the force of thanksgiving is an essential ingredient of life.
Thanksgiving swings the gates of the kingdom of God wide open for us and keeps the door open for the manifestation of the Word in our lives!
Let’s look at Psalm 100:4-5 in the Classic Amplified translation, “Enter into His gates with thanksgiving and a thank offering and into His courts with praise! Be thankful and say so to Him, bless and affectionately praise His name! For the Lord is good; His mercy and loving-kindness are everlasting, His faithfulness and truth endure to all generations.” – Psalm 100:4-5 AMPC
Thanksgiving is the doorway into the things of the Kingdom of God! I really like the way the Classic Amplified says that one part, “be thankful AND SAY SO TO HIM!” We need to spend more time expressing thankfulness. We are not doing nearly enough of that!
Even more than that though, we need to develop an ongoing, overall attitude of gratitude. One ministry couple I know keep little signs and notes all around that say, “Remember to be thankful!” That is so good! It wouldn’t hurt anything if we all did that!
Another, often overlooked, thing that thanksgiving does in our lives is allow us to keep the things we are believing for stirred up in our thinking and keep them before the Lord without compromising our faith!
This process used to puzzle me and I know from talking to people over the years that it has puzzled a lot of other people as well. Particularly those of us in the “Word of faith” part of the family having been taught (and correctly so) that after you have prayed and asked the Lord for something by faith then that settles it! If you ask the Lord for it again, you just negated or cancelled out your faith that was working to bring what you asked for into manifestation in your life because, if you really believed it was yours, then you wouldn’t be asking again!
So, how do we keep our faith and mode of receiving stirred up between the time we pray the prayer of faith and the time that what we asked for becomes physical reality? How do we stay stirred up and in faith when we say and believe that something is ours now but yet we aren’t driving it yet or living in it or wearing it or whatever the case may be?
“Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” – Philippians 4:6-7 KJV
WITH THANKSGIVING – that’s how!
“Father, I know you hear my prayer of faith and I just want to thank You for my new car (house, shoes, etc)! It is so nice and wonderful to drive. It’s such a wonderful blessing in my life and I am so grateful!”
This process also invokes the principle of faith of “calling things that be not (yet) as though they already are” as we can see in Romans 4:17.
“(as it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations,) before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were.” – Romans 4:17 KJV
We see an example of thanksgiving being used in this manner by Paul in his prayer life. This is exactly how he prayed when he was praying all the time about that same thing. Let’s look over at Ephesians chapter one. Here Paul is praying for the church and it is something he prayed continually.
“[I] cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers;” – Ephesians 1:16 KJV
And then, I’ll tell you, Paul cut loose with an amazingly powerful prayer that the vast majority of the church doesn’t have guts enough to to pray!
But I pray it over YOU every day!
I am including it here just as I pray it over you, if you are a Partner with our ministry, and I encourage you to pray it over your loved ones every day – over your family, your pastor, your partners and your co-workers.
“Father, I thank you that You, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto my Partners the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of You and Your Word: the eyes of My Partner’s understanding being enlightened; that they may know what is the hope of Your calling, and what the riches of the glory of Your inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of Your power toward my Partners as believers, according to the working of Your mighty power, which You wrought in Christ, when You raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places and raised my Partners up together with Him, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: and hath put all things under my Partner’s feet, and gave Jesus to be the head over all things to my Partners who are the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all.” – Ephesians 1:17-23; 2:6 KJV customized
Praise God! Let’s give thanks!
I thank you my dear Father that my Partners are far above covid-19! They are far above the flu! They are far above cancer! They are far above ALL sickness and disease of every type! They are far above disasters – “natural” or man made! They are far above poverty, lack and insufficiency of all kinds!