Remaining Grateful ...

It is folly to trust in dead images, but it is wisdom to trust in the living God, for he is a help and a shield to those that trust in him. Wherever there is right fear of God, there may be cheerful faith in him; those who reverence his word, may rely upon it. He is ever found faithful. The greatest need his blessing, and it shall not be denied to the meanest that fear him. God's blessing gives an increase, especially in spiritual blessings. And the Lord is to be praised: his goodness is large, for he has given the earth to the children of men for their use. 

 [Matthew Henry]

Psalm 115:15 ... Ye are blessed of the Lord which made heaven and earth.

Psalm 28:7 ... The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in him, and I am helped: therefore my heart greatly rejoiceth; and with my song will I praise him. ❤

O For a Thankful Heart!

What tremendous cause we have to be thankful what marvelous reasons we have to be grateful! We are surrounded by mercies, both temporal and spiritual. If we look back, we ought to rejoice that God has chosen us in Christ Jesus before the foundation of the world; He sent His only-begotten Son into the world, to be an atoning sacrifice for our sins; He sent His Holy Spirit into our hearts, to convince us of sin, lead us to Jesus, and make us fit for Heaven! We have . . . His Word in our hands, His grace in our hearts, His mercies in our houses, His Heaven before our eyes! O for a thankful heart! Let us take our poor, hard, ungrateful hearts to Jesus, He can soften them and fill them with gratitude! Let us confess our ingratitude before Him and mourn over our un-thankfulness at His feet. 

O Jesus, grant us a deep sense of our utter unworthiness, and of Your unmerited goodness that our souls may daily praise You with joyful lips! May we live as thankful dependents on Your gracious bounty; as grateful, loving children, before our Father and our God and daily be thankful. Through all eternity, to You, A joyful song I'll raise; But O eternity's too short, to utter all Your praise! 

[James Smith]

Colossians 3:15 ... And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful. ❤

~ Happy Thanksgiving ~

Grateful...

Eternally grateful for His Grace.

 Thank you, Lord.

~ Happy Thanksgiving 2023 ~

Be Thankful!!

No matter what is happening, 

take the time to remember all the good in your life.

Ephesians 5:20 ...  Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ;

~ Happy Thanksgiving 2022 ~

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Nothing Compares.

Nothing is more graceful or befitting in us, as believers in Jesus Christ, that gratitude.

Oh, how much we have to be grateful for!

[James Smith]

2 Corinthians 9:15 ...  Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift. ❤

That One Day

We are somewhat mixed up here in America.  Instead of having one Thanksgiving Day each year, we should have 364.  Use that one day just for complaining and griping.  Use the other 364 days to thank God each day for the many blessings He has showered upon you!

[Charles Dickens]

Psalm 118:24 ... This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it. ❤

Blessings Won!!

Those blessings are sweetest that are won with prayer and worn with thanks. 

 [Thomas Goodwin] 

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Philippians 4:6 ... Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. 

Psalm 66:20 ... Blessed be God, which hath not turned away my prayer, nor his mercy from me.

2 Corinthians 9:11 ... Being enriched in every thing to all bountifulness, which causeth through us thanksgiving to God.❤

Nigh and Grateful.

Never social distance from God!!

Ephesians 2:13 ...  But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.

2 Corinthians 9:11 ... Being enriched in every thing to all bountifulness, which causeth through us thanksgiving to God.

~ Happy Thanksgiving ~

Supernatural Wings

Set apart unto Him your fears and concerns. Cast them into His hands and He will give you His perfect peace. Release the worm-like ways of man and soak in the Supernatural wisdom that only comes from His Spirit. Come away from the current of the world and the madness of natural man that has lost its Shepherd. See the Supernatural details of what the LORD will show you. Follow His lead and He will highlight the next steps. Flow with wide open confidence that He loves you and see your needs. Allow Him to show you what’s truly important and release your fears. Never leave the light of worship and thanksgiving, and your Joy will be full. 

[Troi Nelson Cockayne] 

Philippians 4:6-7 ... 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.

Psalm 100:4 ...  Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name. ❤

All Things For Good.

To be thankful in affliction is a work peculiar to a saint. Every bird can sing in spring, but some birds will sing in the dead of winter. Everyone, almost, can be thankful in prosperity, but a true saint can be thankful in adversity. A good Christian will bless God, not only at sun-rise, but at sun-set. Well may we, in the worst that befalls us, have a psalm of thankfulness, because all things work for good. Oh, be much in blessing of God: we will thank Him that doth befriend us. 

 [Thomas Watson]

Romans 8:28 ... And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

✫❤•°*”˜˜”*°•.❤✫...•°*”˜˜”*°•.❤✫...•°*”˜˜”*°•.❤✫

Thankfulness.

Thankfulness is foundational to the Christian life. Thankfulness is a conscious response that comes from looking beyond our blessings to their source. As Christians, we have been forgiven, saved from death, and adopted as God’s children. There could be no better reason for a grateful heart!

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2 Corinthians 9:11 ... Being enriched in every thing to all bountifulness, which causeth through us thanksgiving to God.❤

See His Hand

Go out in His Spirit and give Him your fears. Never forget that He goes before you and behind you. You are His Child and He covers your needs. Release anxiety and fear. Go with Him and He will go with you. Worship Him and rejoice in your many blessings. Fill your heart with thanksgiving. 

Line the walls with His many miracles and live in its beauty. Heaven sees and saturates in His saving love. Worship brings the radiance of His glory, and dissipates the fog of fear and lies. The enemy wants to fill your house with fear. Reject feeding fear. Remove all worldly banners that cause fear and anger. 

Saturate in His love and see His hand in all things. Be grateful and thankful. It is not your job to worry. It pays you nothing, and in fact it causes you to sink in the debt of darkness and depression. Quit that job, even now. You were made to Worship. Freedom, Joy and Peace are His real gifts He gives to you, His child. Open them daily.

 [Troi Nelson Cockayne]

1 Peter 5:7 ... Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you. 

 Psalm 29:2 ... Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name; worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.❤

Thanksgiving Quotes

To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven.

[Johannes A. Gaertner]

After a good dinner, one can forgive anybody, even one's own relations.

[Oscar Wilde]

Showing gratitude is one of the simplest yet most powerful things humans can do for each other.

[Randy Pausch]

Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.

[Charles Dickens]

When you love what you have, you have everything you need.

[Unknown]

We should certainly count our blessings, but we should also make our blessings count.

[Neal A. Maxwell]

Thanksgiving day is a jewel, to set in the hearts of honest men; but be careful that you do not take the day, and leave out the gratitude.

[E.P. Powell]

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.

[Melody Beattie]

Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our Thanksgiving.

[W.T. Purkiser]

We can always find something to be thankful for, no matter what may be the burden of our wants, or the special subject of our petitions.

[Albert Barnes]

When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around.

[Willie Nelson]

What if, today, we were grateful for everything?

[Charlie Brown]

We must find the time to stop and thank the people who make a difference in our lives.

[John F. Kennedy]

Be present in all things and thankful for all things.

[Maya Angelou]

Thanksgiving is a time of togetherness and gratitude.

[Nigel Hamilton]

If a fellow isn't thankful for what he's got, he isn't likely to be thankful for what he's going to get.

[Frank A. Clark]

What we're really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets. I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving?

[Erma Bombeck]

Forever on Thanksgiving Day, the heart will find the pathway home.

[Wilbur D. Nesbit]

The turkey. The sweet potatoes. The stuffing. The pumpkin pie. Is there anything else we all can agree so vehemently about? I don’t think so.

[Nora Ephron]

No one has ever become poor by giving.

[Anne Frank]

Thanksgiving is Never Our of Season

Everything we enjoy should be viewed as coming from the gracious and liberal hand of our sovereign God. All was forfeited by our sin. All that we receive is by His grace.  The providence that supplies us is the wisdom, benevolence, and power of God in operation for us as expressive of His infinite love and unmerited grace!

Our talents to provide supplies, our opportunities to obtain them, and our abilities to enjoy them, are alike from the Lord. Every mercy increases our obligation and deepens our debt to free grace! Thanksgiving is never out of season, for we have always much to be grateful for.

We must view all things as arranged by His wisdom, dependent on His will, sanctified by His blessing, according with His promises, and flowing from His love!

[James Smith]

1 Thessalonians 5:18 … In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.❤

The Thanksgiving Habit

The annual Thanksgiving Day in America, has grown to be a national festival. It is a day of rejoicing. It summons all the people to gratitude. It is fitting that a people who have received untold blessings, should set apart one day on which all should recall their mercies, think of God as the Giver of all and express their grateful feelings in words of praise.

But it is not intended that the other three hundred and sixty four days shall be empty of thanksgiving, because one is named as an especial day of rejoicing. We cannot crowd into any one day, all the thanks of a year. Indeed, on no one day can we be grateful for another day. No one person can give thanks for a whole company of people. So no one day can give thanks for any but itself. All the days should be thanksgiving days. Any that is not, lacks something, and stands as imperfect days in the calendar. We are told that we may count that day lost in which we do no kindness to anyone. In like manner may be set down as a lost day that one in which no songs of gratitude rises from our hearts and lips to God.

Anybody can be thankful on one day of the year. At least it ought to be possible for even the most gloomy and pessimistic person to rouse up to grateful feeling, on the high tide of an annual Thanksgiving day. No doubt it is something to pipe even one little song in a whole year of discontent and complaining the kind of living with which some people fill their years. God must be pleased to have some people grateful even for a few moments in a long period of time, and to hear them sing even once in a year. But that is not the way He would have us live. The ideal life is one that is always thankful, not only for a little moment on a particularly fine day. "Praise is lovely," that is, beautiful, beautiful to God. The life which pleases Him is the one which always rejoices.

[J. R. Miller]

1 Chronicles 16:34 … O give thanks unto the Lord; for he is good; for his mercy endureth for ever.

1 Thessalonians 5:18 … In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.

Psalm 100:4 … Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.❤

In Everything Give Thanks

Why so? Because God makes everything work together for our good.  We thank the physician, though he gives us a bitter medicine which makes us nauseated because it is to make us well. We thank any man who does us a good turn; and shall we not be thankful to God who makes everything work for good to us?

God loves a thankful Christian! Job thanked God when He took all away: "The Lord has taken away blessed be the name of the Lord!" Job 1:21. Many will thank God when He gives; Job thanks Him when He takes away, because he knew that God would work good out of it.

We read of saints with harps in their hands an emblem of praise. Revelation 14:2. Yet we meet many Christians who have tears in their eyes, and complaints in their mouths! But there are few with their harps in their hands who praise God in affliction.

To be thankful in affliction is a work peculiar to a saint.  Every bird can sing in spring--but few birds will sing in the dead of winter!  Everyone, almost, can be thankful in prosperity but a true saint can be thankful in adversity!

Well may we, in the worst that befalls us, have a psalm of thankfulness because God works all things together for our good. Oh, be much in giving thanks to God!

[Thomas Watson]

Romans 8:28 ... And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

1 Thessalonians 5:18 ... In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.❤

Always Possible

It is always possible to be thankful for what is given rather than to complain about what is not given. One or the other becomes a habit of life.

[Elisabeth Elliot]

Philippians 2:14-15 ...  Do all things without murmurings and disputings: That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world;

1 Thessalonians 5:8 ...  In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.

Psalm 100:4 ... Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.❤

Left His Throne

And did the Holy and the Just, The Sovereign of the skies, Stoop down to wretchedness and dust, That guilty worms might rise?

Yes, the Redeemer left His throne, His radiant throne on high, (Surprising mercy! love unknown!) To suffer, bleed, and die!

He took the dying traitor's place, And suffered in his stead; For man (O miracle of grace!) For man the Savior bled!

Dear Lord, what heavenly wonders dwell In Your atoning blood! By this are sinners snatched from Hell, And rebels brought to God!

What glad return can I impart For favors so divine? O take my all, this worthless heart, And make it wholly Thine!

[Anne Steele]

1 Thessalonians 5:18 ...  In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.

Psalm 75:1 ... Unto thee, O God, do we give thanks, unto thee do we give thanks: for that thy name is near thy wondrous works declare.

2 Corinthians 9:15 ...  Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift. ❤

Thanking God!!

One day, Johann Tauler of Strosbourg met a peasant and greeted him, "God give you a good day, my friend!"

The peasant answered briskly, "I thank God that I never have a bad day!"

Tauler, astonished, kept silent for a moment. Tauler then added, "God give you a happy life, my friend."

The peasant replied composedly, "I thank God that I am never unhappy!"

"Never unhappy!" cried Tauler bewildered, "What do you mean?"

"Well," came the reply, "When it is sunshine, I thank God; and when it rains, I thank God. When I have plenty, I thank God; and when I am hungry, I thank God. Since God's will is my will, and whatever pleases God pleases me, I am never unhappy."

Tauler looked upon him with awe. "Who are you?" he asked.

"I am a king!" said the peasant.

"A king?" Tauler asked, "Where is your kingdom?"

The peasant smiled and whispered softly, "In my heart!"

[Thomas Watson]

Ephesians 5:20 ... Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ;

Proverbs 15:15 ...  All the days of the afflicted are evil: but he that is of a merry heart hath a continual feast.

Psalm 100:4 ... Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.❤

Don't Lose Sight

In ancient times, lepers were social outcasts because of their highly contagious disease. In this passage, ten lepers came to Jesus begging for mercy and He graciously healed them.

Can you imagine? These lepers had an awful disease. Their bodies were slowly deteriorating and worse, they were shunned from their friends and family and forced to live in a community of only those who were too withering away. Suddenly merciful Jesus comes along and “poof!” the sickness leaves them! How life changing! These people must have been overjoyed! Now they could go back to their families, their homes, their communities and live normal lives!

But as I reread this story today something struck me. Only one of them returned to thank the Lord! But how often do we do the same? We get so focused on our blessing and forget about the One who gave it!

Just as the Samaritan returned to Jesus to thank and worship Him who had redeemed his life, we too must thank God for every good and perfect gift comes from Him and He deserves all the honor and the glory! And as a matter of fact, one of the cornerstones of effective prayer is entering His gates with thanksgiving and praise. Let’s start thanking God for all His goodness toward us!

It’s easy to get caught up in the blessing God has given us so much! But let’s be sure that we make daily habit of thanking God first!

[George Whitten]

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Luke 17:15-16 ... And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, And fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks: and he was a Samaritan.

1 Thessalonians 5:18 ... In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.

Psalm 50:14 ... Offer unto God thanksgiving; and pay thy vows unto the most High:❤