Thankfulness:
Blessings
Psalms
34:1-10
We praise
God for all blessings we have from him.
He hears us,
keeps us
from our fears, and keeps us safe. We
are blessed to trust in the Lord,
knowing that
having faith we can endure all that we go through, good and bad.
As we remain
righteous he hears us and takes care of us during our trials.
By now we know that there are a
great many blessings in our lives; our thankfulness journals prove that! Every kind of physical blessing comes from
God (Deut. 16:17). Great or small, we
must remember to whom the credit goes.
Jesus healed 10 men of leprosy in Luke 17. Leprosy was, at that time, an incurable and
very painful disease. To be completely
healed of it must have been quite a shock, a great and immeasurable gift. Yet only one man out of the ten took the time
to go back and acknowledge the source of that gift and give thanks to Jesus for
it (Luke 17:15-18). How sad that the
others did not think to express their gratitude to God as well!
Similarly, it is important that when
life seems to go our way, we should remember to attribute that to the one who
bestows all good things on us (James 1:17).
In Genesis 39:2-5 it is clear that Joseph did well in his job due to
God’s blessing. Each of us experiences
some form of accomplishment in life, and while hard work is essential, such
success is in no way possible without God.
Greater by far than these passing
temporary physical blessings are the spiritual blessings God has planned for us
from the beginning (Eph. 1:3). Through
Christ we have the gift of the gospel, a blessing from which we can gather all
other blessings of a spiritual nature (1 Cor. 9:23). God did not come up with his plan as a
solution for an unforeseen problem, but as a gesture of love and hope towards
us, something he intended long before Christ was born on Earth (Rom.
16:25-26).
In Isaiah 12:1-2 we are reminded of the forgiveness that is
provided by the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In giving us the ability to choose to do
right or wrong, God also knew we would thus need to obtain forgiveness, for we
are all guilty of sin, as is noted in Romans 3:23-24 as well as chapter 7:24-25. How grateful I am that sin is wrapped up in
forgiveness, even as David is quoted to speak about in Romans 4:6-8! That forgiveness is accessed through our obedience
in a conscious choice to follow God’s plan for our salvation (Rom.
6:17-18). Making that choice removes our
fear of death and replaces it with victory in eternal life (1 Cor. 15:56-57).
Thus, because of the grace and love
of God, we are able to find joy and delight in thankfulness to him for both
learning as well as teaching others (1 Thess. 3:6-10). The soft and open hearts of others accepting
and following sound doctrine is reason to rejoice and give thanks (1 Thess.
2:13). This is not an accidental
side-effect of teaching others! Their addition to the church makes us all
stronger, which is how God intended for the church to work (Heb. 12:28). If we do not teach others, we will be unable
to give thanks for such things, and we ourselves will lose the benefits of
adding to the church.
Bountiful and immeasurable are our spiritual blessings! Many more things could easily be considered
spiritual blessings, but it would take many weeks indeed to cover them
all. I hope that we each will seek out
and acknowledge the spiritual benefits we enjoy as Christians on a day-to-day
basis, and remember to thank God for each and every one. May we seek an attitude of gratefulness for
them all and be glad! In our last
lesson, we will look at how to obtain and maintain such an attitude for all
good things on an on-going basis.
(Questions that went with this lesson are available upon request.)
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