Enter His gates with thanksgiving; go into His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him and praise His name.
Psalm 100:4 (NLT)
One of the things I’m learning is that thanksgiving and praise go hand in hand. Individually they are a powerful expression of worship to the Lord; but offered together they are an unstoppable force in changing the atmosphere and creating space for God to break into your situation. I wonder what would happen if we as the church across the world decided that we were going to commit to thank and praise the Lord in every moment and every season. Take a moment and imagine it with me:
- When bank accounts are almost empty… We’re going to thank Him for His provision and praise Him for His goodness.
- When healing hasn’t manifest yet… We’re going to thank Him for His promise and praise Him for His power.
- When a relationship is struggling… We’re going to thank Him for His faithfulness and praise Him for the testimony of restoration to come.
“Thanksgiving brings us into the manifest presence of God and connects us with what He is doing and saying in the midst of our circumstances.”
Bill Johnson
Why are thanksgiving and praise so powerful?
When we give thanks and praise, our eyes are lifted off ourselves and our situation and instead fixed on Jesus. When we fix our eyes on Jesus, He fills our gaze and everything else fades away. We choose in that moment faith not fear, peacenot anxiety and hope instead of despair. We declare that His is working and moving even when we may not feel it or see it. This way of living, thinking and responding is available to each one of us when we position our hearts in thanksgiving and praise.
My prayer is that we all want to live with lives full of faith, peace, hope and uncontainable joy. To continuously choose to offer thanks and praise to the One who is completely worthy and completely holy; and not just on a Sunday morning. So, let’s commit to cultivating and creating a culture in our own lives of thanksgiving and praise. When it’s easy, when it’s hard, when we feel like it, when we don’t, when we can see clearly and in the moments, that require trust. Let’s give thanks to Him and praise His name. I think we’ll find that it changes everything.