| Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. |
| —Psalm 100:4 |
So many times in Scripture, especially in the Psalms, we are encouraged to “Give thanks to the Lord.” The Psalms also persuade us to “Praise the Lord” and to “Worship the Lord.”
To me, praise and worship stem from a mindset that understands to Whom we belong and also from a mindset that understands His greatness and power. We worship because God is worthy of our worship. And, we praise Him for His attributes and those universal benefits we receive from His magnificent grace and power, including the salvation from the penalty of our sins.
To give thanks, however, brings praise to a personal level. In fact, I would like to assert that we open the door to God’s presence with thanksgiving.
We should ask ourselves: “Have our hearts ever felt cold and indifferent when we came to God in prayer?” Certainly none of us can claim that we always come to God with the totality of our heart, mind, soul, and strength, even though He requires that of us.
May I suggest that, when we feel distant from our Lord, we should consider beginning our prayer times with a round of thanksgiving. It doesn’t take long before our hearts engage more fully, when we think how personally God has intervened in our lives—even during times when we wait and wonder at the way He leads us.
This idea has come to me through two passages of Scripture. We find the first passage in Romans 1:21-32. Here the writer describes the wrath of God against wickedness, and the steps to the decline of evil in a person. The very first step downward in this list of sins is a lack of thanksgiving. Romans 1:21:
For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to Him.
As we read the rest of the first chapter of Romans, we recognize that the sin that the Apostle Paul writes about only gets darker and deeper. One commentator uses the phrase: “… sin begets sin.” That is, new sin heaps itself on existing sin.
The other passage of Scripture, in which I read this kind of progression, is found in Psalm 106. Here we discover a record of Israel’s unfaithfulness to God. Interestingly enough, the Psalm begins with the admonition, “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.” When the Psalmist recounts the history of the Jewish nation and recalls their sin, notice the very first thing the Psalmist states about God in Psalm 106:7:
When our fathers were in Egypt, they gave no thought to your miracles, they did not remember your many kindnesses.
From there on, the list includes: rebellion, discontent, jealousy, idolatry, unbelief, apostasy, insurrection, and accommodation to the culture around them. This represents quite a list of terrible sins. But, please take note that not remembering the Lord and His goodness with thanksgiving is the lack of action that first started them down the wrong path.
During this Thanksgiving week, I invite you to rediscover with me the wonderful way in which the giving of thanks to God provides the key that opens the gate, allows us to come into the very presence of our Lord, and allows us to experience anew His sweet Spirit.
