“It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord, and to sing praises unto Your Name, O most High. 2.To show forth your loving-kindness in the morning and your faithfulness every night.”
We have a season that we call “Thanksgiving,” but thanksgiving should be a part of our everyday lives. We should be eternally thankful for all of the good things that Jesus has done in our lives. We see all of the beauty around us and we know that He is the author of it. We think of the coming of Jesus into the world, dying on the cross, rising from the tomb, etc. and we know that He is the One who made it all possible. We enjoy the fellowship that we have with our fellow Christians, and we know that He gave us each other. Yes, thanksgiving is a good thing. The psalmist suggests some things that should result from giving thanks unto the Lord. The psalmist wrote: “it is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord, and to sing praises unto your name.” We sing praises to God because He has put a song in our hearts. What is the source of the song of praise that we sing in His name? It comes from the Holy Spirit who dwells in our hearts. I know that this is not always true, but sometimes when I look out over a congregation and see that some are not singing, I can’t help but wonder if they have a song in their hearts. I’m not known for my great singing, but I do a lot of it in church, in the shower, in the car, etc. (I did sing bass with “The Harper Trio” on a couple of occasions – by their grace. lol) Hymns just come naturally to me when I want to celebrate what Jesus has done for me. I sing aloud when I am alone and silently when I am with others, for obvious reasons if you have ever heard me sing. (I know three verses of many of the great hymns that I have been singing all of my life. That is because we usually skipped the third verse if a song had four verses.) Anyway, the song of thanksgiving does not need to be beautiful, it just needs to come from the heart. That is music to God’s ears. The psalmist wrote that to give thanks unto the Lord is to “show forth,” or proclaim, God’s “loving-kindness in the morning.” The suggestion that we show forth his loving-kindness in the morning and His faithfulness at night means that we should continually proclaim both. We are not only to be thankful for the fact that God loves us, but we are to share it with other people. It should be obvious to the people that we encounter on a daily basis that we are loved by God because we show them His love by the way we talk to them and treat them. We should proclaim that love to our families, our co-workers, or fellow Christians, people who are not Christians, and cashiers where we shop and waiters and waitresses where we eat. Part of being really thankful is sharing the joy of it with others. As mentioned above, the psalmist also wrote that we proclaim God's faithfulness when we are thankful. We know of God’s faithfulness in our hearts because we have experienced it by the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. However, it is not a secret that we keep but a joy that we proclaim to others, mainly by the way we live. We should proclaim God’s faithfulness just as we proclaim His love, by how we treat people. We should also proclaim God’s faithfulness by telling people about how He has been faithful to us. Surely, we all have experiences with God’s faithfulness to us that we can share with others. There are people out there who are just waiting to hear about God’s faithfulness. If we are Christians, we have testimonies of God’s faithfulness that others need to hear. By all means, be a thankful person for “it is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord.” (And don't wait until the November Thanksgiving season to stress your own thankfulness.) Bro. Joe
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorDr. Joe Beauchamp is the author of this blog and website. Categories
All
Archives
September 2021
|