SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR
7/29/2019 9:31 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-1 “For
what are we to give thanks?—For all Things”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ephesians
5:20
Message of the verses: “20 always giving
thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the
Father;”
Now
if I asked you this question “What is the greatest gift we can give to
God?” Well John MacArthur writes that
“The greatest gift we can give to God is a thankful heart, because all we can
give to Him is simply grateful recognition that all we have is from Him. We give Him ‘thanks for all things’ because
He has given us all things and because giving thanks in everything ‘is God’s
will…in Christ Jesus’ (1 Thess. 5:18).
Understanding ‘what the will of the Lord is’ (Eph. 5:17) includes
understanding that He wants His children is to be thankful . The Spirit-filled heart sees God’s gracious
hand in every circumstance and knows ‘that God causes all things to work together
for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His
purpose’ (Rom. 8:28). The spiritual
believer sees God’s wise and loving care in the difficulties and trials as well
as in blessing and prosperity. He thanks
God for a job even if it is demanding and unfulfilling. He thanks God for his health, even if it is
far from being what he would like it to be.
He thanks God even when his dearest loved ones die, saying with Job,
‘The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away.
Blessed be the name of the Lord’ (Job 1:21).”
What
we are talking about seems and is very difficult, and can only be done when we
know the God who has saved us in a very intimate way, and this can be done by
knowing His attributes, knowing especially His great love that He has for His
own demonstrated by sending His only begotten Son to planet earth to live for
33 years, the last three teaching and preaching, and doing miracles, and then
to die on the cross which was the will of the Father as seen in Isaiah’s
prophecies about the Messiah found in chapters 52-53. As far as the death of Jesus Christ it was
accomplished on a cruel Roman cross which David saw as he wrote Psalm 22. Now as we get to know our Lord better we
trust Him more and more, and therefore we are able to give thanks for all
things as Paul writes about in this 20th verse of Ephesians chapter
five.
7/29/2019
9:49 AM
7/29/2019
3:59 PM
I
want to end this very short SD with another quote from John MacArthur and then
we continue to look at this subject in our next SD, Lord willing.
“The
only person who can genuinely give thanks for all things is the humble person,
the person who knows he deserves nothing and who therefore gives thanks even
for the smallest things. Lack of
thankfulness comes from pride, from the conviction that we deserve something
better than we have. Pride tries to
convince us that our job, our health, our spouse, and most of what we have is
not as good as we deserve. Pride was the
root of the first sin and remains the root of all sin. Satan’s pride led him to rebel against God
and try to usurp God’s throne. The pride
of Adam and Eve led them to believe Satan’s lie that they deserved more than
they had and that they even had a right to be like God.”
I
have to say that I am very thankful for this last paragraph as most people who
have read one of two of my Spiritual Diaries know that humility, the lack there
of, and that means not pride is something that has been on my heart all of this
year and I truly believe that the Lord is working on this and pray He will
continue to work on it so that I can be more like my Lord Jesus Christ.
The verse that goes along with President
Calvin Coolidge from yesterday is Philippians 3:12-13: “One thing I do, forgetting those things
which are behind, and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press
toward the goal for the prise of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”
7/29/2019 4:08 PM
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