THANKS Eph. 5: 20 CLICK TITLE FOR AUDIO

Paul tells that we are to be “Giving thanks always for all things unto God…”  That can be hard to do.  If it weren’t for the grace of God working in us we wouldn’t be able to do that in all circumstances.

It starts with thanking God for his provisions – his daily provisions – a fellow and his wife were married for 49 years and every time she prepared a meal he thanked her with a kiss, whether it was toast for breakfast or steak for supper – he gave her an extra kiss for the bad ones and proclaimed that he was thanking her for her effort – their granddaughter calculated that grandpa had kissed grandma 53,655 times – we need to be thankful for all of God’s wonderful provisions [life, safety, food, air, comfort, sleep, health, fellowship, church, sanity, and on and on].

It continues with thanking God for his spiritual blessings – we should continually thank him for his salvation, mercy, grace, forbearance, love, longsuffering, righteousness, spiritual fruit, rest in Jesus, peace, faith, hope, and so forth.

Then we can thank him for all of his promises – rapture, heaven, our mansion, glorified bodies, second coming, an inheritance, answered prayer, eternal security, preservation of his word, forgiveness, and so forth.

And eventually we will thank him even for the “bad” things – Matthew Henry was robbed of his purse.  He wrote in his diary, “Let me be thankful first because I was never robbed before; second, because although they took my purse they did not take my life; third, because although they took my all it was not much; and fourth because it was I who was robbed, not I who robbed.

When you find yourself thanking God for everything you will be able to thank him in everything [1 Thes 5:18].  We are so much like children who want everything to work out the way we think things should go – but like good parents, God knows better than we do and he wants us to thank him for the Brussels sprouts when we were expecting chocolate.