Thought for Today: “Develop Thankfulness”

We are to daily give thanks if we want to be thankful people. We need to discipline ourselves to find something every day to be thankful for and express our thanks to God.

We are told in Ephesians 5:19-20, “Speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

The key word is “always”. We are to give thinks always.

There’s an old hymn that goes like this, “When upon life’s billows you are tempest tossed, when you are discouraged thinking all is lost. Count your many blessings, name them one by one. And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.”

Sometimes I counsel people who are depressed that before they go to bed to write down those things that happened in which they were grateful and thankful for.

If they couldn’t think of any, which is usually the case when we’re in the middle of a heavy crisis, I tell them to remind themselves about the air they breathe, or better yet, about Jesus’s sacrifice upon the cross for the forgiveness of our sins.

And the reason we’re to count our blessings before we go to sleep is that we won’t have all the negative junk invading our thoughts and dreams.

And so, I think we need to start praying for God to forgive us of our complaining spirit, and instead, we are to be thanking Him for all that He has given.