The Culture of Hope Founded on Faith
With Thanksgiving . . .
While the Lord’s Prayer does not expressly include thanksgiving, we find thanksgiving to be a necessary Christian exercise throughout the New Testament.
Philippians 4:6-7 includes thanksgiving with “supplication” and “petition”. Being anxious for nothing, the promise of incomprehensible peace, is conditional on our “prayer and supplication with thanksgiving” along with making our requests (another word for “petitions”) known to God. The context indicates that our supplications for others go hand-in-hand with our petitions for ourselves, and are confirmed by gratitude. Human experience is similar throughout the world. Though we do not experience the exact same hardships and events, nor do we react in exactly the same way as others, we can engage in a certain amount of empathy with the recognition of the similarities in the emotional, spiritual, and physical needs that God created in all humans.
As seen in Philippians 4:6, the Bible also makes it clear that it is God’s will that we express gratitude and thanksgiving in prayer. In the Old Testament, Leviticus and Nehemiah demonstrated specific instructions for thanksgiving sacrifices and job descriptions for people charged with the thanksgiving aspect of worship and prayer. Throughout the Psalms, David frequently expressed thanksgiving, making it clear that thanksgiving is a key part of our worship and prayer. Verses like Psalm 100:4, “Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name” make it clear that our coming to God in personal prayer, as well as corporate prayer, needs to involve thanksgiving of some kind. After Jesus’ ascension, the apostles “were continually in the temple, praising and blessing God” (Luke 24:53). Paul admonished us to, “Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” (1 Thess. 5:16-18)
Notice that the passage establishes a relationship of obedience through ceaseless rejoicing, prayer, and thanksgiving for everything. This means that, even when we don’t feel like it or things look very bleak and hopeless in our lives, we are still called to glorify God in obedience by a prayerful “attitude of gratitude” that pervades everything about our lives. This also means that we are to always express our gratitude to God, not just when things are going well. Lloyd John Ogilvie calls this “thanksliving” (John Lloyd Ogilvie, God’s Best for My Life. Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishing, November 1981, p. 27). It is when we obediently live this way that we are able to access the power of God to stand against the enemy of our souls.
To thoroughly understand the place of thanksgiving in the life of a Christian, a close look at 2 Corinthians 4:15-18 affirms that the character of our eternal nature is the focus of what happens by God’s will in our lives: “For all things are for your sakes, that the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many redound to the glory of God. For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, works for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.”
Thanksgiving on our part for all that God sends our way, and the resultant peace and joy, is a reflection of our understanding that it is for the Glory of God that we exist. Colossians 2:6-7 confirms thanksgiving as the expression of mature Christianity: “As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: Rooted and built up in him, and established in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.”
Along with “blessing, and glory, and wisdom . . . and honour, and power, and might, be unto our God for ever and ever” (Rev. 7:12), the angels include “thanksgiving” as they stand about the throne worshiping God.
[Some parts of this discussion are excerpted from The Gift of Seeing Angels and Demons: A Handbook For Discerners of Spirits by Susan Merritt, PhD. published in Roseville, CA, by www.PTLB.com. 2016]
