It is good to thank God for tangible material blessings – provision of a house, car, job, child, promotion, contract, answer to prayers, etc. But what gives God greater joy and provides you greater mileage in your faith record is when you thank God for unseen, intangible and seemingly negligible blessings such as sleeping and waking up, spiritual blessings, victory over unseen battles, etc.
How often do you thank God for these? Sometime ago, I read about a man who was attacked by armed robbers. He was robbed of his property and beaten. Yet, he came to thank God. Many who saw no reason for him to thank God, began to ask why he had come to thank God. To them, if he had escaped the armed robbers or his property were intact, those would be justifiable reasons to thank God; but not when he was beaten and robbed. The man saw what they did not see, and said he was thanking God that he was robbed but was not a robber himself; that he had something somebody considered valuable to steal, and because they took his property, not his life.
One lesson from this is that if you want to live a life of thanksgiving, you must considered what others take for granted and probe into the extreme possibilities of a negative event which did not take place. It calls for creativity!
The ten lepers had a divine appointment. They were going out while Jesus was coming in. May your path cross the Lord’s today. Even though they were some distance away, they were outcasts, moving corpses and destined to die sooner or later, they still had something – their voices for which to thank Him. God never leaves you without something to thank Him for.
As long as you have your mouth, you can call or thank Him and get out of trouble. The one who can speak out will always tell people where it is hurting. This is why I pity little children. An adage says, The inability to speak is the root of all ill-luck. As an undergraduate, I went to spend a week with my uncle. The pounded yam his wife served me was small. If I was going to spend just that day, I would have kept quiet. But since I had a week ahead of me, I did not want hunger to kill me, so I asked her if I was really welcome.
And she said ‘Yes’. With that, I requested for more food and she served me. Thank God you have a mouth. Use it to thank God from today. The more creative you are, the more the quality of your thanksgiving.
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Please Lord, save my marriage. Bless all the saints and Padre Pio.