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~ by Pat Luffman Rowland

Prayerful Pondering

Tag Archives: God’s provisions

No Petitions, Just Thanksgiving

05 Monday Sep 2016

Posted by Pat Luffman Rowland in prayer

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Tags

communion with God, faith, faithfulness of God, God's love, God's provisions, gratitude to God, peace, prayers of thanksgiving, recognition of blessings, study scripture

Enter into His gates with thanksgiving,
And into His courts with praise.
Be thankful to Him, and bless His name.

Psalm 100:4 (NKJV)

________

I belong to a ladies intercessory prayer group that meets each Tuesday. One morning as we readied ourselves to pray, Ann said the Lord had impressed upon her heart that we don’t spend enough time thanking Him before we begin our petitions. We corrected our order of prayer that morning. This was years ago, yet I remember often what Ann said and how guilty I stand all the time.

Most of us probably fail with the time we allot to prayers of thanksgiving. We have no trouble remembering what we want from God for ourselves, those we love, or those who have asked us to pray. We compile lists and tuck them into our Bibles. We note our needs and desires in prayer journals and faithfully go over each one when we pray. We wake in the middle of the night with some concern and begin petitioning God about the thing that has us anxious. But as our standard with prayer, how good are we at giving thanks? Coming to our Father and spelling out the ways He blesses us every day?

The miracle of feeding a crowd of 5,000 with only five loaves of bread and two fish began with Jesus giving thanks (see Matthew 15:32-39). Let us not miss that first part of the miracle–giving thanks. God was extravagant in His provision that day and He still is today if we provide the atmosphere for such blessing.

What happens when we give thanks? I believe we see our own increase; we see the many ways God pours out the abundance of his love on us.

  • The increase could be in simple awareness; we may see what we’ve missed before.
  • It could be that God will trust us with more because we are faithful to recognize His grace.
  • It could be in seeing that, we know how to progress to another level of receiving.
  • It could be in recognizing what we’ve been given and then giving it back to the Lord, He multiplies.
  • It could be God blessing us with more because we honor His giving to us.

While developing this blog, I decided to set aside a full day of asking God for nothing; rather,making it a day of remembrance with thanksgiving. It is my custom to pray throughout the day on things that come to mind and when I would catch myself about to ask God for something, I changed the prayer into one of thanksgiving for His faithfulness in the many ways He has taken care of me through the years. I thought on His sure hand of protection, His guidance, and certainly His deliverance. When a friend called asking that I pray for her, I told her of my commitment for the day and we turned her prayer request into one of remembering how God had provided for her in the past and thanked Him for how we knew He would take care of her present need. She was as happy as I to approach God this way.

As my day came to a close, I felt such peace. Through hour after hour of thanksgiving, I had experienced the joy of just loving on God without asking for a single thing. I plan to make this a new design for my prayer life–setting aside a day to do nothing but give thanks–and I enthusiastically invite you to give it a try. I challenge you to do it for one day and see if it doesn’t draw  you closer to God. 1 Thessalonians 5:18 says “In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you” (NAS). May we hasten to be about His will.

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The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Galatians 5:22-23 ESV

If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. Romans 10:9

God has not given us a spirt of fear, but of power and love and of a sound mind. 2 Timothy 1:7

Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise; give thanks to Him and praise His name. For the Lord is good and His love endures forever; His faithfulness continues through all generations. Psalm 100:4-5

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:9

© Pat Rowland and Prayerful Pondering, 2010 - 2013.
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pat Rowland and Prayerful Pondering with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Hope must be in the future tense. Faith, to be faith, must be in the present tense. Catherine Marshall
Everything over your head is under his feet. Dr. Tom Lindberg
What an excellent ground of hope and confidence we have when we reflect upon these three things in prayer--the Father's love, the son's merit and the Spirit's power! Thomas Manton
Our Christian hope is that we're going to live with Christ in a new earth, where is not only no more death, but where life is what it was always meant to be. Timothy Keller

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