Your Daily Devotional for May 23, 2006

May 23, 2006 

 

An Attribute So Priceless

by Dr. Paul Chappell

 

“In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.”

 

1 Thessalonians 5:18

 

One of the greatest dispositions a believer should aspire for is the attitude of thankfulness.  When the spirit of thankfulness dies within us, a host of other qualities dies with it.  Ask yourself this question: What is God’s will for my life?  Let’s start with the basics.  God wants us to have a thankful heart, not just for the blessings that come our way, but also for the bumps and curves on the road of life.  That’s what today’s verse is speaking about—learning to be thankful in everything.

 

Ingratitude leads to grumpiness, dissatisfaction, worries, and self-centeredness.  It could also ultimately lead to us making the wrong decisions and choices.  If you stop to think about it, we have every reason to be thankful.  Rejoice and thank God that we have a Saviour!  We can never thank Him enough for Jesus Christ!  If He wasn’t 100% God when He died on that cross, then there would be no salvation to speak of.  But Jesus left Heaven’s glory to come down to earth, live among sinners, walk on these dirty streets, and endure unimaginable suffering.  He willingly laid aside not His deity, but the prerogatives of His deity to save us from our sin.  My friend, if our Saviour shed His precious blood to cleanse us from our sin, it is only right for us to thank Him. 

 

Get a new restoration of your salvation.  2 Corinthians 2:14 says, “Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every place.”  It is never so bad that it might not be worse.  One of the major challenges we have in our lives is this matter of keeping our focus off of ourselves and on the Lord.  When pride gets into the equation and we’re not dead to self, we can never be thankful.  We just want to have a huge pity party.  We begin to consider what others have and wonder why so many other people seem to be getting ahead in the material sense, while we’re stuck in a rut. 

 

A fellow said to me the other day, “I used to complain about having to get out of bed until I couldn’t.”  If we have the health to attend church, then we’re blessed.  Sometimes Christians treat church as some kind of club.  If we’re not careful, we can get this way.  If you have nothing else to be thankful for, thank God that there are people at the church who cleaned the toilets, painted the walls, collected the trash lying around on the pews, and trimmed the bushes.  We’re admonished in Psalm 100:4 to “Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.”

 

One of the first steps in backsliding is having a heart of ingratitude.  May we not get to that place where the Spirit of God is grieved.  May we as Christians keep a tender, grateful heart toward our Saviour today.

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