A Journal of a Broken Personality

I'm learning about THANKSGIVING.

I'm learning, I'm learning about THANKSGIVING.

"I will enter his gates with thanksgiving in my heart; I will enter his courts with praise".

As a child I remember being reminded to be thankful especially if there was a treat like chocolates and I wanted some more, the giver would always say "be thankful". A child is taught in their early years of life to say their "please and thank you". I feel we the Christians of today tend to forget our please and thank you especially to our heavenly father, and we are more focused on what we can get.

Our lives have become so busy that we forget to thank God, let alone when we have our prayer do we just take that time alone to say thank you, a separate prayer dedicated to thanksgiving.

My prayers used to be so different; I used to use my prayer as a request list. "Father I want this, or father bless this" but hardly would I ever take the time just to have a prayer of thanksgiving.

I remember the first time I decided I would try to do a prayer of thanksgiving, I was on my knees face flat on the floor and as I began to say my thank you, I started with the basic things like "thank you God for the sun, for the stars and the moon, thank you for my family, I began to name each member and thanked God for their occupation, protection health and the gift of life. I felt a tear fall. Soon my thanksgiving turned into a sobbing session for God had showed me how richly blessed I was, the small things that I overlooked he began to show me.

My prayer went on "father thank you for my eyes, many people can't see or have one eyesight may be short sighted, long sighted or even be color blind or blind but I thank you for blessing me with eyesight. I was so moved and I felt so guilt for I had overlooked the amazing things my Lord Jesus had blessed me with. My prayer continued and soon the thanksgiving came to a slight pause for I began seeking God for forgiveness for not seeing how good he has been to me.

You see Thanksgiving opens our eyes to see how much God has done for us, especially when things go wrong, when we are in the season of the valley, the devil does his best to depress us and blind us from Gods faithfulness, I learnt that it's at this point that we should give our thanksgiving, the Holy Spirit is kind enough to show us more and more of what the Lord has done and soon while at my lowest I see his faithfulness.

Job is a classic example, he lost everything but he maintained his humility and his place in God, knowing where he stood with him. Humility is important for thanksgiving. I learnt that thanksgiving protects you from pride. 1 Peter 5:6 "humble yourselves before the almighty and in due time he will lift you up" The Lord doesn't make us humble it is our duty out of free will to humble ourselves before him, thanksgiving is a place that KEEPS you humble.

I'm reminded about a story that happened during WWW 2 in a concentration camp. Cory Ten Boom along with her sister Betsy was thrown into one of these camps, Cory found it difficult to be thankful especially in the hard times. There was an incident whereby the women's dormitory was infested with flees and because of that the guards dared not enter but that was the time Betsy would read from the new testament to the ladies. She read 1 Thessalonians 5: 18 "In everything give thanks for this is the will of God for you". She reminded Cory that in EVERYTHING both good and bad times to give thanks to the Lord, so the flees were a blessing in disguise because it allowed the women to read Gods word and even share the reading with the follow inmates without the guards knowledgeas they didn't enter the dormitories due to the fear of catching them.

When we give thanks to God for everything especially in the bad times for things that just don't make sense God opens our eyes to see far beyond what we can see in the norm, he makes sense of the situation, how comforting it is and much easier for our hearts, minds and will for God shows us his way and reasoning.

We had a group called Chitchat Tuesdays of young women who got together to share the word and pray, one of our homework was to write 10 things that we are thankful for everyday till our next meet. What a breakthrough we saw in our own individual lives, all the girls said that it was as if a veil had dropped from their eyes. Try it, take time to write down a list of things that you are thankful for and you will see the miracle of THANKSGIVING.

I'm learning, I'm learning about THANKSGIVING.