By Christianity.com | Created at 2024-11-23 05:04:47 | Updated at 2024-11-23 08:46:14
3 hours ago
Billy Graham said, “A spirit of thankfulness is one of the most distinctive marks of a Christian whose heart is attuned to the Lord. Thank God in the midst of trials and every persecution.”
In his biography of eighteenth-century British abolitionist William Wilberforce, William Hague shares a quote of Wilberforce’s from a letter to his sister one Easter. “'The day has been delightful. I was out before six. . . I think my own devotions become more fervent when offered in this way amidst the general chorus with which all nature seems to be swelling the song of praise and thanksgiving.’ It was the echo of this song that his friends could hear when in his presence.”
In his Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, British writer and literary scholar C.S. Lewis said, “I have tried...to make every pleasure into a channel of adoration. I don’t mean simply by giving thanks for it. One must of course give thanks, but I mean something different. How shall I put it?... Gratitude exclaims, very properly, ‘How good of God to give me this.’ Adoration says, ‘What must be the quality of that Being whose far-off and momentary coruscations [glitters] are like this!’ One’s mind runs back up the sunbeam to the sun.”
In his Smaller Catechism, reformer Martin Luther states, “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. What does this mean? I believe that God has made me and all creatures; that He has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members, my reason and all my senses, and still takes care of them. He also gives me clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife and children, land, animals, and all I have. He richly and daily provides me with all that I need to support this body and life. He defends me against all danger and guards and protects me from all evil. All this He does only out of fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in me. For all this it is my duty to thank and praise, serve and obey Him.”
George Frideric Handel, the great composer who wrote what is considered by many to be his masterwork, The Messiah, expressed his thanksgiving to the Lord in the way God gifted him—through music. “Give Thanks to the Lord” is a piece from The Messiah and quotes and references Psalm 136:1, “Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good,
for His steadfast love endures forever.”
Nineteenth-century pastor Charles Spurgeon is called the “prince of preachers” because of his powerful witness to the Gospel and the enduring legacy of his work (his devotionals are still used worldwide). He said this about thanksgiving: “Our worship should have reference to the past as well as to the future; if we do not bless the Lord for what we have already received, how can we reasonably look for more? We are permitted to bring our petitions, and therefore we are in honour bound to bring our thanksgivings.”
Thanksgiving and praise go hand-in-hand, and evangelist and Bible teacher Oswald Chambers wrote, “Everything that God has created is like an orchestra praising Him. ‘All Thy works shall praise Thee.' In the ear of God everything He created makes exquisite music, and man joined in the paean of praise until he fell; then there came in the frantic discord of sin. The realisation [his spelling] of Redemption brings man by way of the minor note of repentance back into tune with praise again…Praising God is the ultimate end and aim of all we go through.”
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