Earlier this month, I taught the Celebrate Recovery Lesson 22 Gratitude, which just happened to take place in the month that we celebrate Thanksgiving. In case you did not know, CR is a Christ-centered 12 Step Program. We are now on Step 11: We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge o His will for us and power to carry that out.
“Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly.” (Colossians 3:16). We also have 8 Recovery Principles, taken from the Beatitudes in the Bible. We are now on Principle 7: Reserve a daily time with God for prayer, self-examination, Bible reading, and prayer in order to know God and His will for my life and to gain the power to follow His will. It is through prayer, meditation and reserving a daily time with God that I have the awesome privilege of spending time in worship and praise to Him.
As I reflect on the Gratitude lesson, I have to ask…Do you know why gratitude is so important? There are so many reasons and I will focus on this. Psalm 150:6 NIV says, Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. So, as long as we are alive, we are expected to give God praise. Not because of what He does for us or whenever He always gives us what we ask for, but because of Who He is. Let us not forget that He is the Creator of the universe, the Maker of all mankind, the Beginning and the Ending. Just that fact takes me to another verse that prompts me to worship, Revelation 4:11 NKJV You are worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power; For You created all things, and by Your will they exist and were created. Since God is worthy, He deserves our praise. So guess what? I say we should celebrate Thanksgiving every day! Psalms 107:1 reads Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever. How often should we give thanks? Psalm 34:1 NKJV answers that question and states I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth. I have to return to Psalm 150:6 but the MSG says this Let every living, breathing creature praise God! Hallelujah! If you are reading this, that includes you.
I found myself singing the chorus of Great Are You Lord, a few days ago and these are the words: It’s your breath in our lungs, so we pour out our praise, we pour out to You only. I imagined a container that is filled. As long as there’s something inside of it, it’s possible to pour out into another. OK, we are containers or vessels. Every time we wake up and we are able to breathe, we have the ability to pour out our praise to God. that praise has absolutely nothing to do with the current circumstances. (Look at Job.) It has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not things are going my way. (Look at David, Joseph). So I’m glad that Thanksgiving is here, because some need to be reminded to give thanks, not only to our heavenly father, but to people in our lives that we are grateful for. For the sake of this blog, Let’s focus on pouring out our praise to the ONE who gives us our breath EVERY SINGLE DAY! Whenever we open our eyes, we have an opportunity to pour out praise to Him. Keep that in mind. If we do, we would live and operate in continuous praise! Oh how much different life would be if we all kept God at the forefront of our thoughts and minds every day! I wish I had the time to expound upon that…
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