Lord, I Thank You!

Ephesians 6:18 – praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints—NKJV

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This week I am turning my focus to prayer. I’ve blogged before on the subject of praying always, but I don’t recall addressing the many types of ways we can pray. I look at the picture of the young girl and her posture, and I think, I know that posture. Do we have to have a certain type of posture? No! But sometimes a posture say more than our words ever could!

Paul encourages us in this verse to pray with all prayer. That word “all” causes me to infer that there is more than one way to pray. Of course, I know it to be true, but for the sake of beginnings, I want to make that point. There are all kinds of prayers, and therefore there are all kinds of way to pray.

One of my favorite ways to pray, is the prayer of thanksgiving! This time of conversing with the Lord can be short and to the point: Thank you Lord for not allowing that car to hit me! Or it can be longer, where we give Him thanks for any number of reasons!

Something I see in the Old Testament, is that people were chosen to give thanks to God:

And Hezekiah appointed the divisions of the priests and the Levites according to their divisions, each man according to his service, the priests and Levites for burnt offerings and peace offerings, to serve, to give thanks, and to praise in the gates of the camp of the Lord. 2 Chronicles 31:2 – NKJV

Can you imagine living life without the privilege of thanking God for who He is in your life, and for all He has done? Can you imagine being in a time and place when someone else was designated to be in His presence thanking Him, and you weren’t that someone?

And with them Heman and Jeduthun and the rest who were chosen, who were designated by name, to give thanks to the Lord, because His mercy endures forever; 1 Chronicles 16:41 -NKJV

Or maybe it wasn’t like that all! Maybe, they were chosen to set the atmosphere of worship in the house of the Lord! For that is exactly, what the prayer of thanksgiving leads to. Worship!

What are some of the things we should find ourselves giving Him thanks for?

• We should thank Him because He is good! 1 Corinthians 16:34
• We should thank Him for His great name! Psalm 35:18
• We should give Him thanks because we are His people Psalm 79:13
• We should thank Him because it’s the right thing to do! Psalm 92:1
• We should thank Him for His wonderful works to other people! Psalm 107:8
• We should thank Him for His word! Psalm 119:62
• We should thank Him for His mercy that endures forever! Psalm 136:26
• We should give thanks for His Blood that was shed for us! Mark 14:23
• We should give thanks for His Body that was given for us! Luke 22:19
• We should give thanks for what He does for us! Luke 17:16
• We should give thanks for Him giving us the victory through our Lord! 1 Corinthians 15:57
• We should thank Him for those who are a part of the Body of Christ! Ephesians 1:16
• We should thank Him for grace! 2 Corinthians 9:15

And if that is not enough to take you to the place of worship, thanks should be given for Jesus! And thanks for this beautiful land that we live in, and for life, and for health, and for strength! And for family, and jobs, and friends, and vehicles, and homes…and I think you get the picture!

This is my favorite type of prayer, as I said, because it leads to worship. It leads to us remembering who God is and all He has done and can do for us! It has a way of refreshing me and causing me to get my mind off of the negative issues in life, or the stress of the day. As a matter of fact, it gets me in the right frame of mind to blog.

Anyone can be become an expert at talking to God with the prayer of thanksgiving! The leper who was cleansed, immediately knew exactly what words to say and what posture to take after he was healed. You don’t need an example, or further explanation. No need for the Greek or the Hebrew words to break it down! Just know that it’s an excellent way to talk to the Everlasting God and that you will most certainly get His attention!! Then when you finish giving Him thanks, you can just bask in His presence! Wonderful Jesus!

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