Tag: thankfulness

Beloved Christians (Psalm 100 #6)

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth!

2     Serve the Lord with gladness!

    Come into his presence with singing!

3 Know that the Lord, he is God!

    It is he who made us, and we are his;

    we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving,

    and his courts with praise!

    Give thanks to him; bless his name!

5 For the Lord is good;

    his steadfast love endures forever,

    and his faithfulness to all generations.

Psalm 100 (ESV)

Today we conclude our short series on Psalm 100. Verse five culminates in a crescendo of praise and focusses solely on our Heavenly Father.

The Lord is good

Verse five tells us a simple truth – that the Lord is good. When things get difficult, or we look at the problems of the world, it can be easy to forget this fact. If God is so good, then why… <insert here>? We have all asked this at times, and there are no answers that can satisfy this side of heaven I believe.

The suffering of the world, and the pain we experience, does not disprove the existence of a “good” God. This world is broken, corrupted by sin and far removed from what God had originally intended. Yet He has not left us in this mess, alone and uncared for. The cross has said it all. God is indeed good because He came down into this fallen place, lived perfectly and died for each of us.

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.

James 1:17 (NIV)

This verse from James not only tells us that God is the source of every good thing, but that He is ever unchanging. He is good now, and will always be.

Enduring Love

Psalm 100:5 goes on to say that God’s steadfast love endures forever. This continues the theme of the verse from James above, in that God is unchanging. The word “steadfast” (describing God’s love) can be defined as “fixed in direction.” God’s love is not whimsical. It depends not on our behaviour, and His mood. He loves you today, and He will love you just the same tomorrow. You can count on it!

I have sometimes heard Christians say, and probably been guilty of saying it myself, “I just don’t feel that God loves me…” God’s love is not dependent on mere feelings. When your feelings are in disagreement with God’s Word, it is your feelings that are wrong, not the Bible. Whether you feel the love of Christ or not, you can know without a shadow of a doubt that it is true. This is but one of many verses which extol the permanence and endurance of God’s love for all of the saints.

For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom every family[a] in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Ephesians 3:14-19 (NIV)

What a prayer! And I pray it for you dear reader, and please do pray it for me!

Faithful to all generations

Psalm 100 closes with words about God’s faithfulness. God is faithful to His people, and we can rely on Him and His Word without question. God is true to His Word, and if He has said it, you can consider it done.

God is not just faithful to us however, but also to the generations that come after us. This is another sign of His steadfastness and consistency. We can rely on the fact that God is no respecter of persons, and that He will bless my children in the same way He has blessed me. Too few of us take a generational view, thinking primarily of our own lives. If the Lord tarries however, then a new generation will rise up after us and we are responsible to them.

We can trust in the goodness of God, and we can know that God’s faithfulness will remain for those who come after us.

Summary

Psalm 100 may only be short, but I hope it has encouraged you as we have plumbed its depths in the last few posts. It is no doubt a Psalm of praise and thanksgiving to our Creator God, and I want you to come way with many reasons to “shout for joy!”

You are a “Beloved Christian!” That is the culmination of this psalm. God’s love endures, and as a result we have much to thank and worship Him for. God’s love for each of us is reciprocated, and in turn we live to serve Him with gladness. We belong to Him, marked as His people, and so live our lives in gratitude for all that He has done for us.

Are there parts of this passage which really stand out to you? Is God saying something in particular to you during this season of your life? As we read and study the Bible, it should often lead to some form of change in our lives. This might be a specific action you take – like starting all of your prayers with words of thanks – or it may be less tangible than that. Has this psalm provoked you to action? I’d love to hear from you if it has.

Serve the Lord with gladness! Give thanks unto Him, and bless His Name!

Further posts in this series, if you wish to read more, are:

Shouting Christians #1

Serving Christians #2

Singing Christians #3

Created Christians #4

Thankful Christians #5

Thankful Christians (Psalm 100 #5)

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth!

2     Serve the Lord with gladness!

    Come into his presence with singing!

3 Know that the Lord, he is God!

    It is he who made us, and we are his;

    we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving,

    and his courts with praise!

    Give thanks to him; bless his name!

5 For the Lord is good;

    his steadfast love endures forever,

    and his faithfulness to all generations.

Psalm 100 (ESV)

Thankful Christians…? Is there any other kind? A Christian who does not give thanks, is like a Christian who does not pray!

This psalm directs us to enter the gates of our God with thanksgiving. Even in the midst of terrible trouble, we have much to be grateful for. It should not take us long to reel off a list of things we can thank the Lord for.

It was a privilege recently to record an interview with “understand the Bible.” When the video comes out, I’ll share it here so you can see it. One of the questions I was asked was, “Why do Christians pray?” Had you never heard of prayer, and studied our prayer lives to find the answer, what would you say? If you are anything like me, one might study my prayer life and say that prayer is “asking God for things.” Of course, this is woefully inadequate, and yet our prayer lives reflect little more than “petition” at times.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll no doubt say it again, but in our prayer lives, our praise should always outweigh our petition. We should thank God and worship Him with far greater frequency than we make demands of Him.

As we “enter His gates” why not use this as the primary way to start off your prayer time. Enter the prayer time with thanksgiving. Tell God what you are especially grateful for right now, and let that overflow into praise.

Verse four concludes by again telling us to give thanks, but also to “bless His name!” Could it be that by giving thanks, we are blessing His name? Is it a blessing to the Lord when He hears His people expressing their gratitude? I think so.

Being thankful is an admission of how good we have it. It helps us remember that no matter whatever else is going on, we do have some positives to focus on. The Bible is full of exhortations to thank God, and I for one am convicted that I should be doing it all the more.

How about you? On a scale of 1-10, how thankful would you rate yourself? Be honest…

Let us all get into a habit of being grateful. Help each other by commenting below with tings you are grateful for. It doesn’t have to be long, even one-word answers will inspire each of us to say “thank you!” to God for something.

It must go deeper than just saying the words however. I train my children to say “thank you,” after we give them something they have asked for. For a long time (even years) they may repeat the words out of pure habit. Hopefully, sooner or later though, they will learn that thankfulness is in actuality an attitude of the heart.

A heart which is not thankful is one which is arrogant. It demands, or even, expects to have whatever it wants. A humble heart though gives thanks for even the smallest of contributions. One who is humble and thankful recognises what others have done, and acknowledges it.

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good and His mercy endures forever! Amen!

Further posts in this series, if you wish to read more, are:

Shouting Christians #1

Serving Christians #2

Singing Christians #3

Created Christians #4

Lessons from the Garbage

It is bin/rubbish/garbage day here in the village where I live in the south-eastern part of England. And can I take a moment to say a huge thank you to all those who work in refuse collection and waste management. We applaud our healthcare workers every week now in the UK, and rightly so, but those men and women who pick up our waste and help keep everything clean fulfil an important role too. Imagine for a moment what it would be like if they didn’t do it! So a massive thank you to all of them today.

Anyway, back to the post already in progress…

In our village,and it might be the same where you live, we have a local Facebook page for local people to share all kinds of things. The are plenty of adverts for local businesses, which can be helpful, and update on what is going on in the area. As well as this useful material, there is more than a reasonable amount of complaining too.

One neighbour photographs the other’s bin and shares it to the page saying “They’ll never take all that!” Another comments that they saw said neighbour putting an extra bag in the other neighbour’s bin without permission… it’s quite the soap opera!

This is all vaguely interesting Andy, you might well be thinking, but what does it have to do with the Bible? Actually i think the Bible has a lot to teach us in our everyday lives, and here are a few lessons we can all learn from the garbage!

Be grateful for what you have

As I dragged our multiple bins and bin-bags out to the kerbside last evening, I glanced up and down our street. We produce a fair amount of waste as six humans live in our house. We used to use a voluntary recycling scheme to reduce our waste, but COVID-19 put a stop to that. Every house in our street had a lot of rubbish to put out for collection.

It got me thinking – if we are throwing away this much, then we must have an awful lot to begin with. How fortunate we are to have so much, and to be able to throw away so much!

Most people reading this will be reasonably wealthy in comparison to some in the world. We take our blessings for granted, and do not realise that many of us throw away more in a month than some people own.

Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name!

Psalm 100:4 (ESV)

Given how much we have, and how much we waste, we have no excuse for not being thankful.

The things we throw away are not just waste, but they represent the time we spent working to earn them, and often the joy we got from using them. When you throw something away, take a moment to thank God for it. I know it may sound silly, but everything we have comes from God and it’s not wrong to say thank you.

Be considerate to each other

At a house where I used to live, they were fairly strict about what you could and couldn’t put out in your household waste. As well as only putting out certain items, you had to ensure they were in the correct colour bin or sack. Woe to anyone who got it wrong!

One time we put out a sack of garden waste; grass cuttings and the like. Unfortunately, we put it in the recycling receptacle by mistake! An eagle-eyed refuse collector spied the suspect package, ripped the sack open to inspect the contents and then unceremoniously dumped the grass clippings all over the side of the road.

I hold my hands up to the mistake of course, but it was not really necessary to make the mess as he did. Such behaviour is just inconsiderate. Someone else had to come along and clear that up, and it was clear they did not care who it was.

Be considerate of other people, even if it inconveniences you slightly. Don’t take shortcuts and put other people out just because you cannot be bothered.

another now infamous post on our village’s Facebook page shows a car parked right across the pavement blocking anyone with a pushchair (stroller), wheelchair or even those walking. Why? I suspect because parking spaces were full and they did not want to park down the road and walk the rest of the way.

We are all in a hurry at times, and it can be very tempting to take the path of least resistance. But make sure that your choices do not impact on others.

Don’t do anything from selfish ambition or from a cheap desire to boast, but be humble toward one another, always considering others better than yourselves.

Philippians 2:3 (GNT)

Put other people ahead of yourself. And please notice that Paul makes no mention of whether they deserve it or not. If you cannot do it for them, then do it for Jesus.

Don’t complain

As our waste is collected on a Thursday, I try to remember to put it out the night before. However, it is usually just after I’ve sat down for the evening on a Wednesday that I remember. Sadly I’ve spent many an evening uttering to myself and grumbling about having to do it. What a terrible attitude!

Don’t complain about having to sort out your waste into recycling, non-recycling, garden waste and food. Do it with a good attitude and be grateful you have waste to sort.

Don’t complain about your neighbour’s huge pile of rubbish, or those who do not recycle for whatever reason. Don’t grumble if your bin is missed from the collection one week, or if they refuse to take it because you have not put the right items in the right place.

And don’t take photos of your neighbour’s bin and put them on Facebook, it’s just not cool.

Do everything without complaining or arguing

Philippians 2:14 (ISV)

Do everything without complaining. Even putting out the rubbish. I hope this gives you something to think about the next time you are hauling a bag to the side of the road!