Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 3:00 — 4.1MB)
This Thanksgiving holiday is a good time to remind us that we are to overflow with thanksgiving, as we read in Colossians 2.
There is great power available to us when we are truly thankful people. But how do we make thankfulness a way of life for us? Here are some practical ways to learn to practice thanksgiving.
- Do the thankful alphabet. Start with A and go through Z, naming something starting with each letter for which you are thankful. You can have some fun with this; it’s a great game to play in the car with your kids and you’ll be teaching them to practice thankfulness.
- Make every Tuesday a Thankful Tuesday or each Thursday a Thankful Thursday. You can share this with your family or your co-workers and have some fun with it, but it will teach the joy of practicing thankfulness.
- Sing songs of thanksgiving. This week we’ll all probably sing some of those traditional Thanksgiving hymns at our churches, like “We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing” and “Come, ye thankful people, come.” But how about all the other weeks of the year? You could sing “Give Thanks with a Grateful Heart.” How about “Count Your Blessings”? The Bible says to sing and make music in your heart to the Lord. Go for it.
- Begin every prayer time with thanksgiving. Probably the most famous Psalm—Psalm 100—tells us to enter the gates of the Lord with thanksgiving and enter his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. Whenever you enter into the presence of God, always enter with thanksgiving. Make the first words out of your mouth words of thankfulness.
I have found that this changes my prayer time. If I begin with all my needs and requests, I am self-focused. If I begin with thanksgiving—reciting some of the many things I have to be thankful for—I am God-focused. What a difference that makes in my time spent with God, and that in turn makes a difference in my day. I begin to truly overflow with thankfulness.