BE THANKFUL AND SAY SO
Psalm 100:4 (AMPC) Enter into His gates with thanksgiving and a thank offering and into His courts with praise! Be thankful and say so to Him, bless and affectionately praise His name!
One of my mentors said that the Lord asked him, “Do you want to know how you can increase your capacity to receive from Me?” and that he had answered very quickly and said, “Yes Lord, I do.” The Lord said to him, “Learn to cultivate a life of thanksgiving.” Human nature tends to look at the negative side of things and complain about what you don’t have or how things are not right or hard but being in that mode doesn’t fix anything. Our scripture today says, “Be thankful and say so.”
Once, in a time of prayer, the Lord said to me, “This next year, I want you practicing worship and gratefulness more.” Little did I know that in the next three months, we would experience one of the most unprecedented and trying times in our nation and world. The Lord knew what I needed to navigate that time. Whenever I felt fear, or was overwhelmed, or was negative and complaining to myself, I’d remember the instructions from the Lord to me and what He said to my mentor, “Be thankful more and learn to cultivate a life of thanksgiving.” I now have in my home my “Gratitude Wall.” It is where I write down things that I’m grateful for of what the Lord has done or what others have done for me. I have even written notes to people in my life, teachers, mentors, and friends, that have helped me to be where I am today. That was my act of saying so.
I have found that in practicing thankfulness and saying so, it has power in it. I believe the more thankful we are to God and to other people, the more the power of God is released in our lives. I also believe it frees us from the negative, elevates our outlook, and can turn things around in our lives. We have so much to be thankful for, our salvation, His love, His tender mercies, His kindness, His peace, His goodness and on, and on, and on. If we want to increase our capacity to receive from the Lord, we should be thankful for all that the Lord has done in our lives and say so.