A weekday morning devotional series written by Aaron Marcarelli and hosted by Chad McBeam
“I will give You thanks with all my heart; I will sing Your praises before the gods. I will bow down toward Your holy temple And give thanks to Your name for Your mercy and Your truth; For You have made Your word great according to all Your name.”
Psalms 138:1-2 NASB2020
Whereas the word Thanks or thankful is only used 130 times the word praise is used a little more. It is used a little over 6800 times. What can we learn from that?
Praise is a head thing. We can go through the motions of praise. It’s an outward expression. Thanksgiving and Thankfulness are inward expressions from the heart. God knows if we are faking our praise and if it is not true gratitude and thanksgiving from the heart. He said it pretty clearly in Matthew 7:21-23
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; leave Me, you who practice lawlessness.’”
True thanksgiving comes from the transformation of the heart through the power of The Holy Spirit.
The only way that happens is if we give our lives wholeheartedly and without reservation to Christ. Believe that He seeks to save the lost. That He came to earth to die on the cross for the sins of he world, then, now and forever. That He then rose again to prove that death had no dominion over Him, thus giving us eternal forgiveness and eternal life with Him.
If we truly acknowledge and accept that truth, and give our lives to Him, then our hearts will be renewed and our praise will truly be filled with thanksgiving through the power of His Holy Spirit.
Therefore I will praise Him with a grateful and thankful heart. For He, the creator of the heavens and the earth gave us Jesus Christ His Son! That is the greatest gift which I and we should give the most praise and be the most thankful for.
Lord, I am thank you for the greatest gift you have ever given, that is Jesus Christ my Lord. I know that sometimes my praise has has not always been genuine. Help me to rely on your Holy Spirit so that my praise may be true and pure and thankful of the amazing gift of the forgiveness of my sins for all eternity. I pray all these things in Jesus Name Amen…