Morning Dew
Key Passage: Psalm 50
Key Text: Psalm 50:23 – ‘The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me; to one who orders his way rightly, I will show the salvation of God!’
‘What can I say to this kindness of yours?’ I heard someone say. Well you can start by saying thanks. I remember when I first went to school in the UK and went out to buy some basic provisions, I paid for my provisions and was about to collect my package, when the lady attending to me said, could you please say thanks. I was actually surprised because I thought she should be thanking me for patronising her business. But I soon learnt that this was a British cultural courtesy and I needed to say ‘please’ when I made requests and ‘thanks’ or ‘Ta love’ when I was served. Interestingly, ‘thanks giving’ is a cultural thing for heaven. God expects us to say thanks. In Revelation 7:12 we see the angels of God and the elders falling on their faces and saying “Amen: Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honour, and power, and might, be unto our God for ever and ever. Amen. “
Quite honestly, we all find it easy to say thank you in return for someone doing us a good deed. It’s easy to say thanks when someone blessed you, gave you a present or just simply helped you. With God, I am sure we all feel right thanking God for the miracles He has wrought in our lives, for our salvation, healings, deliverances, answered prayers and more, but today’s text is talking about the sacrifice of thanks giving. Sacrifice? Yes a sacrifice. The word sacrifice tells you and I that this is not an easy route, nor is it comfortable, nor is it conventional.
This is the thanks giving we offer God when things don’t appear to be going well. When we have just got a bad news, when we feel life has thrown us a lemon or we are yet to receive an answer to our prayers. You will agree with me, that to thank God when something bad happens, seems absurd. But it really depends on your perspective. Some people truly believe God is behind the mishaps in their lives, so they resort to blaming God. But if you know your bible well enough, you will realise that God is not the author of evil, nor does He send evil to any of us. The Devil is firmly responsible for evil, though God can allow it to glorify His name in a person’s life.
But when you choose to give God thanks in a situation that does not look favourable to us, what you are doing is making a very loud statement, that though you do not like what has happened, you are confident that our Father in heaven will take care of things and it will turn around for our good in the end. God promises many things to the person that will give God this type of sacrifice.
- God says, that whoever offers a sacrifice of thanks giving honour Him. Those who honour God, God honours and no man can dishonour them.
- God says that such people ‘order their way rightly’, this simply means they align themselves with God and position themselves on God’s side for God’s solutions.
- God promises that He would show such people His pathway to salvation. This means that once you can offer God your sacrifice of thanks giving, you basically open the door for God to come and do a miracle in your life and given situation.
Thanks giving is very powerful culture in the Kingdom of Heaven. It is said that we enter His gates with thanks giving and His courts with praise. The bible also says in all things we should give thanks, for this is the will of God concerning us in Christ Jesus.
Thanks giving is a pathway to breakthrough. So if you have particular challenges in your life, please thank God for those things.
Ps 107:22 says “Let them sacrifice the sacrifice of thanks giving”
Psalm 50:5 says –Gather to me my faithful ones, who made a covenant with me by sacrifice!
Ps 50:12-15 says “If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine 13 Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? 14 Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the Most High, 15 and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.
Let us pray: Father in heaven, today we want to thank you, We thank you for all our unanswered prayers. We thank you for all the things that have not gone well in our lives. We thank you for our past failures. We thank you our mistakes. We thank you for everything in our lives, whether they look good or not, we thank you. We thank you for our yesterdays, today’s and tomorrows. We thank you for everything. In Jesus name we have prayed. Amen.