Thursday, November 20, 2025

            Psalm 100 is one of the great chapters about living thankfully.  As we move to within a week of Thanksgiving, it is good to hear the Bible’s admonition to be thankful.  Psalm 100 has the subscript “a Psalm for giving thanks.”  And, indeed, it is.  The earth is called to shout for joy—verbally give thanks to God for His manifold blessings.  We are called to “worship the Lord with gladness.”  Worship is both an honor and a joy.  We gather with other believers in Christ to celebrate what the Lord has done and given to us.  We bring grateful hearts unto the Lord.  Living gladly and gratefully can change your life and lift your spirit. We are called to “come before the Lord with joyful songs.”  The Lord inhabits the praise of His people.  Singing to the Lord is an intentional act of giving thanks by using the voices that God gave us.
            Verse 4 reminds us to “enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise.”  To come into the presence of God requires us to be thankful.  God has given us all that we possess—even the breath that we use to praise God comes from Him.  Our default or factory setting for how to approach the Lord is to enter with a heart of praise and gratitude. Verse 5 concludes with some good theology for us to build our lives upon in times of joy and sorrow.  The Bible says, “for the LORD is good and His love endures forever; His faithfulness continues through all generations.”  The Lord is loving, good, faithful and enduring.  If we ever find ourselves doubting the character of God, we can eagerly return to Psalm 100:5 for a good lesson in theology.
            With Psalm 100 as a foundation, we learn four lessons about living as thankful people in this season of Thanksgiving.  First, living thankfully is a choice.  We can gripe and complain about what we lack, what we are missing and what others have that we do not. Or, we can choose to be grateful for the blessings that God has placed in our lives and hands.  Blessings that He has providentially chosen for us.  Martin Rinkart was a seventeenth-century Lutheran pastor who served during the Thirty Years War in Germany. He wrote the hymn “Now Thank We All Our God.”  In one year alone, Rinkart conducted 4,500 funerals—including one for his own wife.  Yet, he wrote, “Now thank we all our God, with hearts and hands and voices, who wondrous things hath done, in whom the world rejoices.”  We can choose how we respond to life and we can always look for the many blessings we are given.
            Second, living thankfully requires us to get moving.  We can sing, worship with others, talk with God and name our blessings.  We step up and intentionally give thanks for the many works and deeds of the Lord.  We do not live apathetically or blissfully ignorant of what God has done.  Third, we give thanks as a witness to others.  It can be tempting to complain or to grumble about things that we lack or things we cannot control.  But we are often a witness for Christ when we are quick to name our blessings before others and then use those blessings to serve the Lord and others.  Your thankfulness may point someone to the Lord.  Even in a hard season or year of life, we can still bear witness to the goodness and provisions of the Lord God.  If presented with the choice of giving thanks or grumbling, be mindful of who might be listening to you.  Let your words be a witness.  
             And fourth, when we are thankful, we deepen our trust in God to provide and to sustain us.  God has no limits to the depth of His grace and provisions. When we get into the rhythm of living thankfully, we find ourselves also living in anticipation of what the Lord may do next or how He may provide for us going forward.  Recognizing and remembering God’s faithfulness in the past is a good encouragement to trust Him in the future too. Psalm 100:3 leaves us with a final lesson about who we are in Christ, “Know that the Lord is God. It is He who made us, and we are His; we are His people, the sheep of His pasture.”  The Lord is our Good Shepherd!  And for this promise we are thankful!  Have a great Thursday!  Remember you can share our worship any time at YouTube.com/FirstBaptistKannapolis.