TODAY’S DEVOTION (SATURDAY 7TH SEPTEMBER 2024)
“Make a joyful shout to the LORD, all you lands! Serve the LORD with gladness; Come before His presence with singing.
Know that the LORD, He is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.
Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, And into His courts with praise. Be thankful to Him, and bless His name.
For the LORD is good; His mercy is everlasting, and His truth endures to all generations.” Psalm 100:1-5 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 251ST DAY OF OUR YEAR OF IMPACT.
This is the day our LORD has made. We shall rejoice and be glad in it. Yes, daily He has been loading us with benefits. We own Him a lot of gratitude. We owe Him gratitude for the air in our nostrils, the functionality of our lungs, and the persistence of our hearts’ beat that has been on since we were born.
Can you imagine, even a generator will need to be stopped and serviced after some days, so that it can continue working, but our hearts have never been stopped to be serviced, neither have they stopped beating, since the first time they beat while we were in our mother’s wombs.
So, we owe God gratitude. We owe Him gratitude for being able to eat and pass it out as waste. Yes, we owe Him gratitude for the functionality of our respiratory, excretory, and neuron systems. There are people who depend on machines to be able to do most of that.
You will never know how we take that act of God for granted until you observe someone who depend on machines to breathe or excrete.
Sometimes, we heap prayer points on God and complain of this and that, but do not see some of these things, that constantly call for gratitude. Someone once said, “I was complaining to God that I have no shoes until I met someone with no legs. Then I cleaned my tears and started thanking God for my legs”
There are some of us that just need to be visiting the Hospital from time to time just to observe. We need to be looking at those who are in need of critical healing just to thank God for our lives and trust God to help them as well.
Often, we allow the good that has not happened, to cloud our minds, preventing us from seeing the good that is happening, and making us ungrateful people. People who know how to show gratitude to God enjoy certain miracles from His throne. There is a sweet life you will never know if you are not a man or woman of gratitude.
YES, THERE IS A REST YOU WILL NEVER GET IF YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW TO REMEMBER WHERE GOD TOOK YOU FROM, AND APPRECIATE HIM.
Gratitude helps us a lot in overcoming the temptation to become discontent, worrisome, competitive, or bitter with your life. It helps us to brighten up and come to the realm of faith. Gratitude has no disadvantage. In God’s kingdom, it is the quality of being thankful; a readiness to show appreciation or return kindness, either to GOD or man for the good things done.
Yes, we can return kindness to GOD in so many ways. We can return kindness to God by obeying Him, serving Him with our substance, Talents, treasures, and all of our lives.
We live in very interesting seasons where people have a dangerous sense of entitlement that prevents them from showing gratitude or returning kindness for good things done. Gratitude to God is a sweet-smelling act of worship heaven expects from us from time to time!!
When you express gratitude, you demonstrate how grateful you are for something or someone in your life, and respond with feelings of kindness, warmth, and acts of generosity. Sadly, many do not have this quality. They do not show gratitude for things done to them by others.
They are stingy with everything including showing gratitude. They do not respond with feelings of kindness, warmth or other forms of generosity to people who showed them kindness or did one thing or the other in their lives. They do not feel indebted to them.
You find them transferring the same attitude to God.
It is not easy to be good these days, so when someone is good to you be indebted to them. Show them gratitude and you will be able to show God gratitude also, because any gratitude you claim to be showing to God, when you have no sense of indebtedness to those He might have used to touch your life, is false.
You must be grateful to God by being grateful to those He may be using to touch you with acts of kindness or transform your life positively. You do not know how many blessings you may have missed, miracles you have hindered or relationships you might have weakened, by not showing gratitude.
I did this sometimes back and feel I should repeat it again. It is called gratitude challenge. Yes, I want to give you a gratitude challenge today. Send a message of gratitude and if possible, a gift along to three people God may have used to change your life or touch you significantly with acts of kindness. State what they did and express how grateful you are.
DO THIS SOME OTHER TIME, MAYBE ON YOUR BIRTHDAY IF YOU CANNOT DO IT NOW
I know those who chose the paths of ingrates might see this as not about them. Please, do not choose that path this morning. An ingrate is someone who does not show proper appreciation or thanks for something that someone has done for them. Sometimes, he or she shows appreciation but not proper appreciation.
If your kind act gets complain and criticism from someone instead of appreciation, that person is an ingrate. If your kind act of buying something significant for someone gets you nothing in return in form of appreciation, you are dealing with an ingrate.
If a person treats you with lack of respect or value while making significant contributions to their lives, you are dealing with an ingrate. You are trying to bless someone who is not thankful for others’ kindness. It will hurt you badly.
Ingrates hurt people and do not go anywhere in life in the long run. They become old bitter people when they get to the evening of their lives. That is why we should not be one.
You could be a wife that a husband has touched with some acts of love, a church member that a pastor has touched with some acts of kindness, a husband that a wife has touched with kindness, a staff that a boss has touched with kindness, a child that a parent has touched with kindness, a pastor that a member has touched with kindness, or whoever, take up this challenge this morning.
Send a message of gratitude and if possible, a gift to three people God has used to change your life or touch you significantly with acts of kindness.
STATE WHAT THEY DID AND EXPRESS HOW GRATEFUL YOU ARE.
You may have done this before, time has changed, please repeat it again. It could open a flood of miracles your way this week, or at other times of your life. That brings us to a kind of miracle that I call “miracles that happen when we are thankful.” Our devotional text says;
“Make a joyful shout to the LORD, all you lands! Serve the LORD with gladness; Come before His presence with singing.
Know that the LORD, He is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.
Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, And into His courts with praise. Be thankful to Him, and bless His name.For the LORD is good; His mercy is everlasting, and His truth endures to all generations.” Psalm 100:1-5 NKJV
Making joyful shouts to the LORD, serving Him with gladness, and coming to His presence with singing in gratitude, has a way of opening the gates or courts of GOD to us. Those gates are actually spiritual portals. Yes, they are Heavenly portals or entry points between the Spirit realm of God and that of man.
The Bible teaches that God designed them to supply Heavenly treasures from His throne room to our lives on earth.
The opening of the gates is what I refer to as the throne room miracle that happens when we are grateful to God. It is the opening of Heavenly portals over a man’s life that usually lead to his life getting blessed. It makes his life a center of amazing acts of God.
It leads to the release of divine interventions whenever they are needed. That is why we shut our Heavens whenever we lead ungrateful lives.
There is so much about this mystery of the Kingdom that cannot be written on a devotional. But some essential things have been shared. Make use of them and your life will be a center of God’s marvelous deeds. Amen!!!
LET THIS SCRIPTURE BE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR YOU TODAY!
“So they rose early in the morning and went out into the Wilderness of Tekoa; and as they went out, Jehoshaphat stood and said, “Hear me, O Judah and you inhabitants of Jerusalem: Believe in the LORD your God, and you shall be established; believe His prophets, and you shall prosper.”
And when he had consulted with the people, he appointed those who should sing to the LORD, and who should praise the beauty of holiness, as they went out before the army and were saying: “Praise the LORD, For His mercy endures forever.”
Now when they began to sing and to praise, the LORD set ambushes against the people of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, who had come against Judah; and they were defeated.
For the people of Ammon and Moab stood up against the inhabitants of Mount Seir to utterly kill and destroy them. And when they had made an end of the inhabitants of Seir, they helped to destroy one another.” 2 Chronicles 20:20-23 NKJV