Thankfulness: Why?

When the word thankful comes to mind, I remember how I tried to explain the word to a preschool class that I was teaching. To this challenging task I simply said that if you are thankful, that means that you are glad to have something or someone. This was a relatable definition for the children, which was realized by the barrage of items named as they were defining what they were thankful for. Just like the children, when we hear “thankful”, an abundance of personal blessings should flood our minds.

Many times in my life I have heard people say something like this, “Thank you God, (I am thankful) for who you are.” I began thinking and reading about why we should thank God.

In Psalm 95:2-3, David says, "Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song."
[And Why?]
"For the LORD is the great God, the great King above all gods."

God is a great Provider and King, and one reason of many, is that He is so because of the sacrifice He sent for us to enable us to have Eternal Life. He truly loved us, in all our imperfect ways, and promised us peace as a gift for believing and depending on him. As a reciprocal action we should talk to him, and thank him for being close and allowing us to be his chosen children and heirs to the “unshakable Kingdom” and abundant blessings [Hebrews 12:28].

Paul wrote in Romans [5:1] that the peace we have received is a direct result of being “justified through faith” by the gift that is Jesus Christ. And receiving this gift releases us from certain death which is the punishment for sin [Romans 6:23]. For this we must praise God and honor him.

We are not worthy of God’s goodness, yet He gives to us out of grace and mercy because He loves us. We are not treated as we deserve to be, as God has halted what would be just, to show us love. Following in this way, we should halt what the human and carnal nature would have us do and return the love to God and respect what He has done and given to us, by taking care of ourselves, taking care of others who are in need, and by simply thinking, speaking, and acting in a manner that is pleasing to God. This is the ultimate Thank you! For it is at this time of unity with God, and cohesion with his righteous path for us that we fulfill his holy plan for our lives!

What we do for God will last a lifetime, until the end of the ages. It is also contagious, and our responsibility as one of the chosen is not complete until we spread the praise and give God to others.

All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God. Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 2 Corinthians 4:15-16

We pray blessings upon all who have read. We invite you to follow us on social media as well! Be Blessed and Be a Blessing!

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Deception and TRUTH (pt.2)

So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” John 8:31-32

Even though deception runs rampant in our current world because of influential and appealing power, in Christ, hope remains. For it is in him that we find Truth, and there is a mighty power in truth. Truth is an honest account of reality based on facts. As Christians, we have been gifted and entrusted with receiving and sharing this truth. Because Jesus came for a holy mission, He became truth-a living embodiment and example of what and who we should be. His arrival here on earth has many lessons that we can draw from it, namely that of salvation, love, and truth. The truth that He has shown us in every aspect of his life, is the very thing that we need to combat the growing deceptions of this world. Deception may creep into our lives as that of the symbolic icon of its founder, a snake. But we need not be weary, for God has fitted us with protection from the temptations of the deceiver in the Holy Bible. As God has shown before, his holy image would be to much for our finite human minds to comprehend, so He gave us a bit of his knowledge for preparation in word form. And when that Word became Jesus, hope was right in front of us.

Being given truth that provides us with an abundant preparation in God's light, must be accepted by those whom it is intended to save. In order to yield the desired results- being prepared for deception- after hearing we must believe, act on and share the truth.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. Romans 1:24-25

Many times the deceptions of this life need not be complex, it only has to tell us what we want to hear, make us feel how we want to feel, show us things we have never seen, and our physical nature will not only fight for it, but it will lust after it. Sometimes those things that please the physical nature may not, at first thought, seem harmful to us, but the truth will show that if of our thoughts are not saturated in what God has planned for us, then all will be for nothing, because only what we do for God will last. Or yet still, only what we do for God will build and solidify a meaningful legacy that will last to the end of the ages and beyond.

As it is written in the Law of Moses, all this calamity has come upon us; yet we have not entreated the favor of the Lord our God, turning from our iniquities and gaining insight by your truth.  Daniel 9:13

If we turn from the wicked ways and seek God, He will hear us and bless us. So with reciprocity, if we turn from God and his righteous path for us, it will only be a matter of time before He allows us to have what we lust for, but it has a price. Turning away from God who is the light means that we are turning toward the darkness of the deceiver. And without being in the grace and mercy of God there is no guarantee that we will be safe from harm and danger be it toward the body, the mind, or the spirit. Undesired circumstances, at times should cause us to pause for a moment to perhaps take a look at our lives with a little more scrutiny, and maybe then we will realize that our spirit is out of balance. God must be and remain first in our lives. And if we realize when we look at our lives and can see where we have gone astray, let us call out to God and implore of him to give us the strength to hold on, and return again home.

We must turn to God and indulge in his goodness. We must seek him out for our lives lest we forget who He is and why we are blessed. Lest we forget the Creator and worship the creation.

We pray blessings upon all who have read. We invite you to follow us on social media as well! Be Blessed and Be a Blessing!

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And now The Deception and the Truth Ministries Website!