Today amidst the triumph and jubilation, I urge us as a people to pause, step back, and stop to give thanks to God for His boundless blessings towards us. It is a responsibility to which we are all duty bound. It comes to us in the form of a command. "Give thanks to the Lord, call on His name; make known among the nations what He has done. Sing to Him, sing praise to Him; tell of all His wonderful acts," (1 Chronicles 16:8 – 17). A constant theme of Scripture is the call to remember the great things God has done for His people. People of faith recognize this and respond by being thankful and we are no exception. God has been good to us and for that we ought to give Him thanks.

Thanksgiving is pleasing to the Lord. Therefore it is imperative for us to acknowledge that all good gifts come from Him and for that we ought to be thankful. Giving thanks to God is taught throughout Scripture in both the old and new testaments. It is the practice of ancient people - Israelites, Greeks, and Romans as well as others - to express gratitude for what they considered the good things of life: a good harvest, the birth of children, victory in battle, recovery from sickness, and vindication in the face of critics, to name a few. on. God

The Israelites, when they came out of slavery and the wilderness and before entering the promised land, not only counted their blessings: they offered them up to God in thanksgiving. Thanks offerings were central to their practice and to their covenant-making with God. They too, like us, celebrated significant experiences and victories because they saw and understood that everything came from God. If the experience was negative and harsh, it caused them to consider how they might have sinned against the Lord. If it was positive, they praised God and celebrated for joy.

The Israelites gave thanks for God’s deliverance. This elevated Him above all neighbouring people’s gods. It served as a testimony of God’s greatness to those people who would see and understand the significance of such thanksgiving. That further enhanced God’s name and brought fear, awe, and respect on their neighbours who observed such celebrations in honour of a mighty, deliverer God.
So my friends during our period of rejoicing let us offer up our prayer of thanksgiving. A prayer of thanksgiving is a most powerful vehicle to God. When we do so with a grateful heart, God will give us more blessings and we will find more to be thankful about. A prayer of thanksgiving feeds upon itself. The more we give thanks to God, we will find ourselves feeling greater love and closeness to our Holy One. Psalms 92:1 admonishes us – "It is a good thing to give thanks unto the LORD, and to sing praises unto thy name, O most High." Charles Jefferson said, “Gratitude is born in hearts that take time to count up past mercies.” So today let us pause to count up our past mercies, to name them to each other, and then, as Paul instructs us, to give thanks in all circumstances.wn way.
As the general elections come to an end, there isn’t a better time than now to reflect on where we have been but more importantly where we are going. Life is about choices and often times we tend to forget just that. As we get caught up in the things that we want to see happen, we forget that it actually requires an action, better yet a plan to make that vision a definite reality.

We also forget the main person that makes any of these things possible for us. That is why it is important to give thanks and not just when good things happen to us but all of the time. Our heavenly father doesn’t just come around for the good with us; he is there through the good and the bad and thick and thin. Therefore we owe him the same courtesy of saying – Thanks.

As we band together as a people, let us put our reliance on God. Let us place our lives in God's hands and allow Him to take care of us. This is the strength and faith of giving thanks to God for everything in our lives. Let us join with the song writer and proclaim these words:-

We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing;
He chastens and hastens His will to make known.
The wicked oppressing now cease from distressing.
Sing praises to His Name; He forgets not His own.
Beside us to guide us, our God with us joining,
Ordaining, maintaining His kingdom divine;
So from the beginning the fight we were winning;
Thou, Lord, were at our side, all glory be Thine!
We all do extol Thee, Thou Leader triumphant,
And pray that Thou still our Defender will be.
Let Thy congregation escape tribulation;
Thy Name be ever praised! O Lord, make us free!
Remember - Gratitude is a God-honouring attitude.

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