Prayer Secret #12 – Prayers of Thanksgiving

The first 11 prayer secrets all led you step by step on how to properly approach God the Father in your own personal prayer life with Him.

I showed you some of the different conditions that must be met so that you could be on good praying ground with the Lord, along with some of the different types of prayer strategies you could take with Him.

This next prayer secret will be like the icing on the entire prayer cake. Once you start to grow very close in your own personal walk with the Lord, and He then starts to move to answer many of your prayers – then the next thing you will need to learn how to do with the Lord is how to have a very thankful and appreciative type of heart with Him.

And this is something that the Holy Spirit Himself will be moving very strongly on in your own personal relationship with the Lord.

In this article, I will give you both the Scripture verses on this topic, along with some of the specific things that we should all be very thankful for in this life, as many of these types of blessings have been taken too much for granted throughout the years because we are so used to having them with us all of the time.

This very thankful and appreciative type of heart is really something that has to come from the Holy Spirit. Due to the fact that we are all flawed and corrupt sinners, for many of us, this type of thankful heart will not come easy.

The reason being is that many of us who live in the wealthier type of countries are so spoiled and so used to having all of these good material blessings come our way all of the time, that we have taken too much of them for granted, and we really do not realize how blessed we really are as compared to all of the people who are living in extreme poverty across many parts of the world.

For some of us, it is only when we start to actually lose some of these good material blessings do we see how blessed we really are in the Lord.

For many people right now, they are only one or two paychecks away from being out in the streets, especially with most of the world economies still battling recessions on the home front.

If you have just lost your job, and you all of a sudden have to cut way back on your living expenses, you then start to become much more appreciative of those blessings, as you can see now how easily you could lose all of it.

You start to see and realize that nothing in this life should ever be taken for granted, as you know that you could literally lose all of it in a very short period of time. As a result of how quickly we could all lose some of our basic creature comforts, we should learn how to keep all of this in proper perspective with how God has the big picture set up.

Bottom line – unless you are operating in a full surrender with the Lord and allowing Him to build the house of your life, you could literally lose all of it within a matter of days, weeks, or months depending on the type of adversity that may have just struck you.

Some of the different Bible Dictionaries and Commentaries describe a thankful and grateful type of heart as being the following:

• Gratefulness expressed to another
• Act of expressing gratitude
• To declare the merits of someone
• The aspect of praise that gives thanks to God for what He does for us
• Natural expression of thanks in response to blessings, protection or love
• Gratitude is not a tool used to manipulate the will of God, rather it is a joyful commitment of one’s personality to God

Back in the OT, when the Jewish people were walking right with God, they thanked Him for many different things that He had done for them.

They thanked Him for protection from their enemies, deliverance from their enemies, and for keeping the original covenant that was made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They also thanked God for all of the different types of miracles He did for them, such as all of the miracles that were done in the story of Moses.

When the Jewish people really had it together with the Lord, they even made sure to have thanksgiving as a part of their actual religious ceremonies and customs.

You can see many of these types of words incorporated throughout many of the verses when they were giving praise, honor, and glory to the Lord.

King David himself appointed Levitical priests to offer thanks to God, as he knew how important of a thing this really was with God the Father.

This custom was then carried on by both King Solomon and King Hezekiah. And then when you get into the NT, you have the apostle Paul telling us to give thanks in all things.

As you will see when I list the Scripture verses below, this is a real big thing with God the Father, and it is something I feel every single Christian should learn how to do in their own personal walk with the Lord.

The Scripture Verses

Now here are some very good verses from both the OT and NT on the extreme importance that we all learn how to have a very thankful and appreciative type of heart with the Lord.

• “Offer to God thanksgiving, and pay your vows to the Most High.” (Psalm 50:14)
• “And he appointed some of the Levites to minister before the ark of the Lord, to commemorate, to thank, and to praise the Lord God of Israel …” (1 Chronicles 16:4)
• “That I may proclaim with the voice of thanksgiving, and tell of all Your wondrous works.” (Psalm 26:7)
• “I will praise the name of God with a song, and will magnify Him with thanksgiving.” (Psalm 69:30)
• “Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving; let us shout joyfully to Him with psalm.” (Psalm 95:2)
• “Enter His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise. Be thankful to Him, and bless His name.” (Psalm 100:4)
• “I will offer to You the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and will call upon the name of the Lord. ” (Psalm 116:17)
• “Offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving with leaven, proclaim and announce the freewill offerings; for this you love, you children of Israel!” says the Lord God. (Amos 4:5)
• … in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” (1 Thessalonians 5:18)
• “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:6-7)
• “Continue earnestly in prayer, being vigilant in it with thanksgiving.” (Colossians 4:2)
• “… speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all the things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Ephesians 5:19-20)
• “I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given to you by Christ Jesus …” (1 Corinthians 1:4)
• “Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!” (2 Corinthians 9:15)
• “Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place.” (2 Corinthians 2:14)
• “And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who has enabled me, because He counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry …” (1 Timothy 1:12)
• “But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered.” (Romans 6:17)
• “I thank my God upon every remembrance of you …” (Philippians 1:3)
• “We give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you …” (Colossians 1:3)
• “.. forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.” (1 Timothy 4:3)
• “As you have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving.” (Colossians 2:6-7)

When you read each one of these verses one right after the other, you can easily see how God wants all of us to have a very thankful type of heart with Him.

The Jewish people made sure to do it with God the Father when they were walking right with Him in the OT, and the NT apostles made sure to do it after they had met Jesus.

We, as NT believers, should also be including prayers of thanksgiving with the Lord on some kind of regular basis, now that we know who the Lord really is and what He has now done for the entire human race with His sacrificial death on the cross.

Specific Things We Should Be Very Thankful For in This Life

Now that we know God wants all of us to learn how to have a very thankful and appreciative type of heart with Him, what specific things in our lives should we learn to be very thankful for? Here are some of the absolute, bottom-line basics that we should always have a very thankful type of heart for.

I will first list them out in a bolded, numbered format so you can have all of them right at the top of this section:

• The Story of Jesus Christ
• How Great and Awesome God Really Is
• Your Marriage
• Your Good Friends in This Life
• Your Good, Physical Health
• Your Food, Shelter and Clothes
• Your Money Supplies
• The Call That God Has Placed Upon Your Life
• God’s Protection, Guidance, and Anointing on Your Life
• Everytime God Helps You Out With Anything

Now I will discuss each one of these topics under the following captions below. Again, these are all basic areas that we should always remain very thankful for in our own personal relationship with the Lord, for without Him, we would have none of these types of blessings flowing into our lives on any kind of a regular basis.

1. The Story of Jesus Christ

Without question, the very first thing that we should all be very thankful for is the story of how Jesus Christ came down to our earth in the flesh to go through the most horrible, painful, and barbaric death known to mankind at the time He came down to us – crucifixion to a cross by using nails.

When Adam and Eve blew it for both themselves and the rest of the human race that would follow after them, God the Father could have easily washed His hands of the entire human race and let all of us to rot and die in our sins and trespasses against Him. He could have easily let all of us fall straight into the pits of a real, live, living hell with no chance of ever being able to make it back out again. God could have easily given up on the entire human race with what had occurred in the story of Adam and Eve.

But God the Father chose not to do so. He chose instead to implement and carry out a plan B so that we could all get another chance to get back into His good graces. But this plan B was going to be excruciatingly painful for Him to carry out.

As a result of losing maximum life in the Garden of Eden, there was now going to be a very big price tag to get all of us back to Himself – and that price tag was now going to have to be some kind of maximum death. Maximum death for maximum life.

And not only was maximum death going to be the price tag that God is now going to have to pay to get us back to Himself, but this price tag would have to be paid and carried out by one of Them, as part of this maximum, death, price tag was that it had to be a perfect sacrifice.

Since all humans have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, this meant that only one of the Members of the Divine Trinity could take up this call for all of us, as only the Three of Them are absolutely perfect in their divine natures and personalities.

It was obviously decided that Jesus Christ Himself would be the one to take up this call for all of us. But here is where the story now gets very deep and very intense. Jesus knew exactly what He was going to have to do.

He knew the price tag was going to have to be an extremely painful and bloody death on a cross, with the whole ordeal lasting a full 9 hours.

And in order to be able to fully complete this sacrifice, He was going to have to incarnate Himself into a human flesh body so He could feel the pain on the cross to the same intensity we would if we were hanging on that cross with Him. Though Jesus was still fully God, He also became fully Man, and He thus was capable of feeling pain in His human, physical, flesh body in the exact same way we all do.

To think that Jesus would be willing to take on this kind of extreme suffering upon Himself, just to get all of us back to Himself and His Father, is enough to blow all the circuits in our human mind if we just stop long enough to really think about what had occurred with this entire story with Jesus.

And again, God the Father could have easily washed His hands of the entire human race after what had occurred in the story of Adam and Eve.

For God to have this kind of intense love for the entire human race – that He would be willing to send down and sacrifice His one and only begotten Son – that He would have His Son Jesus fully incarnate into a human, flesh body so He could fully experience all of the real pain of a real live crucifixion – is just enough to tear your heart into a million pieces once you really meditate on what God the Father had to do to get all of us back to Himself and His dwelling place, heaven.

It is my own personal opinion that God the Father anointed Mel Gibson to make the movie, “The Passion of the Christ.” I really felt like God wanted all of us to see exactly what His Son Jesus had went through when He went through the entire ordeal of the crucifixion.

It is one thing to read and imagine as best you can what Jesus went through that day from the Gospel narratives, but it is quite another thing to see all of this actually captured and played out on the big screen with all of the special effects that Hollywood could muster up for this one special movie.

For those of you who have seen “The Passion of the Christ,” you know exactly what I am talking about. This movie will leave images in your mind’s eye that will never, ever go away. As such, we should never, ever forget the extreme sacrifice that both Jesus Christ, God the Father, and the Holy Spirit made for all of us when They allowed all of this to happen with Jesus that day.

We will never be able to thank Jesus and our heavenly Father enough for what They did for all of us on that day Jesus was crucified. And to think that God the Father did all of this simply because He loves us, and that He does not want any of us falling into the pits of hell after we die and cross over.

2. How Great and Awesome God Really Is

As a result of Jesus dying on the cross for all of our sins, we can now become saved and born again if we are willing to accept Him as our personal Lord and Savior. Our relationship with both God the Father and Jesus Christ can now be fully restored again if we are willing to accept what Jesus did for us on that day He died on the cross for all of us.

With all Christians now being saved and born again, this now means we can approach the Lord for intimate communication. We can now get to know Him, His Son Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. We can now start to grow in His knowledge and grace.

And as you start to get to know the Lord in your own personal relationship with Him, this is where you will now get into the second thing that we must all learn how to be very thankful for. And this second thing is just the personality of both God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.

Once you start to get to know all Three of Them from your study of the Bible, and then from what you start to learn about Them in your own personal walk and adventures with Them, then you will start to see what kind of awesome God we are really dealing with. Then you will start to see how great and awesome our God really is.

To think that there is only one true God in the entire scheme of things, and that this one and only true God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and omnipresent – and then to top it off, He actually wants to make direct contact with each one of us on an individual basis so He can start to establish a close, intimate, personal relationship with each one of us – is enough to knock you right off of the couch when you realize what kind of an extreme reality we are dealing with.

Once you start to get to know who God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit really are in your own personal relationship with Them, and what kind of divine attributes and personality qualities They each have in Them, then you can learn how to become very thankful for who They really are and for what They have done for all of us. You will want to thank God almost everyday for who He really is, how loving and caring He really is, and how well He handles your personal life on an everyday basis.

To think that there is only one great and awesome God, and that this one great and awesome God really wants to draw very close to you so you can start to enter into a close personal relationship with Him – this one awesome fact alone is enough to be very thankful for all of eternity.

3. Your Marriage

After God creates Eve for Adam, the first thing God does is to establish the marriage union between these two. God says that a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and then the two shall become one flesh. And from there, He tells them to be fruitful and multiply.

Next to the Lord Himself, I believe the second greatest thing that God has given all of us is the ability to marry someone we are truly in love with, and then to be able to have and bring children into this world as result of the holy marriage union that has now been formed out between this couple and the Lord.

Think about this long and hard – a woman only has a 20-30 year window at best to bring any children into this world. And once that window closes, it will be closed for all of eternity.

There is no marriage or any kind of procreation up in heaven. Every single person who makes it into heaven has to be born into this world as a result of the curse of Adam and Eve. No one person can ever be born or created up in heaven. They have to be created and born down here, with all of it being through a woman’s womb.

As a result, each woman only has one shot, one window, and one opportunity to bring any children not only in this world, but into the next world as well, which will be heaven, and then eventually the New Heaven and the New Earth. And once a woman brings a beautiful child into this world, then she will be that child’s natural mother for all of eternity.

This will be a very special bond between the mother and child that will last for all of eternity, and you only have one chance in the big picture, eternal scheme of things to make it all happen down in here in this life.

And the same thing goes for the natural father of these children. This father will forever be this child’s natural father by blood and again, that special bond will last for all of eternity.

To any of you who have good marriages in the Lord along with any children, really be appreciative and thankful for having this kind of an incredible blessing from the Lord. Again, I believe this is the second greatest blessing that God can give you down here in this life next to Himself, His Son Jesus, and His Holy Spirit.

A beautiful spouse, and one or more beautiful children, is a blessing of the highest order and it is all being given direct you by the Lord Himself. As a result, do not ever forget to thank the Lord on some kind of a regular basis if you are one of the blessed who have truly received this kind of a good marriage in this life.

4. Your Good Friends in This Life

Next to God and family, I believe the next most important thing in your life is the good friends that God will bring into your life. We have another good article on this topic in our site. The title of this article is, “Choose Your Friends Carefully,” and it is in the Bible Basics section of our site.

We need other good, solid, Christian friends we can fellowship with and share our walks with. As a result, God will personally lead you to the other people that He will want you to have good friendships with in this life. And once God does this for you, always be very thankful for it, as many people do not even have one good friend they can trust or have good fellowship with in this life. Really cherish these special friendships when they are brought into your life by the Lord, and do not ever take any of them for granted.

As many of you already know, a true, good, God-friend can sometimes be hard to find in this day and age where so many people have become so self-centered and narcissistic.

The material pleasures of this life have ruined many people, and all they live their lives for is trying to acquire more wealth and material goods. As a result of living in this hedonistic type of lifestyle, many of these people have lost the ability to bond with other people, and you thus will not be able to establish any kind of a good, solid, trustworthy friendship with these kinds of people.

Again, when God does bring in the real people who can be your true God-friends in this life, never forget how hard of a thing it is for many people to find one or two true good friends in this life – and really cherish and treasure these people when they are brought into your life by the Lord.

5. Your Good Physical Health

If God has blessed you with any kind of good physical health, always be very thankful for it, as any kind of a major illness or disease could knock you flat on your back and totally or partially incapacitate you.

Good physical health is something that many of us can take too much for granted until we get knocked flat on our back with any kind of a major illness or disease.

And once that happens, then you will really see how important good physical health really is and what a real blessing it is to have in the cursed and fallen world in which we now all live in.

For those of you who have been blessed with good physical health for most of your life, always be very thankful for it and do not ever forget to thank God Himself for it, as He is the One who is really allowing you to have this kind of good blessing in this life.

6. Your Food, Shelter, and Clothes

Another major area that we should always be very thankful for is our food, shelter, and clothes supplies.

If you have a good, solid roof over your head, enough food to be able to feed you and your family on a daily basis, and enough good clothes to keep all of you properly clothed and protected from the weather elements, then this should be another major thing that you add to your list on what to be thankful for with the Lord.

So many people across many parts of the world are living in extreme poverty. I am sure you have all seen the graphic videos of what these people are forced to live under. Some of these children are running around totally naked with their ribs sticking out, along with being forced to live in paper thin huts and tents.

People who are living in this kind of extreme poverty do not have the food, shelter, or clothes that we have. As a result, just remember where all of these types of good material blessings are coming from, and that it is only by the grace of God that you personally are not living in this kind of extreme poverty yourself.

Our food, shelter, and clothes supplies should always be something that we never, ever take for granted – and we should always be willing to thank the Lord on some kind of a regular basis that we do have these three important things operating in our life so we do not have to worry about it.

7. Your Money Supplies

As a result of the Adamic curse that is still in full operation on this earth, one of the things that we have to have flowing into our lives on some kind of a regular basis is money, as money is the only thing that will keep us from living in extreme poverty.

Have a man lose his job, and he could easily lose his house and everything else in a very short period of time. Some people are only one or two paychecks from being totally homeless and out on the streets.

As a result, always be very thankful for the money you have flowing in your life so you can be kept properly supported in this life.

Again, God is the One who is controlling the money supply into your life and into your household. So never forget to thank Him on some kind of regular basis for the money that He does have flowing into your life, for without it, you could literally lose everything you have in a very short period of time.

8. The Call That God Has Placed Upon Your Life

As we have said before, once you enter into a true full surrender with the Lord, He will then enter you into His perfect plan and destiny for your life.

And in that perfect plan and destiny will be your call or calls. And once you find out what those call or calls are going to be, always remember where these calls are coming from and who is setting all of this up for you.

If God is calling you to be a doctor, an evangelist, a bible teacher, an attorney, a policeman, or a good stay-at-home mom during the early years of your marriage, then really cherish these calls and be very thankful for them, as they are being personally handed out to you by the Lord Himself.

Never forget who is pulling the strings behind the scenes allowing you to be able to walk into these types of divine calls.

9. God’s Protection, Guidance, and Anointing on Your Life

Once you come into a true full surrender with the Lord, and He then starts to lead you into his divine plan and destiny for your life, then the next thing that will occur in your walk with the Lord is that He will start to give you His divine protection, guidance, and power.

If God does not fully protect you in this life, then you will never ever make it to first base, as the dark side would take you out the first chance they got.

If God does not specifically lead you as to where you need to go in your call for Him, then you will never get from first bast to second base, as you will have no idea where to go next.

And if God does not give you His anointing and power to be really good in the call that He is giving out to you, then you will never fully accomplish everything He will want you to accomplish for Him in that call.

So not only will you get what God’s best is going to be for you and your life once you do receive that special calling from Him, but now God is going to add the icing to this entire cake by giving you His divine protection, guidance, and power along the way so you can be very good in that specific calling.

And again, once you start to see this kind of activity occur with the Lord, always remember where these kinds of good blessings are coming from – and do not ever forget to thank the Lord for giving you His divine protection, guidance, and power – for without these three additional blessings operating in your life, you will never succeed in the calling that God has placed on your life.

10. Everytime God Helps You Out With Anything

Once God starts to become very active in your own personal life, you will find Him doing a lot of incredible things for you. The Bible calls the Holy Spirit the Helper, and He will literally help you with everything across the board of your entire life.

God can help you with things on your job, with things in your marriage if you are married, and with things in school if you are still in school.

He can help you solve problems, give you favor with your bosses at your place of employment, promote you to the next job when it is time for your promotion to occur on His set timetable, lead you to the one He will want you to marry in this life, help deliver you if you have fallen into any kind of a trap or snare from the dark side, or heal you if you have been hit with any kind of an ailment or disease.

As you can see, there are literally an infinite number of things God can help you out with in your own personal life. And once you start to see Him help you out like this across the board of your entire life, always remember where this kind of divine help is coming from in the first place, and always remember to personally thank Him whenever He does do something specific to help you out.

If you show God that you are really thankful when He does help you out like this, then you will touch His heart, and you will then create a strong desire in Him to want to continue to work with you.

Conclusion

As you can see from some of the above examples, there are just an incredible number of things we can be very thankful for with the Lord.

If you really want to enter into a true personal relationship with the Lord, it would be my strong recommendation that you also add prayers of thanksgiving in your own personal prayer life with the Lord from time to time.

Never forget who we are serving and following in this life, and if it was not for the Lord and His intense love for all of us, we would not be who we are today.

All of the above blessings are major blessings that God is bestowing upon many of His people today, and as a result, we should always be very thankful when they do come our way – and to make sure that we thank God direct when we do receive these types of blessings from Him, as so many people across the world do not have a lot of these blessings coming their way due to the extreme poverty they were all born into.

What I have found on this part of my walk with the Lord, is that the Holy Spirit Himself will prompt me to want to give thanks to the Lord. It could be for a blessing that God has just passed my way, or it could be just on God Himself, how great He is, and for what He has already done for the entire human race with the sacrifice of His Son Jesus on a cross to pay the penalty for all of our sins.

These little prayers of thanksgiving can actually happen anyplace at anytime, especially if they are coming in direct from the Holy Spirit. You can also do them on your own initiative with the Lord, as you do not have to wait for the Holy Spirit to prompt you to do it.

Another thing I have found with these types of thanksgiving prayers, is that they will help keep you humble in your walk with the Lord. It is very easy for some of us to become spoiled with these types of blessing always coming our way in this life.

And once we start to become too spoiled, we can then start to take these kinds of blessings too much for granted and forget where they are coming from in the first place.

And once we start to forget where they are actually coming from, then we will start to think they are all coming our way due to all of our own hard working efforts instead of realizing that all of these types of blessings are really coming direct from the hand of God Himself.

These types of thanksgiving prayers, when done on a regular basis with the Lord, will help keep us in proper touch with the Lord, along with constantly reminding us where all of these types of blessings are coming from in the first place – lest we all get puffed up with our own pride and vanity, thinking that it is now all of us and none of God.