Ephesians 1:3
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.”
For many years, when my husband and I hosted our family’s Thanksgiving dinner, it was our tradition to go around the table, giving each person an opportunity to express what they were most thankful for from the previous year. Invariably, the thanks and praise to the Lord would be for family: help during a health crisis, grace in grieving the death of a family member, provision for finances, a new job, a new house, a long-prayed-for spouse. These are all very good things and were definitely answers to prayer and worthy of our thanks to God. But what if this Thanksgiving we focused less on the tangible, material ways God has blessed us and more on the “spiritual” blessings God has given?
Over the last 24 days of this season of gratitude and thanksgiving, a large portion of our focus has been on precisely that—the ways God offers blessings and provision for our spiritual growth and needs. With that in mind, as we gather together this week, I pray our hearts will be reminded to offer thanks for His spiritual blessings:
• He chose us from the beginning to be His.
• He offers His gift of salvation that comes by grace through faith in Christ.
• He adopts us into His family and, as His children, He gives us the right to call Him Father.
• He promises forgiveness of sin that separates us from a Holy God.
• He sent His Holy Spirit to dwell in us at the moment of conversion and seals us forever in Christ.
• He gives us insight and wisdom through His Word into the mystery of His will so that we can live our lives to glorify Him.
• He gives us Himself, our all-knowing, hearing, seeing, loving, sovereign God, who is actively working in each of our lives.
Wherever we gather this year for Thanksgiving—with family, friends, at home, or far away—let our words of thanks and our sacrifice of praise be lifted to the God Who gave.
May the words of The Doxology, written by Thomas Ken in 1674, be our prayer of praise and thanksgiving today:
Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
I am honored that you have read my devotion today, and pray it is an encouragement to you and glorifies God. To receive Devotions For All Reasons in your email every day, go to the homepage and simply click on “Subscribe.”
