Give Thanks

We pray because we have a need to tell God about our circumstances. To understand the truth of this statement, we must ask ourselves: what happens when we neglect to pray for our daily needs and thank God for providing them?

If we are honest about it and examine our lives over a period of time, we will discover a subtle change taking place in our feelings and in our thinking. If we neglect to pray for our needs, we will begin to take the blessings of life for granted, and gradually, without at first realizing it, we will succumb to the senseless notion that we can provide for the necessities of life and that we are perfectly capable of managing our own affairs without any help from God.

When we think this way, it is not long before pride steps in and a kind of spiritual blindness settles upon us—a blindness which blocks our vision in relation to God, others, and even ourselves. We need, therefore, to constantly remind ourselves that everything we have comes from His hand and that at any moment, should He choose to do so, He could turn off the supplies, and we would soon become beggared and bankrupt. The only way, therefore, that we can build a barricade against this awful blight of ingratitude is to pray daily, remembering, as the poet said:

Back of the bread is the snowy flour,
And back of the flour, the mill,
And back of the mill is the field of wheat,
The rain, and the Father’s will.

Further Study

1Kings 17; Ps 23:5; Isa 41:10; Mal 3:10

How did God test Elijah’s faith?

How did he respond?