HOW GRATEFUL ARE WE?
I recently read an article by the Puritan, Thomas Doolittle (1632-1707). His words were challenging. I don’t think many Christians could receive them today. But would you mind if I shared two little excerpts? He wrote:“When God is a Benefactor to a people and they do not serve Him, what monstrous wickedness it is! God hath kept you all safe in the night, and yet in the morning you do not say, ‘Where is the Lord that did preserve us? Come, come, let us give joint praises to Him?’”
Talking about all the blessings God pours out upon us—salvation, healing from sickness, and deliverance from affliction, etc. he writes: “And yet you do not pray to nor praise this your wonderful Benefactor together. Let the very walls within which these ungrateful wretches live be astonished at this! Let the very beams and pillars of their houses tremble! And let the very girders of the floors on which they tread and walk be horribly afraid! That such as dwell in such an house together go to bed before they go to prayer together! Let the earth be amazed, that the families which the Lord doth nourish and maintain are rebellious and unthankful, being worse than the very ox that knoweth his wonder and of less understanding than the very ass (Isaiah 1:2,3).”
Wow, were you able to take that? Not for the faint-hearted! But it is true, isn’t it? Are we truly thankful if we don’t gather as families to praise and worship God each day? We give more importance to all the plans we have for the day than taking time to praise and worship the God who gives us our very breath.
Just as every morning and evening sacrifice in the Old Testament pointed forward to Calvary, as we have our family prayer times morning and evening, I love to take time thank Jesus for His great salvation and to realize again that every sacrifice was pointing to the ONCE AND FOR ALL sacrifice for our sins (Hebrews 9:11-14; 25-28; 10:10-14; and 1 Peter 3:18). I don’t like to let a day go past without thanking Him for His eternal salvation which is beyond all comprehension.
And how grateful we should be for all His goodness to us. We are constantly aware of God’s great protection and delivering power with us here on the Hilltop. Let’s be grateful people, not every now and then, but DAILY.
In His love,
Nancy Campbell
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