Thanks and Giving - Week 1 - Thankfulness is our response to God’s blessings

Today you may be struggling and the idea of giving thanks in this tough time is challenging. Today you may be on top, life is fantastically wonderful, and you are floating on cloud 9. In both cases, we often forget that as believers we are to be thankful. We pray for gifts and when they arrive we often think it is to our own credit and/or we forget who blessed us. Or we are so low that we can’t see anything in the gift to be thankful for.
I hope that after today you will find that God has given us much and in that we can always be thankful.

From the beginning of time God created for us to be blessed and for himself to be glorified.
Watch “The Giving Tree” https://youtu.be/XFQZfeHq9wo

What do we have to be thankful for?

Gifts from God in Genesis:

1. Creator of Life (2:7 Then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.)

2. Food (2:9a And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.)

3. Right and Wrong (2:9b The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.)

4. Work and Home (2:15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.)

5. Marriage (2:18 Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”)

6. We have a body, a soul, a mind, and strength (1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.)

7. Children (1:28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it)


Everything good that we see and have is from God, for that we are thankful.
—James 1:17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.)


Thankfulness is contagious, but What does it look like?
How to live a life of Thankfulness according Psalm 33:

1. Shout for joy, pray and sing
—1-3 Shout for joy in the LORD, O you righteous! Praise befits the upright. Give thanks to the LORD with the lyre; make melody to him with the harp of ten strings! Sing to him a new song; play skillfully on the strings, with loud shouts

2. Live a just and righteous life
—5 He loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of the steadfast love of the LORD.

3. In times of trial seek counsel
—11 The counsel of the LORD stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations.

4. Remind yourself of the hope in the Lord
—20-22 Our soul waits for the LORD; he is our help and our shield. For our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name.
Let your steadfast love, O LORD, be upon us, even as we hope in you.

Remember: Thankfulness is our response to God’s blessing!