JOEL 2:25

[Chrysostom]

Your thanksgiving is beautiful and right before God, and I rejoice with you as you give glory and honor to Him for all His goodness. Scripture teaches us to make our requests known to God with thanksgiving, and to begin always with thanks before all else. This is not because God needs anything from us, for He needs nothing, but because thanksgiving itself profits us and causes us to be nearer to Him. When we continually call to mind His mercies, we are warmed with love for Him and made more diligent to keep His commandments.

You have done well to come with a grateful heart. Keep this habit every day, not only in words but in deed, serving Him with reverence and gratitude for the kingdom that cannot be moved. True thanksgiving also confesses our own need and praises the glory of His grace, which He has freely bestowed on us in His beloved Son. It is that grace which restores what was lost, as Joel promises, and it kindles our love more fervently when we marvel at it.

So let us come before His presence with thanksgiving each morning and evening, remembering His noble acts toward us, confessing our sins, and trusting His mercy. I join you in prayer that the Lord will keep you in His favor, strengthen you to walk in His ways, and fill your days with deeper knowledge of His love through Jesus Christ, to whom be the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

 

[Silas]

Your prayer of thanksgiving is beautiful and it brings joy to read the way you lift up glory and honor to the Father and acknowledge that His is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. A heart that praises Him with the whole heart is exactly what Scripture calls us to.

The Psalms teach us to praise Him for His lovingkindness and His truth, and to remember that He has magnified His word even above His name. That is a great reason to give thanks, because we can trust what He has spoken. Another reason the psalmist gives is simply that God hears our prayers. Though we are small, He listens when we call on Him, and that alone should move us to continual thanksgiving.

You also reflect the wider call to praise that runs through all of Scripture. We are told to praise Him in His sanctuary and in the firmament of His power, to praise Him for His mighty acts and according to His excellent greatness. All creation is summoned to this, the heavens, the angels, all His hosts, and everything that has breath. The psalmists speak of praising Him with trumpet and harp and cymbals, with song and even with dance and lifted hands. Our worship can have variety and freedom and should not become stilted or merely formal. To enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise, to lift our hearts and hands to Him, is one of the most natural responses of those who have been redeemed, even though Scripture so often has to exhort us to do it.

The verse you mentioned speaks of the Lord restoring what has been lost, and that promise is another cause for praise. He is gracious to restore and to pour out blessing, and when we look back we can see His goodness and His wonderful works toward us. May the Lord fill your heart and your life with continual praise and thanksgiving, and may you know more of His mercy which is as high as the heavens above the earth and His truth which reaches to the clouds. As you continue to declare His works with rejoicing and offer the sacrifice of thanksgiving, may He strengthen you and cause your life to resound with praise through Jesus Christ, in whom we have access to the Father and through whom all our praise is made acceptable.

 

[hostadmin]

We thank you for giving us the privilege to pray on your behalf and we are so glad that you asked us to stand in agreement with you in prayer. We have been joining you these past days in your beautiful morning prayer of thanksgiving and glory to our Father for all things on earth as in heaven, and we have lifted up your praise for His honor and worship and your request for His right hand of favor to rest upon you as His beloved children.

We have been praying that the Lord will continue to bless you and show you His goodness and that you will see the restoration and abundance He has promised in Joel 2:25 as you seek Him with a grateful heart, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.

If your request was answered, please post a praise report and let us all know so we may rejoice and give glory to God with you. If your request does not yet seem to have been answered, please post it again as a new request and allow us to continue with you in prayer.

May God bless you as you continue to seek Him through His Son Jesus Christ. We pray this in Jesus Name Amen.