Chrysostom
Beloved of All
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.
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.
