Encountering God through Thanksgiving
First15 Devotional
First15
4.9 • 2.3K Ratings
🗓️ 21 June 2023
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Expressing gratitude and thanks to God has a miraculous way of opening and changing our hearts. Today we’ll explore the discipline of thanksgiving, and encounter God in response. May you take away from our time today, timeless principles that quickly get your heart in the right place despite your season or circumstances.
Our Scripture for today comes from Psalm 100:4, and today's worship is Thank You by Bethel Music.
First15 is a daily devotional written and recorded by Craig Denison. If you would like to learn more about the First15 app, books, blogs, videos and our other resources, please visit first15.org. You can always reach out to us on our contact page on the website.
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We just launched Vol. 7 of our First15 Devotional Series, Trust. And I couldn’t be more excited!
Trust is one of the devotional books I’ve been most anticipating, because of how critical trust is to our ability to thrive in and out of life’s difficult seasons.
This year has been arguably the hardest year we’ve faced globally in a generation. The pandemic has quickly taken its toll in every corner of our society, and every corner of the human heart. And the effects of systematic racism, and our lack of true racial reconciliation across the U.S. and beyond has brought us face to face with the mountain of division we’ve yet to overcome.
Personally, when life is good I find it easy to trust God, to be grateful for the ways he’s providing for me. But when my circumstances get hard, I find myself taking my life back in my control, and suffering as a result.
In Scripture, so many of God’s promises of peace, of provision, of safety are linked to our trust. Trust is like the “yes” that empowers God to move in deeper and more profound ways in and through us.
So I want to sincerely encourage you to get Trust today, to immerse yourself in this 5-week guide that will help you genuinely and wholeheartedly trust God. Because when you give God your trust, you’ll find an abundant peace and life that can carry you with unshakable joy through even life’s hardest challenges.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The expressing gratitude in thanks to God has a miraculous way of opening and changing |
| 0:10.4 | our hearts. |
| 0:11.4 | Today we will explore the discipline of thanksgiving and encounter God and response. |
| 0:16.8 | May you take away from our time today timeless principles that quickly get your heart in |
| 0:22.5 | the right place despite your season or circumstances. |
| 0:26.8 | Welcome to the first 15 podcast. |
| 0:34.5 | Thanksgiving is a gift given to us by the good and loving nature of our Heavenly Father. |
| 0:40.9 | In and out of every season of life, we have a reason to give thanks because we serve |
| 0:46.3 | a holy, faithful, good and loving God. |
| 0:49.8 | We serve the only King who would lay down his life for his unworthy, rebellious servants. |
| 0:56.4 | We serve a God perfectly worthy of all the thanksgiving and praise we could possibly |
| 1:02.0 | give. |
| 1:03.2 | In using the incredible gift of thanksgiving, we remind ourselves of how truly good our |
| 1:09.0 | Father is. |
| 1:10.6 | In thanksgiving, we experience the joy of a proper perspective and have our hearts stirred |
| 1:16.6 | by the renewing of our minds. |
| 1:19.4 | Some 104 says, enter his gates with thanksgiving. |
| 1:23.6 | In courts with praise, give thanks to him, bless his name. |
| 1:28.6 | When we come before God with thanksgiving, we seek the face of our Father while grounding |
| 1:33.8 | ourselves firmly in the truth of His perfect nature. |
| 1:37.5 | When we begin our days, prayers, worship, reading and fellowship with a heart of thanksgiving, |
| 1:44.4 | we live out of a place of faith and reality found in the Kingdom of God come to earth. |
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