Being Thankful

I know we hear it every year on Thanksgiving. How we need to be thankful for what we have, and it's true. But sometimes I think we forget how blessed we truly are! If you are on a computer able to read this blog post with your free time, then right there you have something that most children outside of the united states don't have. You have a computer to surf the web with, and you have free time to do with as you please. There are people all around us who have next to nothing, and yet we just choose to pass them by and not offer any help.

You may be wondering how this applies to your life, or where it says in the Bible to be thankful. Well, 1 Thessalonians 5:18 says "Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." In other words, be thankful no matter what is going on around you, even if you have nothing, give God praise and be thankful, it's what God wants of us.

It's not always easy to be thankful for what we have and often times we feel as though we don't have enough and we need more. But if we ask God to help us to be thankful he will begin to open our eyes to all that we have and how blessed we are. Here's 3 things in our lives we can all be thankful.

1. God and his sacrifice for us.

God loves us and cares about us. In fact he loves us so much he gave his only son to a perverse and sinful world to take and bare what should have been each and everyone of our own punishment. He gave up his only son! I don't think we fully understand or grasp that concept. How many of us would be willing and able to give up the thing we love the most, that could never be replaced, for someone who doesn't even know, or respect us? It would be a huge sacrifice! That's exactly what God did! And because of his sacrifice we can one day spend eternity with him! I don't know about you, but I can't wait! We need to remember to be thankful for the sacrifice God made for us. (John 3:16)

2. Our Family

Most of us have some form of family. Weather it be your mom and dad, brother or sister, aunt or uncle, cousins, nephew or niece, grandma or grandpa. There's someone who takes care of you and provides for you. Someone who loves you. To often we take advantage of our family, we think that they will be there forever. When the truth is, they won't. One of my friends just recently told me that she used to feel this way, but then her dad went over seas and almost died and she realised that she wasn't as close to her dad as she would have liked. She said it opened her eyes to the fact that he wouldn't be around forever and after that she realised how blessed she was to have her dad here. We need to thank God daily for the family he has placed around us here on earth.

3. Food to eat

Okay, I know most of us have heard this one before. But there are so many children and adults around the world who have nothing to eat. There are children starving to death with no one to take care of them and feed them. We are so blessed to have food to eat! Even if it's something we don't like, there are so many who would be happy with anything they could get a hold of. Be thankful for the food God gives you, for a meal that he has provided. (Proverbs 22:9)

Three things we can be thankful for, three things to thank God for. God has called us to be thankful and give him praise. The question is, will you be thankful or will you not? What will you do?