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Thanksgiving is the expression of the human heart in praise and prayer of the sacred memory of the gracious acts of God which benefit our lives every day.  In Psalm 9, David manifests thanksgiving in praise and prayer.  Praise and prayer are aspects of worship.  Worship is devotion or homage paid to deity.  David renders unto God what is rightly due His holy name.

Thanksgiving and Praise.
Praise is adoration of the name of God for His glory, holiness and majesty.  God acts in creation and redemption to benefit all of mankind.  David makes a holy resolution in response to all that God has done, “I will praise thee.”  Consider some aspects of this praise:
1.  It is personal.  “I.”  David engages his own heart, mind and will to glorify God.  He has been touched by God’s mercies and graciousness.  He renders the praise as thanksgiving.
2.  It is reflective.  David spends time thinking about God and what He has done.  We must count our many blessings and name them one by one.  We are ‘vessels of mercy’.  Just as a ordinary vessel by its scent tells what liquid is in it, so should our lips smell of the fragrance of God’s mercy shed abroad in our hearts.  Thanksgiving is reflective of God’s mercies and help.
3.  It is purposed.  “I will.”   It sometimes takes all of our determination to bless God in the midst of adversity.  Job’s wife told him to curse God and die.  Job said, “The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away; blessed by the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21 and 2:9).
4.  It is focused.  “I will praise thee.”  God is the ultimate source of every good and perfect gift (James 1:17).  God is an inexhaustible fountain of blessings that enriches our lives.  You cannot separate thanksgiving from God.
5.  It is declared.  “I will show forth.”  The psalmist openly declares his praise for God’s goodness.  He tells saint and sinner.  His praise is a thankful telling forth of all God has done for him.
6.  It is unfeigned.  “With my whole heart.”  There is no pretense.  There is no lip service.  His praise is whole-hearted and sincere.  This distinguishes him from the hypocrites who pay lip service but their hearts are far from God (Matt. 15:8).
7.  It is all-encompassing.  “All thy marvelous works.”  Can we truly comprehend all of the marvelous works of God?  His preservation, forgiveness, conversion, deliverance, creation, provision, guidance, justification, sanctification, atonement, reconciliation, salvation, answered prayers and we shutter to leave something out.  If we are willing to talk of His deeds, God has given us plenty to talk about!

Gladness and joy are the appropriate spirit in which to praise the goodness of God.  Joy and thanksgiving go together.  Can you be sad while counting up all the blessings God has bestowed upon you?  Can you truly be thankful and not be joyful?  We rejoice in the Lord.

Thanksgiving and Prayer.
In Psalm 9:13, David pleads, “Have mercy upon me, O LORD.”  This breathes forth a humble spirit.  It exudes a deep spiritual need.  It indicates self-knowledge and self-awareness.  It make appeal to the source which possesses the power of spiritual healing.
Thou liftest me up from the gates of death.  Sickness, sin, despair, and temptation have worked to bring us low.  When it seems helpless and hopeless, God delivers and saves.  Underneath us are the everlasting arms of Almighty God.
The psalmist returns to praise.

This day of thanksgiving, let us use our lips to declare the true feelings of our hearts as we stand overwhelmed by God’s graciousness and lovingkindness.

Psalm 116 contains the central thought of love, adoration, and thanksgiving to God for His acts of redemption. The thoughts are personal.  God is magnified for His graciousness.  He has manifested mercy, deliverance from enemies and protection.  The Psalmist asks, “What shall I render unto the Lord for all His benefits toward me?

We want to focus on the response of the human heart that knows the grace of God. What can be done to manifest our gratitude?

Take the Cup of Blessing
We must first drink of the fullness of God’s goodness.  We must take it all in and experience His saving power.  Partake with joyful hearts.  Thanksgiving from the heart flows from participation in the stream of the grace of God.

Call Upon The Name of the Lord
In the Old Testament, the phrase, “to call upon the name of the Lord” was used frequently for worshipping God.  Worship directed to God is a manifestation of thanksgiving. Worship is homage paid to deity.  It is reverence, awe, love and devotion toward God.  It involves acts, sanctioned by God, that are directed to Him. Prayers are thank you notes to God. Praise glorifies His name.  In the midst of the assembly of the saints, God’s Word is declared and honored.  His works are remembered.  Worship attempts to give God what is rightly due Him.

I Am Thy Servant
God’s goodness toward us produces a desire to give something back.  Many today have become lovers of self.  This results in being self-centered, and self-absorbed.  Freedom from sin is the result of God’s saving acts (redemptive acts).  Such freedom results in our sonship.  Sonship without service is a manifestation of ingratitude. When we become lovers of God, we become selfless.  Service to God is the result of selflessness.  This is the key to sacrificial love.

Sacrifice of Thanksgiving
The Psalmist declares, “My inmost soul shall adore Thee.”  How?  He will do it with lips of prayer and praise.  He will surrender his heart in character and conduct that is befitting a servant of the Most High God.  He renders a thankful heart.  This is a heart that is humble, full of love and totally devoted to God’s Will.

A Challenge
Use holy ingenuity to search out various ways by which you may render fresh praises to our God!  Begin with the thoughts expressed in this Psalm.  Render to God the genuine praise His majesty and glory deserves.

     Are you thankful for your job?  In difficult economic times, you would think that everyone would be thankful for his/her job.  But, a Gallup poll indicated that nearly three-fourths of us with paid positions are “emotionally disengaged” (55%) or “actively disengaged” (16%) from their jobs.  The actively disengaged cost their companies $350 billion each year! (Christianity Today, Nov. 10, p. 47).
     In Luke 17:11-19, Luke relates an event in the life of Jesus where gratitude played a significant role in obtaining a special blessing.  Jesus was on His way to Jerusalem.  He was going to attend the Passover Feast toward the close of His personal ministry.  He went through that region northward through Samaria into the southern or southeastern part of Galilee so as to fall in with the pilgrims going from Galilee through Perea to Jerusalem.  As He went, He came to a certain city and encountered ten lepers.  Leprosy was a contagious skin disease which required separation from others.  The group of ten consisted of Jews and Samaritans.  They were united by a common malady.  They were unclean, isolated and hopeless.
     When they saw Jesus, they recognized Him and cried out to Him for mercy.  Jesus commands them to show themselves to the priest–a requirement of the law of Moses to be declared clean.  They were commanded to go before any healing took place!  This was a test of their faith.  They went as instructed and as they went, they were healed of their leprosy.  Faith must be active in response to the commands of Jesus.  No obedience, no blessing!  The blessing bestowed was a miracle of healing.  It meant instantaneous recovery from leprosy.  It was a wonderful blessing.
     One of the ten cleansed, when he saw he was healed, turned back and found Jesus and with a loud voice glorified God.  One effect of leprosy was the loss of the strength of the voice.  When healed, this man, a Samaritan, used his new voice to glorify God.  He also thanked Jesus for the tremendous blessing of healing.  The gratitude he showed was freely given from a humble heart touched by God’s graciousness.  Gratitude reflects a sacred memory of blessings received from God.  The gift of healing could not have been received except by the power of God.  The thanks offered completed the circle of relationship with Christ and so the leper that returned to give thanks receives a double blessing!  First, he recieves a temporal blessing in being healed from his leprosy.  Second, he receives a spiritual blessing of fullness of relationship with Jesus Christ.  When Jesus said to him, “thy faith hath made thee whole,” He meant not only that the man had been healed, but that he had been forgiven. 
     Where are the nine?  The nine had their cure, but the one, a Samaritan, had his cure plus fullness of relationship with Jesus.  “Temporal mercies are doubled and sweetened to us when fetched in by the prayers of faith (be merciful to me) and returned by the praises of faith (gratitude)” (Christianity Today, Nov. 10, p. 49). 
     Gratitude completes the circle of relationship with Jesus!  Without it, we are nothing but selfish takers.  With it, we are humble recipients of God’s blessings desiring fullness of relationship with Him.  Gratitude motives to deeper and richer relationship with God.

     How do you move, provide for, and keep 3,000,000 people happy?  They have to be fed.  They have to have water for themselves and their animals.  They have to be protected from their enemies.  God demonstrates His goodness in the miraculous provisions for the children of Israel during the 40 years of wilderness wanderings.  Consider the following details of God’s goodness.
     God provided manna for the people for forty years!  Let’s assume that the number of people in Israel was 3,000,000.  Do you know how much manna was needed to feed them each day in the wilderness?  One scholar has estimated that they needed, 4,500 tons of manna every day.  If this is true, and if you take into account that God fed His people every day for 40 years, this means 65,700,000 tons of manna supernaturally appeared on the ground.  God is good.
     How many quail do you think it would take to feed that massive group of Israelites?  It would take 90,000,000 quail for 30 days if one quail was provided for each Israelite.  Imagine the scene in Israel when millions of quail showed up in an unlikely place!  God is good.  (Figures taken from Rick Renner, Sparkling Gems From the Greek, pp. 695-699).
     Do you have any idea of how much water it would take to support 3,000,000 people?  You have to take into account the animals as well.  It would have required 15,000,000 gallons of water every day just to meet their basic needs for survival.  For one week the supply would be 100,000,000 gallons of water.  Multiply this by 40 years and you have a staggering amount of water miraculously provided by God.  God is good!
     The clothing and shoes that they wore during this time never wore out!  In Deut. 8:4, Moses writes, “Thy raiment waxed not old upon thee, neither did thy foot swell, these forty years.”  God is good!
     Israel saw and experienced the goodness of God on an unprecedented scale for 40 years.  Yet, the book of Hebrews records that they tempted God (Heb. 3:9).  To tempt God is to put God to the test of faithfulness to His nature and His word.  It betrays doubt and skepticism.  Will God do what He says or will He not?  But, tempting God reveals that they were not confident that God would take care of them.  They should have trusted God, instead they tempted Him.  They should have feared God, instead they forgot Him.  They should have loved God, instead they left Him. 
     After 40 years of mighty demonstration of God’s presence and power among them, they forgot God.  In Judges 2:10 and 13, the Bible reveals that “there arose another generation after them, which knew not the LORD, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel.”  “And they forsook the LORD, and served Baal and Ashtaroth.”  God’s goodness is met with ingratitude and unbelief! 
     The warning not to forget God is applicable to us.  We live in the midst of abundance.  We experience the goodness of God every day.  We must not stop trusting God and start trusting in the material things that He has provided.  “Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God” (Heb. 3:12).  Don’t forget how good God has been!

     An outstanding volume on the theme of thanksgiving is David Pao’s book, Thanksgiving An Investigation of a Pauline Theme.  This book is published by InterVarsity Press and is a part of a series called, “New Studies in Biblical Theology.”
     There are four words that are commonly associated with thanksgiving.
They are: God-centered, dependency, worship, and covenant.  The spirit of thanksgiving is born out of an understanding that God is the ultimate source of all things.  This involves both physical and spiritual things.  Creation passages affirm this fact.  Consider Gen. 1:1; John 1:1-3; Col. 1:16-18.  Pao mentions that thanksgiving in Paul’s writing is reserved for God and not for humans. The only possible exception he gives is Rom. 16:4 where Paul thanks Priscilla and Acquila for risking their lives to help Paul, but Pao mentions that even this shows a wider concern for the ministry of God and the work of God.  In thanksgiving, we recognize that God is the ultimate source of all things including our own existence.
     Secondly, in thanksgiving, we confess our dependency upon God.  Our narcissistic age inflates the gradiose self and manifests a stubborn independence. Narcissism is self-absorption and produces ingratitude.  We must be able to appreciate help and enrichment from others.  In thanksgiving, we confess our need of God.
     Thirdly, in thanksgiving, we express our gratitude through praise and prayer directed to God.  Worship is an expression of a grateful heart.  When we feel a sense of being overwhelmed by God’s goodness, our hearts are made to sing and to bless God’s holy name.  Feelings of entitlement rob us of gratitude.  God does not owe us anything.  But, He has freely given us all things to enjoy.  We must freely give our hearts to Him.
     Fourthly, in thanksgiving, we express our full consecration to God according to the covenant He has given us.  Thanksgiving is more than just words.  It must become a way of life.  Paul states that we present our bodies as a living sacrifice unto God (Rom. 12:1,2).  Complete consecration to God is the fullest expession of thanksgiving.  
     Here are some closing thoughts on thanksgiving gleaned from Bits and Pieces, Nov., 2008, p. 12.
     -The table is a meeting place, a gathering ground, the source of sustenance and nourishment, festivity, safety, and satisfaction.  A person cooking is a person giving: Even the simplest food is a gift.
     -He who forgets the language of gratitude can never be on speaking terms with happiness.
     -One single grateful thought raised to heaven is the most perfect prayer.
     -As bread is the staff of life, the simple sustenance of the body, so appreciation is the food of the soul.
     -“In everything, give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you” (I Thess. 5:18).