Billy Graham said, “A spirit of thankfulness is one of the distinctive marks of a Christian whose heart is attuned to the Lord. Thank God within the midst of trials and each persecution.”
In his biography of eighteenth-century British abolitionist William Wilberforce, William Hague shares a quote of Wilberforce’s from a letter to his sister one Easter. “’The day has been delightful. I used to be out before six. . . I believe my very own devotions grow to be more fervent when offered in this manner amidst the final chorus with which all nature appears to be swelling the song of praise and thanksgiving.’ It was the echo of this song that his friends could hear when in his presence.”
In his Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, British author and literary scholar C.S. Lewis said, “I actually have tried…to make every pleasure right into a channel of adoration. I don’t mean just by giving thanks for it. One must in fact give thanks, but I mean something different. How shall I put it?… Gratitude exclaims, very properly, ‘How good of God to present me this.’ Adoration says, ‘What should be the standard of that Being whose far-off and momentary coruscations [glitters] are like this!’ One’s mind runs back up the sunbeam to the sun.”
In his Smaller Catechism, reformer Martin Luther states, “I think in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. What does this mean? I think that God has made me and all creatures; that He has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members, my reason and all my senses, and still takes care of them. He also gives me clothing and shoes, food and drinks, house and residential, wife and kids, land, animals, and all I actually have. He richly and every day provides me with all that I would like to support this body and life. He defends me against all danger and guards and protects me from all evil. All this He does only out of fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, with none merit or worthiness in me. For all this it’s my duty to thank and praise, serve and obey Him.”
George Frideric Handel, the good composer who wrote what is taken into account by many to be his masterwork, The Messiah, expressed his thanksgiving to the Lord in the best way God gifted him—through music. “Give Thanks to the Lord” is a chunk from The Messiah and quotes and references Psalm 136:1, “Give due to the LORD, for He is sweet,
for His steadfast love endures eternally.”
Nineteenth-century pastor Charles Spurgeon is named the “prince of preachers” due to his powerful witness to the Gospel and the enduring legacy of his work (his devotionals are still used worldwide). He said this about thanksgiving: “Our worship must have reference to the past in addition to to the long run; if we don’t bless the Lord for what we have now already received, how can we reasonably search for more? We are permitted to bring our petitions, and subsequently we’re in honour certain to bring our thanksgivings.”
Thanksgiving and praise go hand-in-hand, and evangelist and Bible teacher Oswald Chambers wrote, “Everything that God has created is like an orchestra praising Him. ‘All Thy works shall praise Thee.’ In the ear of God all the pieces He created makes exquisite music, and man joined within the paean of praise until he fell; then there got here within the frantic discord of sin. The realisation [his spelling] of Redemption brings man by means of the minor note of repentance back into tune with praise again…Praising God is the last word end and aim of all we undergo.”
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