“We are asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, so that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him: bearing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, so that you may have great endurance and patience, joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the saints’ inheritance in the light.” – Colossians 1:9-11
My prayer for you today is that you would “joyfully give thanks to the Father.” Don’t miss the connection between joy and giving thanks. The one stirs up the other. If you experience joy, then thankfulness comes as the easy and natural response. If you give thanks, it stirs up joyfulness deep within. Like one of Newton’s perpetual motion devices with one ball causing another to fly up only to come back down and launch the original ball off again, joy and giving thanks continually reinforce and re-energize one another.
Do you find yourself joyless today? Give thanks to the Father! Start with being grateful for the breath of air you just took in and keep going until light starts to break into your soul. Gratefulness stirs up joyfulness!
Do you find yourself lacking gratitude? Begin where you are already experiencing joy and say, “thank you!” Failing to express gratitude for the joy we are already experiencing can lead to taking that joy for granted. When it slips away, we can be left confused and wondering. But if we attend to the joy we have been given, we can grow in gratitude and grow in joy.
Think These Things 