12/26/2022
By Pastor Vinnie Cappetta
"Follow the Leader: Always Giving Thanks"
“…always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Ephesians 5:20
It's pretty easy to give thanks to the Lord for things when they are going well. We know all good things come from the Lord, so we should be thanking Him, right? However, Paul doesn't say we should only be giving thanks while we are receiving blessings. He tells us we should ALWAYS be giving thanks. This is a very different perspective than the world’s perspective.
When we are having trouble, it's tough to give thanks for past victories. They seem so far off. Yet, those are the very things we should be dwelling on. If the Lord gave us victory then, why aren't we trusting Him now for the future victories we will receive? If we follow Paul's advice here, current problems are really just future testimonies of how the Lord has helped us.
Many years ago the church I served was dragged through difficult circumstances. We had our eyes set on a new facility being built in our town. We had been searching for over a year for this kind of space. A business approached us about leasing the space from them, and it sounded like a good deal, so we prayed and decided this is the way the Lord was calling us. The build got six month’s behind on its completion date. Because of the delays, the business that we were to share the space with wasn’t able to move in and we lost the opportunity to move in. As we began searching for a suitable facility, we thanked God that he didn’t allow us to move into a space that obviously wasn’t His will for us. But if I am being honest, it wasn’t easy to give thanks for the emotional roller coaster ride.
ALWAYS give thanks. Remember victory and blessing always proceed from God, so we give thanks in the name of the Lord Jesus.
