This is the Truth Network. Encouraging prayer. God offers an open invitation for his people to talk with him at any time about anything. On encouraging prayer, Dr. James Banks, author of the best-selling Prayers for Prodigals and many other books on prayer, provides weekly biblical insight to help you learn to love to pray.
And now, here's James.
Well, Thanksgiving is coming up, and today on Encouraging Prayer, we're going to talk about how giving thanks makes us happy. James? Yeah, Thanksgiving is more of a Christian holiday than we realize, isn't it? I mean, there's. You can't have Thanksgiving without having someone to be thankful to.
Right? After all, if if I'm thankful Whom am I thanking?
Well said. Yeah, who would that be? I mean, there's something about giving thanks that draws us closer to God. And just yesterday, I was reading in Psalm 116, verse 17, where the psalmist prays, I will offer you a sacrifice of thanksgiving. And I began to get a little convicted.
I began to think, wait a minute. You know, when was the last time I did that? When I just, and we talked about this recently, you know, giving thanks when you don't feel like it. Am I growing in this? Because, you know, what if we do this when we go through the day?
We're going to be in a better place by the time we get to the end of the day spiritually. than we were when we started. Oh well. Yeah, absolutely. And I...
You know, when you say this, it brings to my mind an experience that God really reminded me in a really difficult situation. The importance of this idea is that. I have for years at the beginning of my time to my devotional time with God early in the morning is just started thanking Him like, man, yesterday that was an awesome stay. Whatever it was that I was really thankful for, I love to start my morning off that way.
Well, a few years ago, well, someone who was very, very, very dear to me and close to me attempted suicide, and they did it in such a way that just kind of blew our minds in that they had googled how to do it most effectively, and it was by taking Tylenol in it. It just, we didn't see it coming. You know, when we googled it ourselves, when we realized that this person had taken a bottle of Tylenol, and we realized, oh my goodness, that this was a horrible situation, rushed them to the hospital. Uh it was nip and tuck.
Some horrible things you know went on for almost a day. And at the end of that, unfortunately, when you attempt suicide in North Carolina, it's against the law, so they Put them in the psychiatric ward, which made them even angrier at us. And it was really a difficult situation. As we finished up that day and a night with no sleep, another someone very close to me also had to move. That we had to help them in order for them to get their deposit back.
And that was a grueling day. We get home that night about one o'clock in the morning. And The heat was off in our house. It was like February and it was like 40 degrees and it was freezing. And I said, Well, I'm not, you know, we just grabbed some blankets.
We're not going to a hotel. We're going to spend the night here. And so we grabbed those blankets. And the next morning, I got up, it was still freezing cold, and I can remember vividly sitting in the couch, just totally mad. Like, how could I go through all this?
And Lord, and I said, you know. This morning, I'm not thankful. I'm just going to take the gloves off, and I'm going to tell you, I am not thankful. This is not what, you know, I can't be happy about all these things that are going on, Lord. I'm just not.
And as I sat there in my self pity and the smoke began to clear, I'll never, ever, ever forget the spirit, which I don't know why I hadn't quenched it, whispers in my ear, Robbie, They lived. And O my soul I'll never forget that moment. Like, how could I be so ungrateful? When the miracle of miracles had been done for me and my family in this situation, it is something I will never, ever, ever forget. And it was someone very close to you, and that realization, God.
God was there. Yeah. Yeah, this this You know, sometimes we really have to boil life down to what really matters. Don't we? And It's.
It's it's just so easy for us to to go along and uh get swept up in the in the flow of things and Um We we gotta press pause. We we've gotta stop. And And the more we do that, even in those hard, hard places. You're right. God has a way of breaking through, doesn't he?
Yeah, it's it's and when he does, it's it's a beautiful thing to see. And there was no condemnation with that. Yeah. Yeah, go ahead. What would be the interesting thing though is that Again you did press pause, even though things were a mess.
You did stop, and you do have a practice of thanking God regularly. And you just weren't going to, you know, because you were letting him in. And just in doing that, things changed. Yeah, what a gift prayer is. I I c I you know, What an amazing friend we have in Jesus, right?
It's just beyond the value of life is to be able to share it with God. Mm-hmm. Yeah. But because we are so self-focused, that sacrifice of thanksgiving has to be that moment of turning out from ourselves and turning to Him. And oh, as we do, you know, sometimes it takes time and sometimes you're right.
The gloves have to come off. But The beautiful thing is they can. You know? They can. We can be that honest with God.
And he'll meet us and he'll love us and he won't condemn us. And that's such a good thing. Oh, it is. Oh, it is. It's a good time to pray.
So, Lord. Father. Yeah, Lord, help us. Help us in this. Thank you, Father, for this story from Robbie and just help us.
all to be in that place of realizing, oh. We can thank you, and there's more than we know that we can thank you for. Just move our hearts. to that place and and Help us to go there more and more. In Jesus' name.
Amen. Ah man. You can hear more from Pastor James by visiting his website, jamesbanks.org, or by visiting Peace Church in Durham, North Carolina. May God bless you and encourage you as you pray.
