Just by virtue of the fact that most of us are Americans and live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world and have a roof over our heads and luxuries that most people in the rest of the world couldn’t even begin to imagine should be enough to have all of us on our faces before God giving thanks to the Lord and praising His name every single day of our lives; not to mention at a time we call “Thanksgiving!” Yet it seems that we often need a refresher on what is praise and thanksgiving and what is not and the blessings and curses brought on accordingly.

After a day of literally not being on the private site more than a few minutes due to some major computer issues, resulting in the purchase of a new one and spending all afternoon with my computer technician to set up my new system and get everything moved over and updated…all a HUGE praise), I logged in Wednesday night truly expecting to see some posts filled with praise and thanksgiving; especially after one member’s invitation to do just that and the awesome example another member has set for all of us in the past few weeks! So I couldn’t believe what I saw and ended up deleting several post without even reading them all the way through…which is something I’ve NEVER done before!!! I love you all dearly, but I have to admit that I just don’t understand why it is so difficult to GENUINELY praise God with hearts filled to overflowing with praise and thanksgiving for our many blessings. And that should not and does not depend on or have anything to do with what any other person in our lives does or doesn’t do, or on what circumstances we face at any given time when we truly know WHO OUR GOD IS AND HOW MUCH HE LOVES US AND HOW FAITHFUL HE IS TO uphold and fulfill HIS WORD!

So perhaps we need to be reminded of the definition of “praise” to better understand what it means to PRAISE GOD. And then we might need to be reminded of the definition of ”thanksgiving” so we know what that means as well; because we’re not doing either when what we write is full of all the ways we’re “struggling”…”being attacked”…”broken hearted”disappointed”…”suffering” and everything else I saw in posts Wednesday night that actually had the words praise and/or thanksgiving in their titles. And as we can see by reading the following Seeds Of Faith posts, the history of FAM just proves that when the praises go up, so do the number of restorations, and when the site is filled with woes and self pity posts that tend to magnify the works of the flesh and devil instead, there are no restorations. So with that in mind, I’m just not going to even bother reading posts that do that in the future; I’m going to delete them and have instructed our other editors to do the same thing.

Yes, we all have struggles as human beings, particularly as we face the challenges of separation and/or divorce, and they too are an important part of our testimonies because they glorify and draw attention to the awesome work God is doing in our hearts and lives and His UNFAILING FAITHFULNESS TO UPHOLD THE POWER AND PROMISE OF HIS WORD. BUT a post with very few words of praise and thanksgiving sprinkled in what really just lists all the details of why someone ISN’T all that happy, not truly praising God and DOESN’T even come close to having a heart filled with thanksgiving does neither! So I’d STRONGLY suggest reading and taking to heart, Understanding what Happens when We Magnify and Validate the Work of the Devil , and then the following SOF posts to truly understand what praise and thanksgiving is and what it isn’t and what happens when we praise and truly give thanks to God and when we don’t:
Praise in ALL THINGS
If Only We Could Understand the SUPERNATURAL Power of Praise and Thanksgiving!
Speak Words of Praise and Thanksgiving for Life and Blessings!
Let Everything that has Breath Praise the Lord!
Recognizing the Power of Praise and that it is Our Purpose
The Awesome Power of Praise and Thanksgiving

If we want the power and promise of God’s Word to be manifested in our lives, then I hope and pray that we will learn to truly praise God and truly have thanksgiving in our hearts because God would be a liar and make a mockery of His Word if He blessed and rewarded mumbling and grumbling with the awesome miracle of restored marriages. And when what seems like restoration happens by our own hand instead of by the SUPERNATURAL power of God; it doesn’t last because as Psalm 127:1 declares, everything done by our own hand is in vain and does not last.

So I pray that all of us will come to know and live according to the awesome promise of Psalm 100:3-5, which says Know that the LORD is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the LORD is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.

And I pray that those whose posts I deleted Wednesday night will realize that they in particular have SO much to be praising and thanking God for this Thanksgiving; if a restored marriage and spending the holiday alone with our spouse, being blessed with the gift of a huge material blessing that so radically changes our life, a spouse demonstrating a total change in divorce plans and God working to deliver us from what has been a great burden for years isn’t enough to warrant and elicit NOTHING BUT JOYFUL PRAISE AND THANKSGIVING FROM US, then why should God even bother blessing us with anything else? After all, that just demonstrates an unbelievable lack of gratitude and thanksgiving, so there’s no reason for Gog to expect anything more from us in the future when we obviously don’t truly appreciate what He has already done for us.

As the FAM members know, God has truly blessed me beyond belief in the past few months and NOTHING could keep me from singing His praises every day for the rest of my life and all day long! But I can assure you that if I had spent most of my time thinking about the challenges I faced, what I didn’t have, how long it was taking to see my prayers answered and those things I wanted and didn’t have, or diminished every praise with posts filled with those things, I wouldn’t be looking forward to the future with my husband today. So we ALL need to remember that the Bible warns us that the “little foxes spoil the vine” (Song of Solomon 2:15) and “A little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough” (Galatians 5:9 NASB).” And I pray that the Lord will fill your hearts with so much praise and thanksgiving that there’s no room for anything else. And when that happens, we’ll start seeing more and more names moved to the Restored Marriage list!

Sadly, I know of at least ffive marriages that have been restored in the past year, and there’s not one word about them on the site, and I get call after call filled with great praises of how God is moving, which never make it on the site either. So I suggest that we all read, study and take to heart the very important revelation found in Ephesians 1:3-14 because bringing praise and glory to the name of Jesus is the ONLY thing that motivates and moves the hand of God to move in our lives, marriages and in ALL circumstances! And if we really want Him to do that, we had better learn what it means to praise God and GIVE THANKS IN EVERYTHING (1 Thessalonians 5:18)!

Posted Friday, November 27th, 2009 at 10:24 am in Seeds Of Faith.