Gratitude, Thanksgiving & Praise

Today as I walked into my parents home for our weekly Sunday morning Bible study, also with my sister and her family, I told Mom "I'm as happy as a little kid out of school for the summer". Why was I so happy? Because I was up and about this morning, instead of sleeping through noon, like I have for the past several days, and I knew that it wasn't soon going to be dark before my day really had a chance to get started good. I hadn't been in this kind of a rut any recently until this. Some medication I take makes me more prone to sleeping long hours, if I don't get regular exercise. I was sick for a few days and managed to hurt my foot twice. I'm very thankful I got well quickly. I love our family Bible study and it was wonderful to be back in church today.

I've been reading from E.M. Bounds Essentials of Prayer, which is so inspiring. Here are some excerpts from chapter four, "Prayer, Praise, and Thanksgiving" including a link to this chapter online, where you can also read the whole book at Christians' Classics Ethereal Library.

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bounds/essentials.v.html

Excerpts:

Many are the causes for thanksgiving and praise. The Psalms are filled with many songs of praise and hymns of thanksgiving, all pointing back to the results of prayer. Thanksgiving includes gratitude.

Thanksgiving is just what the word itself signifies—the giving of thanks to God. It is giving something to God in words which we feel at heart for blessings received. Gratitude arises from a contemplation of the goodness of God.

Answered prayers cause gratitude, and gratitude brings forth a love that declares it will not cease praying: “Because he hath inclined his ear unto me, therefore will I call upon him as long as I live.” Gratitude and love move to larger and increased praying.

As prayer brings things to us which beget gratitude and thanksgiving, so praise and gratitude promote prayer, and induce more praying and better praying.
Gratitude and thanksgiving forever stand opposed to all murmurings at God’s dealings with us, and all complainings at our lot. Gratitude and murmuring never abide in the same heart at the same time. An unappreciative spirit has no standing beside gratitude and praise. And true prayer corrects complaining and promotes gratitude and thanksgiving.

The bane of the wilderness-journey of the Israelites on their way to Canaan was their proneness to murmur and complain against God and Moses. For this, God was several times greatly grieved, and it took the strong praying of Moses to avert God’s wrath because of these murmurings. The absence of gratitude left no room nor disposition for praise and thanksgiving, just as it is so always.

The spirit of praise was once the boast of the primitive Church. ...That this spirit of praise is sadly deficient in our present-day congregations must be evident to every careful observer. That it is a mighty force in projecting the Gospel, and its body of vital forces, must be equally evident.

Praise is so distinctly and definitely wedded to prayer, so inseparably joined, that they cannot be divorced. Praise is dependent on prayer for its full volume and its sweetest melody.

Giving thanks is the very life of prayer. It is its fragrance and music, its poetry and its crown. Prayer bringing the desired answer breaks out into praise and thanksgiving. So that whatever interferes with and injures the spirit of prayer necessarily hurts and dissipates the spirit of praise.

Where grace abounds, song abounds. When God is in the heart, heaven is present and melody is there, and the lips overflow out of the abundance of the heart.

The music of praise, for there is real music of soul in praise, is too hopeful and happy to be denied.

According to our special needs, so must our praying be. We are to be special and particular and bring to the knowledge of God by prayer, supplication and thanksgiving, our particular requests, the things we need, the things we greatly desire. And with it all, accompanying all these requests, there must be thanksgiving.
It is indeed a pleasing thought that what we are called upon to do on earth, to praise and give thanks...