“Praying with Thanksgiving” – Week 1
By Brenda V. Hess, Area Women’s Ministries President, Western Europe, Mediterranean & Middle East

Many things come to our mind when we think about the month of November—the beautiful colors of the leaves, cooler weather, football (well, some people anyway!), a hot cup of coffee or hot chocolate, a long weekend off work, lots and lots of good food, and the fact that Christmas is right around the corner.

But the number one thing that most of us think about during the month of November is a very special holiday called Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is more than turkey and pumpkin pie; it reminds us of the blessings of cherishing our families and friends, and remembering the goodness of God.

This month I want us to look at Thanksgiving in the following spiritual perspectives:

Week 1—Praying with thanksgiving
Week 2—Praising with thanksgiving
Week 3—Overflowing with thanksgiving
Week 4—Giving of our time with thanksgiving

Praying with Thanksgiving
We have probably all, at one time or another, had times in our life when we prayed a lot of selfish prayers, such as:

• Prayers of desperation—which say, “God you’ve got to help me!”
• Prayers of self-pity—which say, “God, things are so awful!”
• Prayers of resignation—which say, “God, I can’t go on any longer. I want to quit!”

But there is a different kind of prayer than these that I want to learn how to pray more often:

Prayers of thanksgiving

The Apostle Paul teaches us an important lesson concerning how to give thanks in our praying. In Philippians 4:6, he writes from a prison, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” I find it strange that Paul himself was suffering. He was in prison. Yet, he tells us that we should pray with thanksgiving. When we present our requests to God, it is essential that we keep our prayers God-centered and not self-centered.

The Apostle Paul also wrote in 1 Thessalonians 5:18 (NIV), “Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” We don’t need to only pray prayers of thanksgiving when things are going good, but we need to pray prayers of thanksgiving at all times, in all situations. We thank Him when the sun is shining and we thank Him when the dark clouds are all around us. We thank Him when things are going the way we want them to go, and we thank Him when it seems our world is falling apart.

When we mix thanks with prayer, it somehow changes our attitude toward the situations in our life. When we think about what God has done for us in the past, what He is doing for us in the present, and what He is going to do for us in the future, we begin to increase our faith and pray with thanks-giving.

Let’s determine in our mind that we will pray with thanks-giving, not only on Thanksgiving Day, but every day of the year!

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