If I had to choose between my wife and my putter... well, I’d miss her.

Gary Player

Thankfulness

Recently I was asked to lead prayers of thankfulness at church. This is a shorter version of what I said. Use it as a prayer, changing it to include your own reasons for being thankful.

First of all Lord, we thank you that you are a personal God and that you want to have a relationship with us. Thank you that you have given us the amazing privilege of talking to you.

With the psalmist Lord, we give thanks for your unfailing love and your wonderful deeds for mankind. We thank you that you are good and that you love endures forever. The psalmist wrote “I give thanks for you answered me and became my salvation” and we add our thanks to the psalmist’s.

With the apostle Paul we thank you for the grace and gracious favour you have given us, for the victory we have the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul tells us to give thanks in all circumstances, something we find a real challenge.

We thank you too for the picture in Revelation of the living creatures giving glory and honour and thanks to the one sit on the throne for ever and ever.

Lord as we reflect on 2014, all of us have experienced exciting and encouraging things and we have all faced challenges and disappointments. Help us to view everything that has happened with thankfulness.

At the most basic level we thank you that we have homes to live in and food to eat each day. We realise that for many people, for example, in some parts of the world such simple necessities of life seem like extreme luxury. We thank you for friendship and family. We thank you for our church family, the people who love us, accept us and care for us.

We think you for the spiritual blessings that we experience in the practical things of life. Thank you that Jesus died for us and that our sins have been forgiven. Thank you for the incredible promise that you live in us and that you will never leave us nor forsake us.

We thank you that you know our joys and our sorrows and that you share both with us.

As we look forward to 2015, which will undoubtedly bring joys and sorrows, help us to view them all through the filter of gratitude to you. And we thank you finally that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ and that even if our lives on Earth end this year that we have the certainty of going to be with you for ever.

In the name of Christ – Amen.

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