A Heart Filled with Thanksgiving

“Let your roots grow down into Him, and let your lives be built on Him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness” (Colossians 2:7 NLT).

The Apostle Paul reminds us in this verse that as we mature in our devotion to Jesus Christ our LORD and Savior, our cup should overflow with gratitude and thankfulness. Thankfulness is a foundational fruit cultivated within our walk with Christ! Now before Christ, well … that would be a different story. We become thankful when things go our way, and Thanksgiving is simply Turkey Day.

Maybe, before Jesus, we carried around a victim mentality and blamed others for every little thing going wrong in our lives. Or you grumbled so often people preferred the plague quarantine rather than a visit from you. Perhaps instead of half full you see the cup is half empty, the water’s dirty, and the cup is not nearly as nice as you deserve!

With Christ, we experience the fullness of God. This means, we are complete, lacking nothing, and made whole in His Holiness and perfection. Backing up a few verses to Colossians 1:19 NASB, Paul writes, “It was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Christ.” Jesus is God manifest in human bodily form, and within him, God’s character, perfection, holiness, power, and love reside. Choosing to lace ourselves to His truth on our daily walk opens the doors of our hearts to thankfulness for all Jesus has done for us.

I don’t know about you but there seems to be a lot of people weary in the world. It just seems like people are walking through a desert valley thirsting for a drink of new life. I think back and remember how God brought me from the pit to His palace. He quenched my thirst! We have kind of a running joke in our family, after we would have ham on a holiday the kids would be lining up for a drink to quench their thirst. They were all so very thirsty! Eating something that contains lots of sodium will do that to a person.

Like my kids in the good old days, there seems to be a lot of people lining up for things of this world, which will continue to leave them thirsty and unfulfilled. We have the opportunity to share a drink from the cup of life everlasting. We should be sharing Jesus out of the thankfulness in our hearts. Jesus Christ is the only one who can quench life’s spiritual thirst. As you drink from His cup you become content, satisfied, overflowing with joy and thankfulness!

For most of us, the road was crooked getting to where we are now. At times the road felt daunting, or even hopeless. When my heart was failing, looking like Swiss cheese, I didn’t know it, but God did. Before I knew there was a problem, He was preparing a way for it to be repaired. My heart had more holes than holiness, but God knew where I was going, and wanted to forgive where I had been! Yet thirty-five years ago this month, laying down on that operating table, I was still spiritually separated from God.

You see I was born with a bad heart. Not just the congenital birth defective heart, but the heart born of Adamic sin. Yes, the doctors had filled the holes in my heart, but I still had a spiritual hole only God could fill. It had taken the doctors a year to find what was wrong in my physical body, and it would take many more years for me to understand true thankfulness.

It wasn’t that I didn’t value my life or couldn’t see the many times that God had protected me, it was more an expectation of deliverance. I was young and saw myself as more ten-foot tall than six-foot under. I just knew my fitness students were waiting for my return!

God met me where I was on my journey, sending a fitness student sharing prayer with me. I gave my life to Jesus that day and He saved me from my sin. Praise God!

Twenty years to the day, for whatever reason, the patches on my holey heart broke loose and required surgical repair once again. The right side of my heart was twice as large as the left. God placed me in the hands of the right physician and surgically sewed my heart back together. And while the right side of my heart returned to normal size, my thankfulness to God has grown exponentially! I will be forever thankful to Him, for my healing, and for saving me from my sin!

So, let me ask you, has God done that for you? Is your heart filled with thankfulness? Let me offer you Romans 10:9 for consideration. “If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

If life is leaving you thirsting for more, don’t give up, give it to God! He will meet you right where you are and quench your thirst! Make this Thanksgiving one you will never forget!

Click here to learn about Theresa Rowe’s show, “Shaped by Faith,” and when to watch it on Inspiration TV.