Thankfulness: Another Day of Life

If you are like me, you did not manually wake your mind up, or tell your heart to beat all night, or have an intentional effort to maintain your life.

Thankfulness: Another Day of Life

This week's devotions are written by my son, Bryant Forshee, Lead Student Pastor for Cross Church, Springdale, AR campus.

- Pastor Danny

"Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, who does not change like shifting shadows."

(James 1:17, CSB)

For today's devotion, I want to refresh your memory with Jerry Bridges' quote, or at least the beginning part of it: "Thankfulness to God is a recognition that God in His goodness and faithfulness has provided for us and cared for us, both physically..." I want you to think about this: God provides for you physically.

If you are like me, you did not manually wake your mind up, or tell your heart to beat all night, or have an intentional effort to maintain your life last night or throughout the day. No, God has provided for you physically. He created you and placed you in your family, which we talked about yesterday, but He is also sustaining you, maintaining you, sanctifying you, growing you, and looking after you.

That is what I want to drive home today for all of us: being thankful for "today" that God has given us. We are not promised tomorrow and we see from James 1 that "every good and perfect gift is from above." A new day is a good gift that we get from God! We may not know what it holds, but a new day is a gift because with a new day comes new opportunities to know God more, love people more, and walk in what God has called us to do that day!

Here is what I would encourage you to do: after your greeting, start every prayer with, "thank you for another day of life." What that looks like in my prayer life is, "Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for another day of life." I do not know where I first heard that or remember who first did it, but when I first heard that, my perspective changed on starting out my prayers with an acknowledgement of my amazing Heavenly Father followed by thankfulness to be alive on this earth. It has so stuck with me that I try to start every prayer with this statement to build my thankfulness to God.

Today, as you go throughout your day and you're not thinking about telling your heart to pump blood or your feet to put one in front of the other, and all the other things your Heavenly Father does to take care of you physically, may you walk in thankfulness to God, and as you walk in this thankfulness, spend some time thanking Him for another day of life and all that He does to sustain you!