The Write Place

Psalm 100:4
“Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
    and his courts with praise!
    Give thanks to him; bless his name!

We are made to worship and give thanks. In our culture, we say we don’t need to worship, and may begrudgingly admit we should be thankful. But we all worship something, apart from God they are idols. But both praise and thanksgiving are commands and a blessing, natural for us and for your good.


We think about Philippians 4 often, but don’t miss how what giving thanks produces.

Philipians 4:4-7
“⁴ Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! ⁵ Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. ⁶ Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. ⁷ And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Giving thanks is an exercise in remembering what we have and what has been done for us. It points us back to who has loved us. In light of these things, how can you forget peace? The unease and distress in the unbelieving world starts to make more sense.

There is a natural impulse in us as human beings to give thanks, praise and worship.

The simple question arises every Thanksgiving, who are we giving thanks to? Thanks demands a person for an object, not anything impersonal. But that’s the nonsense alternative people have to choose.

In our lostness, we are turning to worshipping and thanking the creation not the creator.

Romans 1:18-23

“²⁵ because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.”

One thing irritates me more than most things, and that is poor translations that miss the point. Romans 1 has one such translation that alters the meaning almost entirely. When Paul says, “they worshipped the creature rather than the creator” the original Greek is “the thing created” (τῇ κτίσει).

The created world became viewed as the thing that made us; you may know it as Mother nature. The tagline “Nature made me” (by nature made) and “it’s not nice to mess with mother nature” (Chiffon Margerine) are almost comical admissions of this. More and more we are seeing people thank the sun, the earth, the ground, the rain, and treat animals as equals or superiors to you and me. Native Americans used to thank animals they hunted, and you are seeing similar things more and more. After all if they are part of the creator, they deserve to be thanked and worshipped.

It is no surprise to me that as soon as we got rid of the creator, the creation become the object of worship. Environmentalism and earth worship are everywhere today. Take it for what it is, our culture’s growing practice of praise and thanksgiving.

Compare that with Ephesians 1:3-15 where Paul praises and thanks God for what he has done in the work of salvation, I will share the bookends below.

^“3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. 

¹⁵ For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God’s people, ¹⁶ I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.” 


We are made to worship. The empty, secular godless Thanksgiving can’t and won’t last. Now is a good time to remind the world of the God who gives every breath, the praise due him, and the loving relationship open in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So let me end reminding you what we have to be thankful for in Christ Jesus, and the hope you have to offer the world, and the praise we offer to God.

Ephesians 1:3-14

³ Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. ⁴ For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love ⁵ he^[a] predestined us for adoption to sonship^[b] through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— ⁶ to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. ⁷ In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace ⁸ that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, ⁹ he^[c] made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, ¹⁰ to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.

¹¹ In him we were also chosen,^[d] having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, ¹² in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. ¹³ And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, ¹⁴ who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.