Thanksgiving and Prayer


In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.--Phil. 4: 6.

Prayer should always be accompanied with thanksgiving. An ungrateful heart cannot truly pray. To be ungrateful is to be selfish. “Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may spend it in your pleasures.” (Jas. 4: 3).

Prayer is the mightiest force in the world. If God made this mighty power available to ungrateful and selfish people, they would use it for their own advantage and aggrandizement; they might employ it against people they disliked. Instead of using prayer to get God's will done, they would turn it into a means of accomplishing their own desires and designs, and the result would be disastrous.

Prayer brings us into contact with the omnipotent Power. Thus James could say, "The prayer of a good man is full of power in its working" (Jas. 5: 16).

God and man working together, that is prayer. And this method of cooperation with God has to do with the direction of unseen forces, the directing of those forces toward the accomplishment of the Divine will in the redemption of a lost world and the building of the kingdom of God in human society.

That prayer is a means of cooperating with God in getting His will done, and not merely a means of getting things for ourselves, is a truth we need to remember. We may pray for many things, but never should we pray for anything selfishly. It is asking amiss to ask for something, even a spiritual blessing, just to be used for our own satisfaction or pleasure. The spirit of prayer is canceled out if our prayers are motivated by self-interest.

If we are grateful to God for His blessings upon us, our prayers will reach out to others to bring His blessings upon them.

For temporal blessings, let our prayers be moderate and qualified, for spiritual blessings, for light and strength and grace, that we may be more efficient and more effective in the service of God, let them be unbounded and importunate.

The redemption of the world is the supreme purpose towards which all the Divine activities are directed, and all of our prayers should be aimed in this direction, whether we pray for temporal or spiritual blessings.