Colossians 2:6,7
As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.
A. W. PINK (1886-1952): Faith is thankful acceptance, and thankfulness is an expression of love.
WILLIAM JAY (1769-1853): “It is a good thing,” says the Psalmist, “to give thanks unto the Lord, and to sing praises unto thy name, O Most High: to shew forth thy lovingkindness in the morning, and thy faithfulness every night,” Psalm 92:1.
JEREMIAH DYKE (1584-1639): We are to be taken up in duties of thanksgiving, and to be more than ordinarily enlarged therein. There is no such way to enlarge the heart in that duty, as by meditation, to heat and warm our hearts. So Psalm 104:33,34: I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live. I will sing praise unto my God while I have my being; my meditation of Him shall be sweet; I will be glad in the Lord. There is nothing that so feeds spiritual joy, and so maintains and holds up that holy frame that should be in the heart in the duty of thanksgiving, as meditation. That is the oil and the fuel that keeps such fire burning. The sweeter our meditation is, the more is the heart prepared and enlarged to praises, thanksgiving, and joy in the Lord.
MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): When we are most thankful we should always give ourselves to prayer…Thanksgiving must have a part in every prayer…I am sure we now have reason to thank God, upon our knees.
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES (1899-1981): We have our problems and troubles but there on our knees we must ask ourselves: What can I thank God for? We have to do that deliberately…We must remind ourselves of it. We must say “I may be in trouble at the moment, but I can thank God for my salvation and that He has sent His son to die on the Cross for me and for my sins. There is a terrible problem facing me, I know, but He has done that for me. I thank God that He sent His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ , into the world. I will thank Him for bearing my sins in His own body on the tree, I will thank Him for rising again for my justification. I will pour out my heart in thanksgiving for that. I will thank Him for the many blessings I have received in the past.”
JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564): In the first place, while it is our duty to allow no favour from God to pass without rendering praise, it becomes us, nevertheless, more especially when our prayers have been favourably regarded by Him, to acknowledge His mercy with thanksgiving, as He commands us to do in Psalm 50:15, Call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.
JOHN NEWTON (1725-1807): Repeated supports and deliverances, in answer to prayer, afford new motives and causes for praise and thanksgiving.
AMY CARMICHAEL (1867-1951): We know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him, I John 5:15. We pray from the ground of that certainty; not towards the certainty, but from it. Is that why we have the words, “in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving?” We give thanks before we see.
D. L. MOODY (1837-1899): One reason why we don’t have more answers to our prayers is because we are not thankful enough. The divine injunction is, “Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God,” Philippians 4:6. Some one has well said there are three things in this verse—careful for nothing, prayerful for everything, thankful for any thing.
FRANCES BEVAN (1827-1909): When God honours a person to suffer for His truth, this is a great privilege: “Unto you it is given not only to believe on Him, but to suffer for his sake,” Philippians 1:29…This made John Careless, an English martyr (though he died not at the stake, but yet in prison for Christ), say, “Such an honour ’tis as angels are not permitted to have; therefore, God forgive me mine unthankfulness.”
WILLIAM SECKER (died 1681): He enjoys much who is thankful for little.
FRANCES BEVAN: God has said “not many mighty, not many noble, are called.” The Countess of Huntingdon said that she was thankful for the letter ‘m’.
D. L. MOODY: John Bunyan thanked God more for Bedford Jail than for any thing that ever happened to him.
WILLIAM JAY (1769-1853): It was well Bunyan did not escape from the prison at Bedford. Or we should not have had his Pilgrim’s Progress and his Holy War.
JOHN NEWTON: We have great reason to be thankful for the instructions and writings of spiritual men.
RENÉ PACHE (1904-1979): Let us thank God that He has so marvelously watched over the integrity of His Word and that He permitted the whole canon of the ancient Scriptures to come down to us—and nothing else but that.
MARTIN LUTHER (1483-1546): No greater mischief can happen to a Christian people, than to have God’s Word taken from them, or falsified, so that they no longer have it pure and clear…Our unthankfulness for, and light esteem of God’s Word, will do more than anything to help the Pope into the saddle again.
JOHN TRAPP (1601-1699): Hearty thanks must be given to God: such as cometh not from the roof of the mouth, but the root of the heart…Bugenhagen, a famous divine of Germany, was so joyful of the Dutch Bible, in translating whereof out of the Hebrew and Greek originals he and some other learned men had laboured together with Luther, that every year he invited his friends on that day of the month whereon the work was finished, and called it the Feast of the translation of the Bible.
MATTHEW HENRY: Thanksgiving is good, but thanks-living is better.
ERNST C. HOMBURG (1605-1681):
Thou Life of my life, blessed Jesus,
Thou death of the death that was mine…
Thou suffered the cross and the torment,
That I might forever go free—
A thousand, a thousand thanksgivings,
I bring, Blessed Saviour, to Thee!
