The word magnify is seldom used in our daily vocabulary. If we do use the word, we are probably talking about a microscope or reading glasses. The psalmist taught that we magnify God with our thanksgiving. In other words, our praise of God extols or elevates his greatness in this world. 

God doesn’t change, but our thoughts about God do. Our thanksgiving doesn’t make God greater because he is already all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving. Our words of praise cause us and others to see his greatness more clearly. Our thanksgiving helps the world see God's greatness in new and larger ways. We have magnified his reality through our praise.

If we thought of our words of praise as a way to show God to our world, wouldn’t our praise become more public? More frequent? And more effective? There are moments throughout the day when we can point others to our magnificent God. We can “magnify him with thanksgiving.”

I often see a beautiful sunrise or sunset and say, “Way to go God!” My kids grew up hearing that and learned to see God in his creation. Our world needs us to magnify the Creator. We live in a culture that offers praise to so many who are undeserving yet condemns praise to the One who is all-deserving. We can use our right to freedom of speech to magnify God. We live in a culture that debates opinions, but we can offer gratitude for the word of God that is eternal truth. 

We can praise God each day and magnify his reality. Wisdom is offering our gratitude to God. Wisdom will praise God and exalt him to others. How will your praise and gratitude magnify God tomorrow? As Psalm 145:3 says, “Great is the Lᴏʀᴅ, and greatly to be praised.”

If you made a list of the ten people who most impacted your walk with the Lord, whom would you name? Make that list and thank God for bringing them into your life. You can praise God for sending you the people you needed and using them to “increase” your walk with the Lord.

God made us to need one another. Paul was grateful for his brothers in the faith as he watched their growth in their knowledge of God and in their love for one another. Imagine knowing the apostle Paul was thankful for your life!

Some of the most significant people in any church are the people who quietly invest their wisdom in the lives of others. They live their faith as an example and encouragement to their fellow Christians because their faith is living and active. Faith is contagious when lived with fervor and the character of Christ.

Some people have been Christians for a long time while others are new believers. All Christians should have a growing faith and a great capacity to love their brothers and sisters in the Lord. That kind of love marked the individuals for whom Paul offered gratitude to God. 

Spiritual growth and an increasing love for God and others are goals we should all aim at. Those are the qualities we should look for in others, offering thanks for the power of God, who makes growth possible.

If all of us made that list and shared it with one another, we would all be encouraged by the faithful witness of those who were named. We would also be more inclined to follow their wise examples and devotion to the Lord.

As Paul taught, “We ought always to give thanks to God” for our brothers and sisters in the Lord. God knew we needed one another.

Wisdom is offering our gratitude to God. God has given us examples to follow, and God has called us to be an example for others. Begin by gratefully praising God for those on your list, and then pray for the wisdom to live in such a way that others would list your name as someone for whom they praised God.

The promised land was to be a blessing to the descendants of Abraham, but it was also to be a witness to other nations about the greatness of the one true God. The blessings God planned for Israel were intended to draw all people to himself.

That’s why the author of 1 Chronicles encouraged the Israelites to give thanks to the Lord and to call upon his name. He encouraged them to live a life of gratitude for all they had been given and to trust, or call upon, their God for all the needs of their lives.

Their personal testimonies would come from their close relationship with God. They were to make God’s deeds known “among all the peoples.” Our gratitude for God’s blessings should be shared with those around us.

People need to know God, and we can make his character and his deeds known to others when we are careful to give God the credit and the glory for the things he has done.

When people see us handle the difficult times with an honest faith, we can tell them our peace is a supernatural gift from God, and, therefore, can’t be understood or explained by the standards of this world. We can turn our praise and their attention to the One whose peace “passes all understanding” (Philippians 4:7).

We can be grateful for the kindnesses of others, but we can extend that gratitude to God for providing us with friends who bless our lives. We can be grateful for our work and the chance to earn what we own, but we can acknowledge that our strengths and abilities come from God. 

Sharing our gratitude for God in our witness to others is the way we can “make his deeds known.” We can give others the chance to understand God’s love and power when we credit our blessings to the glory of God.

Wisdom is offering our gratitude to God. It is good to live gratefully, and it is wise to show the world that “his deeds” are the blessings of our lives.

By the time Paul had written his amazing letter of theological truth to the church in Rome, the apostle had experienced a great deal.

Paul had met the Lord on the road to Damascus and was blinded, but his eyesight was restored by God. Paul was criticized by his Jewish brothers, feared by his Christian brothers, and had been a traitor to both groups in his past.

Paul had been arrested, beaten, stoned, and left for dead. Paul had walked hundreds of miles, taught thousands of people, and raised up leaders from all walks of life. Paul worked to live and lived to do his ministry. 

And Paul told the church in Rome, “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.” Paul had led an educated and complicated life trying to serve God as his King.

When Paul wrote his letter to the Roman church, he wanted them to understand that his life was because of God’s grace. He wanted them to know that everything he had accomplished had been accomplished through the power of God. And Paul wanted all the glory to be directed to his great God. 

If we were to write our accomplishments down, would we feel proud of our actions or overwhelmed with all that God had accomplished through our lives? We won’t be grateful to God until we realize all we can be grateful for because of God.

Paul endured some difficult circumstances, but he could even be grateful for those times because God had used them or redeemed them for his greater good. In Romans 8:28 Paul wrote, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”

One day we will stand before God and he can explain how he redeemed even the worst moments of our lives for a higher purpose. Eternity is different because “through him and to him are all things.” We can say what people have said through the ages, “To him be glory forever. Amen.”

Wisdom is offering our gratitude to God. Wisdom is strengthened when we grow to understand that we can be grateful in all circumstances because we have a God who can do all things and redeem all things for our greater good. We just need to live wisely and “called according to his purpose.”

For those who celebrate Thanksgiving, plans are probably in full swing. There are things to be ordered, people to make room for, and lots and lots of food to purchase and store up for the holiday. Thanksgiving tables “abound” with food, family, and friends, and our faith should equally abound with gratitude.

Some will have a quiet, small Thanksgiving. Some will find themselves on their own. Some will have an empty chair at their table and wonder how they can feel grateful when their grief or loneliness is controlling their thoughts. 

Paul gives us the key to living with abundant thanksgiving in his letter to the Colossians, and his words can help us transcend our circumstances. He said because you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, “Walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith.” There are difficult times in our lives, and the holiday season can often magnify our pain rather than heal the hurt. But Paul taught us that when we walk in the Lord with an established, mature faith, we can abound in thanksgiving.

We probably all know someone who will have a difficult time this year during the upcoming holidays. How can we help them lean into their faith? And how can we help them lean on us and into the hope our faith offers?

In one of his songs, Ken Medema sings, “Don’t tell me I have a friend in Jesus until you show me I have a friend in you.” Who needs a seat at your Thanksgiving table? Whose holiday can you bless with your compassion or friendship? If you are the lonely one, how can you help others abound in “thanksgiving” because you understand?

Paul wrote the letter of Colossians while under house arrest in Rome. His friends visited him there and cared for him, and Paul used that time to write many of his letters that we study in our Bibles. Paul was “rooted and established” in his faith, and his prison epistles are filled with words of joy and encouragement to others. Paul had learned the key to abundant thanksgiving. His gratitude was born from his walk with the Lord.

Wisdom is offering our gratitude to God. Our personal walk with God will produce the faith and wisdom needed to be grateful in any circumstance as we lean into his abundant love.

There is a theological reason that worship services begin with hymns, songs, and moments intended to turn our hearts toward God in praise. I try to ignore the distractions of people walking in late or people who sing the lyrics with disinterested faces. I wish I could tell them, “These moments are the way you enter the Lord’s holy presence.” 

Our praise and gratitude usher us to the foot of God’s throne, where he is high and lifted up and listening to the “joy noise” of the praise and thanksgiving we offer to him, “the rock of our salvation.” Next Sunday you might want to arrive at church a little earlier so you can prepare your heart to worship your Creator and King. He will bless your effort!

Whenever the rush or circumstances of life cause you to feel like God is far away, praise him. Your worship and gratitude will usher you straight to his throne. If you have spent a long period of time apart from God’s leadership and love, repent. The word repent literally means to stop walking in one direction and turn to go the opposite way. When you repent you will be able to praise God for the forgiveness he has offered, and your praise will soon guide you into his holy presence where you will find his comfort and peace.

I usually sing very quietly because I don’t know one key from another. Someone asked me one time if I was an alto or a soprano. I told them the truth: it depends on who I am standing next to. But, I learned a while back that I can quietly offer my joyful “noise” to the Lord, and he accepts my offering of praise as worthy. God knows my heart, and he knows when I am singing to him or thinking about something else.

Wisdom is offering our gratitude to God. How will these words impact your next time of worship? You need only remember that we come into his presence with thanksgiving. Your praise and gratitude will usher you to God’s throne. That one truth is all your heart needs to know. That wisdom will change your worship in amazing ways.

Today’s thoughts are about biblical wisdom that is difficult to believe. Paul wrote Timothy, his protégé, a statement that seems simple and easy to believe—until it isn’t. Paul said, “Everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving.”

When we first read that verse, we think about the powerful testimony to God we see in our world. The complex simplicity of a newborn baby. The powerful displays of color we see in a beautiful sky or mountainside. The uniqueness of God’s creative genius in each animal at the zoo. Accepting that everything created by God is good is easy—until we realize the truth of Genesis 3.

Adam and Eve had sinned. God told Adam, “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19). God created the beautiful things in nature, but God also created death. There will be a time when we draw our last breath on earth. God created heaven, but he also created hell. It takes wisdom and gratitude to understand and believe that even that truth can be received with thanksgiving.

How do our prayers and God’s word make holy everything created by God? There are truths of Scripture we would reject if we could, but Paul taught Timothy, and us, to receive them with thanksgiving.

Death wasn’t a punishment from God; it was his provision. He didn’t want us to live in a fallen world forever. No one who goes to heaven misses anything they leave behind on earth. God needed to separate the sinful from the saved. He created heaven to be perfect, and sin could never exist with his perfection. His love and holiness would never have created hell for any other reason. 

“God so loved the world, that he gave us his only Son” (John 3:16). God would never have left us in a fallen creation so he created heaven and gave everyone the chance to dwell there. We can be thankful to God, even thankful to him for creating death, when we realize that prayer and his word give us the joy and comfort of his eternal promises.

Wisdom is offering our gratitude to God. God’s joy can result from our wise praise.

King David led an imperfect life, yet to this day he is considered to be among Israel’s greatest kings. David was a “servant to Israel” and lived with a joyful and glad heart for all the goodness the Lord had shown him.

Today’s leaders don’t hesitate to boast of their accomplishments. David didn’t hesitate to boast in the Lord, grateful for his grace and goodness. Today’s leaders try to disguise and even lie about their failures. David grieved his sin publicly, teaching others to do the same. Today’s leaders try to wait for people to forget their sin. David taught people to repent and trust God’s grace for their sin.

Servant leaders are those who teach us what it means to serve God so that we can serve others well. Good leaders point others to the power of God. Their successes aren’t because of personal abilities; success is their ability to walk with God’s leadership in their lives.

The people “blessed the king” and went home “joyful and glad of heart” because they realized their leader, King David, was led by God and blessed by God with the ability to serve them. 

We can be grateful for those leaders in our lives who cause us to trust God, and we can trust them because of their walk with the Lord. We should pray for our leaders and pray for them to have a life-altering encounter with God just as Paul did on the road to Damascus. Paul is an excellent example of what it means to lead through the power and blessings of the Holy Spirit.

Wisdom is offering our gratitude to God. Every news broadcast or business meeting at church is a call to pray for our leaders to be filled with divine wisdom. We should be grateful to God for pouring out his wisdom for their thoughts and his grace for their failures. How grateful we are for those who lead with the goodness that the Lord has shown them, for the goodness that is God shining through them.

The Hebrew word for soul is nefesh and means that part of a person into which God had breathed life itself. When a verse uses the word soul, it almost always means the most essential fiber of your being, your life itself.

The psalmist was writing praise from the deepest part of his life and the very essence of his existence when he said, “Bless the Lᴏʀᴅ, O my soul and all that is within me, bless his holy name!” His highest praise and his deepest gratitude were for the blessings of the Lord. 

The psalmist repeated himself, which was the Hebrew way of expressing that the statement was complete, profound truth. He said again, “Bless the Lᴏʀᴅ, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.” The psalmist was stressing the great need to praise God for his very life and all that God had done, or prospered, in his soul.

He was calling people to understand the depth of his praise to God for all that God had done in, for, and through his very life. When last did your praise for God come from your very soul?

Pause and truly experience a deep breath. Breathing is an action we rarely notice, yet it occurs many times each minute of every day. We will praise God from the depth of our souls when we realize that our need for God is as great as our need for that next breath. We will praise God when we realize our life is full of benefits that we often take for granted yet are the very essence of our daily lives.

Wisdom is offering our gratitude to God. Wisdom is breathing in all our benefits so that we can breathe out the words and wisdom of our grateful praise. “Bless the Lᴏʀᴅ, O my soul and all that is within me, bless his holy name!”

Generosity is a quality that is honored and respected by almost everyone regardless of personal ideology. Hearts are warmed by the person who gives up their seat for an elderly person. We smile at the one in the grocery line who offers to pick up the rest of the bill for someone. Generosity is a universal language of kindness.

Paul asked the Gentile churches he had founded to provide an offering for their struggling brothers and sisters in Jerusalem. Drought, famine, and persecution had caused extreme hardship to the Christian believers there. It’s important to remember that the greatest divide in the early church was between the Gentile and Jewish believers. Yet, Paul gathered a great deal of money from the Gentile believers to help the Jerusalem church. 

Paul told the Gentile believers, “You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God.” Paul knew that their generosity would honor God and indicate to the Jerusalem Christians that these Gentile believers were filled by the same Holy Spirit they knew. 

Paul taught them that their service was more than supplying help to meet the needs of the saints in Jerusalem; they would also produce thanksgiving to God. 

Generosity, done wisely, honors the giver and their God who leads and blesses their gift.

Paul was warned not to take the large offering from the largely Gentile churches of Asia

Minor to Jerusalem. He was an enemy of the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem, and people

feared he would be harmed. Paul chose to go anyway, and his desire to be generous led to his arrest, conviction, and eventually a ship headed for Rome. 

Did his generosity produce thanksgiving? It was under house arrest in Rome that Paul wrote Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. Those letters have been read and studied by the Christian church since that time. Wisdom is offering our gratitude to God. Paul would say, “Wisdom is living a generous life that God will enrich in every way.”