Giving Thanksgiving a Voice

That I may publish with the voice of thanksgiving, and tell of all thy wondrous works (Psalms 26:7, KJV).

Last week, we focused one “content” of Thanksgiving—contentment. While Thanksgiving is comprised of being content in what God has blessed us with, we cannot be truly thankful until we vocalize what we feel in our heart. In the Old Testament, the Nation of Israel offered sacrifices of thanksgiving to God, but they did not do so at the command of the High Priest. They gave offerings to God out of their own free will.

In Psalms 26:7, the word thanksgiving comes from the Hebrew todah, which means a vow of acknowledgement, adoration, or confession of thanksgiving. Our thanksgiving needs a voice! The concept of thanksgiving will never be complete until we speak it out.

The Psalmist speaks of the need to verbalize our thanksgiving many times in Scripture (Psalms 95:2, 100:4, 107:22, 116:17, 147:7), and this concept is validated by the prophets of the Old Testament (Isaiah 51:3, Amos 4:5, Jonah 2:9) and the New Testament (II Corinthians 9:12). Thanksgiving will always be more than a spirit of gratitude—we need to express our thanksgiving.

Two Voices of Thanksgiving

After Thanksgiving Voice

Jesus came across ten leprous men in the Bible, had mercy upon them, and told them to go and show themselves to the priests. On their way to the priests, the lepers were cleansed (Luke 17:11–14). Only one leper, upon discovery of his healing, turned back to thank Jesus (Luke 17:15–16). Jesus said, “Arise, go thy way: thy faith had made thee whole” (Luke 17:19, KJV).

Something happened to the one leper that didn’t to the other nine. The nine were cleansed, but the one was made whole. God’s work may not be done until we vocalize our worship/praise. Therefore, our thanksgiving isn’t done until we put a voice to it!

Hell wants to shut up our thanksgiving. Satan is the price of the power of the air (Ephesians 2:2) and nothing fights against him more is when the Saints of God cut through the air with our praise! We can be overcomers by the word of our testimony (Revelation 12:10)!

Pre-Thanksgiving Voice

Our most powerful thanksgiving voice is the praise we give to God before His work is ever done. When we praise God for something that hasn’t happened yet, we loose our faith! We need to have faith to speak of things that haven’t happened yet, as though they have (Romans 4:17), and praise God in the process.

The centurion had enough faith to thank Jesus for the healing of his servant before Jesus was even asked. Because of this, his servant was made whole that had been sick (Luke 7:10). Our praise and thanksgiving needs to come even when we don’t have any evidence that God is working. We cannot even comprehend all of what God would loose in our lives if we would just praise Him in faith for doing it!

Publicly Praising

King David went through a lot in his life, but he never failed to turn to the Lord and give Him thanks. David said, “My foot standeth in an even place: in the congregations will I bless the LORD” (Psalms 26:12, KJV). Because God blessed him and placed his feet on solid ground, David would never stop telling others how thankful he was for what God had done in his life. We need to not only tell others today how great our God is, but tell the One in whom we are eternally thankful.