Please and thank-you … the magic words of childhood learning. If I had a nickel for every time I instructed one of our three, over their growing up years, to use these words as offering, well my financial future would be secure. Repetition has a way of ensuring information and behavior stick like super glue!
The magic words of adulthood are a not-so-famous pair, but are equally rich in meaning, benefit and practice …
thankfulness and joy
These two words, practices, are essentials for the Christ-follower. The thing is that you cannot have joy without thankfulness and you cannot have thankfulness without joy. The two are synonymous.
Neither joy, nor thankfulness have anything to do with happiness, to do with everything in life going as we wish. Joy and thankfulness are independent of the ephemeral or short-lived condition of happiness. Instead they are result of something eternal, holy.
Blogger, Corella Roberts, has said,
“the binding agent of joy is thankfulness”
Thankfulness and joy are fruits of the Holy Spirit within us. It is not us, in our own power, but he who is within us. They are the outpouring of the peace that passes all human understanding.
When the Prince of Peace resides within us, thankfulness and joy emanate from us, naturally and grandly.
1 Thessalonians 5:18, NIV: “give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”
itsawonderfilledlife 