Thou hast made me what I am, and given me
what I have; In thee I live and move and have my being;
Thy providence has set the bounds of my habitation,
and wisely administers all my affairs.
It is true that we live in uncertain times. Inflation is at a 40 year high, gas prices and high and in some places still rising, the cost of food and all household items have gone up. Schools that used to be places of learning have become centers of indoctrination into everything ungodly. There is also sickness suffered by some, loss of loved ones, personal squabbles that are going on within families such as marital problems, problems between parents and their children, problems between siblings, etc.
Once we begin to record all the ways God is good to us and verbally thank and praise Him for His goodness, our problems do not disappear, but we are able to put them in the right perspective.
If we are not careful, these problems can and will overtake us and weigh us down and make us forget that despite all of the difficulties of life, we have experienced good from our God. Indeed we have, if we are Christians and we should not lose sight of that.
One way to make sure our eyes are continually on the goodness of God is to keep a gratitude journal. Taking time to think through and write down all the ways God has been good to us. Another way is to verbally thank God in prayer and praise for His goodness. Problems have a way of clouding God’s goodness in our lives while at the same time magnifying the difficulties.
Once we begin to record all the ways God is good to us and verbally thank and praise Him for His goodness, our problems do not disappear, but we are able to put them in the right perspective.
If you need help saying a prayer of praise to God who is the source of all good, you can use the words from this prayer of praise and gratitude from the Valley of Vision titled “God the Source of All Good”. This prayer can be found on page 6.
O LORD GOD, WHO INHABITEST ETERNITY,
The heavens declare thy glory,
The earth thy riches,
The universe is thy temple;
Thy presence fills immensity,
Yet thou hast of thy pleasure created life,
and communicated happiness;
Thou hast made me what I am, and given me
what I have;
In thee I live and move and have my being;
Thy providence has set the bounds of my habitation,
and wisely administers all my affairs.
I thank thee for thy riches to me in Jesus,
for the unclouded revelation of him in thy Word,
where I behold his Person, character, grace, glory,
humiliation, sufferings, death, and resurrection;
Give me to feel a need of his continual saviourhood,
and cry with Job, ‘I am vile’,
with Peter, ‘I perish’,
with the publican, ‘Be merciful to me, a sinner’.
Subdue in me the love of sin,
Let me know the need of renovation as well as
of forgiveness,
in order to serve and enjoy thee for ever.
I come to thee in the all-prevailing name of Jesus,
with nothing of my own to plead,
no works, no worthiness, no promises.
I am often straying,
often knowingly opposing thy authority,
often abusing thy goodness;
Much of my guilt arises from my religious privileges,
my low estimation of them,
my failure to use them to my advantage,
But I am not careless of thy favour or regardless of
thy glory;
Impress me deeply with a sense of thine
omnipresence, that thou art about my path,
my ways, my lying down, my end
Soli Deo Gloria!
