Thanking God at All Times

From Joseph Prince’s Destined to Reign Devotional:

Hebrews 13:15: Therefore by Him let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name.

Lifting up your hands and thanking God is spontaneous and easy when you have just received a wonderful blessing: “God, I can’t thank You enough for this miracle!”

“Thank You Father, for answering my prayer!”

“Father, thank You for the windfall!”

Perhaps you came close to being in a fatal accident, but God plucked you out of danger just in time. Or your grandmother, an unbeliever for many years, finally received Jesus as her Savior and got healed of a long-term disease.

But there are times when you don’t feel like lifting up your hands to thank and praise God, yet you do it. Perhaps you feel very discouraged lately. Perhaps everything is going wrong for you and you feel like your life is in a mess. You can’t hold back the tears. Yet, you make a conscious decision to lift your hands and thank God for being in the situation with you. You open your mouth and begin to praise Him even though you really don’t feel like doing it.

In the midst of the trial that you are going through, you praise Him that He is your righteousness in spite of all the mistakes you have made. You thank Him that He is your Prince of Peace, and that His peace will arise in you and still the storms in your life.

My friend, God sees and appreciates such times when, despite feeling so discouraged, you offer a freewill thanksgiving offering to Him. In fact, your thanksgiving during such times is more highly prized by Him than your thanksgiving during those times when you are feeling joyful because you have just been blessed.

And when you choose to thank Him for His unfailing love, and His faithfulness to deliver, protect and provide for you even when you don’t see the blessings yet, before long, you will find yourself experiencing and enjoying the blessings! So lift your hands and praise the Lord, for He is good, and His mercy endures forever! (Psalm 106:1.)

Thought for the Day
God sees and appreciates those times when, despite feeling so discouraged, you offer a freewill thanksgiving offering to Him.

Destined to Reign Devotional

How to Activate Favor in Your Life

From Kate McVeigh’s The Blessing of Favor (an excerpt):

1. PRAY FOR FAVOR.
Have you ever had a time when maybe you talked to someone and what you said didn’t come out the way you wanted it to? Maybe you tried to encourage someone, and by the time you finished, you thought, “I think I just discouraged them.” I’ve learned that I can pray for favor in those situations.
They don’t think much about my mistake. The favor of God causes them to believe the best about me.

2. ACKNOWLEDGE FAVOR EVERY TIME SOMETHING GOOD HAPPENS TO YOU.
You acknowledge favor in your life by saying, “That’s the favor of God” when something good happens. You will begin to experience more and more favor because what you respect will be drawn to you. What you respect is what you attract.

3. AS WE BEGIN TO ACKNOWLEDGE AND RECOGNIZE FAVOR, WE WILL EXPERIENCE MORE OF IT.
Jesus walked in great favor and continually grew in it. I believe He had so much favor He practically had to insult Pilate to get Himself crucified. Luke 2:52 says, “And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.” Don’t allow yourself to be comfortable with the little bit of favor you experience now; God has so much more. Ephesians 3:20 says that God is able to do exceeding, abundantly above all we ask or think! The Lord wants you to have so much favor that you don’t have enough room for it all.

4. SOW FAVOR.
The Bible says in Galatians 6:7 that whatever you sow you will reap. In other words, if you sow favor into someone’s life by showing them favor, you will reap favor in your own life. God has blessed me with favor where my wardrobe is concerned. People are giving me clothes all the time! I believe it’s because I’ve given a lot of clothes away. I have experienced Ephesians 3:20 NKJV, “exceedingly abundantly above,” in my wardrobe. I don’t have enough room to receive it all. That’s what favor can do for you! When you sow a seed in faith to God, that seed never leaves your life, just your hand. That seed will reenter your life when you need it most. I travel all around the world preaching the Gospel and have believed that God would send people to minister to my family. I believe if you help take care of God’s family, He’ll take care of yours. For years, I had sowed favor by leading other people’s family members to the Lord. Remember, whenever you sow a seed into someone else’s life, you will reap in your own.

5. CONFESS FAVOR ON A DAILY BASIS.
You should confess favor every day of your life. Every single morning I get up and confess, “Lord, I thank You that I have favor with You and man today. I thank You, Lord, that people are going out of their way to bless me and do good to me today. I have favor everywhere I go.” One time I was watching a television interview of Brother Oral Roberts, and I’ll never forget this man saying to him, “Brother Roberts, I’ve got a lot of faith.” He replied, “That’s your problem. You’ve still got it. You’ve got to release it.”

6. CALL YOUR FAVOR HOME.
I have a little dog named Favor. Favor is small, white, and fluffy. (Because of that name, my little niece thinks I wrote this book about my dog!) Favor got out one day, and I opened the front door and called for Favor to come home. My neighbors probably thought, “Man, we knew she was one of those faith preachers, but this is going a little bit too far.” It wasn’t long until Favor heard me calling and came running. The Lord spoke to my heart that day and said, “Just like you called your dog, Favor, home, you need to call your supernatural favor home.” Call the favor of God to operate in your life. Call your favor home. Call your blessings home. Call whatever you need – your money or healing – home. If you will call those things which be not as though they were, you will have those things that you call for. (Rom. 4:17.)

7. EXPECT FAVOR
Several times in the Bible, Jesus told people, “According to your faith be it unto you.” I often like to translate that as, “The sky is the limit.” If you can believe it, you can receive it. So you should be expecting the favor of God to explode on the scene of your life. Have you ever seen someone with a rejection complex? They are always expecting people to reject them, and guess what? People do! Well, you can turn that around. Start expecting people to like you and favor you, and they will! It’s a matter of retraining yourself and changing the way you think. Continually remind yourself about who you are in Christ. Tell yourself, “The greater One lives in me” (1 John 4:4) and “I am accepted in the beloved.” (Eph. 1:6.)

Here’s a catchy acronym I came up with for the word favor:
Faith
Activates
Victorious
Outrageous
Results

The Blessing of Favor