Thanksgiving Prayer Flowing Out Of God's Promises
a Biblical Meditation/Devotional Prayer
by Raimer Rojas
by Raimer Rojas
Structure of This Spiritual Practice
Read It > Personalize It > Paraphrase It > Apply It To Your Life Situation
Choose a Bible verse or verse phrase (not a whole passage) that God is using to speak to you today and read it aloud, a few times (or in a few different versions).
EXAMPLE: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness." - Lamentations 3:22-23 ESV
Personalize the verse/phrase, with a thanksgiving focus, and say it over yourself (and/or someone else or a group of people you are praying for). Try to keep the verse/phrase as close to the original as possible while personalizing it.
EXAMPLE (over ME): “Thank You Lord, that your steadfast love, over ME, never ceases; Thank You that Your mercies never come to an end in MY life; they are new every morning; how great is Your faithfulness over MY life!"
EXAMPLE (over US): “Thank You Lord, that Your steadfast love, over US, never ceases; Thank You that Your mercies never come to an end in OUR lives; they are new every morning; how great is your faithfulness over OUR lives!"
Paraphrase the verse/phrase, with a thanksgiving focus, over yourself (and/or others you are praying for). Take more freedom to put it in your own words. Your are even free to add material from any related verse(s) that spontaneously comes to mind, to enhance your paraphrase.
EXAMPLE (over me): "Thank You Father that Your loyal and unending love will never stop flowing over ME; Your mercies pouring over ME will continue forever. In fact every new day will bring with it new mercies flowing from Your throne and breaking forth over MY LIFE. I was fearfully and wonderfully made in Your image inside my mother’s womb, by Your steadfast love and faithfulness. And I will see Your mercy and goodness on display every single day of MY LIFE, reminding ME of Your faithfulness for ME. Truly I AM a blessed person because I AM Yours and You are MINE!"
EXAMPLE (over others): "Thank You Father that Your loyal and unending love will never stop flowing over the GENERATIONS LIFEGROUP; Your mercies pouring over US will will continue forever. In fact every new day will bring with it new mercies flowing from Your throne and breaking forth over OUR lives. We were fearfully and wonderfully made in Your image inside our mothers’ wombs, by Your steadfast love and faithfulness. And WE will see Your mercy and goodness on display every single day of OUR lives, reminding US of Your faithfulness for US. Truly WE ARE a blessed PEOPLE because WE ARE Yours and You are OURS!"
In a spirit of thanksgiving, apply this promise to your life in a spontaneous prayer flow. Apply and elaborate out of the insights, understandings, and depth of the revelation you received through the previous steps of this practice. Apply your insights to your particular contexts and situations and pray in confident trust, out of the promises He has given you.
"Thank You, Lord God, that even in the midst of this trying issue with my family, I know that You will make Your mercies new even today. I know I can be receiving Your love over me, despite what is going on. I may not know how things will turn out with my family over this issue, or how long this problem will continue, but I can rest in the fact that You will be faithful. You can redeem anything. You can turn all things for good of those who love You; those who have been called according to Your purpose."
TEACHING: Why Thanksgiving
The Word of God gives us plenty of promises out of which we can confidently pray for ourselves and others. This spiritual practice is designed to help you pray out of such Biblical promises, from a thanksgiving prayer focus. We can pray His promises with thanksgiving, knowing that He has pre-approved these things for us—we know such prayers will be answered, sooner or later in our lives.
Thanksgiving is an expression of the trust we have that God will hear and respond when we pray to Him. “But giving thanks is a sacrifice that truly honors me. If you keep to my path, I will reveal to you the salvation of God.” - Psalms 50:23 NLT
“Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” - 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 NIV
“Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our “God is a consuming fire.” - Hebrews 12:28-29 NIV
Jesus Himself practiced thanksgiving. Here are three examples of Jesus giving thanks:
Before the manifestation of the miracle healing of raising Lazarus from the dead, Jesus prays with thanksgiving: “So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, ‘Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.’” - John 11:41-42 NIV
In the feeding of the 5,000, the multiplication of food miracle follows the giving of thanks: “Jesus then took the loaves, and after giving thanks He distributed them to those who were reclining; likewise also of the fish, as much as they wanted.” - John 6:11 NASB2020
At the last supper: “And [Jesus] took the bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to the [disciples], saying, "This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of Me." - Luke 22:19 NIV
This verse below speaks of the confidence we have when we pray according to His will. So if we know that He hears and will respond, we can step into thankfulness even before the answer comes… “This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him.” - 1 John 5:14-15 NASB2020
We do not need to come to God, pleading or begging Him for something that He has already made clear He will do. This sense that God wants to do this, can be because it is a particular promise where you meet the context and conditions He gave or because of the witness of the Spirit in our lives. We can enter into such promises with a thankful heart that they will come about in our lives, just as He says it will happen. It takes great humility to come in agreement with what we sense from God. Pride keeps us from receiving these promises. Pride is self-sufficiency, a reliance on our own strength; humility is a humble posture of receiving from God what you cannot do for yourself—what only God can do. Praying in a posture of thanksgiving is praying in agreement that He will do what He said He will do; it is praying, "Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." It is also a way for us to to realign our mind and our actions with the promises that are soon to break forth. It is a way to emphasize to ourselves what we say we believe.
Here's one very basic example: When the Word of God says, "I will pour out my Spirit on all people...(in the last days)" - Joel 2:28 & Acts 2:17, then I can pray in confident agreement that this is happening all over. > PRAYER: "Thank You God that Your Spirit is being poured out on all people... Thank you that my family is experiencing the pouring out of Your Spirit... Thank You that my neighborhood is even now experiencing some of this pouring out..."
Some level of discernment is needed for this practice. There are many promises in the Bible spoken to individuals, particular groups of people, etc. which were NOT meant for every believer or for every person on the planet. You will need to discern the condition attached with the Biblical promise, if there's one. And part of this discernment process is that you do NOT use a proof-text—that you do NOT take a verse of out of its originally intended context and apply it to things for which it was never meant to be.
For example Psalm 1 is addressed to two groups, the righteous and the wicked. The blessings for the righteous are meant only for the righteous, not for everybody. So there is an element of checking Your heart and actions in the light of that condition. Pray over yourself or others that which does pertain to you.
Another way we hear God's promises in our lives is through hearing God (through prophetic revelation). Our own spirit can also be a witness to a promise Holy Spirit has personally delivered into our spirit, as a response to a request we have presented to Him. This spiritual sensitivity will need to be honed in over time through experience and confirmation of the answer having coming through. But this is something people who pray can come to feel after praying for a person or situation, over time. They report, "It's like the burden to pray lifted and I knew that the answer requested would come to fruition, sooner or later."
So as believers, we can come into agreement with what God wants to do, through thanksgiving, either from a general Biblical promise He has given (that we meet the conditions) or through a personalized Spirit-response planted into our spirit from an initial request we made. This is the privilege of being His children. We have a God who has spoken promises to His people through His Word and who continues to speak to us individually and corporately, Spirit to spirit. We can appropriate these promises into our response in situations that have not yet seen the breakthrough of the Lord; We can live lives with trust and expectancy of what He will do; We can enter into His rest before the answer or breakthrough manifests!