Thank You God

By Byron Wicker –

Dear People Who Keep Company with God,

When I was a young believer a prophetic minister was giving words of knowledge to several of the young men in our church. My turn came and he said, “Count your blessings and be thankful.” That was it. I went home disappointed and feeling somewhat humiliated. Everyone else was given words of callings and destiny and all I got was be thankful for what you have.

It took me a couple days, but I swallowed my pride and concluded to at least give it a try. It wasn’t long before I was thanking God for answering my prayers before He answered them. I was becoming a man of faith. I also noticed an overall attitude shift; I was not near as anxious, moody, resentful or fearful as I had been. In short, cultivating a thankful heart made a huge difference in my life.

I do not ever remember a time where I have felt such urgency toward thankfulness as I do now. For a while now I keep having a sense to pause, savor what God has done and thank Him.

Thankfulness releases peace. The peace of God keeps your heart and mind from being overcome by the trouble, sorrow and toxic emotions that are more rampant in this world than they ever have been in my lifetime (Phil. 4:6-7).

Thankfulness releases faith. There is no doubt that Jesus’ faith was directly related to his thankful heart. In John 6 we have the miraculous feeding of the five thousand. Notice Jesus did not pray before the miracle. He simply gave thanks to the Father. On many occasions Jesus would thank the Father and then do the miracle.

Thankfulness releases wholeness. In Luke 17 there is the story of the ten lepers who came to Jesus for healing. All were healed, but only one of them returned to give thanks. Although all ten were healed physically, something much greater happened to the one who gave thanks. When Jesus said he was made whole he used the Greek word “sozo” which we know means saved, healed and delivered. His whole person was made healthy.

Medical and behavioral science are proving this. Below is an excerpt from an article that was in USA Today. “It (thankfulness) doesn’t really work if you do it only once a year,” says Sonja Lyubomirsky, professor of psychology at the University of California-Riverside. Practicing gratitude is like exercising, says Robert Emmons, professor of psychology at the University of California-Davis: “Use it, and you won’t lose it, even when times are tough, as they are for many folks right now.”

Lyubomirsky and Emmons are among researchers who have studied the power of gratitude and learned, for example, that: People with high blood pressure not only lower their blood pressure, but feel less hostile and are more likely to quit smoking and lose weight when they practice gratitude. People who care for relatives with Alzheimer’s disease feel less stress and depression when they keep daily gratitude journals, listing the positive things in their lives.

Those who maintain a thankful attitude through life appear to have lower risks of several disorders, including depression, phobias,  bulimia and alcoholism. I believe God is saying to all of us, “Count your blessings and be thankful.”

Many Blessings, Byron Wicker

Byron Wicker was saved in the mid 1970’s after having an encounter with the supernatural power of God. His Christian life and ministry is marked by dreams, visions, revelations of the Lord and heavenly encounters. He has been deeply involved in and impacted by various renewal outpourings since the 1970’s. After a successful engineering career he felt called to enter the pastoral ministry in the early 1990’s and is currently the lead pastor of RiverLife Fellowship Church in Mooresville, NC. He has been involved in starting a ministry training school, a K-12 Christian Academy, healing rooms, a wellness center and church planting. He can be reached at: byron@riverlifefellowship.com