Thankful for Fleas

Let us come before him with thanksgiving. Let us sing him psalms of praise. - Psalm 95:2

How do you like it when you do things for people and they don’t appreciate it? Have you ever cooked a meal for someone who simply wolfed it down and never expressed any appreciation for it? Have you ever sung a song in public and no one even mentioned it afterwards? It certainly doesn’t encourage you to do it again, does it? How can you expect God to continue blessing you if you aren’t grateful for what He’s already done? If we are mean-spirited enough to assume that we simply deserve all God’s provision, don’t you think we are due for a reality check? God is a person. As such a relationship with Him can be developed like a relationship with any other person. You need to spend time with Him, talk to Him, be open with Him, listen to Him and last but certainly not least, you need to be grateful for all the things He does for you.

Spend an entire session of prayer simply thanking Him for His blessings. Thank Him for family, friends, fortunes won, fortunes lost (with subsequent gained wisdom). Thank Him for all the things that have NOT happened to you that have happened to others. Thank Him for creation. Not just generally but specifically. Go through and, like Adam, name all the creatures with a breath of gratitude. Appreciate all the beauty of nature while expressing worship for its Creator. Thank God for fleas! Corrie Ten Boom related that while in a Nazi POW camp, her sister encouraged God to even thank God for the fleas. Corrie thought her sister was crazy. Then she found out that the guards would not enter the barracks because of all the fleas and lice. This gave the prisoners at least one place that they could escape their tormentors gaze, even if it was only temporary.

God has a plan for everything and he uses even the Devil’s machinations to His own purpose. Remember Job? Satan wanted to destroy Job and for a while it almost seemed like he had succeeded! But God used the Old Serpent’s traps to make Job stronger than he ever was before. So thank God for even the things in life that you don’t like!

Ingratitude will paralyze your prayer life. Gratitude will feed it, empower it, enlighten it and embolden it. God answers “Thanks, God!” prayers with “Sure! No problem! Here’s a hundred times more!”