PSALM 103 : 1-4

Today, I remain most of all thankful for God’s redeeming grace that gloriously saved a wretch like me and redirected the entire trajectory of my life. These are not words that I sentimentally sing occasionally, but I really sing “I once was lost, but now I’m found was blind, but now I see.”

I think sometimes after we have been saved a while, we tend to forget how terribly and immeasurably lost we were. The novelty wears off after a while, but especially in these rather dark and foreboding times, we must regularly travel back in time and give praise without restraint, for the magnificence and vastness of God’s amazing grace.

As David compiles a list of blessings for which he remains so passionately grateful, very prominent on that catalog is the forgiveness of his iniquities (v.3). May the Eternal Savior help us never to overlook or minimize this blessing – the forgiveness of all our iniquities. Today during this Thanksgiving season we must never take it for granted that we who were so lost and without much value to God were released not just from the penalty of sin, but from the guilt that sin brings. We have been truly fully acquitted. Clemency and divine favor have been extended to us. What a blessing to stand before the Judge of all humankind – guilt free and thoroughly cleansed and emancipated. For this, Lord, we thank you!

Like the Psalmist, we are also led to be grateful and most thankful for the healing power of Jesus (v.3).. So very often this year our lives have been interrupted and severely plagued by sickness, disease and sometimes indescribably horrible pain. In spite of all the health fads and health foods, so many of us have fallen prey to sickness. It remains perennially an integral part of the human condition. Sickness, both physical and mental, plagues all of humanity. Yet as we struggle with sickness known and unknown, Jesus reassures us from His divine word that He has the amazing power, not just to diagnose our diseases, but to heal and cure all our diseases. We, therefore, proclaim and acknowledge Him, not just as Savior but as Healer. It is our strong conviction based on past experiences that healing of the body and mind have been wonderfully provided for us in the glorious atoning work of the Christ at Calvary. The Scriptures persistently declare “. . . by whose stripes we are healed” (1 Peter 2:24). For this, Lord, we thank you!

Next on the list for which we offer special praise and thanksgiving is redemption from destruction (Psalm 103:4), I wonder how many of us truly realize that the Satanic plan was our total destruction. The intent of the enemy has never been just to silence us, but to ruin us beyond repair, to pulverize and vaporize us, to rub us out, to decimate us beyond reconstruction, but thanks be to God, the Redeemer came to completely repurchase us and to free us from Satanic bondage and captivity by giving His life a ransom for us. For this,Lord, we thank you!

We as the redeemed of the Lord shall spend the rest of our lives and eternity, sincerely praising and thanking our most awesome Savior for the forgiving of our sins, the healing of our bodies and the redeeming of our messed-up lives from destruction. Lord we truly thank you!