Two Ways to Guarantee More Blessings
For more than two centuries, the United States has enjoyed unparalleled blessings: physical protection, prosperity and personal freedoms. Many attribute this to American exceptionalism. They know that America is exceptional, and they assume it must be because Americans, past and present, are exceptional.
America is the greatest nation in world history. Its principles are exceptional. But they did not come from Americans! American exceptionalism came from God!
This points to the single most important action you can take during America’s 250th anniversary: praise and thank God.
The principles, institutions and other blessings that make America exceptional come directly from God keeping His promise to one man, Abraham, because he obeyed and believed God, putting the Creator above everything else in his life!
America is a testament to God’s exceptionalism: His faithfulness, patience, wisdom, grace, mercy and majesty! Everything truly good in America came from God. All the evils and problems have come from Americans. James 1:17 says: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”
Consider everything you treasure and love: your family, spouse, pet, house and other possessions. You have all these blessings because God kept His tremendous promises to Abraham despite the spiritual condition of ourselves and our forebears! We deserve none of them. We are all sinners who have richly earned the wages of sin: death (Romans 6:23). But God, out of His goodness, allows us to experience the good things of life!
However, God corrects everyone He loves (Hebrews 12:5-6). He will remove blessings to help us repent and turn to Him, because a lifestyle of obedience toward God is a lifestyle of blessings! Even if we are experiencing hard times, God can turn that into a blessing! (Romans 8:28).
It is our duty, our responsibility, to praise and thank God always for our blessings.
One of this nation’s greatest sins is ingratitude.
“The other day this question came to my mind: ‘What is the greatest possible sin anyone could commit?’” the late Herbert W. Armstrong wrote in the April 1962 Plain Truth. “Once I attended a church service in which the results of a contest were announced. A new Bible was given as first prize for the best answer to the question: ‘What is the most common sin, committed by the largest number of people?’ First prize was awarded for the answer: ‘ingratitude.’
“Certainly a lack of gratitude is one of the most prevalent, if not the most terrible, of sins. Few have learned to really appreciate what they have. Most are prone to accept the good things by taking them for granted, failing to give thanks. We gripe about our complaints more than we count our blessings.”
How much worse is this attitude now, 80 years deeper into the age of selfish materialism? The Apostle Paul wrote that these last days would be perilous, and he listed “unthankful” as a common trait of our modern societies (2 Timothy 3:2).
Ingratitude is inherently rooted in selfishness: When we think only of our needs, desires, wants and lusts, we grow dissatisfied and downhearted.
Praising and thanking God is a daily way we switch the focus from ourselves to God. This redirects our mind to His will, His purpose, His plan.
“A man after God’s own heart builds his life around praising and thanking God!” writes Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry. “When you praise and thank God continually, do you realize how converted that makes you? Just thinking normally, you won’t continually thank and praise God; it is not a natural way to think” (The New Throne of David).
When Israel was a great nation, the people praised and thanked God. If America wants to remain great, we must rediscover how to praise and thank God.
“We are here to learn to praise and thank God as a way of life!” continues Mr. Flurry. “… Praising and thanking God is a God-centered way of life!”
God has given us an entire book of the Bible dedicated to praising and thanking God. The Psalms are 150 sacred poems, all divinely inspired, that we can use to build our lives around this attitude of thanksgiving.
The Psalms start by telling us how we can be blessed: “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night” (Psalm 1:1-2).
The Psalms conclude: “Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord. Praise ye the Lord” (Psalm 150:6).
America’s 250th anniversary celebrations should be built around praising and thanking God. If America wants to be blessed and not cursed, we need to praise and thank God!
The Apostle Paul told us to never stop praising God: “Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18).
Put this lifestyle to the test. Fill your life with praise for and thanks to God, and witness a spiritual revival in your life!
Read The Psalms of David and the Psalter of Tara and rejoice as King David did as you learn to build your life around praising and thanking God.