matthew

Happy New Year!
It’s indeed a time to say “Thank you”. Thank you to your spouse for making 2021 a joyful one. Thank you to friends and colleagues for being there all through the year. Thank you to family for being the support you needed all through the tough year. Ultimately, a big thank you to the Almighty God for sustaining you and keeping your unceasing breathe all through the year..

Lord, we say THANK YOU. Thank you for every step we took in the year, for the evil that you turned around for good, for the provisions, for health – the divine health and the prescribed medication that works for the restoration of our health. Thank you for our emotional stability, that you for leading us beside still waters, thank you for being such a faithful shepherd. Thank you for making us a fragrance of your love and grace. Lord, we are grateful for a sound mind for every day of the year 2021. Thank you Lord.

Friend, as we burst forth in thanksgiving for all the goodness of the year, it’s important to keep it what it is – Thanksgiving and not in “better-than comparison”. The year was a tough one for everyone, a year the whole world battle to recover from epidemic and various disasters, people lost families, people became jobless, some were sick all the year and so many more that fail the mention of my ink. All these ones are not victims because they are less faithful or righteous; nor because of their sins. It happened because it happened.

So as you lift up your voice in praise, worship and thanksgiving in your closet, in church, in the fellowship, please be Christ-like enough to be mindful of your neighbors. Let your thanksgiving proceed from a heart of gratitude for your personal journey, and not how God has been good to you and wicked to others, not how he has kept you and “killed” others. That is not our God!

You are not this blessed because you have been good, prayed more or how well your other religious activities paid off so well. Instead of the better-than praise, thank him for how faithful he has been to your journey, for preventing you from being a beneficiary of the consequence of your mistakes. Like the one leper who returned with a heart-full of gratitude for his own healing, do the same for all he has done for you. Remember, thanksgiving is a focus on one’s personal journey!

May the Lord lead you into greater victories in 2022.