Our blessed Lord taught,
“Ask, and it will be given to
you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.
‘For
everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who
knocks it
will be opened’” (Matthew 7:7-8). The apostle wrote
in Philippians 4:6,
“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer
and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your request be made to
God…” As
children of God, we have the words of Jesus and the Holy Spirit
(through Paul)
informing us that we have the wonderful privilege of asking, making
supplications and requests, and our God will hear us. The fact is we
probably
ask more in our prayers than we do in the giving of thanks for His
infinite
grace through which He bestows an abundance of blessings upon us. For
example,
brethren often fail to give thanks for the food that is about to be
eaten. A
brother is usually requested to “ask the blessing”
or to “bless the food.” So
many times the brother will ask the Lord to “bless this food
to the nourishment
of our bodies and our bodies in your service” and there is
nothing wrong in
that request. However, what we fail to do is to express our gratitude
for the
food that we have received as a blessing from God. It is on this point
that I
would like to emphasize in this article so that we all might be mindful
of our
need to give thanks, not only for our food, but also for all the
blessings of
life that God has given us. The writer James states that
“Every good gift and
every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of
lights,
with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning” (James
1:17).
Concerning the giving of
thanks specifically for our
food, consider the example of Jesus Christ. In the feeding of the four
thousand
men plus women and children, Matthew wrote, “And He took the
seven loaves and
the fish and gave thanks, broke them and gave them to His disciples;
and the
disciples gave to the multitude” (Matthew 15:36). On another
occasion when He fed
the five thousand, John wrote, “And Jesus took the loaves,
and when He had
given thanks He distributed them to the disciples, and the disciples to
those
sitting down; and likewise of the fish, as much as they
wanted” (John 6:11,
23). Then there is the example of the apostle Paul giving thanks before
he ate
food that had been given as a blessing from God. He was on his way to Rome
as a prisoner, and
the boat in which he was traveling was in serious trouble and was about
to
sink. The people on board had not eaten in fourteen days, and Paul
encouraged
them to take nourishment. In Acts
27:35,
we read, “And when he had said these things, he took bread
and gave thanks to
God in the presence of them all; and when he had broken it he began to
eat.” In
matters of judgment, Paul wrote the following in Romans 14:6:
“…He who eats, eats to the Lord, for he gives God
thanks; and he who does not eat, to the Lord he does not eat, and gives
God
thanks.” The apostle later wrote in 1 Timothy 4:4-5,
“For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be
refused if it is
received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified by the word of God and
prayer.”
In our prayer before our meals let it be one of thanksgiving for the
food that
we are about to receive along with other expressions of praise and
requests.
