Learning to share your thankfulness
2 Samuel 22:50 Therefore I will give thanks unto thee, O LORD, among the heathen, and I will sing praises unto thy name.
Giving thanks is an important thing for the Christian, and it is something that we should do every day of our lives, but what is interesting about this verse is that David was willing to give thanks to God even in the midst of the heathen. David was not going to allow the heathen that surrounded him to stop him from praising and thanking God for the victory that was provided to him by God. Now, it is easy for the Christian to praise and thank God in church or in the quiet time of our personal prayer life, but to thank God in the midst of those that either do not believe in God or those who have disdain for God, that is a different story. It takes courage and conviction to praise God when these types of people are present, but we should never let the crowd that we are around determine whether or not we are going to thank God for all that He has done or not. David was so grateful for all that God had done for him that he was even willing to tell these people who did not even believe in the one true God what His God had done for him. He did not care what they thought of him and he did not care about the looks that he would get from them. David knew that God had delivered him and he was going to tell everyone around him about it.
Christian, we need to understand that God has delivered us as well. We have been delivered from the eternal damnation of our sin through Jesus Christ, and that is something that we should be giving thanks to God for every day! It is something that we should be so thankful for, that we are excited to tell others about this deliverance. The deliverance that God has provided is so great that we want to share this deliverance with others. Did all the heathen listen to David? Probably not, but it was not going to stop him from telling them. Will everyone we tell listen to us? Also, probably not, but it should never stop us from telling them either. One of the reasons that we see an increasing amount of people believe that God does not even exist is because we are not willing to publicly talk about God and all that He has done in our lives. If we only thank God in private, how will others know what God has done and is doing? How will they know that God is real? We need to determine to be more vocal about all the things that God has done in our lives, and a good place to start is with the perfect salvation that He has provided for us through Jesus Christ. Don’t let the world around you keep you from sharing what God has done. God is good, and if we are not willing to share that fact, how will others ever know what we know to be true?