Fortifying our Heart with the Attitude of Thanksgiving

Eternal Glorious Fountain Ministry (EGFM)

Programme: Revelation Hour (RH)

Date: Saturday, 18th January 2025

Minister: Pastor Tunji Adegoke

Topic: Fortifying our Heart with the Attitude of Thanksgiving  

Transcript Summary

1. God has the power to save everyone. There is no number of people on the face of the earth that is overwhelming to the Creator. He has enough; He’s the many-breasted One that wants to feed everyone and bring everyone to glory. So if you found yourself in 2025 by the grace of God, mercy has found you and your heart should be full of thanksgiving, first of all for the keeping of your life.

• We also should be very grateful that we are not just roaming aimlessly in the spirit. That is a great note of thanksgiving. The realm of the spirit is so wide and vast; it is like an ocean. If you do not have a compass, a leader or a guide, you can wander aimlessly there because every way looks like the way. You don’t even know where the way is except you find the Way; and the Lord in His mercy has placed us under an apostle of the way — the person of our Daddy, Reverend Kayode Oyegoke.

• Satan has many “good intentions” for us, and all those intentions are to lead us to destruction. We know he is diametrically opposed to God, and unless we find the Way, there’s no man in himself that can decide he is not going to follow Satan.

• As you grow up in the spirit, so will your thanksgiving increase because you’ll see how helpless you are without the mercy of the Lord. One thought that the Lord keeps dropping in my heart is that there’s no movement you made out of darkness that was because of something that is intrinsically or expressly yours. This means that you didn’t plot your escape; you did not lead yourself out of darkness. You don’t have the power to come out of darkness because darkness is weaved to keep men trapped forever. It takes God to destroy the trap of everlasting strength that holds men in darkness.

• If you have made any progress at all, even if it’s a microcosm of a step, it was not by your strength. If the Lord did not push you forward, you can’t move. Sometimes you look back to where you think you should be and you begin to wail, forgetting to look back to where you’ve come from and be grateful because you did not plot your path. You didn’t even know the way to pass. The Lord held you by the hand and pulled you towards Himself. So, your heart must never leave thanksgiving.

• If you are left to the mercy of the fallen cherub, you won’t be here. If at all you will be here, you’ll be a wolf, not a sheep. So you cannot afford not to be thankful. The beautiful thing about thanksgiving after the order of life is that you don’t wait to see things. It’s a default mood. You can have a thankful heart. One of the things you should trust God for this year is a thankful heart.

• There will be things around you that are bugging you because we live in a broken world, but one of the antidotes or demonstrations that you are not of this world is that in a broken world where people are complaining and bitter, you are finding places to be thankful. Thanksgiving is the key to entering gates. If there are gates before you, then you better be a thankful person. Otherwise, when you stand before that gate, it will not open to you. Just be thankful. Start dancing and the door will open.

• Don’t misconstrue a thankful heart for a good mood. When David said I will bless the Lord at all times (Psalm 34:1), he was not saying that it will always be going well. He was making an oath, saying “I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth”.

• (2 Cor. 4:17-18) You are seeing something that nobody is seeing and what makes you see it is light afflictions. That was the wisdom that Paul had that made him say, “I glory in tribulation”. If we are going to see the things that are invisible, we have to have gone through what Paul called light affliction. The invisible things of God are not seen by people who have not been raised to see them, and one of the key things that raises you is tribulation.

1. If you enter thanksgiving and stay there, you will see the door that God is trying to show you. If, for example, a person is troubling you right now, he/she will change but you did not use that opportunity to archive meekness, lowliness and brokenness.

1. Even when you don’t understand the things being spoken, can you thank God? It’s good to be concerned that you don’t understand, but that you heard the word, you sat under that ambience, something definitely dropped to you that will probably unfold that revelation two or three months down the line. We don’t wrestle to understand revelation, we wait.

1. We give thanks to God, for unto us is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom (Mark 4:11). Understanding is a gift. We will rest in faith that understanding will come in time. When we see Him face to face, we will fully grasp it. A heart of thanksgiving is essential—it is something we must cherish if we have it, and strive to develop if we don’t. Thanksgiving is a weapon for 2025! You must be thankful, even when it’s hard. Sometimes, it’s as simple as putting a smile on your face, even if you do not feel like it.

Psa. 3:5). If God has sustained you, it is for a purpose: to gain understanding. You will understand. Keep trusting and giving thanks. It will all come together in time. Can we be thankful even for natural things? Sometimes, we aren’t grateful for these everyday blessings. Your whole life is an economy under the spirit of grace, and no part of you is left for you to “sort out” on your own.

1. God has promised to take care of every part—natural and spiritual. We should not become so “spiritual” that we forget to thank God for good health, money in our pockets, transport fare, or even milestones like gaining admission, graduating, or completing NYSC. Thanksgiving should be our default. That’s the heart that gains access to God’s gates. If we do this, we will never see a reason to complain. Complaining can be costly. Consider the Israelites in the wilderness: anyone who complained died. Even after enduring days without food or water, those who maintained the right attitude, like Caleb and Joshua, survived. Complaining pulls us out of God’s script for our lives.

1. In the wilderness, our lives are heavily scripted and not by happenstance, even while we are unaware of all the details. If we follow to the end, we will see the Lord. The effect of complaining, bickering, and murmuring is to take us out of our God-designed script. Assuredly, for every line of God’s script for our lives, there are 1,001 lines of another (alternative) script that we can wrongfully fulfill. There are many doors out of the script of life. Trials, referred to as “light afflictions”, come with a purpose. They are called light afflictions in view of what God has promised (2 Cor. 4:17). The issue/trial is not as significant as what it can do to your heart. Whatever it can do to your heart is what it has come to do. If it cannot get your heart, it will come and go, seeing that your heart is still intact, or that you are still praising God.

1. You might feel like you’re not where you want to be. Maybe you’ve heard criticism from others, perhaps even from your pastors. Still, can you thank God for where you are today? You might say, “I don’t yet understand as I should,” or “I’m not walking in love as I should.” Even so, can you offer gratitude to God? You may feel like you’re going through a difficult season but can you thank God in the midst of it? Declare with your mouth, “I will not be one of those who complain. I will bless the Lord.” Remember, the Bible says, “…weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning” (Psa. 30:5) Hold on to that promise—your morning is coming!

1. We thank God because we have a God whose thoughts towards us are thoughts of good, not of evil, to bring us to an unexpected end (Jer. 29:11)—and we know that end is God Himself. We thank the Lord, for the light afflictions which are but for a moment, working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. While we look not at the things that are seen but at the things that are unseen (2 Cor. 4:17), so that we can become unseen. Thanks be unto God

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1. “But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” (Heb. 11:6). We know one of the signs of faith is thanksgiving. God wants us to look into 2025 with the eyes of faith. Can you look into it by faith and thank God for the advent of Jesus in your personal life this 2025? Just look at it and see how much of God you are going to receive this year, as far as your eyes can see. Let us thank the Father, for Jesus is our portion, even in 2025. Thank God for life transfer.

Message Ends