So Noah came out, together with his sons and wife and sons’ wives. All the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground and all the birds - everything that moves on the earth - came out of the ark, one kind after another.
Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. The Lord smelled the pleasant aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.
“As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.”
Genesis 19:15-22, 29-30
With the coming of dawn, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Hurry! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be swept away when the city is punished.”
When he hesitated, the men grasped his hand and the hands of his wife and of his two daughters and led them safely out of the city, for the Lord was merciful to them.
As soon as they had brought them out, one of them said, “Flee for your lives! Don't look back, and don't stop anywhere in the plain! Flee to the mountains or you will be swept away!”
But Lot said to them, “No, my lords, please! Your servant has found favour in your eyes, and you have shown great kindness to me in sparing my life. But I can’t flee to the mountains: this disaster will overtake me, and I’ll die. Look, here is a town near enough to run to, and it is small. Let me flee to it - it is very small, isn’t it? Then my life will be spared.”
He said to him, “Very well, I will grant this request too; I will not overthrow the town you speak of. But flee quickly, because I cannot do anything until you reach it.” (That is why the town is called Zoar.)
So when God destroyed the cities of the plain, he remembered Abraham, and he brought Lot out of the catastrophe that overthrew the cities where Lot had lived.
Lot and his daughters left Zoar and settled in the mountains, for he was afraid to stay in Zoar. He and his daughters lived in a cave.
I thank God for the grace of another opportunity to share a post on this blog and in the spirit of gratitude, I will appreciate if my readers can help thank God on my behalf for adding another year unto me. For 40years I have enjoyed the grace and goodness God in my life, home and family. It was my 40th birthday 2days ago and the Lord has been and is still and will always be gracious to me.
The topic of showing gratitude or appreciation or better still thanksgiving cannot be overemphasized. Gratitude is a virtue that is closely linked with blessings. A man who knows how to show gratitude for help or gift received is a man who will always enjoy more and more blessings in his life. Paul instructed in Philippians 4:6b that our prayers and petitions should be presented before God with thanksgiving. We also learnt in 1 Thessalonians to give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for us in Christ Jesus. Thanksgiving is a characteristic of champions, a life that has learnt to be thankful is a life that will enjoy all round blessing.
As humans when we render help or assistance to someone who comes back to show appreciation for the help rendered, we will be more inclined to help such a person when next it is required more than one who was helped and never came back to say thank you for the help received. So knowing that we who are created in the image and likeness of God have this nature in us, should we expect anything different from God who created us after His own image. We should therefore understand that just as we feel honoured when appreciated so does God feel when we appreciate His goodness in our lives and show gratitude for His unending love for us.
When you sometimes feel God has done nothing in your life to be grateful for, try to understand that the breath you have that makes you living rather than dead is a gift that you have undeservingly received from the Lord. You have absolutely no control over that breath and it can be taken away from you without your permission. And so, that you still have that breath is as a result of God’s mercy, it is a gift from God that is worth thanking Him for. As you learn to start a life of thanksgiving just by appreciating God for that breath you still possess, then you will start to see more of His goodness being displayed in your life.
Looking at the passages above and comparing the life of Noah and Lot with regards to the issue of gratitude, there are a lot of lessons to learn. Noah was a righteous man who was singled out for deliverance by God from the destruction that swept through the face of the earth. On the land of the living at that time when God destroyed all that He had created, Noah and his household were the only ones spared by God. When calm returned to earth and Noah came out of the ark with his household, the Bible tells us that he built an altar to God and offered a sacrifice to God. He was not asked to do this, he just did it because he was grateful to God that his life and that of his household was spared. The result of this show of gratitude was a covenant of blessing by God. The Bible tells us that when God smelled the aroma of Noah’s sacrifice he was pleased and said in His heart that never again will He curse the ground on account of man, and never again will He destroy all living creature like He did then.
The aroma of Noah’s sacrifice produced a covenant not just for Noah and his household, but for all that God had created. That covenant is still in effect till date. The chapter 9 of the book of Genesis shows a continuation of the blessings of God on the life of Noah and all humans on account of that pleasing aroma of Noah’s sacrifice as a show of gratitude for God’s mercy on him and his family.
Now moving on to Lot, he had a similar experience as that of Noah. He enjoyed of similar grace of God’s mercy just the way Noah did. When God wanted to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah and all the cities of the plain, it was just Lot that the Lord showed mercy to on account of his relationship with Abraham. In fact the angels of the Lord had to grasped Lot by the hand together with his wife and daughters and carried them to safety. But unlike Noah, Lot never saw the need to build an altar and sacrifice to God. Instead he grew afraid and went to live in the cave. The end result of his lack of gratitude saw his daughters getting him drunk and making babies through him. In fact he didn’t get drunk once, but twice and from there began a generation of people who were hostile to the children of God, the seed of Abraham.(Genesis 19:31-38). Rather than Lot thanking God for his deliverance, he was afraid and drank himself to sin.
The gratitude that Noah expressed, saw him getting more blessed by God than before the time he went into the ark, and the lack of gratitude in the life of Lot saw him in self destruct activities. And so I can confirm again that the issue of thanksgiving cannot be overemphasized to one who dears to receive true blessings from God. “When praises go up, blessings come down,” that is a slogan I am very familiar with and I am sure is common among Christians. There is the will for God to let loose and open the flood gates of heaven’s blessings over the life who has learnt the secret of praising God.
Start today by thanking God for those assumed irrelevant blessings, the attitude of thanking God for what you think are irrelevant will birth the release of the relevant blessings in your life.
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