3 Dynamic Actions You Need to Enter His Gates with Thanksgiving
The presence of God is always with you wherever you go as David wrote in Psalm 139. But as you journey in faith throughout your life, you’ll sense the Lord’s presence more powerfully as you take intentional time to enter His gates with thanksgiving to praise and glorify Him.
There isn’t anywhere you can go to escape Him! But there is a difference between being in the companionable presence of God who is always with you and entering His gates with thanksgiving to be in His glorious presence where He chooses to dwell. According to Psalm 22:3, God dwells within the praises of His people.
God is with you, yes. But are you with Him? Those are two different things! God is omnipresent, meaning He’s everywhere all at once, but if you want to be close to God to hear Him, to sense Him, to be guided by Him, to grow in your faith in a deeper, more profound way, you need to be where He is. That’s where worship comes in!
How to Daily Enter His Gates with Thanksgiving
Action 1: Give the Lord the glory due His Name
Psalm 96:8 says, “Give unto the Lord the glory due His name, bring an offering and come into His courts.”
One of the most powerful ways to enter into the presence of God is by your thanksgiving for who He is. A grateful heart is where all worship begins. Psalm 50:23 says, “Whoever sacrifices a thank offering glorifies Me and makes a way; I will show him the salvation of God.” (MEV)
The Word of God is the sure foundation for worship and it is replete with the names of God that show His character, His power, and His nature. As you draw closer to God in worship, prayer and His Word, He will reveal the spiritual realities of those names to you in each situation as you need them, and those will become fresh revelations in your worship through each opportunity for faith.
Psalm 48:10 says, “According to Your name, O God, so is Your praise to the ends of the earth.” (MEV)
God is omnipresent, meaning He’s everywhere all at once, but if you want to be close to God to hear Him, to sense Him, to be guided by Him, to grow in your faith in a deeper, more profound way, you need to be where He is.
~Alicia Purdy
Even Jesus gave God the Father the glory due His name as seen in the Lord’s Prayer because He understood that praise and worship and prayer were the sure foundations of faith, and He modeled that with His life and His words.
As you enter His gates with thanksgiving, always give the Lord the glory He is due because of His name, which He has revealed to you. Your praise should reflect your gratitude for the name He has shown you already and the name He reveals to you right now in this season of your life: Provider, Healer, Friend, Guide, Comforter, Rock, Strong Tower, Mighty Warrior… the list goes on! Remember, gratitude is the point of origin for all praise.
Action 2: Bring a Sacrifice
In Romans 12:1 Paul wrote that believers must present their bodies as a living sacrifice to God. God no longer requires literal blood as He did in the Old Covenant because Jesus Christ shed His own innocent blood once and for all. And yet, the Lord still does require an offering, a living sacrifice, to enter into His dwelling place and that sacrifice is you.
A sacrifice of anything hurts. A sacrifice takes something from you. Its costs you. Otherwise it’s not really a true sacrifice. David said he would never present the Lord with an offering that didn’t cost him something (2 Samuel 24:24). Worship is no different. When you enter His gates with thanksgiving, there should be a sacrifice every time.
A sacrifice of your hands. A sacrifice of your inhibitions. A sacrifice of your mouth. A sacrifice of your emotions and feelings. A sacrifice of your voice. A sacrifice of your self-consciousness to replace it with a God consciousness. If you’re truly open to a sacrifice of praise, the Holy Spirit will inspire a thought within you, a challenging, sacrificial act and the choice is yours to follow His leading or not.
Psalm 118:27 says, “…bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar.” (MEV) A sacrifice doesn’t want to die that is why it must be bound to the altar! Of course you won’t feel comfortable. If you did, it wouldn’t be a sacrifice!
God understands true sacrifice better than any person ever could and yet He gave anyway. God honors sacrifice because He knows what it costs. As you enter His gates with thanksgiving, open your heart, mind and spirit to His prompting for a sacrifice of praise. He will meet you there.
Action 3: Shift Your Focus
True worship is God-centered, not anything else. There are plenty of songs sung in churches and by believers that aren’t true praise or worship in spirit and truth because they are more focused on the worshipper than the One who should be worshipped. Many songs have more words of the writer than they do the Words of God. Those are not “bad” at all – they just aren’t worship!
The Almighty God has a jealousy for the worship of His people. That is clear throughout His Word. In Isaiah 42:8 He said, “My praise I will not give to another”. But why is God jealous for worship? He wants your praise and your worship because He loves you. He desires the intimate fellowship and communion that praise and worship facilitate between your spirit and His.
No words written by any person will ever have more power than the Words of God, that is why all praise and worship must be rooted in the foundations of the Bible.
~Alicia Purdy
When you enter His gates with thanksgiving, worship becomes about Him and not about you. That is the whole point! Worship is not a time to pour out complaints, seek to receive from Him, focus on your past mistakes or declare personal victories. He will minister to you because He is faithful, but that is not the focus – Worship is about ministry to the Lord.
No words written by any person will ever have more power than the Words of God, that is why all praise and worship must be rooted in the foundations of the Bible.
Revelation 1:16 and 5:10 note that the people of God are all made to be kings and priests. In 1 Peter 2:9, Peter wrote that Godβs people were chosen to be a royal priesthood. The purpose of the priesthood in the Bible was minister to the Lord. That isnβt just the job of the pastor and the worship team!Β Every believer is called to minister to the Lord.Β
Entering His gates with thanksgiving in worship will shift your focus from you onto Him. Minister to Him and that is where you’ll start to see a shift in everything else.
Thought for Today: Enter His Gates With Thanksgiving, but Don’t Stop There
The doors to God’s glorious presence are lockedΒ … to those who won’t worship Him. Not everyone gets to enter into heaven because of their choices, and in the sam way not everyone gets to enter into His presence for the same reason. You enter His gates with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise.
It really is as simple as that when you worship Him in spirit and in truth, presenting your body as a living sacrifice, which is “holy” and “acceptable” to Him. (Romans 12:1) There is a clear path the Lord has made for you to enter into His presence and experience the fullness of a sacrificial, God-centered, glorious relationship. He’s so faithful! Psalm 16:11 says, “You make known to me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”
There isn’t anything you could ever give to God that will be more of a sacrifice than the one He gave you. If your heart is truly grateful for that, the next step is to spend your life expressing that to Him in your worship and praise – and that is only the beginning. Seek through the journey of your life for His faithfulness and take that into your worship as well. You’ll never run out of things to thank Him for and He’ll never run out of faithfulness. Praise the Lord!
Learn More about God’s Heart for How He Desires to be Worshipped:
“What is True Worship? The Four Biblical Foundations of Worship & Praise”
Don’t forget to pick up a copy of The Way of the Worshipper on Amazon – and AVAILABLE NOW you can also purchase The Way of the Worshipper: A Devotional Workbook for deeper study, personal examination and spiritual growth!
