The Gate of the Lord

How wonderful is the Word of God!! This morning I was spending time in the Word reading Psalm 118. We see here a reminder of God’s mercy that endures forever, He saves us, He is for us and fights for us and He saves us from death. But what we also find in this passage of scripture is a precious treasure and a key! 

Psalm 100v4 says “Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, And into His courts with praise. Be thankful to Him, and bless His name”.

In Psalm 118v19-20 we see that there are gates of righteousness and a gate of the Lord. “Open to me the gates of righteousness; I will go through them, and I will praise the Lord. This is the gate of the Lord, through which the righteous shall enter”.

We see in these two passages that thanksgiving and praise is a key to entering in to Him, entering into heavenly places and entering into our spiritual blessings. 

I remind you of a passage I have shared before from John 10v7 “I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture”. Jesus is a gate and a door. We can enter into Him and receive all we need. 

John 14v6 says “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me”. 

What can we take from this? The most important thing in our walk with God is thanksgiving and praise. To live a life of gratitude and of praise to Him. Glorifying Him whenever we can. Not forgetting His goodness in our lives. Not forgetting that the gates of righteousness He opened to us, must not be taken for granted. It is only through Jesus we get to the Father, and in order to enter in, we need to give thanks and praise. We also need to choose to enter in. The door is open, the gates are open - it is our choice. 

Let us not live our lives in grumbling and complaining, being unthankful and ungrateful. We will shut the door; we will shut the gate that is our provision, the door that has all we need, No matter what our circumstances, we have a God who is always merciful, let us not forget this. Let us praise Him in the plenty and in the lack, in joy and in sadness, in sickness and in health, in trials and tribulations - in every circumstance. His courts are where we need to go for what we need and if we cannot give thanks or praise, how do we receive? If we cannot be thankful, how do we enter in? 

Father God, 

We thank You this day for Your goodness and Your mercy that is new every morning. We thank You for Your abundant grace for this day. This is the day of the Lord and we will rejoice in it and be glad. We repent for grumbling and complaining, for not being thankful and for not seeing Your goodness in each day. We repent for where we have taken Your love and Your sacrifice for us for granted. Our righteousness comes from You. We repent for self-righteousness and for thinking that it is in our strength we overcome or are able to do things. We acknowledge today that all comes from You. All is in You and through You. Help us, Lord, to have an attitude of gratitude. Help us, Lord, to deal with those things in our life that stand in the way of our receiving all that You have made available to us. Heal our brokenness, help our unbelief, and forgive our selfish ways. Today we choose to worship You in spirit and in truth. Today we choose to be thankful and praise You no matter our circumstances. Today we choose to trust in Your unfailing love for us. Today, we choose to enter into You. You are worthy of all our praise and our lives are yours. We submit to your gates of righteousness and we enter the gate of the Lord. We bless Your holy name and we ask all this in the mighty name of Yeshua!