thanksgiving

"I will enter His gates with thanksgiving in my heart, I will enter His courts with praise, I will say this is the day that the Lord has made. I will rejoice for He has made me glad; I will rejoice for He has made me glad..." Lyrics to a song I used to sing in Sunday School. I remembered it on the plane to Melbourne as my partner handed me a book - "Here, read this, I have just finished it; it's really good...I've learnt from it and am putting it into practice...it has changed the way I view praising God and the way I actually praise Him..." The book is titled The Great Connection and I do recommend it. By the way, the song reflects the first step of entering into God's presence. We start with thanksgiving and praise to go from the outer courts to the inner and then the Holy of Holies.

I'll share more on the book at a later time. What I want to thank God for, amongst other things, is His healing. I sprained my ankle the day before the convention and it was throbbing throughout the afternoon after I had hurt it sprinting down a corridor at work, and even bothered me that night. But I committed my left foot to God and asked that it be totally healed by the morning, ready for me to set off for Melbourned and be able to jump and praise Him. And indeed, by God's grace it really was fine that next morning! Yay!

Also, I have always had a rather paralysing phobia of falling sensations. There was a point in time on the plane where we hit a bit of turbulence and the plane was threatening to do it's up and down motion (which I unfortunately have always hated having been negatively affected by it since an early age) so I sang praise songs in my heart while reading the book and told God that I would not let Satan freak me out all the time and take my faith away. Well, thank God for I was perfectly fine and at the point where I thought it was about to get bad, I said firmly in my heart, "No Satan, you have no hold over me! God, I will not let Him do this to me again. Steady my heart Lord!" and then the plane kind of jerked and we landed! Haha! In fact, from the time we took off, God reminded me that His hand was on my plane and that He would not let me be hurt in anyway and I pictured Him enveloping the vessel I was seated in and guiding it through the sky to erraticly weathered Melbourne.

I even managed to convince myself to take a step of faith to going onto the giant swing where you can strapped into a harness, fitted onto a rope, pulled way up into the sky to then be dropped and swung from side to side once you yank on a string attachng both sides. Although I did not get to go on it in the end as they had to close the swing for dinner, I know in my heart that I can do it! I can do it because God is above my irrational fears that I have allowed to wage war within my little head. So amusement park rides make me super uncomfortable, as do other things like boats that can create up and down motions and falling sensations but at the end of the day, these things cannot hurt me unless I let them and I have let them for long enough. God has given me a spirit of power, of love and a sound mind. Not timidity! I can do this through Him who gives me strength - Him who lives in me and is greater than he that is in the world!