Everything God has manifested, He has made known beforehand. The starting point is revelation, God revealing Himself to man. God has prescribed the way to please Him. To give thanks to God, He must reveal Himself. To do this, we must be in contact with this revelation. This implies, as a starting point, becoming a witness to God’s revelation, which sometimes is not always a spiritual revelation.

Our thanksgiving to God depends on how God has revealed Himself to us. There is no theory to illustrate this. For example, if we want to learn to swim, the best way for us to learn is to jump into the water. And we will realize through our trial and error experience that we would have learned to swim.

It is the same process of God in our lives when we go through a difficult situation. God reveals Himself to us so that we understand, without a theoretical lesson, what He is through everything He does.

Also, those who have seen the bill know how to give glory to God and give thanks. To illustrate this, I remember that at one point, I gave a gift to my wife, and she thanked me for the gesture.

Several days later, she suddenly calls me on the phone, crying tears of joy to thank me again for the gift I had given her. And I tell her, “You already thanked me.” She retorts, “Yes, but I saw the bill, and the cost you spent was very expensive and exorbitant.”

It’s the same when we observe the price God paid to save us from our miserable state of sin. He delivered His only son, Jesus Christ, to death so that we may have eternal life. It was costly, and when we recognize the price it has cost us, we have reasons to give thanks to God. To put it simply, we will say:

• Those who have seen the bill paid by God by giving us His son on the Cross will give thanks differently.
• Those who have seen the bill do not look at their clothes to prostrate themselves.
• Those who have seen the bill do not look at the time to get up and give thanks to God.
• Those who have seen the bill do not look at the amount to be able to give to God.
• Those who have seen the bill, you see them cry because they know the price God paid on the Cross.

When the church understands the paid bill, it changes its way of expressing itself to God in the midst of thanksgiving.

This text is an excerpt from the book “MATONDO: Living Through Thanksgiving” written by Authors Arlette Manegabe, Athom’s Mbuma, David Kajisu, Fifi Bilolo Tunasi, Grâce Tshiashala, Michael Tettey, Pasteur Lévi Kongolo Kazadi, Sissi Bogoli, Tracien Boma.