Day #20 of my Big Thanksgiving Challenge. Excerpted from my 100 Days of Thanksgiving Devotional-Journal which you can order when you CLICK HERE.

The Midnight Hour

When I was quickly scanning through a list of Bible verses about being thankful, I was strongly drawn to a verse I am sure I must have read over the years but to which I had never paid any serious attention. Immediately I was struck by it. Moved would be a more accurate word. Deeply, deeply moved in fact.

You will see in the verse below how the psalmist makes a conscious decision to wake up in the middle of the night TO THANK THE LORD! Now if you’re anything like I am, I need my sleep. And truth is I haven’t slept super well in many years. The idea of purposely getting up in the middle of the night my self-centered flesh would not even consider. And though I do wake in the middle of the night on a regular basis, much of the time I try desperately to fall back asleep though I have come to believe God wakes me on purpose to spend time with Him and the Bible and pray and such as I am so easily distracted during the daytime.

Truth is even when I do quit trying to fall back asleep and spend time with God, I am not sure I ever considered using some of that middle-of-the-night time to thank and praise the Lord – until the Lord opened my heart and eyes to the verse. I wonder if perhaps the Lord might use this same verse in your life to encourage you to consider the midnight hours to thank the Lord!

“At midnight I will rise to give thanks unto thee because of thy righteous judgments.” Psalms 119:62