So shall our thanksgiving be the link between the joy of anticipation and the rejoicing of realization. And therefore it should always accompany prayer, not as a delayed and non-essential afterthought, but as the leading feature. Every petition should commence with thanks or worship. The two most important prayers for us are those imbedded in the first chapters of Ephesians, which are the models for our imitation. There is rare rejoicing in what God has done for us in the past and what He proposes for the future, with Paul s petition in between.
Prayer is but the link between past and future joys.
If this is realized in our hearts, it will always be flavored by grateful praise of Him to Whom it is directed. The second point of importance in this sentence is Who . We may rejoice briefly in many things and in a multiplicity of persons. But the chief source of genuine joy for us will center about two, One the Source and the other the Channel of our greatest and most lasting blessings. Only in God and His Christ is the spring perennial of perfect and eternal bliss, and only through the apostle of the nations comes the transcendent grace to us, the least deserving of all God s creatures.