Scripture Search

It occurs to me that many people may not know how to conduct a basic Scripture survey search. This has been one of the most fruitful ways of looking into what the Bible says about any topic I employ.

Basically, I take a good concordance (which lists verses using a topical index approach) and write down, then look up, every reference on that topic that I find.

So for this week of blogs dedicated to developing the capacity of being a person of gratefulness (as opposed to being a wretched ingrate), I suggest you do the same. Take one page in a notebook (you don’t want to lose this work; I refer time and again to the reference studies I’ve conducted), and begin to write down the verses in the Old and New Testament that the concordance has organized topically.

This may take you awhile, so don’t try to do it in one sitting. Make it a month-or-so enterprise. Then savor the verses that you look up and write down. Memorize a few. In my husband’s huge concordance, borrowed from his ministerial library, I discover the first reference to the word “thank” (or thanked, thankful, thankfulness, thanking, thanks or thanksgiving) is in Leviticus 7:12, and it refers to one of the Old Testament thanks offerings. I notice that the first reference to the word “thanks” is in 1 Chronicles 16:4, “to give thanks, and to praise the Lord.”

This is going to be a fruitful and empowering study. Maybe I’ll schedule this study for the next few months, perhaps months and months—or as long as it takes.

If an attitude of appreciation is a healing factor for mind and body, I (we, if you study with me) should be in for days and days ahead of heightened well-being. So be happy, be healthy. Give thanks.

I spy God!