Bible verses for prayer of thanksgiving give you words to use when your heart is full and you want to say thank you to God. Many of them come from the Psalms, where thanks is sung, spoken and repeated. You can pray them slowly, one line at a time, or let them shape your own words at the start or end of the day.
O give thanks unto the Lord; for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever. O give thanks unto the God of gods: for his mercy endureth for ever. O give thanks to the Lord of lords: for his mercy endureth for ever.
Psalms 136:1-3 (KJV)
Each line of this psalm repeats that God’s mercy endures forever, making it easy to pray aloud as a litany of thanks.
This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.
Psalms 118:24 (KJV)
A short morning prayer that receives the day as the Lord’s gift and chooses to rejoice in it.
I will praise thee, O Lord, with my whole heart; I will shew forth all thy marvellous works. I will be glad and rejoice in thee: I will sing praise to thy name, O thou most High.
Psalms 9:1-2 (KJV)
David resolves to praise God with his whole heart and to speak of all his marvellous works.
Bless the Lord, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; Who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies; Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
Psalms 103:1-5 (KJV)
This psalm walks through God’s benefits, from forgiveness to healing, reminding the soul not to forget them.
Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, and make a joyful noise unto him with psalms.
Psalms 95:2 (KJV)
An invitation to come before God’s presence with thanksgiving and joyful songs of praise.
The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in him, and I am helped: therefore my heart greatly rejoiceth; and with my song will I praise him.
Psalms 28:7 (KJV)
Here the Lord is called strength and shield, and the heart that trusted him responds with a song of thanks.
Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing: thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness; To the end that my glory may sing praise to thee, and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks unto thee for ever.
Psalms 30:11-12 (KJV)
Written for times of relief, it thanks God for turning mourning into dancing and promises lasting praise.
Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men! For he satisfieth the longing soul, and filleth the hungry soul with goodness.
Psalms 107:8-9 (KJV)
These lines urge people to praise the Lord for his goodness, for he satisfies the longing soul.
But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
1 Corinthians 15:57 (KJV)
Paul breaks into thanks to God, who gives believers victory through the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every place.
2 Corinthians 2:14 (KJV)
A prayer of thanks to God, who always leads his people in triumph in Christ.
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
James 1:17 (KJV)
Useful for naming blessings, since every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father of lights.
It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.
Lamentations 3:22-23 (KJV)
Even in grief, the writer thanks God that his compassions fail not and are new every morning.
I will bless the Lord at all times: his praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul shall make her boast in the Lord: the humble shall hear thereof, and be glad. O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together.
Psalms 34:1-3 (KJV)
David commits to bless the Lord at all times and invites others to magnify his name together.
It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord, and to sing praises unto thy name, O most High: To shew forth thy lovingkindness in the morning, and thy faithfulness every night,
Psalms 92:1-2 (KJV)
It is good to give thanks to the Lord, declaring his lovingkindness every morning and his faithfulness every night.
I thank my God upon every remembrance of you,
Philippians 1:3 (KJV)
Paul thanks God every time he remembers his friends, a pattern for thanking God for people.
I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and will call upon the name of the Lord.
Psalms 116:17 (KJV)
The psalmist promises to offer God the sacrifice of thanksgiving and call on his name.
Because thy lovingkindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee. Thus will I bless thee while I live: I will lift up my hands in thy name.
Psalms 63:3-4 (KJV)
Because God’s lovingkindness is better than life, David pledges to praise him and lift up his hands.
One simple way to begin is to pray a psalm straight through. Psalm 103:1-5 works well because it lists God’s benefits one by one: forgiveness, healing, redemption, lovingkindness and good things that satisfy. Read a line, pause, and name something specific from your own life that fits it. Psalm 136 can be prayed the same way, with a family or small group answering each line with, for his mercy endureth for ever.
These verses also help build a daily rhythm. Psalm 92:2 speaks of declaring God’s lovingkindness in the morning and his faithfulness every night. You might open the day with Psalm 118:24 and close it by writing down three things you are grateful for, then thanking God for each. Philippians 1:3 is a good prompt for thanking God for particular people by name.
Thankful prayer is not only for easy days. Lamentations 3:22-23 was written in a time of great loss, yet it still thanks God that his mercies are new every morning. When gratitude feels hard, start small, thank God for his presence and his steady love, and let these verses carry you until your own words return.
Luke 17:11-19 tells of ten lepers who called out to Jesus for mercy. He sent them to show themselves to the priests, and as they went, they were cleansed. Only one, a Samaritan, turned back and “with a loud voice glorified God, And fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks” (Luke 17:15-16). Jesus asked, “Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine?” (Luke 17:17).
The nine were not wicked. They were probably doing exactly what they had been told. But in the rush of good news, they forgot to return. That is an easy mistake to make after any answered prayer.
The story gives a practical pattern for anyone using Bible verses for prayer of thanksgiving. First, notice what God has done before moving on to the next need. Second, go back on purpose and say thank you, out loud if you can. Third, be specific; the Samaritan thanked Jesus for a particular healing, not for blessings in general. Keeping a short list of prayers and marking when each is answered makes it much easier to return like he did.
The Samaritan’s gratitude also led him closer to Jesus. The other nine received healing, but he received a personal word: “thy faith hath made thee whole” (Luke 17:19). Thankful prayer is not only good manners toward God. It draws us back into His presence, where we come to know Him better than before.
Gratitude grows with practice. This one-week plan pairs a single passage with a simple focus for each day. Spend five or ten minutes reading the verse, then thank God in your own words for what it brings to mind.
At the end of the week, read back what you wrote. Many people are surprised at how much they had overlooked. You can repeat the plan with the same passages or swap in other Bible verses for prayer of thanksgiving you have come to love.
Thankfulness is meant for every part of life, not just special occasions. Here are a few ways to bring these Bible verses for prayer of thanksgiving into ordinary moments.
Jesus gave thanks before feeding the five thousand (John 6:11). Paul wrote that every creature of God is good “if it be received with thanksgiving” (1 Timothy 4:4). Pausing before a meal to thank God, even briefly, turns daily food into a daily reminder of His care.
Philippians 4:6 says, “Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.” Try beginning a worried prayer by thanking God for one past answer before you ask for help with the present problem. For more on this, see these Bible verses about prayer and peace.
Write down what happened, tell someone else, and thank God specifically, just as the Samaritan did. These Bible verses for answered prayer are a good place to find words.
Paul regularly opened his letters by thanking God for the believers he wrote to (Colossians 1:3). Try sending a short note to someone you thanked God for in prayer, letting them know how they have been a gift to you.
“In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you” (1 Thessalonians 5:18). Paul says in everything, not for everything. You do not have to be thankful for pain, but you can thank God for His presence in the middle of it.
Wherever you are, Bible verses for prayer of thanksgiving can give shape to what your heart wants to say.
Long before these Bible verses for prayer of thanksgiving were gathered here, David modeled what it looks like to thank God in both triumph and trouble. When the ark of the covenant finally returned to Jerusalem, David wrote and appointed a psalm of thanksgiving to be sung before the Lord, beginning “Give thanks unto the Lord, call upon his name” (1 Chronicles 16:8).
Yet David’s own prayers of thanksgiving were not reserved for good days alone. Many of his psalms move from raw complaint into praise within the same prayer, as in Psalm 13, where he cries out in distress and ends by declaring, “I will sing unto the Lord, because he hath dealt bountifully with me” (Psalm 13:6). David’s example shows that these Bible verses for prayer of thanksgiving do not require every circumstance to be resolved first; they simply require remembering who God has already proven Himself to be, even in hard seasons.
Sometimes the hardest part of prayer is simply beginning. This short prayer draws on several of these Bible verses for prayer of thanksgiving and gives you words to start with before adding your own.
“Father, I enter Your gates with thanksgiving today, just as Psalm 100:4 invites me to. Thank You for ______, a gift I too easily overlook. Thank You for Your mercy, which Lamentations 3:22-23 says is new every morning. Thank You for hearing me even before I finish speaking, and for the peace Philippians 4:6-7 promises to those who pray with thanksgiving. Teach me to return often to these Bible verses for prayer of thanksgiving, not only when good news arrives. In Jesus’ name, amen.”
Pray this each morning for a week, filling in your own specific gift each time, and notice how returning to these Bible verses for prayer of thanksgiving begins to shape how you see the rest of your day.
these verses do not need to wait for a special occasion. Try pausing before meals, at the start of your workday, or right before sleep to name one specific thing, however small, that you are grateful for.
Keeping a short written list nearby can help: a notebook by your bed, a note on your phone, or a line in your journal each evening. Over several weeks, returning daily to these verses tends to retrain your attention away from what feels lacking and toward what God has already provided, even during genuinely difficult seasons of life.
This brief plan pairs these verses with a short prompt for each day, so gratitude becomes a practiced habit rather than an occasional feeling.
By the end of the week, many people find that these verses have reshaped not just their prayers, but their outlook on ordinary days.
Consider sharing one thing you are thankful for with someone else this week, since spoken gratitude tends to deepen a private prayer. For further encouragement, see these Bible verses about prayer and faith and Bible verses about prayer and peace.
Thanks in the Old Testament was never left to mood. It was scheduled. Leviticus 23 lays out the appointed feasts, and several of them were harvest festivals: firstfruits, weeks, and booths. A farmer who had spent months watching the sky for rain was told to stop, carry something to the sanctuary, and say out loud where the crop had really come from.
Deuteronomy 26 gives the script. The worshipper brought a basket and declared, ”I have brought the firstfruits of the land, which thou, O Lord, hast given me” (Deuteronomy 26:10). Notice what is missing. There is no speech about how hard he had worked or how clever the planting had been. The basket was handed over, and the words credited the Giver.
There is a practical lesson for a modern kitchen or workshop. We tend to wait until we feel grateful before we say thank you. Israel did it the other way around: they set a day, brought the basket, and let the habit train the heart. If your own thanks has gone thin, a fixed time each week, even ten quiet minutes on Sunday evening, can do what a passing feeling never will. The feast came around whether the year had been fat or lean, and that steadiness is part of why the practice lasted for centuries.
The book of Lamentations was written after Jerusalem fell. Houses were burned, the temple was gone, and the survivors were hungry. Yet right in the middle of the book, in chapter 3, the writer stops and says something that surprises many first-time readers: ”It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22-23).
Read the verses before it and you will see this is no cheerful poster slogan. The speaker has just described being hedged in, wearied, and ignored when he cried out. The thanks comes anyway, and it is small and specific. We are not consumed. That is the whole claim. He is alive, and he counts it.
Many of us pray from a place like that. A layoff letter, a diagnosis, an empty chair at the table. Thanking God in those weeks does not mean pretending the loss is fine. It can mean naming the one thing still standing: a neighbor who showed up, a morning that arrived, a thread of strength you did not expect to have. The writer of Lamentations shows that grief and thanks can sit in the same paragraph without cancelling each other out.
When Paul wrote to the church at Philippi he was under guard, most likely in Rome, chained to a soldier and unsure how his case would end. A man in that position has plenty to complain about. Instead the letter opens with, ”I thank my God upon every remembrance of you” (Philippians 1:3).
Look at what he is thankful for. Not release, not comfort, not a better cell. People. He remembers faces in Philippi, the merchant woman Lydia, the jailer whose household had believed, the believers who sent money more than once, and he turns each memory into a prayer. His gratitude is tied to individuals he could name.
That gives a simple pattern for anyone whose own circumstances are cramped. Sit down with a short list of people who have shaped your faith, a former Sunday school teacher, a coworker who prayed with you, a relative who never gave up on you, and thank God for them one at a time. Then, if you can, send a note. Paul did exactly that. His letter was both a prayer and a thank-you card, and the church kept it for two thousand years.
Psalm 116:17 says, ”I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and will call upon the name of the Lord.” The word sacrifice is deliberate. In the temple system a sacrifice meant something taken from your own flock or field and given away. Thanks was understood to carry a price, even if it was only the time to walk to the altar and the willingness to speak in public.
The New Testament carries the thought forward. Hebrews 13:15 says, ”By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name.” The offering is now our speech. No animal is needed, but the sense of cost remains. Some days the sacrifice is thanking God when your phone is full of bad news, or when you have a dozen reasons to be short with everyone.
What does this look like on an ordinary Tuesday? Perhaps you stop a complaint halfway and replace it with one sentence of thanks. Perhaps you pray aloud in the car instead of scrolling. These are small offerings, and the Bible treats them as real ones. God does not weigh them by size. He receives what is brought.
Not every season lets gratitude come easily, and it helps to say so plainly. Some people hear a verse about giving thanks and feel a small stab of guilt, as if their sadness proved a weak faith. The psalms give no such verdict. They are full of honest cries, and the thanks that appears in them tends to arrive after the writer has said what hurts.
Psalm 30 is a good example. David looks back and says, ”Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing: thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness; To the end that my glory may sing praise to thee, and not be silent” (Psalm 30:11-12). The mourning came first. The dancing is described as something God did over time, not something David produced on command.
If you are in a heavy stretch, do not manufacture a feeling. Start with the tiniest honest sentence: thank you for today’s water, for a friend who texted, for breath. Let the rest wait. And if the heaviness lasts for weeks and you cannot sleep, eat, or find any interest in life, please talk with a doctor or a counselor as well as praying. Seeking help is not a failure of thankfulness. Many believers have found that prayer and good care work side by side.
There are mornings when you want to thank God and nothing comes. The Bible anticipated that. The Psalter was a prayer book long before it was a book on a shelf, and its songs were meant to be lent to people who could not find their own. Psalm 92 even carries a heading showing it was sung for the Sabbath day, and it opens, ”It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord, and to sing praises unto thy name, O most High” (Psalm 92:1).
A grandmother might read that line over breakfast and let the grandchildren say it back. A man alone in a hospital waiting room might whisper it with his phone in his hand. The words are old, but they do not need updating. They fit a crowded sanctuary and a lonely car equally well.
Then let your own words follow. After reading a verse, add one sentence about this week: the repaired dishwasher, a test result that came back clear, a child who finally slept through the night. Paul closes his great chapter on resurrection with a line that works as a short daily prayer: ”But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:57). Short, true, and easy to carry into the day.
Readers interested in prayer of thanksgiving often continue with Bible Verses For Strength and Courage, Bible Verses About Faith and Courage, Bible Verses About Faith and Trust, Bible Verses For Healing and Faith, Bible Verses About Hope, Bible Verses About Strength, Bible Verses About Grief, Bible Verses About Grace, Bible Verses About Encouragement, Bible Verses About Obedience and Bible Verses For Strength in Difficult Times.
For deeper study, Bible Gateway, Bible Hub and Bible Study Tools are all free to use.
One simple way to begin is to pray a psalm straight through. Psalm 103:1-5 works well because it lists God's benefits one by one: forgiveness, healing, redemption, lovingkindness and good things that satisfy.
This page brings together 20 King James Version references about prayer Of Thanksgiving, drawn from 11 different books of the Bible.
Yes, the verses referenced on this page, including Psalm 103:1, are quoted according to the King James Version (KJV), and are suitable for daily reading, memorization, or devotional use.
Beyond the references highlighted on this page, prayer Of Thanksgiving appears throughout Scripture in books such as Psalm, Philippians, Lamentations, Luke, James; this collection focuses on some of the clearest examples.
These prayer Of Thanksgiving verses are drawn from books including Psalm, Philippians, Lamentations, Luke, James, among others.
