9:11 thanksgiving to God. We are to give thanks “in every thing” (I Thessalonians 5:18). The importance of being thankful is pointed out by the fact that such words as “praise” and “thanksgiving,” with their derivatives, occur some five hundred times in the Bible. A key evidence that a Christian is “filled with the Spirit” is that he or she is habitually “giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 5:18,20).