From our Sunday service on November 24, 2024, Psalm 100, Philippians 4, Psalm 105, 1 Thessalonians 5, 2 Kings 6, and Psalm 37. Watch the full message: The Power of a Grateful Heart on YouTube.
It’s Thanksgiving week, and I think it would be a shame for a pastor to let Thanksgiving week go by without preaching on thankfulness. We all know thankfulness is an important part of our Christian walk, and we all know the Bible tells us to be thankful. But a lot of times we don’t spend time in Scripture really looking at what that looks like. So today I want to look at what the Bible says about it.
When was the last time you thanked God for something small? A lot of times we thank him for the big things: a raise at work, a bonus, a daughter who got married. But when was the last time you thanked him for a good night’s sleep, a quiet moment in the midst of a busy day, a sunrise, or a sunset on a starry night?
I remember driving through the middle of the night all the way down to Florida when I was in college. You get those peaceful moments under a starry night, and I remember thinking, “Wow, God, I have the opportunity to go all the way down to Florida for college, and I have this quiet time with you.” I look back on it as a really special moment. But a lot of times we pass those moments by without a second thought.
Why Gratitude Matters
We all know thankfulness can be powerful, but most of us underestimate how much it affects our lives. I was looking for scientific studies to back this up and found one from the University of Miami. For ten weeks, three groups of people wrote down the events of each week. Group one wrote only things they were grateful for. Group two wrote only things that irritated them: “Jenny was talking behind my back at work today,” “my car was making weird noises.” Group three wrote events that had a general effect on them, positive or negative.
At the end of the ten weeks, those who wrote only about gratitude were more optimistic and felt better about their lives. The researchers were even more surprised to find that they had exercised more without any effort and had fewer visits to the doctor than those who focused on sources of aggravation. Other studies in the same area have shown that gratitude improves overall happiness, that those who regularly thank their spouses have happier marriages, and that managers who regularly recognize their employees’ work verbally have more effective employees, because the happiness of the boss made the employees happy as well.
We know in our heads that thankfulness is important, but we don’t realize how far it reverberates. If I’m thankful, I’m going to be healthier, I’m going to go to the doctor less, and everybody around me is going to be happier too. Our capacity for thankfulness affects every area of our lives, including our health, our attitude, and our relationships with others. More important than any study, God himself emphasizes gratitude in Scripture, and today I want to talk about how God wants us to have a heart of gratitude.
What Is Thankfulness?
We can’t talk about something we don’t know about, so I looked up Merriam-Webster. It gave three definitions of “thankful”: an expression of thanks, a consciousness of benefits received, and the state of being well pleased. As I looked at the Bible, I found that all three have an application in Scripture, so let’s take them one at a time.
Thankfulness as an Expression of Thanks
Psalm 100 is basically the psalm of thankfulness, a celebration of the goodness of God through thankfulness. What I want you to get from it is that thanksgiving itself is a form of worship.
Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands. Serve the LORD with gladness: come before his presence with singing. Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name. For the LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.
Psalm 100:1–5
The title calls it “A Psalm of praise,” so this is a psalm meant to worship God, and here thanksgiving is listed as one of the ways we praise him. “Enter into his gates with thanksgiving.” Any time you meet with God, go to him with a grateful attitude, thanking him for the things he has done. “Into his courts with praise”: be excited about him and celebrate him.
Let’s be clear that it’s not wrong to go to God with a bad attitude. It’s actually a really good thing to do. It’s okay to have a negative emotion and still go to God in prayer, and not every prayer is going to come at your happiest moment. But it’s also important to go to God in the happy moments and express gratitude to him.
Verse 2 says to serve the Lord with gladness and come before his presence with singing. We serve him through thankfulness, through our happiness and our rejoicing. And why? Verse 5 says, “for,” meaning because, “the LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.” No matter what, we can always be thankful to God because he is good, even when we don’t feel like he is and even when we can’t see it. His mercy is everlasting, which means it is eternal and unending, with no start and no end. And his truth endures to all generations: our fathers’ generation before we were born, our generation, our children’s generation, and our children’s children’s. God is faithful not just to us but to those who will come after us and those who came before. That’s something we can already be thankful for. If we want to truly and fully worship God, we need an attitude of gratitude.
Next, Philippians 4 shows how thankfulness gives us confidence in the promises of God.
Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
Philippians 4:6–7
“Be careful for nothing” means do not be anxious. Don’t be worried about anything. How many of you have experienced anxiety in your life? I know you have. I have, you have, and you will, and I will. Anxiety will be in our lives one way or another. This doesn’t mean we should drive dangerously down the road. It doesn’t tell us to speed, go bungee jumping, or go skydiving. It says don’t be anxious, because there’s something you can do about it: “in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.”
Supplication means going to God specifically with a request, asking him to do something. Some people preach that you shouldn’t ask God for things because he’s already going to do them, but the Bible says it’s okay to ask God to do stuff. It also says that’s not all we should do. We should go to him with gratitude for what he’s done. We don’t just say, “God, I’m so stressed, I’m so depressed, I’m falling apart here, everything’s bad.” We say, “God, I’m stressed and I know you can give me peace, but before I ask for anything else, I want to thank you for all the good things you’ve done in my life.”
Verse 7 says that if we do this, the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. When we take time away from our anxiety to thank God, we realize we have way more than we thought we did. It reminds us of God’s faithfulness that we already have as we ask him for the next thing. Instead of focusing on what we don’t have, we learn through thankfulness how much we can trust him from what he’s already done. So if we want to free ourselves from anxiety and worry, we need to start by thanking God for the good he has already given us, changing our perspective from what we don’t have to the many things we already find in our lives.
Thankfulness as a Consciousness of Benefits Received
This passage teaches us that thankfulness is not a passive act. It doesn’t just happen. It’s an active choice we make each day.
O give thanks unto the LORD; call upon his name: make known his deeds among the people. Sing unto him, sing psalms unto him: talk ye of all his wondrous works. Glory ye in his holy name: let the heart of them rejoice that seek the LORD.
Psalm 105:1–3
Thankfulness is listed here among many other verbs, actions we have to do: call, make known, sing, talk, glory, rejoice. They’re not passive. It’s not “be rejoiced” or “be made known,” with somebody else doing it. You can’t make known his deeds among the people without going actively to the people and telling them. You can’t sing to the Lord in worship without opening your mouth. You can’t glory in silence, and you can’t rejoice without going out of your way to find something to rejoice in. Thankfulness is just as much an action as these are.
A lot of times we think, “I am aware that God is good,” but it’s not good enough to say that passively. Being aware of things in your life is not the same as being thankful for them. It’s one thing to know that I have stuff, and another to look at it one by one and see what God has done. A lot of us know God has been good to us and know we have blessings from him, but we’ve never taken that head knowledge and put it in our hearts. We rarely go to God thanking him for the things he’s done one by one. We just say, “God, thank you for this food,” and acknowledge there’s food on my plate. We could do so much better: “God, I thank you that I can have such a delicious meal. It’s full of nutrition. I’m thankful for the person who prepared it. I have a house to eat it in, with heat in the winter and air conditioning in the summer.” There are all these things that go into that one meal, and we’ve forgotten about ninety-five percent of them.
In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.
1 Thessalonians 5:18
This is what God wants for you: thankfulness for everything in your life. In the Greek, “every thing” is a singular word, not a plural. It’s not everything in general but every individual thing.
You may be thinking, “Even things I don’t like? You’re telling me I should be thankful when I burn my toast in the morning and get stuck in traffic on my way to work?” Well, yes and no. You don’t need to be thankful that you burned your toast. You can be thankful that, despite burning it, God has blessed you enough that you can put another slice in the toaster and continue to eat. There are people who have to think week to week about buying bread. There are millions of people in this world who would give an arm or a leg to live in our comfort. You don’t need to thank God for the traffic jam, but you can thank him that you have a car that enables you to be stuck in traffic to begin with. How many people in this world don’t have a car to take them to work? They’ve never experienced a traffic jam in their lives, and yet we get so upset with God: “I’m going to be late to work, my boss is going to be mad at me, this is the third time this week. Why am I so persecuted? This toaster is such a curse to me.” When you look at your inconveniences in terms of your blessings, it changes your perspective.
How many daily blessings have we completely ignored? Clean water coming out of our faucets, when in a lot of countries you can’t drink the water, and some countries don’t even have a faucet. Yet every day we turn it on and never thank God for that comfort. A comfortable bed to sleep in. Food on our table. Access to education in this country. A loyal pet. Our relationships with others. Even the stable routine that lets us get bored in the first place. We get stuck in the cycle of saying, “My life is so boring,” but the fact that your life can get boring at all is a blessing. There are people, probably even in our city, who pray every night for the opportunity to be bored, who work two or three jobs just to make it by and wish they had nothing to do on a Saturday afternoon. If we looked at our lives with all the blessings in front of us, it would change everything. We should be thankful not just for the big things but for every little thing, even the things we take for granted.
Thankful for the Unseen
We should be thankful not only for the things we can see but also for the unseen things. In 2 Kings 6, a king of Syria was starting a war against Israel. He was very confident, with mighty armies, and he was trying to figure out how much of a threat there was. He asked who was standing for the Lord, and they said just Elisha the prophet and his servant. They were worried because somehow the secret battle plans had gotten out. God had given them to Elisha. Who’s the spy? It’s just a prophet and his servant. So the king of Syria comes to war.
And when the servant of the man of God was risen early, and gone forth, behold, an host compassed the city both with horses and chariots. And his servant said unto him, Alas, my master! how shall we do? And he answered, Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them. And Elisha prayed, and said, LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the LORD opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.
2 Kings 6:15–17
The servant says, “Master, there’s an entire army around our city. We have no preparations. What are we going to do?” Elisha answers, “Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them.” The servant is thinking, “It’s just us, isn’t it? We’re the only ones on God’s side in this city. What are you talking about?” He doesn’t see any way out. Then Elisha prays, “LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see.” The servant had seen an earthly foe, a great empire. Elisha says, “You haven’t figured out the ministry yet. You don’t see the unseen,” and asks God to let him see his army. His eyes are opened to the spiritual realm, and he sees all the angels of the Lord around the entire city.
The servant was scared in that moment that God was not taking care of him and there was no plan for survival, but at the same time a great spiritual battle was going on right in front of him. God’s forces were already there, already defending, and the victory was already prepared to be won. We may thank God for the little things, but we also need to thank him for the unseen things. There are going to be times when we see hardship ahead and can’t see the way out. But God has an unseen army we’re not entirely aware of, and it may not be until weeks, months, or even years later that we begin to see how he worked with it. We hear stories about how the Lord was trying to get a message to Daniel, but the forces of evil delayed it for a season, while God’s army was fighting that entire time to bring the message of hope to that believer. We need to know God is working even when we don’t see it. We can be thankful even then, because we know God is good and always at work. His unseen blessings are worth thanking him for even when we do not see them. Outside our view is a great spiritual battle we’re often unaware of, and how often do we go out of our way to thank God for the invisible ways he’s protecting and guiding us?
Thankfulness as a State of Being Well Pleased
The third definition is the state of being well pleased, or the word I’ll use here, satisfied. If thankfulness is being satisfied, how do we find satisfaction? First of all, satisfaction is found in the Lord.
Trust in the LORD, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed. Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Commit thy way unto the LORD; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.
Psalm 37:3–5
When we take our passions and place them in God, we will naturally find the desires of our heart. If we align ourselves with God’s will, then God will enable us to do his will, and we’ll find satisfaction in serving him. Here the Bible says serving the Lord is trusting in him and doing good. If we seek to do that, we’ll find satisfaction in it, but we will not find it outside of committing ourselves to God.
Philippians 4:11-13 also teaches that contentment leads to satisfaction.
Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.
Philippians 4:11–13
As we go through life we go through many phases. There are phases where things are tight and we barely have what we need to get by, and times when God blesses us with abundance. If we are only thankful in the moments of abundance, we’re going to be miserable people. Paul says he has learned, whether he lacks a lot or has a lot, to be content with what he has, because he can do all things through Christ who strengthens him.
But godliness with contentment is great gain.
1 Timothy 6:6
Godliness itself is not great gain. You can be godly and moral, but if you’re not content, you’re not going to enjoy all the blessings of God. I’m sorry, but we don’t preach the prosperity gospel here. Following God does not guarantee wealth and comfort. It does guarantee that if you are content in following God, you will live a good, pleasing, satisfying life. It has been said that contentment is the soil from which thankfulness grows, and that is truthful. You cannot be thankful without being content. If you’re not content, you will always be ungrateful for what you have and always searching for more.
How Do We Become Content?
We live in a world where everyone around us is trying to convince us not to be content. The entire capitalistic society runs on the idea that I need to buy something else, and that this is the solution for whatever problem I have. The Bible teaches the opposite: God is the solution for every problem we have, and we need to follow his will and his philosophy. We need to reject the idea that if I just had a little bit more, my life would be better, and instead say, “God has given me what I need, and if he has, I don’t need anything else. What he has given me and chosen for me is good, and I should be satisfied in it.” There are two steps to finding contentment.
First, don’t compare yourself with what others have.
…they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise.
2 Corinthians 10:12
Don’t look at what the people around you have and say, “They’re way more blessed than me.” If you compare yourselves among yourselves, you will either see yourself too highly or think of yourself more lowly than you should.
Second, focus on the many things you do have rather than the few things you don’t. If we take time to look at those things one by one, we will quickly realize how blessed we are.
Two Challenges for Thanksgiving Week
This is the week of Thanksgiving. Think about how this very week you can create a spirit of gratitude. I’m going to give you two challenges to take active steps.
Challenge one: in the spirit of that scientific study, create a list every day of three to five unique things (not the same thing every day) that you can be thankful for from that specific day. It can be on a piece of paper, in a notebook, or on your phone. What’s important is that you write down a few good things every day, and then at the end of the day, pray and thank God for those things.
Challenge two: find someone in your life who has encouraged you this week, and go out of your way to thank them specifically for everything they’ve done for you. Don’t be afraid to list some specific things. If we want a spirit of gratitude, we need to take it from our minds and put it into our lives through action.
May we all be people who are constantly involved with thankfulness. God wants us to have a heart of gratitude, because when we cultivate gratitude, we align ourselves with God’s will, unlock peace for our lives, and find satisfaction in him, not in what we have, but in who God is.
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