November 23, 2017
I’m speaking to you out of deep gratitude for all that God has given me, and especially as I have responsibilities in relation to you. Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it’s important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him.—Romans 12:31
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Gratitude is the ability to experience life as a gift. It opens us up to wonder, delight, and humility. It makes our hearts generous. It liberates us from the prison of self-preoccupation.
Gratitude is not something we give to God because he wants to make sure we know how much trouble he went to over us. Gratitude is the gift God gives us that enables us to be blessed by all his other gifts, the way our taste buds enable us to enjoy the gift of food. Without gratitude, our lives degenerate into envy, dissatisfaction, and complaints, taking what we have for granted and always wanting more. …
The feeling part of gratitude is important. But don’t wait to feel thankful before giving thanks. Usually the thinking and the doing lead to the emotions. C. S. Lewis once said that it’s a thin line between pretending to feel something and beginning to feel it. There is a reason why the holiday is called Thanksgiving, not Thanksfeeling.—John Ortberg2
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Gratitude can transform common days into thanksgivings, turn routine jobs into joy, and change ordinary opportunities into blessings.—William Arthur Ward
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Christians have, most of all, a responsibility to God in thanks and gratitude for what God has done for us already. We’re not just to be looking for more and selfishly craving more, selfishly boasting of more, but we are to sacrificially want to serve Christ and serve others and witness and win souls forever for heaven!—David Brandt Berg
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As a child, sitting between my parents in church on Sunday mornings, I often heard these words read from Scripture: “In everything give thanks!”3 And my young mind responded with: “Yes, one needs to be grateful for every good thing that happens in one’s life.” From time to time, through the years of my youth, those words replayed in my consciousness, and I learned to be grateful for many obvious things. I expressed gratitude for gifts received, kindness bestowed, and all the good times and friends I experienced in the course of living.
Expressing gratitude even when things went wrong was much more difficult to do, but I was also amazed at the outcome of doing so. I discovered that the scripture “God inhabits the praise of His people”4 was to remind us that gratitude releases an energy that could begin turning things around, and when I did so, it imbued me with the strength and ability to surmount whatever was happening in my outer world. Eventually, I would see that what had often appeared as a negative circumstance was really the pivotal point for a new direction that I would take. Often, in retrospect, I could see clearly that it had been a blessing in disguise and had led me into a deeper and more meaningful place.
… I am truly GRATEFUL for discovering the power of gratitude in my life, and I shall always continue to give thanks in EVERYTHING!—Louise Hay5
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Let’s celebrate some wonderful things about gratitude:
1. When you feel gratitude and are expressing your gratitude, you can’t feel anxiety, worry, or fear at the same time.
It’s like the saying, “When you let the light in, the darkness will flee of itself.” Fear and gratitude can’t occupy the same space. Putting yourself in a grateful frame of mind, and staying in that state, is an effective way to combat fear or worry.
2. When you weave gratitude through the fabric of your life, people will like you more.
Why? Simply because you’re nicer to be around. People like being around upbeat, positive, hopeful people. They like the energy, the good vibes, and the positive approach to life. Everybody has their own personal challenges, and nobody’s looking for more bad news or grief to take on themselves. And it’s so refreshing and inspiring to be with people who are grateful and have a positive attitude.
3. Gratitude improves your overall health and well-being.
Practicing gratitude has been shown to reduce stress, anxiety, worry, and fear. And not only that, but it improves negative conditions that link to these emotions, such as heart disease, high blood pressure, depression, and so on.
Something we can do to cultivate more gratitude in our lives, and to think more about our blessings and all the good, is to keep a gratitude journal. As I was thinking about this topic some time back, I decided to begin a gratitude journal.
According to studies, writing down the things that you’re grateful for brings with it some pretty amazing benefits, like more happiness, better sleep, less loneliness, and fewer symptoms of illness. The thing that I love about it is that it reminds me of what God has done for me—about the many joys I have in my life, about the prayers answered, the victories won, and the things He’s done in the lives of my loved ones. It reminds me that God is involved in my life, and reading what He’s done causes me to love Him and thank Him all the more.
Keeping a gratitude journal helps you to think more about the good things. You realize how very special every day is, and how little things are wonderful things, and by stopping to remember and write them down, you notice more of them and appreciate them more. Being grateful for the good makes more good things happen.—Peter Amsterdam
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Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates vision for tomorrow.—Melody Beattie
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My presence is an endless source of joy: a continual feast! … I am the Spirit of life, and thankfulness and gratitude help chase away fear; they bring remorse to a dead end; they leap over the gorge of worry and they land in the field of peace and calm, where I dwell. They give you smooth sailing, powered by the breath of My Spirit. Your spirit is a vehicle, and what it carries determines your direction as well as your destination. If you carry thankfulness and gratitude in your passenger seats, and if you power your vehicle with praise, you will eventually reach the heights of heaven, where I dwell.—Jesus, speaking in prophecy
Published on Anchor November 2017. Read by Jerry Paladino. Music by John Listen.
1 MSG.
2 John Ortberg, When the Game Is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box (Zondervan, 2009).
3 1 Thessalonians 5:18.
4 Psalm 22:3.
5 Louise Hay and friends, Gratitude: A Way of Life (Hay House, 1996).
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