There are a few important lessons that we
try over and over again to teach our children and grandchildren. We give one of these lessons when someone
gives the child something. We say to the
child, “What do you say?” Most children
learn the routine and reply without hesitation, “Thank you.” Gratitude is one of the fundamental values
that we want to instill in our children.
Those of us who are older also need to be reminded occasionally that
it's good to say “Thank you,” especially in the broader sense of going through
each day with an attitude of gratitude.
A
university research project focused on determining how important gratitude and
thanksgiving are for a fulfilling life.
Some participants in the study were asked to practice daily gratitude
exercises such as keeping a list of things they were grateful for. Others were asked to keep a list of bad
things that happened to them, and a third group — the control group — were not
told to do anything different. The group
that practiced daily gratitude “reported higher levels of alertness,
enthusiasm, determination, optimism and energy.” (Radical Gratitude,
Ellen Vaughn, p.46) You just feel better
when you make a practice of giving thanks, finding reasons to regularly express
gratitude!
The Ultimate Expression of Gratitude
What determines
how thankful we are in a given situation?
There are two factors. One is the
importance of the good thing that happened to us. Was it something minor, major, or in
between? The second factor is the
importance of the person who does the good thing. If a girl really likes a guy and he gives her
a single rose, she would probably be very grateful. Though the gift was small, the giver is very
important to her, so she feels very grateful.
On the other hand, a perfect stranger could pull you out of snowdrift
and you'd be very grateful, even though the person meant little to you, because
it was a big favor that the person did.
The best-case scenario is when someone really important to you does something
really important for you. That's a
formula for great gratitude!
This
message is the fourth in our series of six messages with the theme “The
Divine Elephant: Reason Enough for Embracing Today.” We often use the phrase “the elephant in
the room” to refer to a situation that shouldn't be ignored. If God is the biggest and most important of
anything that exists — and He is — He should make all the difference in the
world to us. If He’s the creator and
sustainer and if — as the history and teaching in the Bible show — He wants to
personally relate to us, nothing should be more important to us than God. No one does anything more important than God
does, so there’s no one we should be more grateful to than God! Because God is supposed to be (if we don’t
ignore the Divine Elephant in the room) a big part of our days, we should see
every day as Thanksgiving Day!
It
has to be a sad experience for an atheist to view a beautiful sunset and have
no one to thank for it. I really feel
sorry for people of no faith, or even those people who believe but usually
ignore the Divine Elephant, when Thanksgiving Day comes. Everyone, the media included, talks about
being thankful, but often it isn’t made clear whom we should thank. If the universe is here by chance and
everything exists by some random, mindless, purposeless process, there’s no one
to thank! No wonder it’s called Turkey
Day!
By
ignoring the Divine Elephant in the room, we miss our best and biggest
opportunity to be thankful. Thanksgiving
to God is the ultimate expression of gratitude.
When it comes to God, there’s a lot that we can be grateful for. We can join the psalmist in declaring, “Give
thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever.” (Psalm
107:1)
In
fact, the phrase “give thanks” in reference to God is in the Bible 33 times;
it's that important! If we aren’t going
to ignore the Divine Elephant in the room, we should regularly express
gratitude and live with a thankful attitude toward Him.
Gratitude When Life's Not Great
As pastor to
several hundred people, I'm made aware every day — and often many times each
day — of the tremendous problems that people are dealing with. It's staggering! Gathered in our three worship services this
weekend are people facing debilitating illnesses, the loss of a loved one, the
loss of a job, alienated relationships, financial struggles, cuts in medical
benefits, and on and on.
I
considered all of this as I studied God's Word.
After all, it's hard to express gratitude when life isn’t good. The reality is that life's never perfect,
though sometimes it’s a lot harder than other times. The question is whether we can be thankful
while we’re in the shadow of the hard things in our lives.
Let
me share something that the apostle Paul wrote while he was in a far-from-ideal
position. In fact, he was under arrest
for having preached about Jesus. He
referred to his incarceration as “my chains.” (Philippians 1:14) In his letter to the Philippian Christians
Paul stated, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer
and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”
(Philippians 4:6) Even in the midst of
our troubles as we bring our burdens to the Lord, crying out to Him for help,
we should have an undercurrent of thanksgiving flowing through us because God
is good and we’re able to go to Him with all of the difficulties in our lives!
We
can't always be thankful for the circumstances we face, but we can always be
thankful to God for being with us in those circumstances! I like to remember three of the many
qualities or characteristics that God possesses for which I'm eternally
grateful. I'm grateful that He’s
all-loving, all-wise, and all-powerful.
He’s all-loving: that is, He’s all good and wants what’s ultimately best
for me. He’s wise and knows what’s
ultimately best for me. He’s
all-powerful and can do what’s ultimately best for me. We can take our requests to Him with
thanksgiving, trusting and believing that His love, wisdom, and power will
ultimately work in our favor and to His glory.
Dietrich
Bonhoeffer was a German minister and theologian who was teaching in the United States during World War
2. He decided to go back to Germany and join the
resistance movement against Hitler. He
was arrested and incarcerated in the Flossenburg concentration camp, where he
was executed by hanging just three weeks before the liberation by the Russians.
An
English officer who was imprisoned with him said, “Bonhoeffer always seemed to
me to spread an atmosphere of happiness and joy over the least incident and profound
gratitude for the mere fact that he was alive.” (The Life You've Always
Wanted, John Ortberg, p.72) I dare
say that if the apostle Paul and Dietrich Bonhoeffer could find reason enough
to give thanks while they were incarcerated for trying to do good, we can
certainly find reason to give thanks to God in the midst of whatever we're
facing!
There
are always pluses and minuses in life, including jobs, health, finances, and
close relationships. Maybe you can find
something to be thankful for but can also see things that you don’t like and
aren’t thankful for. When it comes to
God and our relationship with Him, there’s nothing on the minus side! Our greatest gratitude is reserved for God
Himself! As Ellen Vaughn stated in her
book Radical Gratitude, our gratitude “is relational, rather than
conditional.” We can't always be
thankful for the conditions we face, but we can always be thankful for being
able to relate to God in those conditions!
Actually, it’s often during difficult times that we grow closer to God
and deepen our faith in Him. We can
declare with the psalmist, “The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart
trusts in him, and I am helped. My heart
leaps for joy and I will give thanks to him in song.” (Psalm 28:7) We can be grateful to God even when things
aren’t great!
Practicing Gratitude
If we're
determined not to ignore the Divine Elephant in our lives, we should be able to
express gratitude toward Him every day.
There’s so much we can be grateful to God for!
We
started out by talking about teaching children to show gratitude. I like the way the great Christian writer
G.K. Chesterton put it: “If my children wake up on Christmas morning and have
somebody to thank for putting candy in their stocking, have I no one to thank
for putting two feet in mine?” (Can Man Live Without God?, Ravi
Zacharias, p.88)
The
other day I heard the term “rubbernecking” used in reference to an accident on
the freeway. As they drove by the
accident people were “rubbernecking,” as the news reporter said: they were
slowing down and gawking. I suggest that
we ought to be “rubbernecking” throughout our days — not at a disaster, but at
the often seemingly-small reasons for being delighted. Let’s look for reasons to gawk with
gratitude!
Why
not practice being thankful throughout the day?
When we get up in the morning, thank God for something. At noon during lunch,
thank Him for something again. At
dinnertime, pause to give thanks. At
bedtime, express gratitude to Him again!
If
God is God — if God IS — that should make all the difference in the world to
us! Remember that if you've turned your
life over to Him, you have a relationship with Him. You have Him and much of His goodness every
day!
The
Bible reminds us that “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming
down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting
shadows.” (James 1:17) Just as a
parent says to a child when he receives a gift, I ask each of us — as children
of the Heavenly Father who have received many good gifts from Him — “What do
you say?”
Our
response should be, “Thank you!”
