Thankfulness

Introduction

As you all know, particularly around this time of year we all come together with our families and friends to celebrate Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is a good chance for all of us to reflect on what we are thankful for and is the one time of year that thankfulness and fellowship seem to be on the hearts of most people. You could be thankful for family, friends, food, I think a few of our little ones said they were thankful for mom and dad. Whatever you are thankful for it is a time of celebration, gratitude, and for some remembrance.

While this yearly celebration and fellowship involving all we are thankful for in our lives is important and a special times for most families to enjoy each other and reflect on what they are thankful for, I wanted to focus in our time here today on how thankfulness, the “attitude of gratitude” is not only something that is good to practice once a year, but rather day-to-day in our lives as Christian, as an attitude and practice that is essential to our Christian walk, as well as something that is commanded to us through Scripture.

For us to understand how we can apply the mindset of thankfulness to our own lives we need to understand exactly what it is first. What is thankfulness? Merriam-Webster dictionary defines being thankful as “conscious of the benefit received” or presently aware of what has been given to you that benefits you, “expressive of thanks”, that is showing thanks verbally or by some other means, or “well pleased” or satisfied. In other words, thankfulness is not only a verbal expression or a simple “thank you”, rather as we can see by the first definition, thankfulness is a form of consciousness, a state of being thankful. It is an ever on-going awareness of the good that God has been working in our lives. It is the result of an awakening within us, in which our mind and heart receive God’s goodness with gratitude, see what He has done for us, and then express that thankfulness.

Why? Why should we make giving thanks a daily part of our lives as believers? Why should we make an attitude of thanksgiving a priority in our lives as Christian? First of all, because Scripture will show us that God tells us to.

The phrase “give thanks” appears around 73 times in the King James Version of the Bible and the theme of thankfulness is one that is prevalent from cover to cover of the Bible. In the Psalms alone, we see such Scriptures as, “Oh, sing to Him you saints of His; give thanks to His Holy name.” (Psalm 30:4”)

Psalm 50:14 “Offer unto God thanksgiving; And pay thy vows unto the most High:” , Psalm 92:1 “It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord, And to sing praises unto thy name, O most High:” , Psalm 95:2 “Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, And make a joyful noise unto him with psalms.” , Psalm 100:4 “Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, And into his courts with praise: Be thankful unto him, and bless his name.” , Psalm 106:1 “Praise ye the Lord. O give thanks unto the Lord; for he is good: For his mercy endureth for ever.” , Psalm 107:1 “O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good: For his mercy endureth for ever.” , Psalm 107:8 “Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, And for his wonderful works to the children of men!” , Psalm 136:26 “O give thanks unto the God of heaven: For his mercy endureth for ever.”

In 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, Paul would say to “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this IS THE WILL OF GOD IN CHRIST JESUS FOR YOU. We can see through Paul’s writing here that not only is thankfulness something Scripture encourages us to do, but that thankfulness and gratitude is God’s will for our lives. We can see that the expression of thanks is not just something that God likes, but something God expects. We can see that expectation reflected in the life of Jesus in the story where He healed the lepers: Luke 17:11–19 “And it came to pass, as he went to Jerusalem, that he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered into a certain village, there met him ten men that were lepers, which stood afar off: And they lifted up their voices, and said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. And when he saw them, he said unto them, Go shew yourselves unto the priests. And it came to pass, that, as they went, they were cleansed. And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, And fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks: and he was a Samaritan. And Jesus answering said, Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine? There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger. And he said unto him, Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole.” Jesus would heal 10 lepers, but only one would return to give thanks to Him, leaving Jesus to question where the other 9 were. This shows us that God expects us to express thanks for what we have been given. We see thus far that thankfulness is encouraged in Scripture by other believers, but an expectation of God Himself through the story we read involving His Son Jesus here.

Another reason that thankfulness is essential in the life of a believer is that it helps us stand our ground against the enemy in difficult times and spiritual attacks. In Job, Satan would attempt to prove to God that Job was only serving Him because of His prosperity, because of the gifts God had given him. Thus, God allowed Job to lose pretty much everything except for his life and allowed Satan to tempt Job to turn from God. One way of looking at the situation we see early in the book of Job is that Satan was banking on Job having an attitude of un-thankfulness, or not being conscious of the benefits already received by God, not living in that “state of gratitude” to pull from our definition we used earlier. However, Job would go on to say later in his story, despite losing everything; “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” and his family would go on to be blessed beyond measure because of Job’s thankfulness, because of His consciousness of the goodness and sovereignty of God, because of his not turning away from what he knew to be good in his time of difficulty, in his thankfulness of what God had provided before the loss, as well as his thankfulness that he could trust God even after his loss because of God’s all-knowingness and power.

If you really think about it, doesn’t the enemy often use the same playbook against us, often with great success, knowing that we tend to be in a state of un-thankfulness? Do we not often find ourselves giving into sin, doing what we know to be wrong, turning our backs on God some moments in circumstances in our lives a lot less difficult than what Job’s were? Can we not attribute most of our falling into sin to a lifestyle of not being thankful? If we take some of the ten commandments for instance as an example, if we worship other gods in our hearts, minds, and desires, is it not because we are not thankful for the one true God and the satisfaction He gives to us through His peace? If we commit adultery in our hearts and minds is it not because of a lack of thankfulness for our spouse? If we kill though most often we kill in our hearts and minds, is it not because we are acting out or desiring the exercising of our own justice on those we deem unworthy of our good graces and mercy because we are not thankful for God’s justice or His fairness, or His decision on who He will spare and who He will not. We bear false witness, creating lies or creating hurtful rumors against those around us to give ourselves a sick thrill by making others look worse than we think we ourselves are, because of a lack of thankfulness of the truth, a lack of thankfulness of God’s other creations besides us, and because of a lack of thankfulness for God giving us the truth about who we ourselves are, feeling so negatively about ourselves we feel the need to tear others down? If we take the name of the Lord in vain is it not because we are not thankful, not consciously bearing thanks for the Holiness His name carries? Finally, if we covet is it not because we are not thankful for what we already have, because our lack of thankfulness makes us feel that what we have is inadequate? The list could go on and on and on. We must remember like Job did, that although materially we may not have everything we want, we can still remain thankful of God’s sovereignty, of God’s control, of God’s hand over our lives if we are not thankful for anything else.

Habakkuk 3:17–18 Would say “Although the fig tree shall not blossom, Neither shall fruit be in the vines; The labour of the olive shall fail, And the fields shall yield no meat; The flock shall be cut off from the fold, And there shall be no herd in the stalls: Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation.”

I hope you see Church between this Scripture and what we can find in the story of Job that God not only commands us to be thankful to glorify Him, but because thankfulness is one of if not the greatest tool we have in our arsenal to fight the temptation of the enemy to turn away from God! If we are able to be like Job who expressed his acknowledgement and appreciation of God’s sovereignty he found satisfaction in although he lost his health, the support of his friends, his possessions, etc. and if we could learn to be like Habakkuk, praising his saving God through his loss, the enemy has no ground in your heart in which to dig his feet into. This is why thankfulness goes far beyond being a strong suggestion in Scripture, but rather an expectation like we seen earlier. An attitude of gratitude, a heart of thankfulness, the continuous act of consciously receiving the gifts and benefits of our following Christ, will quench the desires to covet what we don’t have, to keep us out of the never-ending spiral of wanting “more”, to keep our heart more full of light than darkness by trusting in God’s sovereignty, control, and steadfastness in our lives just as Job did, that we see the Psalms writers mention, that we see Paul stress the importance of in his letters to the early Churches.

Maybe you find yourself having a hard time being thankful today. Maybe the Thanksgiving season is tough for you this year because of loss, because of illness, or because some of your favorite people weren’t at the table with you this year. Although we can feel some sadness because of what we may be missing this year Church I am here to tell you that we must remember to be like Job, to be like Habakkuk, to be thankful for what God has given us, to be thankful, to keep that consciousness of God’s goodness in our lives, to remember like Job that the Lord gives and He also takes away, but through it all that He is still God, that He still looks over our lives and crafts our paths and the roads we go down with His master hands, with all of those winding and curving paths in life that often confuse us or some bumps in the road that hurt us at times ending up in eternity when we reach the end of our lives and cross into eternity.

We can all be thankful this morning that the same God that ever so graciously watches over us by His sovereignty, that ever so graciously gives us His love, that enables us and grants us the opportunity to praise Him as the source of our eternal thankfulness, that ever so carefully watches over us, sent His only Son Jesus to die a brutal death on the Cross, a death that should have been reserved for the likes of thieves and criminals, that for any of you today that have not received Him as your own personal Savior can be given eternal life today if you accept Him as your Lord and Savior. It is my prayer that right where you are today that you would accept His free gift of Salvation, of which we are so thankful.