Living in the SpiritSample

Gratitude

The Bible regularly encourages us to give thanks to the Lord. I used to see this as a call to make checklists. I would pray things like, “God, thank you for my wife, for my family, for a pretty day,” etc. It didn’t create a tremendous amount of gratitude in my heart. I was just going through the motions and discharging a duty.

Once, when I was struggling with despair and feeling defeated, I opened my Bible to Psalm 107:1, which says, “Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!” My first thought when I read this verse was accusatory. The thought said, “That is your problem. You are ungrateful.”

I then stopped and started my usual practice of making a list of good things in my life without taking the time to feel anything about them. Then I had another thought. This one said, “Read the verse again.”

As I reread the verse, it jumped out at me that it didn’t say to make a list of blessings. It specifically said to give thanks to God for His goodness and love. I realized that this was a God thought. I felt inspired to get a piece of paper and draw a diagram. It looked like this.

God wasn’t speaking to me in clear, distinct words, but I could tell I was thinking with God. He was letting me know that I could thank Him in the midst of my problems because He was looking at me through eyes of goodness and love. He was already making plans to deal with every problem that was motivated by His goodness to me and His love.

I also recognized the word love as the Hebrew word hesed. It specifically referred to the type of family attachment that communicated, “I will do good to you simply because you are mine.” For example, the first use of hesed in the Bible has Abraham’s servant asking Rebekah’s family to let her leave them and marry Isaac (Gen. 24:12, 49). In his appeal, he basically says, “Are you going to show me hesed, or not?” In other words, are you going to do right by me as a family member or not?

As I pondered these things, I felt my spirits lift. Although I had not heard God distinctly or directly, it seemed clear that I had heard from God. I had spent enough years meditating on and memorizing Scripture to know that my thinking aligned with Scripture. So, by faith, I prayed, “Thank You, Father, for Your goodness and love. Thank You that I know I can count on You to take care of me because I am part of Your family, and You love me.”

I then began going through my problems and saying, “Thank You for you have a good plan for dealing with this. Thank You that You have a loving plan for dealing with that. Thank You that I do not need to know what Your plans are. I just need to know that You are good and full of hesed.”

When gratitude is simply a duty, we discharge it by making a list and checking off boxes. It doesn’t accomplish much. But when gratitude becomes a spirit of appreciation, and we allow ourselves to feel the thankfulness for more than a few seconds, it prepares our hearts for connection with God. I think this is one of the reasons we are so often encouraged to enter God’s presence with gratitude and praise. It isn’t an obligation so much as an invitation to come relationally ready to meet with someone we enjoy.