Gratitude – goodchristianfiction

As flood waters rose around Houston earlier this week, neighbors came together to help neighbors because that’s what Texans do.

In one such scene, a man holding his infant road out from his flooded house on a fisherman’s johnboat. As he stepped out of the boat into safety, he reached into his pocket to offer his rescuer the cash he had in it. Even though this man was facing devastating loss, he was so grateful to be saved that he offered all that he had in thankfulness.

God longs to hear that kind of gratitude from us, we children born in sin yet saved by the sacrifice of his one and only Son:

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8)

A humble heart understands what it owes to the forgiver of all sins, to the One who asked of Job, “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? . . . Who marked off its dimensions? . . . Who laid its cornerstone–while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?” (Job 38: 4-7).

In a world where even the stones will cry out if we will not praise our God, surely His praises should be ever on our lips.

Yet, how often do we fall short of the kind of gratitude God deserves? Each day, we wake up with every intention to be good, and each day we inevitably fall short of our goal. No matter how hard we try, we can never earn our way into heaven. Yet, even though we don’t deserve to be there, God willingly gave of Himself so that we would have a free pass into His heavenly realm.

It seems like the very least we could do would be to remember to say a sincere thank You every once in a while. The New Testament writers will us to do even more than this:

Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. (1 Thessalonians 5:18)

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. (Philippians 4:6)

When we praise God, we not only please Him, but we also give ourselves a helping of the peace He promises when we agree to join Him in His “easy yoke and light burden” (Matt. 11:30).

In her great devotional, Jesus Calling, Sarah Young encourages us to thank God in all things in order to draw ourselves closer to Him. For example, she writes, we should be thanking Him in advance for His answers to our prayers.

Perhaps you do this all the time already. Perhaps, like me, you have been so intent on the need in your praying, you have forgotten about God’s promise to answer all prayers. His answer may be no, but He always gives you one. When I followed Young’s advice and added thankfulness to my requests, I was quick to discover the calming ability of a little bit of gratitude.

What happens when we don’t give God thanks? Paul tells us this lack of attention leads only to despair:

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. (Romans 1:21)

Practice thankfulness on the easy days, and you'll be ready to be thankful even on your darkest days. — Practice thankfulness on the easy days, and you’ll be ready to be thankful even on your darkest days.

On a sunny day, laying in the shade of your favorite tree and sipping lemonade as you listen to the birds chatter over your head–that’s the time to start working your gratitude muscles. Discover new and loving ways to say thank you to the Maker of Heaven and Earth.

It’s those sunny-day thanks that will give you the reflexes to find gratitude as you wallow in life’s shadows. He is sometimes harder to find in the valleys, until you topple into His open arms and realize just how much you actually depend on Him. When you finish being angry at Him for the mess you’re in, you remember the joy of times spent in His presence when being thankful was easy.

You realize just how many reasons you have to be thankful for Him in the midst of your greatest trials.

Like the psalmists who found words of praise for the Lord on a daily basis, you too should vow to:

. . . give thanks to the Lord because of his righteousness./ I will sing the praises of the name of the Lord Most High. (Psalm 7:17)

Make gratitude a major component in your relationship with God and others, and you’ll soon discover how powerful the words thank you can be.

Joy to the world, the LORD has come. Let earth receive its King. Let every heart prepare Him room, and Heaven and Nature sing.

Christmas is the time when we celebrate the greatest miracle ever–the willingness of an all-powerful God to become like one of us in order to save us.

He has shown the depth of His patience and His wrath throughout the history of His interactions with us. In Old Testament times, He called His chosen people “stiff-necked” and punished them with as much passion as He subsequently forgave them. Through chance after chance, the Israelites moved toward and away from Him in an ebb and flow that lasted thousands of years.

When a baby was born to a virgin in a manger, God’s people were marking off almost 400 years of silence from Him. Further, if a Messiah had come, they expected Him to be a champion who blazed against their enemies and allowed the Israelites to rule the world, overthrowing their Roman oppressors and making sure they never again were slaves.

Intead, what they got was a man who instructed them to “turn the other cheek.” The Kingdom Jesus came to establish had absolutely nothing to do with earthly rule as the Israelites understood it.

More than 2000 years later, some have still not heard His word, and some might argue that we of His Kingdom are at a stage where we are also “stiff-necked,” turning away from Him in a time when we most need what He has to offer.

For those who have accepted the salvation Christ offers, a gratitude based on the humble realization of just how little we deserve God’s love and sacrifice should be the first thought we have upon rising each morning and before we lay down to sleep each night. It should also be a gratitude that colors the way we treat everyone around us.

No one’s love is greater than God’s love for us. And the best news of all time is that His love is available to all of us, no matter who we are or what we have done, as long as we are willing to reach out with both hands and grab it–gratefully.