The Discipline of Gratitude

For many of us, gratitude has been embedded in our being since we were old enough to say the words “thank” and “you.” As a child, I grew my own grateful muscles painstakingly through every handwritten thank-you card after birthdays and Christmas celebrations. It’s just polite, right? Why wouldn’t we want to take a cue from the rustic autumn signs dotting the neighborhood porches in November and give thanks?

For the Christian, gratitude moves past politeness as a call to obedience from God. Scripture reminds us consistently to offer up thanks to God and even to give thanks in all circumstances (Ps. 107:1; 1 Thess. 5:18). Yet, if we’re not careful, we might conclude that our giving of thanks is a one-sided activity. That it’s primarily something we do for another. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. God has fashioned the discipline of giving thanks as a two-way street—for it does far more for the one thanking than for the one being thanked.

Accepting Our Need

One of the greatest gifts of gratitude is the opportunity to sit within humility. Why are we thanking? Because someone did something for us. Perhaps it was something big, like an answered prayer for healing, or maybe it was something as small as our server handing us a glass of water. In either case, we were left face-to-face with our own needs that someone else had to fill on our behalf.

Of course, we’ve been balking at this reality ever since Adam and Eve took a bite from the forbidden fruit. Satan’s question, “Did God really say?” prompted the first humans to ask their own questions about their reality as created beings: Do I really need to listen? Does God really have something that I can’t fill on my own? We’ve been answering those questions with a decided “No” ever since. Our modern world’s individualistic ideals only chain us further to this kind of pride. We have rights, agency, and the gumption to be who we want to be with our own capable hands. Here enters gratefulness.

Gratefulness opens our eyes to what’s true—our desperate need. As creatures of our God, we were made dependent upon him. Through God alone we “live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). Our very lives, our breath, and the sustenance we consume to survive all come through the hand of God (Acts 17:25; Ps. 104:14).  Moreover, we are dependent upon Christ for our salvation. For it’s “not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy” that we have been saved (Titus 3:5). It’s no wonder as King David grew in his love for God, he only recognized his dependency more, crying out that his soul thirsts for God and his flesh faints for him (Ps. 63:1).

We don’t only need God, but we need others, too. We weren’t created to be singular. In fact, even before sin came into the world, God recounted that Adam’s isolation wasn’t good (Gen. 2:18). He needed other people to depend on, to learn from, and to be encouraged by. And so do we. We need others to help us with simple tasks, to remind us of what’s true, and to fill up what we lack.

The simple practice of gratitude each day gives us the opportunity to sit in this humility a little longer. It keeps us from brushing past it, and instead prompts us to name out one by one the tasks, the gifts, the encouragement, the help we wouldn’t have had without someone else stepping in. This practice steeps us in a “true self-knowledge” as author Grace Hamman writes, that strips us of “toxic positivity and the web of half-truths we all weave around our personas” (34).

Every time we thank God in our prayers we are brought face to face with the humble realization of who we are. We are mere recipients of the Father’s good gifts. He is the one who controls the earth, the rains, and can turn the hearts of kings. We are only his creatures, dependent upon him, and often on the other image-bearers he has placed around us. This feeling isn’t as popular. It’s more fun to think about giving thanks as something kind, polite, and a service to someone else instead of a chance to acknowledge vulnerability. Yet it’s the reminder we desperately need—to remember the humble and beautiful needy people God created us to be.

Accepting Love

While gratitude schools us in humility, at the same time, it gives us the opportunity to delight in the specific, personal love from both God and our neighbors. If you think about it—our gratitude is a bold claim. When a child thanks God for the sunny weather, he’s telling the mighty God of the Universe, who rules and reigns over all creation, who holds the stars in place and the galaxies together, that this God decided to give that little boy sunny weather today. It’s astronomical, but it’s also not a lie. Of course, there may be a hundred more answers to prayer in that weather pattern. God can work a million outcomes in an instant, using the same sunny day to bring joy, grace, or challenging growth to many at the same time. The full knowledge of God’s reasoning is kept dark from us.

But his grace in ordering a thousand events at once never detracts from his care for the one. That boy isn’t wrong that the particular sunny day was a particular gift to thank the Lord for. And neither are we for our own prayers of gratitude. God’s grace to us in even the small things of life isn’t an afterthought, but it remains the purposeful mercy of his Fatherly love.

Our practice of gratitude opens our eyes to see the extravagant love of our God who showers his children with good gifts. (James 1:17). When we thank God for giving us strength to make it through a difficult day at work, we step into an opportunity to truly dwell on what that means: the sovereign King cared enough about us to enter into our day and revive us by his strength. When we thank God for an answered prayer, we get to sit in the acknowledgment that the Creator listens to us, sees our pain, and grants strength and grace to his beloved.

Sure, we know those verses that tell us God hears his people, gives them grace, shows them mercy, and comforts them. Yet when we step into the practice of gratitude, we get the opportunity to speak the reality of his pointed, specific, and abundant love to his children.

We can experience the same as we practice giving thanks even to our friends, family members, and strangers who meet our needs. Each word of gratitude is an invitation to acknowledge the love extended personally and deliberately to us. Because gratefulness has been so ingrained in us, it’s so easy for our gratitude to become a formality. Yet this misses out on the joy embedded within thanksgiving. It misses out on the chance to stop and see the care and love given to us.

Practicing Gratitude 

Far from being about giving something, gratefulness is much more about what we receive in the process. So why not search for ways to increase our gratitude? Turn to gratefulness within the big and the small. Those humble prayers of the child thanking the Lord for their favorite breakfast or their time playing outside aren’t prayers to grow out of, but to grow deeper into. We are to grow deeper in utter dependency, like a child, in God’s kingdom (Matt. 18:4). As we do, we’ll become reacquainted with our humanity, and we’ll settle into our deep needs—pulling closer to the community around us who can fill them, and ultimately the God who satisfies them completely.

Keep moving towards gratitude and pausing upon it today. You’ll find yourself all the richer with every thanks, for you’ll discover yourself both humbled and dearly loved.