The Spiritual Discipline of Thanksgiving
When Paul drilled down to the very heart of sin in Romans 1:21, he said, “Although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him.” A thankless heart isn’t just a problem. It is a sin against God. Every kind of evil begins there. Francis Schaeffer said, “A heart giving thanks at any given moment is the real test of the extent to which we love God at that moment” (A Christian View of Spirituality, 205). Thanking God is loving God. Thanksgiving is not an optional add-on to the Christian life; the Christian life cannot be lived without thanksgiving.
But giving thanks is hard, isn’t it? Paul called this world the “present evil age” (Gal. 1:4). It’s not easy to thank God with a broken heart or a tragic diagnosis. It’s not easy to thank God in the depths of anxiety and depression. It’s not easy to thank God in the middle of the night when you can’t sleep and don’t know what’s coming tomorrow, but you think it’s more than you can bear. Nowhere does the Bible say thanking God is easy. But nowhere does the Bible say thanking God is optional. It’s not a practice reserved only for the good times. It’s a spiritual discipline necessary at all times.
Becoming Psalm 100 People
The Bible says, “If there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Phil. 4:8). One classic Psalm of thanksgiving, Psalm 100, gives us things of which we can think about. In fact, Psalm 100 is a perfect Psalm to grow in the spiritual discipline of thanksgiving.
We start in the middle of Psalm 100, in verse 3, because it shows us the ground for our thanksgiving. Our God is the only God. It all begins there. The one true God is ours by grace in Christ. We are his people, his very own creation. He didn’t plop us here and retreat to heaven to see how this played out. He is involved in every detail of our life, the good and the bad, the sins and the successes. He is our Good Shepherd who takes care of us and watches over us, and even when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, it’s so he can take us to the green pastures and still waters we long for. We are not the first people to experience this. The Bible is filled with those who have come before us, bearing witness to these truths. God has been faithful for generations. Throughout history, God has never disappointed anyone who trusted him, and he will not start with us. “For the LORD is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations” (Ps. 100:5).
These truths find their ultimate expression in the person and work of Jesus Christ. “For all the promises of God find their Yes in him” (2 Cor. 1:20a). Every promise in the Bible that God made, every hope in the Bible that God gave, and every joy in the Bible that God promised find their Yes in Jesus. Yes, life is still hard and still hurts, but in Christ, even death is now a portal into a better world with him. “And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good” (Rom. 8:28a). We have victory through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 15:57). We’ve been rescued! Jesus is the reason for our greatest thanks.
We can give thanks even in the hard stuff, because no matter how hopeless today may seem, there is hope for tomorrow. As Ray Ortlund said, “God has designed reality in such a way that we praise our way into a better future.” Thanksgiving moves us closer to God’s heart and a better tomorrow. We thank God because of who God is. We thank God because he loves and cares for us. We thank God because, in him, our future is incredibly bright.
Psalm 100 people thank God not because they are told to, but because he has proven himself good and just and true and loving and everything else we most need. How can we not be thankful?
A Joyful Noise
Psalm 100 people take that knowledge of God and internalize it. When that happens, we find joy bursting out of us. The spiritual discipline of thanksgiving includes rejoicing in God.
Part of cultivating this spiritual discipline is letting loose. Our thanksgiving can be too reserved. We can let those around us affect the way we thank God. After all, we don’t want to downplay pain and sorrow with seemingly shallow thanksgiving. But thanking God is never shallow. How could it be? Who has ever seen a beaming child run to his parents with arms wide open and a big, loud “thank you” bursting from his mouth and then thought, “Okay, that’s enough. No need to be all showy about it”?
The first verse of Psalm 100 takes us to the heart of this effusive thanksgiving, “Make a joyful noise to the LORD.” The meaning here isn’t that we should come up to God and shake his hand, look him square in the eye, and express a mild but firm “Thank you.” No. It means we should erupt. We need to get over our reservations and let loose—and not just every now and then.
A joyful noise is loud and raucous, like an underdog college football team at home against a big-name rival. The underdog wins. The crowd goes nuts. The band plays and dances. The fans storm the field. It’s impossible not to smile. It’s an unexpected victory, just like our salvation in Christ. That’s a joyful noise.
A “joyful noise” was how ancient Israel welcomed their king. Psalm 100 people parade into church celebrating the exaltation of King Jesus. They come in rowdy and ready to party. The big game has been won upon the cross. His resurrection proved it. We’re on the winning side! And now, we’re in that in-between time, basking in the afterglow of the victory before the big party later on, and we can’t stop talking about the final play that sealed the game. We keep replaying it in our minds and telling everyone we see. It’s a joyful noise!
Serving with Gladness
The spiritual discipline of thanksgiving takes a more defined outward shape as our inward soul rejoices. How do Psalm 100 people serve the Lord? Verse 2 tells us they “serve the Lord with gladness.” When joy captures the heart, the hands start moving. We aren’t lazy. We are hard workers because we know whom we serve, and that makes all the difference. Psalm 100 people don’t view serving God as a chore but as a privilege. They serve the Lord with gladness out of response to his goodness. As they serve, they thank him for the privilege. Thanksgiving changes duty into delight.
Psalm 100 people are like the underdog football team before the big game. Nothing about it will be easy. It’ll demand their all. It’ll hurt and be hard. They’ll have to get dirty and sweaty and bloody. So what? They run out on the field. Psalm 100 people know they don’t belong there—not based on their merit—but here they are, loved by God, ready to serve out of sheer gladness.
Coming with Songs and Praise
Psalm 100 people “come into his presence with singing” (Ps. 100:2b). The spiritual discipline of thanksgiving includes singing praise to God. This means we come with a song of praise on our lips to God. We sing about what we delight in. That’s why so many songs are about love and lovers. Psalm 100 people sing loudly to God because they delight in him. They “enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise!” (Ps. 100:4a).
I love how commentator Derek Kidner explains it. “The simplicity of this invitation may conceal the wonder of it, for the courts are truly his, not ours, and his gates are shut to the unclean. Yet not only his outer courts but the Holy of Holies itself are thrown open ‘by the new and living way,’ and we are welcome” (Psalms 73–150, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries, 390). We have unfiltered access to God in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. As Tim Keller puts it, “The only person who dares wake up a king at 3:00 AM for a glass of water is a child. We have that kind of access.” That’s the kind of thing worth singing about.
How do we gain such entry into God’s courts? We come not on our own merit but through Christ’s. We are those at the Great Banquet who are poor, crippled, lame, and blind (Luke 14:15–24). We are blessed, and we cannot repay our Holy Host. All we can do is thank him. All we can do is enter in amazement that of all the places we could be and should be, we are in the presence of God Almighty. More than that, he’s adopted us as his children. Jesus’s blood seals our fate, and his Holy Spirit is our guarantee. The Father himself loves us. And if we have the Father’s love, we have everything we’ll ever need because he’s a good Father. The spiritual discipline of thanksgiving gives us eyes to see the goodness of God, and when we see the goodness of God, we can’t help but thank him for who he is.
David McLemore is an elder at Refuge Church in Franklin, Tennessee. He is married to Sarah, and they have three sons and one daughter. Read more of David’s writing on his blog, Things of the Sort.