Gratitude Brings Joy to God's Heart

BIBLE MEDITATION

“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God…” Philippians 4:6

 

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT

Are constant, vigilant prayer and thanksgiving even possible for us human beings? Yes! Behind every command of God, like “Fear not,” "Don’t be anxious,” "Be thankful,” is the omnipotent power of God to carry it out. Giving thanks is one of the keys to answered prayer. Why should we ask God for more when we’ve not thanked Him for what He’s already given us and already done? Think about it.

Now, there’s a difference between praise and thanksgiving. Praise is reverencing God for who He is; Thanksgiving is recognizing what He’s done. The two are inextricably interwoven, but they’re not exactly the same. Both are absolutely necessary. The person who is not “praiseful” will never be thankful.

Gratitude is what spoils life when it’s left out. If we don’t learn thanksgiving, we become self-centered, then unlovable and unloving. We will live in our own little world, locked up inside ourselves. When we get that way, we make a mighty small package.

If you want to sing in your heart, to be an attractive person to be around, to have your prayers answered, or to have the strength to endure tribulation, you’d better learn to praise and thank God.

It’s sad to see bitter, broken people who’ve never learned to be thankful. But when you’re thankful, your eyes are opened, and the blinders are taken off. A thankful person is open to God and to others.

ACTION POINT

Have you ever kept a “gratitude journal”? Get an inexpensive journal and each day write down something you’re grateful for that day. By the end of thirty days, if you’ve been paying attention to all you have and all God has done, your journal might be full.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

The Gravity of Gratitude

But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful . . . (2 Timothy 3:1–2)

Notice how ingratitude goes with pride, abuse, and insubordination.

In another place Paul says, “Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking . . . but instead let there be thanksgiving” (Ephesians 5:4). So, it seems that gratitude, thankfulness, is the opposite of ugliness and violence.

The reason this is so is that the feeling of gratitude is a humble feeling, not a proud one. It is other-exalting, not self-exalting. And it is glad-hearted, not angry or bitter. Bitter thankfulness is a contradiction in terms.

The key to unlocking a heart of thankfulness and overcoming bitterness and ugliness and disrespect and violence is a strong belief in God, the Creator and Sustainer and Provider and Hope-giver. If we do not believe we are deeply indebted to God for all we have and hope to have, then the very spring of gratitude has gone dry.

So, I conclude that the rise of violence and sacrilege and ugliness and insubordination in the last times is a God-issue. The basic issue is a failure to feel gratitude at the upper levels of our dependence.

When the high spring of gratitude to God fails at the top of the mountain, soon all the pools of thankfulness begin to dry up further down the mountain. And when gratitude goes, the sovereignty of the self condones more and more corruption for its pleasure.

Pray for a great awakening of humble gratitude.

John Piper 

The Root of Ingratitude

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

When gratitude springs up in the human heart toward God, he is magnified as the wealthy source of our blessing. He is acknowledged as giver and benefactor and therefore as glorious.

But when gratitude does not spring up in our hearts at God’s great goodness to us, it probably means that we don’t want to pay him a compliment; we don’t want to magnify him as our benefactor.

And there is a very good reason that human beings by nature do not want to magnify God with thanksgiving or glorify him as their benefactor. The reason is that it detracts from our own glory, and all people by nature love their own glory more than the glory of God.

At the root of all ingratitude is the love of one’s own greatness. For genuine gratitude admits that we are beneficiaries of an unearned bequest. We are cripples leaning on the cross-shaped crutch of Jesus Christ. We are paralytics living minute by minute in the iron lung of God’s mercy. We are children asleep in heaven’s stroller.

The natural person, apart from saving grace, hates to think of himself in these images: unworthy beneficiary, cripple, paralytic, child. They rob him of his glory by giving it all to God.

Therefore, while a man loves his own glory, and prizes his self-sufficiency, and hates to think of himself as sin-sick and helpless, he will never feel genuine gratitude to the true God and so will never magnify God as he ought, but only himself.

Jesus said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mark 2:17).

Jesus did not come to minister to those who insist they are well. He demands something great: that we admit we are not great. This is bad news to the arrogant, but words of honey to those who have given up their charade of self-sufficiency and are seeking God.

John Piper 

The Gravity of Gratitude

But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful . . . (2 Timothy 3:1–2)

Notice how ingratitude goes with pride, abuse, and insubordination.

In another place Paul says, “Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking . . . but instead let there be thanksgiving” (Ephesians 5:4). So, it seems that gratitude, thankfulness, is the opposite of ugliness and violence.

The reason this is so is that the feeling of gratitude is a humble feeling, not a proud one. It is other-exalting, not self-exalting. And it is glad-hearted, not angry or bitter. Bitter thankfulness is a contradiction in terms.

The key to unlocking a heart of thankfulness and overcoming bitterness and ugliness and disrespect and violence is a strong belief in God, the Creator and Sustainer and Provider and Hope-giver. If we do not believe we are deeply indebted to God for all we have and hope to have, then the very spring of gratitude has gone dry.

So, I conclude that the rise of violence and sacrilege and ugliness and insubordination in the last times is a God-issue. The basic issue is a failure to feel gratitude at the upper levels of our dependence.

When the high spring of gratitude to God fails at the top of the mountain, soon all the pools of thankfulness begin to dry up further down the mountain. And when gratitude goes, the sovereignty of the self condones more and more corruption for its pleasure.

Pray for a great awakening of humble gratitude.

John Piper 

The Soul’s Final Feast

One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple. (Psalm 27:4)

God is not unresponsive to the contrite longing of the soul. He comes and lifts the load of sin and fills our heart with gladness and gratitude. “You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness, that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever!” (Psalm 30:11–12).

But our joy does not just rise from the backward glance in gratitude. It also rises from the forward glance in hope: “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God” (Psalm 42:5–6).

“I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope” (Psalm 130:5).

In the end, the heart longs not for any of God’s good gifts, but for God himself. To see him and know him and be in his presence is the soul’s final feast. Beyond this there is no quest. Words fail. We call it pleasure, joy, delight. But these are weak pointers to the unspeakable experience:

“One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple” (Psalm 27:4).

“In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11).

“Delight yourself in the Lord” (Psalm 37:4).

John Piper 

Are you grumbly hateful? Or humbly grateful?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into diverse temptations. James 1:2

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Sometimes we have to admit it’s hard to “count it all joy.” Trouble comes. Opposition comes. Adversity comes. Sometimes we complain. Rather than being humbly grateful, we become grumbly hateful.

Oh, how I wish that, beginning today, we would emulate the faith of the saints who’ve gone before us—saints like Fannie Crosby, the great hymn writer.

For most of her life, Fannie Crosby was blind, and yet, at the tender age of eight, Fannie wrote:

“Oh! What a happy soul am I, although I cannot see, 

I am resolved that, in this world, contented I will be. 

How many blessings I enjoy, that other people don’t. 

To weep and sigh because I’m blind, I cannot and I won’t.”

You know what? She didn’t. She took her blessings and let God enrich and enliven her life. She lived to age 95 and wrote these words, “Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine. Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine.” In the tests of life, I give Fannie Crosby an A+. Wouldn't you?

ACTION POINT:

• How can you apply this truth to your life today? 

• How can you share this truth with someone else?

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers