Fighting the Flesh #24: Gratitude

“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

Today is Thanksgiving in the United States of America. A day set aside to commemorate the harvest, first decreed a holiday by Abraham Lincoln and observed on November 26, 1863. But, the very first Thanksgiving was traditionally seen to occur between the Wampanoag Native Americans and the pilgrims at Plymouth Plantation in Massachusetts in 1621 to celebrate the pilgrim’s survival of their first brutal winter in New England. The pilgrim’s well understood it was God’s hand that helped them survive their first winter, which is why they set aside a day to give thanks. Giving thanks did not originate with the pilgrim’s however. Giving thanks has been the practice of believers for millennia. Gratitude is the practice of looking to the past and acknowledging God’s hand which gives peace and comfort for the present to go ahead in the future with confidence. The believer’s life is to be filled with gratitude, for only a believer in Christ truly knows and understands himself or herself in the light of God’s countenance. Only the believer is truly aware of God’s providential hand at work.

On the converse side is the unbeliever, who does not give thanks to God. Therefore they do not honor God because they refuse to put into practice the discipline of remembrance, which is the discipline that leads to gratitude. In order to give thanks, one must remember, realize, and acknowledge God’s providence at work—providing, guiding, and supplying our needs. And the more one refuses to see God’s hand at work, the more foolish and darkened they become, because they set themselves as the master’s of their own destiny. They fail to see their intelligence, health, abilities, and backgrounds, are from God. He is the one who has numbered our days (Psalm 90:12), controls our every breath, gives us the ability to have and make wealth (Deuteronomy 8:18), and determines the direction of our lives as James wrote,

“Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.”—James 4:13-16

We must realize God’s sovereignty over our lives, and respond in gratitude. G.K. Chesterton captured this thought, “When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.” Do we take what we have for granted? Or do we respond in gratitude to God? May today be a day of giving thanks for what God has done and may our lives be lived in the joy of His Lordship as we realize how good He has been to us. Amen.