A grateful Christian is a walking advertisement for the life that Jesus offers. The person “overflowing with thankfulness,” as Paul describes it, is the best publicity there is for the truth. He or she is a principal selling point for the Christian way of life. The grateful person honors God and brings him glory. The Psalmist says, “I will praise God’s name in song and glorify him with thanksgiving.” Thanksgiving glorifies God. The thanksgiving of God’s people, St. Paul says, “overflow[s] to the glory of God.”

Gratitude is also a thermometer of an individual’s spiritual health. Where gratitude is low, spiritual health cannot be high. Where gratitude is absent, courageous faith is missing. When gratitude is not present, the glory for accomplishments inevitably rests with gifted people, not with the gracious God.

A life “overflowing with thankfulness” not only glorifies God and pleases him, it opens the door to new opportunities—opportunities that an ungrateful person will never see. “He who sacrifices thank offerings honors me, and he prepares the way so that I may show him the salvation of God.” The grateful person sees God at work in his life, sees the “salvation of God” with his own eyes. The ungrateful person does not.

This, of course, makes the grateful person more grateful and the ungrateful person more of an ingrate. Newton’s first law of motion has a spiritual counterpart: In the absence of a net force, a spirit in motion remains in motion indefinitely along the same line. Just so, a grateful person will continue to be grateful, and will grow more grateful; an ungrateful person will grow more ungrateful—apart from a net force.

But gratefully, we are not apart from such a force. There is an outside influence at work in us, calling us to become a people known for their gratitude. But how? Do we have a part in this? Is there something we must do to become grateful people?

It is easy for us to get ahead of ourselves. Our first concern is not with what we must do, but with what we must know. Grateful people know two fundamental truths about God. They have not only grasped these truths; these truths have grasped them.

The first of these truths is that God is strong: An ungrateful spirit testifies against us that our God is too small. He is not the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac. He is not the “great and terrible” God of Israel. He is not the God who “is in heaven, who does whatever pleases him:”

The other of these truths is that God is loving; he pursues the good of his people at all times. Ingratitude testifies that our God is not the one who so loved the world that he gave; not the awesome, loving God of Calvary. These two fundamental truths about God – that he is strong and loving, great and good – must become part of the fabric of our thinking if we are to be thankful people.

These are truths the Israelites rehearsed again and again. The theme of Psalm 136 is that God is strong, and the psalmist hits the high notes of that theme again and again. But the refrain of that same Psalm is that God is loving. Twenty-six times, as if to drill the truth into our minds, we hear the refrain, “his love endures forever.”

In Psalm 62, God’s strength and love are brought together: “One thing God has spoken, two things I have heard: that you, O Lord, are strong, and that you, O Lord, are loving.”

You may think: “I already know that. God is strong. God is loving. Everybody knows that.” But our worry and our ingratitude testify that it has not gone from doctrine to practice, from head to heart. 

How can we move this knowledge from head to heart? One thing we can do is immerse ourselves in Scripture that magnifies God’s greatness and his goodness, his power and his love. So, for example, we could read Romans 8:28-39 every day for two weeks. When we’ve done that, we might want to read Isaiah 40-66 and jot down all the characteristics of God we find there, whether explicit or implicit. These truths will help wash out some of the false beliefs we have about God that linger in our minds.

A second step is to agree with God about what is good for us. Apart from such an agreement, gratitude will often be impossible. Conformation to the image of his Son is what God calls good. If that is also the good we have chosen, we can be grateful regardless of what is going on in our lives, for this is the good to which God makes all things work (see Romans 8:28-29).

One more thing: we can practice thanking God. We can be intentional about it. Intentional gratitude is something that mental health professionals recommend and that many people try. But if our thinking is not being changed, or if we are committed to a different “good” than the one God knows we need, we will not practice for long.

Addendum

My wife, who reads my column before it posts, said to me, “There are other Scripture you could cite to show that God is loving.” I agreed, but added that there are so many of them that my small article would become a book. A few minutes later, she said, “What about Psalm 103?”

sts, said to me, “There are other Scripture you could cite to show that God is loving.” I agreed, but added that there are so many of them that my small article would become a book. A few minutes later, she said, “What about Psalm 103?”

Psalm 103 is wonderful, and it includes what amount to the credal confession of the Old Testament: “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.” This statement can be found in Psalms 86 and 145, in Exodus, Numbers, Nehemiah, Joel, and Jonah. The gist of this confession can be found in hundreds of other passages in the Old and New Testament.

It also needs to be found in our hearts and minds.

Psalm 103 is wonderful, and it includes what amount to the credal confession of the Old Testament: “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.” This statement can be found in Psalms 86 and 145, in Exodus, Numbers, Nehemiah, Joel, and Jonah. The gist of this confession can be found in hundreds of other passages in the Old and New Testament.

It also needs to be found in our hearts and minds.