Give Thanks 2 | “Commanding Thanksgiving”

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18)

When God commands us to give thanks, the command itself carries a promise—the promise of joy.

A Short Series on Gratitude

This is a short series here at Cross Connection as the Thanksgiving holiday arrives this week. We're considering the topic of gratitude—last week and this week. This week we're looking at the command in the Bible that we give thanks to God: why we should do it, why it's important, and some of the things that kill gratitude in our lives.

The Roman philosopher Cicero, in the first century BC, wrote that gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues but the parent of all the others. About a hundred years later, another Roman philosopher, Seneca, wrote that ingratitude is an abomination. These are challenging words and important for us to consider.

The Ethic of Gratitude

Last week we considered Colossians 2:5-7, where Paul writes of our being rooted and built up in Christ, "abounding in faith with thanksgiving." Because we have received Christ Jesus the Lord—if you are a Christian who has received the gift of God in Christ—then we ought to be people who are thankful.

What I aimed to do last week was establish a theology and an ethic of gratitude: this is what we should do as those who have received Christ. And in receiving Him we receive everything that is in Him, by Him, and through Him. All the promises of God in Christ are yes and amen, so they are all ours.

Have you ever seen the show Storage Wars? People bid at auctions on abandoned storage units. They can only look from the door; they can't go in. But once you win the auction, everything inside is yours. It may not be the best illustration, but it flies here—because when you receive Christ, you receive everything that comes with Him.

In Ephesians 1:3 Paul says that in Christ we have received every spiritual blessing in heavenly places. And in 2 Peter 1:3, Peter says that by God's divine power He has given to the Christian everything that pertains to life and godliness. So we have an ethic of gratitude: because of all we have been given, we ought to be people of praise.

But we don't always do that, do we? If we're honest, we often mirror the children of Israel in their wilderness wanderings more than a people filled with gratitude. They were a murmuring people, and so are we. Yet the ethic remains: as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, be grateful.

The Imperative of Gratitude

We move now to what I call the imperative of gratitude. Here in 1 Thessalonians 5:18, Paul says, "in everything give thanks." The words "give thanks" are one word in the original language, eucharisteo, and it is in the imperative—it is a command. So gratitude is not only something we ought to do; it is something we are commanded to do.

The Bible commands thanksgiving—not only as an "ought to" but as a "must do." But this presents a problem on several layers, and I want to consider them.

The Emotional Problem

Because we are commanded to worship God through thanksgiving, we run into an issue in our emotions. It is not entirely fruitful to command emotions. Our emotions are not necessarily subject to an outside command or to our will. We can't just instantly turn them on. There may be things we can do to bolster an emotional response, but our makeup simply doesn't work by command.

Picture yourself driving south on the 15 freeway, cruising along at 65 or 80 miles per hour. About fifty feet in front of you, a pickup truck hits a bump, and a spare tire bounces out of the back toward you. In that moment, do you consciously tell yourself, "I will now be anxious"? No—there is an instant emotive response of anxiety. You didn't will it; it just happened.

Say you have mad driving skills and dodge the tire. Five seconds later you see it in the rearview mirror, your heart still pounding. Now try to tell yourself, "I will not be anxious." There are certain exercises you can do to reduce it, but the emotion is not subject to your command. It's very hard to command or will an emotional response.

Gratitude Is a Responsive Emotion

I bring that up because gratitude is a responsive emotion. Paul said in Romans 7:18, "the will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find." Many of us here are believers and followers of Jesus. There is a will, a desire, to be grateful, because it is the will of God and glorifies Him. We say, "Yes, I want to be a grateful person." But by about Wednesday we find ourselves murmuring and complaining.

We need to recognize that expressing gratitude and having a heart of gratitude are different things. You can say "thank you" with your lips and not actually be thankful. True gratitude—gratitude that honors the one receiving it and satisfies the one giving it—is not merely expressed with the lips. It is at the heart level. And it is not easy to drum up an emotion.

The Command Problem

Imagine Little Billy on Christmas Day. Grandma comes over with a present, and Billy is excited. He tears it open—and inside are socks. Mom says, "Billy, what do we say to Grandma?" and he squeaks out a "thank you." With his lips he honors her, but his heart is far from Grandma. That's scriptural—Isaiah 29:13.

Dutifully offered gratitude is not honoring to the one who receives it. Imagine, husbands, it's your anniversary and you buy two dozen red roses. You knock on the door to surprise your wife, and her heart fills with joy. Then you hand her the roses and say, "I want you to know it is my duty as your husband to buy you these." All the joy goes out the window.

Forced gratitude is insincere, and I'd argue it isn't satisfying to the one who gives it either. Jesus calls it hypocritical, using the words of Isaiah 29:13: "These people draw near to me with their lips and honor me with their mouths, but their hearts are far from me." God says, "That's not what I'm looking for." We can worship in our behaviors while our hearts are far removed from the Lord.

Three Gratitude Killers

So we have an emotional problem and a command problem. From there we move to the gratitude killers. There are three.

The first is enforcement, which we saw with Billy. Forced gratitude is not fruitful; it is ultimately insincere. To force it—"you will be thankful"—produces no real gratitude.

The second is entitlement. If someone feels entitled to something, it is highly unlikely they will have gratitude when they receive it. This is not just biblical; it's empirical. Dr. Robert Emmons, professor of psychology at UC Davis and an expert in the psychology of gratitude, has concluded through research that entitlement is virtually opposed to gratitude. As entitlement increases, gratitude shrinks in proportion.

Think of your paycheck. You probably don't say thank you to your employer for it, because you feel, "I deserve this. I worked for it." If you don't receive what you think you deserve, it doesn't just produce no gratitude—it produces verbal ingratitude: "They gypped me. I should have gotten more." Our culture trains us to feel entitled.

I was talking with a friend recently about different cultures. Years ago his family had a German au pair, and his wife grew upset because the young woman never said thank you at dinner. When he finally asked her about it, she said, "In the manual for being an au pair, it says you are required to give me dinner." There was no gratitude—only a sense of "I'm entitled to this."

Jesus addresses this in Matthew 20. A landowner hires workers for his vineyard at six in the morning, agreeing on a denarius for the day. He hires more at nine, at noon, at three, and even an hour before quitting time. At day's end he pays the last workers a denarius. By the time he reaches those who started at six, they expect a bonus—but he gives them a denarius too, and they're furious. He paid them exactly what was agreed, yet they had no gratitude, because they felt entitled to something more.

The third killer is expectation. Expectation and entitlement are closely linked, but they differ. Entitlement deals with the deserved outcome—"I deserve this." Expectation deals with the likely outcome—"I expect this." Someone might say, "I was born in America, therefore I deserve a good life" (entitlement), while another says, "I was born in America, so I expect a good life" (expectation). Both diminish gratitude. If you get what you expect, why be thankful? It's what you thought would happen.

Dennis Prager on Expectation

Dennis Prager, in his book Happiness Is a Serious Problem, dedicates an entire chapter to expectation. He writes:

Yes, there is a secret to happiness, and it is gratitude. All happy people are grateful, and ungrateful people cannot be happy. We tend to think it is being unhappy that leads people to complain, but it is truer to say that it is complaining that leads people to become unhappy. Because gratitude is the key to happiness, anything that undermines gratitude must undermine happiness. And nothing undermines gratitude as much as expectation. There is an inverse relationship between expectations and gratitude: the more expectations you have, the less gratitude you will have.

If you expect to wake up healthy tomorrow and you do, you are unlikely to be grateful. But if you do not expect to wake up healthy and you do, you will be truly grateful. Most of us are grateful for what we have only after we are threatened with losing it. As Prager finishes, the most important component of happiness is largely dependent upon receiving what we do not expect to receive.

So happiness is a serious problem—and I would say gratitude is a serious problem. It is the Christian's ethic, it is commanded in 1 Thessalonians 5:18 and throughout the Psalms, and it is God's will. It honors and glorifies God. Yet it is an emotion not easily forced and easily killed—by enforcement, entitlement, and expectation. So how do we cultivate it?

Cultivating Gratitude: A Command That Promises Joy

First, we must recognize that God's command to be thankful is ultimately a promise of increased joy. In the very command is the assurance that you will have more joy. I would argue that every command of God, when obeyed, ultimately realizes increased joy and satisfaction in Him. I taught this in a series years ago called The Key to Unlocking Joy, and I believe it more now than I did then.

And modern research confirms what God said thousands of years ago. In 1998, Gallup found that 90 percent of those surveyed in the United States experienced an increase in happiness merely by expressing gratitude. A 2003 joint study by UC Davis and the University of Miami found that an increase in gratitude leads to greater overall well-being, improved quantity and quality of sleep, greater optimism, and deeper connectedness with one another. And a 2008 study involving three universities in the United Kingdom concluded that gratitude has one of the strongest relationships with satisfaction in life of any trait studied. So when Dennis Prager says, "Become a grateful person and you will become more happy," it is being proven again and again.

Cultivating Gratitude: Everything Is a Gift of Grace

Second, we cultivate gratitude by acknowledging that everything we have in this life is an unmerited gift of grace. Theologians often split God's grace into two categories. There is common grace, which all humanity experiences—waking up this morning, taking a breath. Have you ever asked how it is that you were born in this nation and not somewhere like Bangladesh? That is the common grace of God. (And the person in Bangladesh has other things they could point to as the common grace of God.)

But if you are a Christian, you have also received an overwhelming abundance of grace. "For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast." You have an incorruptible, eternal inheritance with God in heaven.

We need to recognize that every single thing—the car you drive, the house you live in, the clothes you wear, the food you'll eat today—is an unmerited gift of God's grace. If we want to go by what we deserve, then apart from Christ we deserve justice and wrath. We're entitled to nothing, yet God has graciously given us all things, including abundant and eternal life in Christ.

Cultivating Gratitude: Give Thanks

Third, we cultivate an attitude of gratitude by giving thanks. While the emotion of gratitude is not easily forced, I have learned that where the head goes, the heart follows. When you begin to exercise and express gratitude, you cultivate and prepare the heart to release gratitude. Research has proven that intentionally taking time daily to record and remember the things you are grateful for cultivates a thankful heart.

Exercising your thanksgiving muscles isn't about eating a lot of turkey. It means practically giving thanks to God and to others. Simply say thank you. You've probably driven with the person who thanks God for a parking space. Maybe you've thought, "How trivial." But that person is cultivating an attitude of thankfulness, recognizing that even something small and mundane was given to them graciously. You are more likely to thank God for the big things if you begin thanking Him for the little things.

William Ward once wrote, "God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used even one of them to give thanks?" Acknowledging God with a prayer of thanksgiving, even at every meal, builds a heart of gratitude. I see this in my children. Children tend to be complainers—just like us, only they don't mask it as well. But every time we sit down to eat, I have them pray and thank God. It's a simple prayer, but it builds gratitude into them from the youngest age.

The Greatest Secret

So we cultivate gratitude by recognizing God commanded it for our increase of joy, by acknowledging that everything we have is His gift, and by simply giving thanks. But I would say the greatest secret to gratitude is to constantly behold the greatness of the glory of God as manifested through His Son, Jesus Christ.

As we approach the Thanksgiving holiday this weekend, we are reminded that as we have received Christ Jesus the Lord, we ought to be a thankful people. God wills it and commands it. But there may be gratitude killers we need to get rid of—a sense of entitlement, a sense of expectation. Maybe we need to build into our lives the recognition that every good and perfect gift comes from Him. We didn't merit it; we don't deserve it. But He has graciously given it to us. And maybe we just need to say thank you.

Closing Prayer

God, I thank You for this church body, for the friends and family we have here—friends we can trust and lean upon, who encourage us when we're down and even challenge and rebuke us when we're not acting in a right way. Lord, I thank You for a place where we can gather together. I thank You that we live in a country where we can worship You publicly and openly without fear.

I thank You that every good and perfect gift comes from You and that You have poured out abundance upon us—abundance like few others in the world experience. Lord, we acknowledge today that everything good comes from You. We thank You that You have brought salvation, that You gave Your only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him would not perish but have everlasting life. We thank You that in Jesus we have peace that surpasses understanding, joy that never diminishes, redemption, every spiritual blessing in heavenly places, all things that pertain to life and godliness, and forgiveness of sin.

Lord, I pray that by our gratitude we would be a witness to others—that people would see in our lives a thanksgiving and joy they are not experiencing through the things of this world. So many times we buy the lie that if we just had more, we'd be more thankful. But Lord, we have much. Help us to be grateful. Make it true in our lives, and make it a witness unto You. We ask this in Jesus' name, and all God's people said, Amen.