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recall well my mother instructing my siblings and me to not forget to thank our host and hostess after joining another family for a meal. when the family went “out” to eat, my mother would be the first to lead us all in saying, “Thank you, Dad, for dinner.” It was drilled into us as kids that acts of kindness deserved our recognition and our expressions of gratitude. I thank God for such training. I have repeated the same instruction with my children, and nothing pleases me more than hearing them thank their mother for a delicious meal she’s prepared for the family.

Thankfulness is a marvelous attribute! I enjoy the expressions of gratitude Americans share with one another over the Thanksgiving holiday. As much as I enjoy sports, in our home around the holidays the NFL lost its luster years ago. Peyton Manning and all the other players are viewed as intruders because I have come to realize it is so much more rewarding to pause and spend time together as a family with an attitude of thanksgiving.

“In short, the thinking goes, ‘I deserve – by virtue of my existence.’ But
when we practice thankfulness, we notice that we have benefitted due to
someone else’s kindness and efforts.”It is remarkable how people struggle with practicing the simple attribute of thankfulness! Consider the big deal made over the drudgery and necessity of writing thank you notes to people who gave wedding gifts or baby shower gifts. I don’t understand this. Are we not thrilled with the kindness of people and their efforts and expense on our behalf, to take three minutes to write a card and address it? Am I missing something? What is so difficult about expressing gratitude for kindness? What is the price of gratitude? Or maybe we should ask, what is the real price of ingratitude... to our souls? I have spoken with very kind people who have treated me to a great professional sports event or a meal, and when I thanked them for their kindness they immediately told me of times when guests never once said thank you. How sad is that? Ingratitude leaves a lasting impression.

If you saw the 1998 movie “Babe, Pig in the City,” you might remember that Babe, after winning a sheepherding contest in the first movie (three years earlier), now finds himself lost in a big city. Through his cleverness he saves a bunch of starving animals and brings back a huge jar of jelly beans, which are allotted to each animal. A large orangutan oversees the rationing and demands each animal come forward, receive his beans and thank the pig. The sincerity is conspicuously absent from the mouths of some of the animals when they repeat the words. That scene captures perfectly a human trait or tendency: If we even have to, we usually end up saying the words “thank you” disingenuously. By nature, we think ourselves deserving, which makes it difficult to bless and instill worth in those from whose kindnesses we have benefitted.

The Scriptures recognize this fault and are full of admonitions to be thankful. I’d like us to explore some interesting observations about the place of thankfulness in the life of a believer.


It should not be shocking to discover that an entitlement mentality pervades much of our culture and shapes political agendas. In short, the thinking goes, “I deserve – by virtue of my existence.” But when we practice thankfulness, we notice that we have benefitted due to someone else’s kindness and efforts. We actually shift the attention off of what we have or believe we deserve, and calculate the amount in which we have been blessed by someone else’s sacrifice, the privilege we did not deserve but received.

Jesus told of the ten lepers who were healed, and “the good guy” in the story is the leper who returns to express thankfulness to Him. Paul tells the Corinthians, “But thanks be to God, who always leads us….” And, “Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift” (2 Cor. 2:14 ; 9:15). A thankful attitude pleases the Lord because, rather than us being selfishly independent, it recognizes His greatness, who sustains us and supplies everything we need. When the Apostle Paul admonishes the Philippian believers he states, “…but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” (Phil. 4:6 ). We go to the Lord to pray and petition with thanksgiving, fully realizing that all we presently have, or ever will have, is due to the gracious provision of the Lord. This prayer has a proper focus and pleases the Lord.


By looking at many individuals in the Scriptures, as well as those in our modern world, we see that those who are extremely blessed by God are not necessarily thankful. Amazingly enough, although the hand of the goodness of God is obvious to us, many who benefit from Him never acknowledge or thank Him. Instead, there is abhorrent greed and discontentment in unregenerate hearts which have experienced affluence. King Herod is an example of one who was elevated by God to a high position and yet failed to acknowledge the One who deserved the thanks (Acts 12:21-23 ). The list of those who exemplify this lack of gratitude today would be too long for publication!

The point that begs to be made is that the opposite of the above is also true: Whereas those who are obviously blessed fail to exhibit thankfulness, those who seemingly have very little are capable, through the work of the Holy Spirit, to be extremely thankful. My family was often the recipient of acts of kindness and gratitude from people in the tiny villages where we ministered in Africa for many years. How humbling it is to receive a chicken from a family (who only owns six chickens) because they were so happy you came to visit their village and minister and share a meal with them. Paul makes mention of the churches in Macedonia in his second letter to the Corinthians regarding their generosity amidst extreme poverty (2 Cor. 8:1 ,2). In fact, I might be so bold as to suggest being thankful comes easier for those who live the reality of dependence upon the Lord, with God supplying their needs while they thank God continually for everything necessary for life (i.e. sleep, air, water, clothes, and food).

This latter point most closely parallels the experience of the American Pilgrims who voyaged on the Mayflower from Europe in 1620 to begin again in the New World. It was winter at Plymouth by the time they built shelters and disembarked from their ship. Before the next planting season nearly half the original 102 members of the voyage perished due to disease, exposure, and generally poor conditions. The monuments and burial sites are preserved today on Coles Hill near the supposed site of their landing. These rugged Pilgrims persevered, planted, made peace with Massasoit, the local chief of the natives, and together survived. At the end of their first harvest, fifty-three Pilgrims (with only five of the original eighteen adult women) with about ninety of Massasoit’s men celebrated a “harvest festival” in late October or early November, to return thanks for the preservation of the Almighty of those left alive. The celebration lasted about three days and probably included types of waterfowl, wild turkey, fish and deer trapped and obtained by both the Pilgrims and Native Americans. This event, commonly accepted as the first thanksgiving, also consisted of prayer and worship and very little revelry, according to historians. These humble survivors recognized the hand of blessing of the Almighty and paused to return thanks, not because of the abundance, but because they were spiritual pilgrims desperately dependent upon the Lord for everything, and they recognized His grace.



As we grow in our faith, one of the evidences of Christlikeness and the Spirit’s control is thankfulness. Paul commands in Ephesians, “Be filled with the Spirit… speak to one another with psalms, hymns…. Sing and make music in your heart… always giving thanks to God the Father for everything” (5:18-20). It is a normal outcome of the control of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Paul says something similar in Colossians, that the believers were to grow up, be strong “and overflowing with thankfulness” (2:6,7). When we grow in the faith, we have the mind of Christ and recognize how utterly dependent upon the Lord we are and we become thankful. It is as natural as blueberries on a blueberry bush. If the bush is healthy and mature, we can expect blueberries. It flows out of us because the Holy Spirit controls and speaks with a heart of gratitude. The Holy Spirit always gives glory and thanks to the Father and the Son. He knows firsthand the work of God because He is God – we lack gratitude to God only when we quench the Spirit’s work in our lives or are too immature in our faith.


God’s people are not only to exhibit an attitude of thankfulness to God for all He has blessed us with, but we are also to move forward in action to bless and supply others. This act of giving of ourselves and of our supply is an act Paul calls an expression of thanks to God. The Apostle Paul challenged the Corinthian believers to give generously out of the grace they had received and in so doing, it would “result in thanksgiving to God” (2 Cor. 9:11 ,12). They are admonished to move their feet, hands, and resources to “obedience that accompanies [their] confession of the gospel of Christ (2 Cor. 9:13 ). My paraphrase of this would be, “Don’t you realize how much you’ve been blessed? Or are you so selfish that you only express ‘thanks’ in words and don’t mean it? You confessed Christ, therefore follow Him in giving of yourself fully – act it out in life and deed, for this is how we show real thankfulness to God! Be thankful, and be generous too. If you really believe God is the source and supplier, act like it with your resources!”

Lord, may we exhibit in our thoughts, attitudes, and actions

the work of your Holy Spirit in our lives – thankfulness!

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