Gratitude

I hope you all are enjoying your summer. This past weekend, Philinda and I were delighted to have all three of our children together with their families. As many of you know, this happens all too infrequently.

For the last two Sundays, I talked about the power of giving thanks. I compared thanks for undeserved blessings with a feeling of entitlement. The latter accompanies a performance mindset, the former a mindset of grace. Gratitude for blessings is absolutely essential if one is ever to surrender to the lordship of Christ.

We are born with a deep instinct of entitlement. Is there a child on the planet that doesn’t feel they are entitled to the love and care of their parents? Children need to be convinced and tutored to learn the simple act of gratitude. Children don’t naturally write thank you notes, and they wouldn’t think of thanking their parents for food, shelter, vacations, or anything else for that matter. Gratitude is a learned reflex. But it is a reflex that is absolutely essential if a child will ever grow in the grace of God. It is the foundation that submission to the will of God is built on, and it is the center of all future relationships that a child will ever enjoy.

Think about it. How can anyone “enter God’s gates with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise” if every part of a person’s heart is colored with entitlement either for their hard work, moral purity, or anything else that contributes to a claim for special treatment or reward?

Jesus was entitled to the highest honor that could ever be given a man, but He never claimed it. Rather, His gratitude for the love and care of God moved Him to not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but He emptied Himself, taking on the form of man, and was obedient even to death, death on the cross. What was at the heart of His obedience? It was gratitude.

What are you grateful for today? Is there anything in your life that you can honestly say, “It was a gift that I didn’t deserve”? If there is, then make that the basis for your worship, your service, and your submission to the will of God.

PJ