A Heart of Thankfulness
If our usual posture when coming to God is that of worry or fear, we need to consider whether we trust God enough with what He's doing in our lives.
I want to grow my thankfulness to God. Gratefulness is a key attitude for any believer in Christ. But it can be hard to maintain a grateful posture considering that we live in tough times. With the rising costs of almost everything, uncertainty in our world due to wars, and our own personal and relational troubles that we're dealing with, it can be hard to be thankful at times. It seems easier to sulk, worry, or fear.
The psalmist encourages us to "enter [God's] gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name" (Ps. 100:4 ESV). We're called to enter God's very presence with a particular attitude: gratefulness in our hearts. God desires that we approach Him in this manner. We might even go as far to say that He instructs or commands us to do this. It doesn't mean we can't come to God with our troubles and worries. There is certainly a time and place for that. But we don't want to forget that God sustains us every day. He's already done so much for us and He will continue to do so. We don't want to overlook God's goodness in our lives.
If our usual posture when coming to God is that of worry or fear, we need to consider whether we trust God enough with what He's doing in our lives. We should also consider whether or not we're content with what God has already provided. Do we have an ungrateful attitude because we're not satisfied? I know it's not easy to change our perspective and attitude. I used to worry all the time and I've had bouts of dissatisfaction in my life. But if we really believe in an all-powerful God who loves us and cares for us, shouldn't that change how we view things in life? When we enter into the presence of God each and every day in prayer, we should consider doing it with much praise and thanksgiving and with less worry and fear.
One of the reasons we might not come to God with thanksgiving is that we might not even know what to be thankful for in the first place. Of course, there are the obvious things to be grateful for such as life, family, food, etc. We should be thankful for these things. But there are plenty of things that we can be thankful for that aren't as obvious. We might even constantly overlook them. To increase our thankfulness to God, we need to increase our powers of observation for the different things that God is doing in our lives. We have to get better at spotting the wonderful things that God is doing every single day.
To facilitate this, we need time to actually think about what God is doing so that we can observe His hand at work. One of the things that I've started to do is to record key prayer items at the back of my journal. Whenever a prayer item is answered by the Lord, I mark it down as “answered.” This gives me plenty of things to be thankful for beyond the obvious stuff. Also, it's nice to see all the answered prayer items in a list. When I list all these prayer requests and answered prayers down on paper, it becomes quite apparent that God indeed hears my prayers and responds to them.
I want to do exactly what the psalmist encourages me to do: to enter God's presence every single time with much thankfulness and praise.
Barnabas the Monastic
Servant of Christ. Husband. Dad. Modern Monastic. I have a wild ambition in life: get as close to the Lord Jesus Christ as I can while on earth. I explore and integrate ancient Christian monk wisdom in modern everyday life. Lives in Canada.
