By Sam Crabtree
Gratitude as a By-Product
Expressing gratitude costs almost nothing. Anyone can do it, at any time. But it requires both the grace of God and our own obedient effort. Being genuinely grateful requires a work of God, a grace of wakefulness, a miraculous heart transformation.
If gratefulness requires the appropriation of enabling grace in order to be able to give thanks, the good news is that there’s also enabling grace for appropriating the enabling grace.
There’s no circumstance in which God’s enablement for you will run short. (2 Cor. 9:8).
Though enabling grace is available in endless supply, a grateful outlook doesn’t just happen. It’s not natural for self-preoccupied, rights-demanding, what’s-in-it-for-me sinners. Thankfulness requires cultivation. One of its dimensions to be cultivated is a biblical mindset. A heart that erupts with thanksgiving is a by-product of learning God’s righteous judgments in the Scriptures. (Ps. 119:7).
Though expressing thanksgiving costs almost nothing, preparing to give thanks—transforming the heart, cultivating the outlook, reading a book about the topic, being vigilant to spot opportunities to express gratitude—will cost something. It costs intentionality, desire, preparation, heart change, a stack of cards and envelopes, postage stamps, and time.
Gratitude Is Not a Curse
Thankfulness is a response to pleasure or to anticipated pleasure. Thankfulness is feedback elicited by satisfaction. It’s a fitting reaction to a beneficial action.
Thankfulness is an expression of the heart’s delight. Delight is not a burdensome chore. The grateful heart takes pleasure not only in the benefit but also in the benefactor. Note well that the grateful recipient understands that the benefactor was not obligated to provide the benefit; the provision was not owed to him. It’s all grace, all unearned, all undeserved.
Though God receives our offerings, he isn’t looking for our outward offerings that give back to him what he gave us in the first place. We arrived on the scene with nothing to bring to God, nothing with which to impress him.
God is scanning us inwardly, looking for grateful hearts to accompany our offerings. He’s looking for such hearts, and he produces such hearts. That’s why we can speak of gratitude as being divinely given.
Gratitude springs from the humility, brokenness, and contrition of heart that God does not despise (Ps. 51:17). Such heart-markers are always from him—and thus even more reason to be grateful.
Taken from “The Cost of Giving Thanks” by Sam Crabtree, Copyright © November 25, 2021. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, IL 60187, www.crossway.org.
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