The Greatness of Gratitude

Chapter 4
Why Should I Practice Being Grateful?

You should make gratitude central in your life because it is healthy for your mind, body, emotion, and spirit. Becoming a genuinely thankful person is not a cakewalk, but you must bend your mind toward being grateful until it becomes almost innate, embossed in your psyche, and etched in your will. You’re in charge of your thoughts, so you must drive them toward gratitude. Drive them! Move them! Push them into deliberate thankfulness and watch your features brighten. When you make happy thoughts and happy words a central part of your conversation, it’s unlikely that you will find much time to murmur and complain. You will fare well in body and soul. Your entire body, including those vital organs that you never see but keep you upright and alive, will thank you. In Psalm 63, David echoes thanks to God as he lies on his bed and ponders God’s kindness. When your heart is thankful, your serotonin levels rise, which affects your entire being. Gratitude lowers your cortisol levels so that you are not in a fight-and flight stance. Your system, up to the very veins of your heart, functions better when you practice being grateful. Being thankful frees you up to give and to receive. It heals the burns and soothes the scars of hurt in your heart. Being thankful connects you to God (Phil. 4:6–7). It lays the foundation for God to take hold of your desires and make them a reality according to his grand plan for your life. Thankfulness also breeds trust. It lets the one you thank know that you recognize the benevolence shown to you. Thankfulness opens God’s hand wider toward you. There is not one person alive who does not want to be blessed. It is important to thank God for the things he has given you as well as for the unanswered requests that you have labored for in prayer. Thankfulness will get your heart out of depression and will raise your soul above the problems of the day.
       The psalmist says, “Give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good” (Ps. 136:1 NET). Do you truly believe that God is good even when things do not work out in your favor? A woman once whined that she was disappointed that God was not working things out for her daughter’s fiancé after all that her daughter had done for him. I found her statements both ignorant of who God is and audacious at best. Whatever little you can do to benefit the kingdom of God is just that, very little; whatever little you feel God has done for you is very big. First, you cannot do anything with spiritual significance unless the Spirit energizes you. In other words, only God can equip you to do anything for him, and God owes you nothing at all. Get it! God owes us nothing. The very fact that God, in his love, mercy, and grace, elected to save you is more than anything you could ask for. He elected to save you. You are chosen. His Spirit drew you. You are being kept until the day when Christ returns on a white horse to judge the world (1 Pet. 1:3–9, 13; Jude 24–25; Rev. 19:11–16). That will be grand. I sort of shudder to think of it, yet excitement wells up inside of me just to know that I will see him one day —face-to-face, shoulder-to-shoulder, and arm-in arm. How beautiful is that! So what am I to do with the hindrances that come my way now? I am to work them!
         The best way, I think, to work your trials is to first have a thankful heart. Recognize that you are not alone, and even if you are in prison for a crime you committed or did not commit, you are not the worst person in terms of your current position. People are in situations that would make what you now face seem like gravy. Things could be better but they could also be worse, so be thankful. Thank God that you are still alive. Thank him that you are mentally capable of making decisions and alert enough to know how to position yourself. Thank him for the place you live in, even if you now sleep in a shelter.
         Remember, this is not permanent. Life is ever evolving, and tomorrow brings about new opportunities. Run with what you have today, no matter how small it is. You may be in humble straits, and things may be very difficult for you, but you are on a journey, and the end is not yet. Imagine your life like a journey on a highway—what you see now is not what you are going to see tomorrow. You are not stuck. You are changing. Things are changing. Life is changing, so change with life. Don’t get stuck. Learn new things. Examine new ideas. Stretch your imagination. Put hope in your heart and smile. There is a better day ahead, and the sun will shine for you if you train your mind to see the sun behind the rain. Maintaining an attitude of gratitude will help you.
         There are thankful people. They work with you, shop in the same stores you do, eat at the same restaurants, are members of your gym, deliver your mail, and walk their dogs in your neighborhood. Look closely, and you will see them. They appreciate whatever you do for them, and they rarely complain. These people exude a deep sense of tranquility. Why is that? One could be tempted to think that they “have it all together,” but that is not true. These people have problems, experience loss, battle illnesses, and are besieged with financial woes. Don’t let their smile fool you. They struggle also, but their struggles do not define their attitude or their altitude. They see their “glass” as halffull, better yet, they see their glass with a limitless potential of being refilled. They see tomorrow as bright, even when the clouds above them are dark.
         Louis Zamperini, a US Air Force pilot during WWII, is a great example of resilience, gratitude, and forgiveness. Imagine how he felt as he floated on the open seas for forty-seven days. He had no idea if he were going to live or be bitten off chunk after chunk by sharks. I wonder what went through his mind during that time. I’m sure a myriad of thoughts captivated his brain during that time. He dozed on and off for days under the penetrating gaze of the sun and the quizzical wink of the stars. Is it possible to thank God, or anyone else for that matter, when hopelessness pulls up a chair by your side and refuses to leave? Zamperini was rescued at sea, only to fall into the enemy’s hands at the time. The Japanese held him as a prisoner of war and mistreated him until the war ended in 1945. In the end, Zamperini became a Christian and forgave his captors for the torment they unleashed on him. He was a man of gratitude until the day he died in 2014 at the ripe old age of ninety-seven. What a way to live! What a legacy to leave our world. The entire script of Zamperini’s life was unfolding just as God had allowed it to be written, and throughout his capture, God’s hand was on Zamperini’s heart. God’s hand is on your heart also. Don’t despise it.
         The grace of God is woven throughout the stories we read in the Bible. Men and women of ill-repute find redemption time and time again. They fall, and they get up. Some fall and remained fallen by their own will, but the opportunity to get up was always available. They chose not to take advantage of it. They chose to look away when grace met their gaze. It is a sad day when one does that. No matter how low you get, grab hold of grace and don’t let go of that rope.