The Grace of Gratitude
16 Rejoice always; 17 pray without ceasing;
18 in everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
~1 Thessalonians 5 (NASB)
A grateful heart is a happy heart. A grateful heart is a light heart. A grateful heart is an open heart. A grateful heart is a heart that has been set free from the burdensome myopia of self-obsessive grumbling.
We all intuitively know that this is true, and in some sense desire this. But, what needs to happen so that we can experience this gratefulness? What do we need to know in order to have this happiness for ourselves?
There are three things we need to know to be happy not only in this life but also in the next. Guilt, Grace and Gratitude.
Guilt. This may seem counter-intuitive but the first thing we need to know is our sin. Before we can know how to find happiness we need to accurately diagnose the great enemy of our happiness—the grumble of sin. We need to know the wickedness of our sin, that it is an offense against God and that, apart from grace, we are without hope of escape.
Grace. We need to know the wonder of our Savior, that though we are helpless in our sin and deserve to be eternally judged for it, He came and accomplished everything necessary to totally remove the guilt of our grumbling. Through His life, death, burial, resurrection and ascension, Jesus has accomplished the impossible rescue. He’s not only saved us from the judgment of God but also from dead-end kingdom of self.
Gratitude. We need to know a heart that has been reworked to its very core by the surprising gift of God’s grace in Christ. We need to know an unshakable attitude of gratitude for the all that God has done for us, in spite of our undeserving status. And we need to know this not just intellectually but experientially. But how? This third point is totally premised on the first two; it is the outworking of being convinced of the other points first. The degree to which we do not experience this heartfelt gratitude is the degree to which we don’t really know (experientially) the first two points—we don’t really know our guilt and His amazing grace. So what do we do? We need to hear it again…and again…and again…
8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.
~Romans 5 (NASB)
Happy Thanksgiving! May you be ever filled with the grace of gratitude!
Don Willeman