Why Do We Need to Be Grateful?

By Todd Tillinghast

What do we usually think about when its thanksgiving and we are talking about being grateful and thankful? We usually think about all the events or things in our lives that have recently happened that we are thankful for.

Of course we have all been taught how important it is to be grateful even of those things that aren’t pleasant in our lives. We have memorized scriptures such as 1 thes 5:18 that tells us to “Give thanks in all things for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” And so we concentrate and focus on the importance of the “attitude of gratitude” or on being in that state of mind even if we don’t necessarily feel grateful or if there may seem to be nothing to be grateful for. In fact, it may even seem that complaining is the more appropriate response to our current set of circumstances.

Now, I certainly believe that being thankful is the correct attitude to have as Paul admonishes us throughout the New Testament (1 Thes 5:18, Col 4:2, Phil 4:6, Eph 5:20,). It is clear that gratitude and thankfulness should permeate our attitudes, conversations and prayer lives. And there is no doubt that for the child of God a continual, consistent and persistent lifestyle demonstrating this gratitude through our speech and our deeds is the only appropriate response to what God has done for us.

But as another Thanksgiving has passed and the Christmas season is upon us as a pastor I want to talk about gratitude and thankfulness in a different way. I have no desire, again this year to pontificate about all the reasons why we should be thankful because we are the most blessed nation and the most blessed generation that has ever existed. This may be true although I’m sure that all previous generations considered themselves to be the best and the most blessed as well. And I certainly do not wish to talk again about the behavior of thankfulness “The attitude of gratitude” which has almost become a Christian ritual and is most definitely a Christian cliché. It would at times seem that we talk about gratitude as something that we must do whether we understand it or not or whether we feel like it or not. In our zeal to act grateful I fear that we have missed the real reason why we should be grateful and it’s not that new car or that promotion. These are definitely things to be thankful for but they are just things. Things change, circumstances change, fortunes change and life changes. If our gratitude is based on events in our lives then it is going to be difficult to maintain the level of thankfulness that I believe Paul was talking about. There is a deeper level of gratitude that isn’t based solely on events or circumstances but is rooted in something stronger.

Maybe you feel genuinely grateful for some blessing in your life and that’s wonderful. You should feel grateful. I don’t want to take away from that at all. In fact, I rejoice with you that God has blessed you. Maybe you feel as if there is nothing in your life to be grateful for… forget the “things we are thankful for lists” just pass the mashed potatoes and gravy. But you know that gratitude and a positive attitude are expected of the Christian so you are grinning and bearing it through this thanksgiving season. I want you to know that life is sometimes difficult and sometimes the appropriate response is not gratitude but pain. We would do well as a church to weep with the wounded as much as we rejoice with the happy. I believe that what I am going to share about gratitude is for both groups of people and for those who may find themselves somewhere in between.

Why Aren’t We Grateful?

Webster defines Gratitude as: A feeling of thankful appreciation for favors received. This definition is very telling and may clue us in as to why we may struggle sometimes with genuine gratitude. I believe that there are three major reasons why we struggle with gratitude in our lives.

1. We don’t really believe that life is a gift.

We cannot be authentically grateful on a fundamental level if we don’t believe that we have received favors in life. Now we understand that when we receive a gift it us a blessing and it is usually given whether we deserve it or not. If it is a true gift then there is no expectation of reciprocation. And for this, a true gift, our natural response is gratitude and thankfulness. But on an everyday basis we don’t typically see our everyday lives as gifts. If you are like me you don’t naturally look at life or anything in it as a gift. My focus is usually on what I have to accomplish, achieving my dreams and getting what I think I am entitled to. Gratitude is difficult for us forward thinkers who are always looking to the future, preparing and planning ahead for tomorrow. Subsequently, gratitude involves looking back at the past at what has already happened and being thankful for it. My natural posture is not one of gratitude. I habitually operate under the flawed assumption that everything that I have came from my own hands. Nothing is free in this life. I can have anything I want as long as I work hard enough to get it. From the sweat of my brow I will form and fashion the life that I deserve. This kind of thinking does not take into account how many things we have and enjoy on a daily basis that we had nothing to do with. We didn’t supply ourselves with everything we have and to believe so is pure arrogance on our part. Think about all of the things that happen every day and in our lives in general that can be characterized as nothing less than free favors given to us by God:

• The rising sun in the morning
• The air you are currently breathing
• Biological life
• The fact that you woke up this morning
• The rotation of the earth
• The location of the earth in the galaxy in relation to the sun
• The day you were born
• The gravity that holds everything together

And of course the list could go on and on and on. If any of these things were changed or altered in the most minute fashion life as we know it would seize to exist. We spend so much energy and time looking for a reason to be grateful when there are so many reasons readily available every day, in fact every minute of every day.

2. We are afraid that being grateful is synonymous with settling for less.

We aren't often thankful in the moment because we may feel that when we are we are settling for less or surrendering. So often we withhold our gratitude until we achieve what we think we are capable of. The sentiment seems to be that if we are thankful for the present then we are selling ourselves short and that somehow the pursuit for excellence must end. But I would argue that being grateful for now, the present, for what we have today is not surrendering or selling yourself short. Quite to the contrary it empowers us to be more effective and more productive because it has a tendency to take away anxiety and release us into joy which is essential to our success in life. Gratitude also takes our focus off ourselves and being self focused is debilitating to personal success.

3. We are too proud to receive blessings.

To be grateful is to place ourselves voluntarily on the receiving end of a blessing. In order to do this it takes humility and a conscious release of control. The Bible admonishes us that it is better to give than to receive yet receiving connotes a weakness that most of us are uncomfortable with. We have no problem being the giver or the one doing the blessing but receiving can often agitate our pride.

Two levels of Gratitude

1. Contrived Gratitude

This is the kind of gratitude that we muster up within ourselves to make ourselves feel better. This is not genuine gratitude. All of us are trained from the time we are children to say please and thank you. We do this habitually. It is a socially accepted and expected response. But do we really understand why we are even saying thank you in most of these contexts?

When I was a child my mother would tell me to eat all of my vegetables and be grateful for them. It was also understood that I would not get any desert if I did not eat my vegetables with a smile on my face and say thank you because my mother worked hard to cook those vegetables and there were starving children in Africa who had nothing to eat. I always thought and wanted to reply, “Let’s send them this food then they won’t be starving.” So it dawned on me that if I wanted to get what I wanted…desert… then I could use gratitude to get it. So I would choke those disgusting greens down with a forced smile upon my face and looking at my Mother with puppy dog eyes say.. “Thank you Mom, may I have my desert now.”

Now I am sure that you had many similar experiences. What happens is we learn to fake gratitude in order to get what we want or to be socially acceptable. I’m sure that there isn’t one of us that has not said thank you for the gift we didn’t like or the dinner that tasted like tree bark. This is contrived gratitude.

Often times when we are feeling down we rev ourselves up in a personal pep rally in order to feel better. We inject gratitude into our lives as an antidote to the poison of negativity or depression. We say things like:

 Thank God I’m not like that guy
 Thank God that I didn’t loose my job like she did
 Thank God I still have my arms and legs
 Thank God I’m not in a hospital bed

There are a couple of problems with this approach to gratitude. Firstly, when we use gratitude in this way we are like the publican who in Luke 18:11 thanked God for not being like other “sinners.” He then went on in the following verse to outline all the wonderful things that he did. This was not pleasing to God then and it is not pleasing to Him now when it comes from our lips. It is competitive and arrogant on our part to hide behind the false guise of gratitude in order to lift ourselves above others.

The second problem with contrived gratitude is that it may work for today but what will happen when we are the one who lost their job or we are the one who is sick? Then we will most assuredly be singing a different song.
Contrived gratitude, though it is often where most of us are in terms of thankfulness, really isn’t gratitude at all.

2. Responsive Gratitude.

Responsive gratitude is the higher level of gratitude because it is generated by a genuine response to what God has given us today. It is the utter acceptance and thankfulness of what we have right now, and the ultimate realization that most of the time our blessings are a result of free favors given to us by our God for which we had nothing to do with. Responsive gratitude is the result of a heart that is consistently aware of and connected to its own blessedness. There is so much we have to be grateful for.

How do we cultivate responsive gratitude?


1. Don’t focus on gratitude, focus on your blessings.

Don’t use gratitude as a means to an end or a weapon to combat negativity in your life. Allow gratitude to be the natural response to an ever increasing awareness of the blessings that surround and permeate your life every day.

2. Be proactive.

Don’t wait until you are depressed to activate gratitude. Don’t wait until someone does something for you to decide to be grateful. Determine to be grateful now. When you wake up in the morning thank God for the day, life and all of the things that are given to us free of charge. Meditate on these things every day. The result will be true gratitude which will produce true joy.