An Attitude of Gratitude

I want you to leave today asking God for one thing: an attitude of gratitude. A grace to always be thankful. Because grumbling, complaining, and murmuring are not harmless little habits. They quietly rot a life. And the antidote is simpler than you think.

One of the most repeated commands given to us as Christians is also one of the easiest to ignore: be thankful. Listen to how often it shows up.

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.

Philippians 4:6 (NKJV)

And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.

Colossians 3:17 (NKJV)

It runs all through the letters. Paul tells Timothy that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and the giving of thanks are to be made for all men. He tells the Ephesians that being filled with the Spirit shows itself in giving thanks always for all things to God the Father. He tells the Colossians to continue earnestly in prayer, being vigilant in it — with thanksgiving. Notice how tightly thanksgiving is tied to prayer, to worship, to being filled with the Spirit. It is not a decoration on the Christian life; it is one of its load-bearing walls.

Continue earnestly in prayer, being vigilant in it with thanksgiving.

Colossians 4:2 (NKJV)

From verses like these it becomes plain that thankfulness is the attitude that catalyzes so many of the good things we want in our walk with God. No one embodied this more than the apostle Paul. Read the way he opens his letters and you keep hearing the same refrain: “I thank my God always concerning you.” “I do not cease to give thanks for you.” “I thank my God upon every remembrance of you.” If anyone had a reason to feel entitled, to grumble at how people treated him, it was Paul — beaten, imprisoned, abandoned by friends. Yet this was one of the ways he kept himself grounded in God: gratitude, at every remembrance. Let me give you two reasons it matters so much.

Thankfulness starves idolatry

The first reason is that gratitude is the most potent weapon against two of the most dangerous sins that can ever get hold of you: idolatry and envy. The first one poisons your relationship with God. The second poisons your relationship with people. And Paul, tellingly, offers thanksgiving as the direct replacement for the very talk that breeds them.

Neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks.

Ephesians 5:4 (NKJV)

Watch how Paul traces the road into idolatry in Romans. It does not begin with some dramatic act of rebellion. It begins with a failure to give thanks.

Because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

Romans 1:21 (NKJV)

When something becomes so important to you that you would disobey God in order to have it, that is idolatry. And the road that gets you there is being unthankful for what God has already blessed you with. What are the things we tend to want so badly we will risk disobedience? Money. Pleasure. The approval and acceptance of people. Fame. Every one of them can quietly climb onto the throne of your heart.

Thankfulness is how you keep God number one at all times. When your heart is full of thanks for what He has given, nothing else has room to grow large enough to come between you and Him.

Thankfulness kills envy

The second sin gratitude destroys is envy. Let me ask you honestly — have you ever felt envious? Now, envy and jealousy are close cousins but not the same. Jealousy is the sadness you feel when you think you will lose out to a rival. Envy is the sadness you feel simply at another person’s good fortune. Thomas Aquinas defined it as “the pain or sadness you feel at another’s good.”

The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard called envy a “small town” sin, because we are usually envious of people who live near us and are like us — the same age, the same class, the same line of work, the same sex. As long as you think a person does not deserve something, for whatever reason, you are already knocking at the door of envy. Have you ever caught yourself thinking any of these?

• That person is getting their way far more often than they should.
• They have more money than they could possibly deserve.
• They are getting more attention than is necessary.
• They do not even deserve the person they are married to.

The common thread is comparison. Because you are measuring yourself against someone else, you decide it is not fair, and pain sets in. Your whole inner life begins to slide into a miserable spiral.

Basil, the fourth-century bishop of Caesarea, described the torment perfectly: the envious person is never without pain, never without grief of mind, and the cruelest part is that he cannot even confess it. With bowed head and downcast eyes he suffers, ashamed to admit, “I grieve at my brother’s happiness.” Jesus told a whole story about this in Matthew 20, about laborers who were bitter because the owner was generous to others.

Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with my own things? Or is your eye evil because I am good?

Matthew 20:15 (NKJV)

So how do you kill envy? Adopt an attitude of gratitude toward the very person who triggers it. Begin to thank God at every remembrance of them. Thank God for the attention they are getting. Thank God for the person they married, for their health, for their children. Because here is the truth that dissolves envy at its root.

For who makes you differ from another? And what do you have that you did not receive? Now if you did indeed receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?

1 Corinthians 4:7 (NKJV)

Sit with that question. There is nothing anyone has that they did not first receive. The looks you envy, the talent, the opportunity, the family — all of it was given. So the moment you begin to thank God for what He has placed in another person’s life, envy loses its grip, because you can no longer pretend they stole something owed to you. Gratitude reframes their good as God’s generosity, and generosity is not something to grieve over. It is something to celebrate.

Thankfulness opens your eyes

The second great reason to be thankful is this: gratitude is the pathway to the miraculous. Thankfulness opens your eyes to see what God has already done and is doing in your life. And when your eyes are open to His goodness, your faith explodes.

Think about it. Faith is energized by love — by seeing how good God has been to you. As you see Him at work, your faith grows, and as your faith grows you begin to experience greater and greater miracles. The reverse is also terrifyingly true. Psalm 78 tells us why the generation of Israel fell in the wilderness. It was not their sin that finished them. It was their unthankfulness. Because they refused to be grateful for what God had done, they missed out on what God could still do.

Yes, again and again they tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel.

Psalm 78:41 (NKJV)

Read that slowly. As great and as mighty as God is, unthankfulness puts a limit on Him in your life. They did not fall because of some spectacular sin; they fell because they forgot what God had already done and stopped being thankful for it. Jesus, by contrast, knew this, and that is why He gave thanks even in His hardest moments.

And He took the seven loaves and the fish and gave thanks, broke them and gave them to His disciples; and the disciples gave to the multitude.

Matthew 15:36 (NKJV)

Before the loaves multiplied, He gave thanks. At the tomb of His dead friend Lazarus, before anyone was raised, He lifted His eyes and said, “Father, I thank You that You have heard Me.” Gratitude came before the miracle, not after it. That is the order. Thanksgiving opens your eyes to see what God is doing, and as your eyes open, your faith is energized by love — and faith energized by love is exactly the faith that moves mountains.

Refuse to grumble

So learn to be thankful always. Refuse to complain. Refuse to grumble. Complaining does not just sour your mood; it disempowers your faith, because it blinds you to everything God has already done for you. Israel turned back in their hearts because they forgot — and they forgot because they stopped giving thanks.

Start where you are, today, with what is in front of you. Name the small mercies before you reach for the large requests. Let your first sentence to God be gratitude, not grievance. And watch how differently you begin to see your own life. “I thank You, O Lord, that You have healed me” — let that become the settled posture of your heart.