Transformational Gratitude

Now may the God who gives perseverance and encouragement grant you to be of the same mind with one another according to Christ Jesus. (Romans 15:5)

A friend called me yesterday and began sharing with me his gratitude and praise for God while also telling me that his basement had been leaking in the last round of heavy rains. He had been reading about the way that God can oversee every event that comes into our lives and will only allow that which is for our ultimate good. So when God tells us to give thanks in everything He is telling us that everything can work for our good, for God would never ask us to give thanks for anything that is evil.

I was thankful that this friend was so full of encouragement and was sharing it with me. I know that he sometime struggles with discouragement and feels that he has almost no one to share his heart with or to encourage him. We have tried to stay in touch but at times it is long periods between contacts. At the same time I share his feelings of frustration at not having people in our lives who are willing to help bear our weaknesses as described in verse one.

As we continued to discuss together we talked about one of the problems that we typically run into with our attempts to live a life full of gratitude. There seems to be a habit we have that our praises for God usually revolve around supposed blessings, external “good” circumstances and material enhancements for our lives. We also look for things like unusual events where we were supernaturally protected from harm or gained advantage in some way that made us feel more important. It is not hard to listen to a session of typical praise and thanksgiving to hear things of this sort about 99% of the time.

But a very important lesson I heard a few years ago has really affected me and influenced my own thinking along these lines. While it is certainly not wrong to be appreciative of the “blessings” that we perceive as coming from God – and we usually fail to do that nearly enough – it comes with a great risk, a liability that can easily be exploited by Satan to cause us a great deal of discouragement many times.

If the reasons for our thanksgiving are based on the uncertain foundation of temporal blessings and good fortunes that come our way, then we are left with very little reason to entertain a spirit of gratitude whenever it appears that things are suddenly going wrong, that life appears to be falling apart, when trials and temptations surround us with darkness and fear. In those times it is very easy to start believing that God must be upset with us or has withdrawn from us in displeasure for some reason. In other words, we can easily allow Satan to control our perceptions about God and His attitude toward us through manipulation of our circumstances.

I have to say that this has been my experience for most of my life. I have a long history of resistance to gratitude to the point where I became known early on as a person who had very little appreciation for the kindnesses or gifts from others. I was sometimes rebuked for this lack of appreciation which only tended to reinforce my negative attitude and cause me to resent others more than appreciate them. It seemed to me that blessings and gifts always came with strings attached and that if I did not comply with unspoken demands to properly appreciate them that they would be withdrawn. In other words, blessings and love toward me were always conditional upon my proper reception and appreciation of them.

I still struggle with this life-long habit of thinking that is deeply embedded in my psyche from a very young age. But learning this important principle about gratitude has been a very big step in liberating me from this trap of legalistic mentality and self-centered discouragement. For I came to learn that it is far more important and transforming internally to focus the bulk of my attention on the character and motives of the heart behind the gifts instead of basing my gratitude on the gifts themselves. This takes the opportunity away from Satan to manipulate my feelings and opinions about God by yanking me around through constantly changing circumstances.

I give Satan a huge but unfair advantage over God in my life whenever I allow my praise and appreciation to rest only on circumstances or temporal blessings. For in doing so I will form my opinions about God and about how He feels about me based on my current circumstances instead of on His declarations about the true intentions of His heart. By doing this I become easy prey for being blinded by the lies and deceptions about God constantly promoted by Satan and the world around me, and living the life of a Christian becomes a constant chore and takes much more effort than God ever intended.

As I shared with my friend yesterday, and I myself need to me reminded of far more often, I believe that there is an overwhelming power, an enormous reservoir of emotional energy, hope and courage easily available to each one of us if we would learn to tap into the power inherent in true gratitude and praise. Satan and his agents are keenly aware of this great threat to their influence over us and are at work with intense frenzy to prevent us from being energized by this activity. To do this they work tirelessly to push entertainment, fear, stress, busyness and myriads of other distractions into our attention to try to prevent us from breathing this life-giving atmosphere of true praise that energizes all of heaven.

What perked up my attention this morning was that this text in Romans is reinforcing this very truth. I have discovered at times the transforming power of focusing on the truth about God's character in times of intense fear or hopelessness and have felt the peace and rest that comes from choosing to thank God for the truths about what He is really like while consciously turning my attention away from the source of my fears. And while that is an important secret for me to learn, I also realize that this attitude of focusing on the heart of God needs to become the all-consuming passion and obsession of my whole life. This is the preparation for heaven that is truly effective and transformational for my heart and which is the only real preparation that effectively qualifies me for heaven.

As I read this text and the following ones this morning I was reminded that my perseverance and encouragement come from God, not from trying to work them up for myself. And as I allow my heart to warm to this truth – that God is the kind of being who wants to empower me to persevere and is always ready to encourage me – then I find that gratitude will spring up naturally and spontaneously; I don't have to work hard at dutifully giving thanks as I have often felt.

Moving over to this whole new way of thinking and reacting comes with a most powerful result within the body of Christ. For those who begin to live a life focused on the goodness and love of God instead of basing their praise and gratitude only on the externals which are only temporary, will find that their hearts began quickly bonding with each other and the unity that Jesus prayed for in John 17 will began to become obvious and irresistible.

I have seen many programs and attempts and calls for unity among Christians. This has led to all sorts of ideas as to how we should achieve this righteous goal set forth by Jesus. But the problem is often that we try to arrive at it by all sorts of means other than the only true way laid out by Jesus. For if we introduce any false elements into our efforts to achieve unity we have just contaminated the ingredients for His perfect cake and the results will always be a failure to rise and set properly when put in the heat.

Maybe coming to understand the true nature and motives for genuine thanksgiving and praise and getting our focus on seeking God's face and learning the real truth about Him is analogous to the secret ingredient that causes the cake to rise to greater heights that we ever thought imaginable. And as we join our hearts with others who are also discovering the secret power of praise and gratitude based on the right motivations we will discover an amazing family emerging from the present discord seen in religion today. And as we look at what is happening to us with our hearts strangely attracted to those we previously only resented, we will see that it is because it is God who is granting us to be of the same mind with one another according to Christ Jesus, so that with one accord you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, accept one another, just as Christ also accepted us to the glory of God. (Romans 15:5-7)

(next in series)