[guestpost]Happy Thanksgiving! This is a shortened version of a post I did for David C. Cook’s Spark ministry blog. You can read the whole article here: Why Thanksgiving Is an Important Response to God’s Gifts. [/guestpost]
Train our kids in Gratitude
As parents, we must both teach and train our kids in the spiritual discipline of gratitude. One of the most important disciplines we can master is thankfulness. Thankfulness is so telling because it reveals much about how we view ourselves and God.
“One of the most important disciplines we can master is thankfulness.”
Growing up, we didn’t have much money, but we had much for which to be thankful. Even though I was very grateful in most situations as I got older, I started to view my walk with God in such a way that I felt God was lucky to have me. I was thankful, but so often, I was thankful for the wrong things.
I can still remember the day the me-centered version of my faith came crashing down. It was horrible, it was painful, and it was beautiful. I realized for the first time that my salvation is a work that Christ has done for me, not a mental decision I make. I realized that the works I do are through the grace that He provides.
When you understand that everything we have is because of all He is, you understand He owes us nothing! He owes me nothing! I owe Him everything! Out of this understanding, we can indeed be grateful for all we have. We live in a state of perpetual gratitude because we didn’t do anything but respond to His calling and receive the gift that He gave.
Gratitude vs. Entitlement in Thanksgiving
When I see Jesus as my everything, I tend to operate from a place of gratitude. The minute I know what I have done I find myself living in a place of entitlement. When I don’t get what I feel that I deserve, I get angry at the person I feel owes me. I did that. I now understand more and more the freedom gratitude brings because God owes me nothing, and I owe Him everything.
Pastor and poet George Herbert understood that even a grateful heart was a gift and a work of grace. Herbert closes his poem entitled Gratefulness with these two powerful stanzas.
“Wherefore I cry, and cry again;
And in no quiet canst thou be,
Till I a thankful heart obtain
Of thee:
Not thankful, when it pleaseth me;
As if thy blessings had spare days:
But such a heart, whose pulse may be
Thy praise.”
Herbert says that he desires that gratitude would so fill our hearts that our hearts will pulse with praise. That thankfulness from us would be the reflexive response to God’s empowering grace.
Christmas and Easter are gifts that we do nothing but receive. Thanksgiving is our right and necessary response to so great a salvation.