It is the time of the year where many hearts and minds turn towards thankfulness. It is a blessing that in the United States we have a day on the calendar that compels us to focus our thoughts to our blessings and prompts us to express thanks for them. However, many people recognize that this spirt of thanks shouldn’t happen just one season a year. Instead, we all would benefit from having more thanksgiving in our lives.
How can we grow in gratitude? Here are three practices to employ:
1. Choose to Be Content
If we want to have more gratitude in our hearts, the first thing that we need to do is to choose to be content. This may sound easier said than done; we are inclined to think that contentedness is about what we have rather than recognizing that it is a condition of the heart. Paul said that he had learned to be content with much and with little (Phil. 4:11-12), thereby demonstrating that our conditions and our circumstances are not prerequisites for contentment. This is a choice that we can make. And if we want to have more thankful hearts, it is a choice that we should make, each and every day.
In his classic book on contentment, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, Jeremiah Burroughs brings this point home by stating that contentment is not a matter of acknowledging what we lack, and then choosing to be happy anyway. Instead, contentment changes our focus all together. A contented heart puts the focus on all that they have – all that they have been given. Burroughs further encourages his readers to put their difficulties side-by-side with their blessings. If we are honest when we do this, we will realize that there is far more good in our lives than there are challenges. God delights in giving good gifts to His kids (Mt. 7:11) and even during difficult seasons, we still experience an overwhelming amount of God’s good. A heart that chooses to be content recognizes this, and deliberately, intentionally chooses to focus on this truth.
2. Cultivate a Heart of Thanks
It may seem like I’m using circular logic here, but please stick with me. If we want to be more grateful, we need to cultivate a heart of thanks. And if we want to grow gratitude in the lives of our kids, we need to do the same thing with them. In other words, a life of gratitude doesn’t just happen – it needs to be nurtured and developed. In our own lives, this may mean that we intentionally look for things that we can give thanks for. Recently, I’ve been trying to find the “little” things that I appreciate about my husband and specifically thank him for those things. For example, we recently needed a new vehicle and he did all of the research on the car and all the budgetary planning to make the purchase possible. It turns out he loves doing this, but more importantly in this context, because he did it, I didn’t have to – AT ALL. It is tempting to just look at this as one person in the marriage using their skills and passions to benefit the family – and it was that! But it also was a way that he blessed me and recognizing that is a reason to give thanks – both to him and to our good God who gave me the gift of my husband.
When farmers want to cultivate land to grow a specific fruit or vegetable, they don’t just throw down some soil and some seed and hope that with infrequent attention, plants will grow. No – they take care of it; they work at it, and they give the seedlings the time and care that they need to flourish into healthy produce. If we want to grow gratitude in our hearts, we need to do the same. We need to examine our lives and see where we lack gratitude and commit to more frequently gives thanks in those areas. We also need to look at where there are seedlings of gratefulness and commit to bring those embryonic beginnings into established and flourishing flora of gratitude. Having a life of gratitude doesn’t just happen, and we need to purpose to cultivate more thanks in our life if we want to grow in gratefulness.
It may be that we want to increase our kids’ propensity towards thankfulness, and in their lives too, this requires that we cultivate hearts of thanks. When they are young, this means that we teach them when to say thank you, and we model lives of gratitude for them. It also means that we point out opportunities for thanksgiving – when bad things that could have happened, don’t, and when we experience God’s good provision in our family. Lastly, cultivating gratitude in the lives of our kids means that we teach them to express thanks appropriately. This means that they need to acknowledge who they are giving thanks to by looking them in the eye and by being specific for what they are grateful. If they are giving thanks to God, looking Him in the eye is out of the question, but they should still be specific in listing their blessings. Simply saying “thank you” is a cultural convention – let’s work to teach our kids to truly be grateful for what they have been given by specifically and respectfully acknowledging those to whom they owe gratitude.
3. Give to Others More
The last way that we can grow in gratitude is to give to others more. Giving to others may seem unrelated to our personal thankfulness, but the more that we sacrifice for the good of others, the more we realize how many blessings we truly have. There may be some reading this who object because they think that they don’t have a lot to give. And it may be true that your monetary resources are limited. But giving financially isn’t the only way to bless others. We can (and should!) give of our time, our talents, and our non-monetary resources. For example – maybe you can’t afford to take someone out to a restaurant, but you have been given a home, and you can invite that person over to share dinner with you. One of the best gifts I was ever given was a backdrop made for a tea party. I was hosting the birthday celebration for a friend’s little girl who had just gone through a tragic loss. I wanted the party to be great, but my skills in crafting and creativity are pretty minimal. My friend sent me ideas of what to do for the party, and then offered to make the backdrop (because we both knew that hers would be significantly better than anything I could pull off.) It required the use of her time and skills, and it made me so thankful that God had given her to me as a friend and that He had gifted her in that way. God has blessed you in many ways; and if you go back to listing your blessings as we discussed earlier, you are well aware of this fact. Use some of these blessings to bless someone else. You will be more grateful for all that you have been given when you utilize them for the good of another person. And you may just increase the thanks in their hearts as well.
It is a gift to have a day denoted for the purpose of giving thanks. But let’s not let the gratitude that we experience on Thanksgiving end when the day comes to a close. Instead, let’s purpose to grow in gratitude each and every day of the year. And let’s remember that expressions of gratitude always require an object (we have to be thankful to someone). The Christian realizes that all good gifts come from God (James 1:17) and therefore increased gratitude in our hearts, should lead to increase praise of Him.
