grateful to god essay

Essay on Being Thankful To God

Students are often asked to write an essay on Being Thankful To God in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Being Thankful To God

Understanding gratitude.

Being thankful to God means showing gratitude. It’s about expressing thanks for all the blessings we have. God gives us life, family, friends, and many other things. We should always say “thank you” to God for these gifts.

Showing Thankfulness

Showing thankfulness to God isn’t hard. We can do it in many ways. We can pray and thank God for our blessings. We can also be kind to others, as this is a way of thanking God.

The Benefits of Being Thankful

Being thankful to God has many benefits. It makes us feel happy and content. It also makes us more positive. When we’re thankful, we focus on the good things in life.

Thankfulness in Difficult Times

Even in tough times, we should be thankful to God. Hard times teach us important lessons. They make us stronger. So, we should thank God for these lessons too.

Teaching Thankfulness

We should teach kids to be thankful to God. They can learn this by saying prayers of thanks or by being kind to others. This will help them grow into grateful adults.

250 Words Essay on Being Thankful To God

Introduction.

Being thankful to God is a way of showing our gratitude for all the blessings we have in life. It’s about recognizing the good in our lives and appreciating it. We should be thankful to God not only for the big things but also for the small things that bring joy to our lives.

The Importance of Being Thankful

Being thankful to God is very important. It helps us to focus on the positive things in our lives. When we are thankful, we feel happy and content. It makes us realize how blessed we are. It also helps us to stay positive, even when things get tough.

Ways to Show Gratitude

There are many ways to show our thanks to God. We can pray and thank Him for all the good things in our lives. We can also show our gratitude by helping others. By being kind and helpful, we are showing our thankfulness to God.

Benefits of Being Thankful

Being thankful to God has many benefits. It helps us to feel more positive and happy. It also helps us to be more patient and understanding. When we are thankful, we are more likely to be kind and helpful to others.

In conclusion, being thankful to God is a very important part of our lives. It helps us to stay positive and happy. It also helps us to be kind and helpful to others. So, let’s always remember to be thankful to God for all the blessings in our lives.

500 Words Essay on Being Thankful To God

Being thankful to God is a simple yet powerful act. It means showing gratitude for all the blessings and lessons we receive from our Creator. It is a way of acknowledging that every good thing we have in life comes from Him. This essay will explore the importance of being thankful to God, the benefits it brings, and how we can express our gratitude.

The Importance of Being Thankful to God

Why should we be thankful to God? The answer is simple. God is the source of everything we have, from the air we breathe to the food we eat. He gives us life, health, family, friends, and countless other blessings. By being thankful to God, we recognize His love and care for us. It’s a way of saying, “I see what You have done for me, and I appreciate it.”

The Benefits of Being Thankful to God

When we are thankful to God, we become happier and more content. Gratitude helps us focus on the positive aspects of our lives, instead of dwelling on the negative. It fills our hearts with joy and peace, making us feel more connected to God. It also brings us closer to other people, as we share our gratitude with them.

In addition, being thankful to God can make us stronger in times of trouble. When we face challenges, remembering God’s past blessings can give us hope and courage. It reminds us that God is always with us, ready to help and guide us.

Ways to Express Gratitude to God

There are many ways to show our thanks to God. One of the most common is through prayer. In our prayers, we can thank God for His love, mercy, and blessings. We can also thank Him for the lessons we learn from our challenges.

Another way to express gratitude is through our actions. We can show our thanks to God by helping others, being kind, and doing good deeds. This is a way of sharing God’s blessings with the world.

Finally, we can show our gratitude to God by living a good life. This means following God’s teachings, being honest, loving, and forgiving. By living this way, we honor God and show our appreciation for His blessings.

In conclusion, being thankful to God is an important part of our lives. It helps us recognize God’s love, brings us joy and strength, and allows us to share our blessings with others. By expressing our gratitude through prayer, good deeds, and a good life, we can show our appreciation for all that God has given us. Let’s make it a habit to thank God every day for His endless love and blessings.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on Being True To Yourself
• Essay on Being Treated Unfairly
• Essay on Being The Youngest Child In The Family

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Happy studying!

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The Importance of Being Grateful to God Every Day

There are some days where life may genuinely seem to suck – from start to finish – literally. 

In fact, sometimes we even go through seasons of hard times, during which being grateful is the absolute last thing on our minds.  In fact, we may even ask ourselves questions like:

• How can I be grateful at a time like this?
• Why is being grateful important?
• What are the benefits of being grateful?

God has recently been teaching me to be grateful simply for His presence in my life.  Grateful because I know that due to the relationship I have with Him, that I can go through some serious crap, but still be more than okay.

Having an “attitude of gratitude” is very important.  However, it is a mindset; one that like everything else, has to be developed over time.   Let’s dive in to see why it’s important to be grateful, and how we can more grateful to God every day.

This post may contain affiliate links.  You can read my full disclosure here .

What Does it Mean to Be Grateful?

Being grateful to god for who he is, being grateful to god for his provision and blessings, being grateful to god for others, being grateful through prayer, being grateful through praise, being grateful through acts of service, be grateful to god every day.

Being thankful and being grateful tend to go hand-in-hand.

The Webster’s dictionary defines them as follows:

• thankful  – being conscious of a benefit received; well pleased; glad
• grateful  – being appreciative of benefits received; expressing gratitude for pleasure or contentment

Our society today is so fast paced that people barely pause to utter a simple ‘thank you’ when you hold a door open, or stop to let someone pass by, or even hand them something they accidentally dropped on the floor!  Even as Christians, we too, get lazy when it comes to expressing gratitude.  

It’s sad, because showing gratitude is actually good for our health.

According to Psychology Today , studies have linked gratitude with increased satisfaction, higher levels of motivation and energy, better sleep and health, and reduced stress and sadness.  Grateful people are supposedly much more engaged with their environment, leading to greater personal growth and self-acceptance, and stronger feelings of purpose.

So, what exactly does the bible say about being grateful, and how do we develop the mindset of gratefulness that God calls us to have?

What Does the Bible Say About Gratitude?

Developing a mindset that reflects an attitude of gratitude starts with a shift in our focus.

There are so many things that compete for our attention, and distract us by directing our focus to the negative things of life, rather than the good.  And, our natural tendency is to complain – about any, and everything.  And complaining is the complete opposite of gratitude.

In everything you do, stay away from complaining and arguing.   Philippians 2:14 TLB

We can all find something to complain about if we look for it.  However, when we shift our focus, and begin to look at the positive things in life, and give thanks to God regardless of what is going on around us, do you know how much our lives will begin to change for the better?

In light of who God is to us – our Lord, Savior, Creator, Redeemer, Protector, Provider, Healer, Shepherd, Heavenly Father – being grateful to Him should go without saying.

The problem I often see is that we allow our situations and circumstances to dictate if we are grateful, or the level of our gratefulness.  But, the Word of God teaches us that we should do otherwise:

• Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever.   (Psalm 118:29 NIV)
• I will give thanks to the Lord because of his righteousness; I will sing the praises of the name of the Lord Most High. (Psalm 7:17 NIV)
• Now, our God, we give you  thanks, and praise your glorious name. (1 Chronicles 29:13 NIV)

We should be grateful to God because He is God, and He is good.  Period!  We should never confuse or downplay the goodness of God based on our circumstances or how we’re feeling. 

Apart from being grateful to God for who He is, we should be thankful to God for his blessings that He bestows upon us every day.

We must train our minds to remember that every day God gives us is a gift.  And, at the very least we should always be grateful for that.

For in him we live and move, and have our being.  As some of your own poets have said, ‘we are his offspring.’ Acts 17:28 NIV

If nothing else is evident, the love of God alone should always be a point of focus and something we appreciate.

Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift! 2 Corinthians 9:15 NIV

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.  They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.   Lamentations 3:22-23 NIV

In love, God chose me before I was even born , and destined me for a purpose.  I’m grateful for His presence, and the fact that His Word says He will never leave me.  I’m grateful that He watches over me, protects me, comforts, and guides me.  I’m grateful that He actually listens when I talk to Him, and that He cares about me so much!

We also must be grateful to God for his everyday blessings of provision in our lives – shelter, food, clothing, running water, electricity, transportation, finances, etc.

One thing I like to remind myself of, is the fact that God will always provide, even if it’s in a different way than what I had in mind.

Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for mankind, for he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things. Psalm 107:8-9 NIV

Ultimately, we must be grateful to God for EVERYTHING!

Always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Ephesians 5:20 NIV

That includes the things that bring us joy and make us happy, and the things that tend to get overlooked. 

If I had to make a quick list, mine would include:  my salvation, my health, coffee, music, my favorite TV shows, hot showers, massages, red wine, sunrises, books, challenges that make me stronger, Netflix, and hoodies LOL.

The list is endless when it comes to things to be grateful for and reasons to be thankful to God.  God’s love, provision, and blessings are evident all day, every day, in everything, all around us.  We never have to look far to see the goodness of God in our lives.  Again, it’s all about a shift in our focus.

God places so many people in our lives as resources of encouragement, humor, love, motivation, knowledge, patience, service, support, fun, and entertainment.  We have to remember to express gratitude for them as well.

The Apostle Paul was a great example of expressing gratitude to the saints in the various churches he wrote to that supported and advanced the ministry of Christ.  Let’s look at a few of those bible verses about gratitude for others:

• We ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love all of you have for one another is increasing. (2 Thessalonians 1:3 NIV)
• They risked their lives for me. Not only I but all the churches of the Gentiles are grateful to them. (Romans 16:4 NIV)
• I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people. (1 Timothy 2:1 NIV)
• I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. (Ephesians 1:16 NIV)

If you were to stop for a moment and just go through the contact list in your phone and think about who makes you laugh the most, who is always there in cases of emergency, who always knows the right advice to give you, or who provides you an on-going service, I’m sure you would come up with a ton of people that you are grateful for.

Anyone from your spouse, kids, siblings, parents, neighbors, best friends, and co-workers, to your pastor, hair dresser, mail man, baseball coach, mechanic, and accountant can be recipients of your expressions of gratitude.

How to Express Gratitude to God and Others

Having the attitude or mindset of gratitude is one thing, but expressing that gratefulness is quite another.  Let’s look specifically at how to be grateful.

One way to express gratitude to God is through prayer.  In fact, whenever we pray, we should approach God with thanksgiving.  He wants us to show our gratitude.  In fact, He welcomes it.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. Philippians 4:6 NIV

When was the last time you spent some time just thanking God without making any requests?  I challenge you to try it.  And if you have, do it more often!

Even when Daniel was facing being thrown into the lion’s den, he didn’t go into panic mode, or start looking for his own solution.  He prayed and gave thanks to God per his usual custom:

Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before. Daniel 6:10 NIV

You see, for Daniel, an attitude of gratitude was a normal routine for him.  If we start to shift our focus in the midst of life’s toughest circumstances, our attitude can begin to change as well.   Gratitude can become our knee-jerk reaction, even in the midst of trials.

I had a literal $1,000 situation once where I had to make a mindset choice.  I could either complain and be frustrated all day about the fact that I had to deplete my savings for unexpected car repairs.  Or, I could be grateful to God that I had the $1,000 in my savings to take care of the emergency in the first place.  It’s all about perspective.

Another way to express gratitude through prayer is by praying for the people in your life that you appreciate. Sometimes, the best thing you can do for people is to spend some time earnestly praying for them.

We always thank God for all of you and continually mention you in our prayers. 1 Thessalonians 1:2 NIV

So often when people share their issues or problems with us, we simply tell them ‘I’ll pray for you’.  Sometimes we do remember to pray for them, but sometimes we also forget.  One of the things I’ve been challenging myself with lately, is taking a few minutes to stop right there in the moment and pray with the person.  Gestures like that are surprising and they go a long way with people, because they know you genuinely care.

When we take time to regularly give thanks to God in prayer, and pray for others, it humbles us, and it reflects a heart of gratitude.

Praise is one of the most prevalent expressions of gratitude mentioned in the bible.  Depending on what version of the bible you’re reading, the word “praise” is used more than 300 times!

Praise is the warm expression of approval or admiration for someone or something.

So how exactly do we praise God?  Well, the good news is, that praise doesn’t have to look a certain way, and you don’t have to be in church or a religious setting to express it:

• In the fourth year the entire crop must be consecrated to the Lord as a celebration of praise.  (Leviticus 19:24 NLT)
• Ezra praised the Lord, the great God; and all the people lifted their hands and responded, “Amen! Amen!” Then they bowed down and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground. (Nehemiah 8:6 NIV)
• Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song. (Psalm 95:1-2 NIV)
• Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. (Psalm 100:4 NIV)
• Give praise to the Lord, proclaim his name; make known among the nations what he has done. Sing to him, sing praise to him; tell of all his wonderful acts. Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice. (Psalm 105:1-3 NIV)
• Sing to the Lord! Give praise to the Lord! He rescues the life of the needy from the hands of the wicked. (Jeremiah 20:13 NIV)
• And David danced before the Lord with all his might, wearing a priestly garment.  So David and all the people of Israel brought up the Ark of the Lord with shouts of joy and the blowing of rams’ horns. (2 Samuel 6:14-15 NLT)
• When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen. (Luke 19:37 NIV)
• Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. (Ephesians 1:3 NIV)
• Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that openly profess his name. (Hebrews 13:15 NIV)

As you can see, we can praise God through words, singing, music, shouts of joy, declarations of His goodness, lifting up our hands in reverence, bowing down in worship, dancing, and full blown celebrations!

You can praise when you’re alone or with others.  You can praise Him while driving in your car, while out for a walk, while doing chores, while exercising, or while taking a shower.    You can praise God anytime and anywhere!  Regardless of when or how you do it, as Christians, we are all called to praise God!

Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Psalm 150:6 NIV

And because God has called us to be grateful to Him for others, we are to praise them accordingly as well:

• Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her.   (Proverbs 31:28 NIV) 
• I praise you for remembering me in everything and for holding to the traditions just as I passed them on to you. (1 Corinthians 11:2 NIV)
• For Titus not only welcomed our appeal, but he is coming to you with much enthusiasm and on his own initiative. And we are sending along with him the brother who is praised by all the churches for his service to the gospel. (2 Corinthians 8:17-19 NIV)
• Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing. (1 Thessalonians 5:11 NIV)

Whether it’s telling your spouse, or a parent how much you love and appreciate them, or thanking a co-worker for their assistance on a project, or encouraging a friend who is going through a tough time the same way they encouraged you, or congratulating and praising a child for chores well done, our warm expressions of praise towards them can make all the difference in the world.

Another way to express gratitude to God is through acts of service.

We serve God by being obedient to what He has called us to do in His Word.  And in His Word, He has called us to use our gifts to serve others, be generous, help those in need, and work at everything as if working for Him directly.  Doing this reflects a heart of gratitude.

• Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will reward them for what they have done. (Psalm 82:3 NIV)
• The disciples, as each one was able, decided to provide help for the brothers and sisters living in Judea. This they did, sending their gift to the elders by Barnabas and Saul. (Acts 11:29-30 NIV)
• Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. (Philippians 2:1-5 NIV)
• You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God. This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of the Lord’s people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God. (2 Corinthians 9:11-12 NIV)
• Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen. (1 Peter 4:10-11 NIV)
• This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.   (1 John 3:16-18 NIV)

Just like with praise, acts of service can be done anywhere and in a variety of ways!

They can come in the form of sending an encouraging phone call to a relative you don’t see often, complimenting a waitress at a restaurant and leaving them a huge tip, getting a thank you card for a mentor, posting something positive about a friend on social media, volunteering at a shelter, doing chores or laundry for someone who recently had surgery, offering to watch your neighbor’s dog while they are away on vacation, or taking an exhausted new mom out for lunch.  The list is endless!

The main thing is to do it willingly, with a heart of gratitude towards God or the person.

Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people. Colossians 3:23 NLT

Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. 2 Corinthians 9:7 NIV

Being grateful often makes us willing to sacrifice time or money and go the extra mile, even when no one is requiring it of us.

Now that we have a better understanding of what being grateful means, what the bible says about it, and how to be grateful to God and others, it’s time to put it all into practice.

As we have seen in Scripture, it is evident, that being grateful and giving thanks is not just a seasonal thing to do on Thanksgiving Day.  It is something we should be doing every day, through all seasons of life. 

Did you know that giving thanks in all circumstances is actually God’s will for us?

Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 NIV

So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. Colossians 2:6-7 NIV

Striving to make gratitude a discipline, something that we focus on and practice in a deliberate way, can change us and our relationships significantly!

So here are my top three strategies for enhancing gratitude daily that I dare you to try.

1.   Pray for a Shift in Your Mindset  – People often say ‘things can’t get any worse’.  Well, I beg to differ, because things could absolutely be worse than they are.  I guarantee you, at any given moment, someone, somewhere, is suffering or going through something far beyond what you are experiencing.  That’s not to downplay your pain, situation, or circumstances.  However, we have to stop allowing the not so good things going on in our lives to overshadow the goodness of God in our lives.

Spend some time earnestly asking God to help shift your focus towards having an attitude of gratitude.  And by the way, the absolute BEST way to help shift your focus is to spend more time meditating on God’s Word.

2.   Count Your Blessings – one of my favorite hymn songs is called Count Your Blessings .  Part of the chorus says: “count your blessings, name them one by one, count your blessings see what God has done!”  I promise you, when you start to actually count your blessings you will have very little time to complain and be stressed about all the crap going on in your life!

I just had one of the most emotionally challenging weeks that I’ve had in a long time, where I literally cried or had some sort of ‘meltdown moment’ every single day.  At surface level most would count this as a bad week, but when I looked back and reflected, I realized how many amazing things actually happened to me this week – including a major answer to prayer that I almost completely overlooked because I was so focused on the one bad situation that had effected me emotionally.

Every day, even if it’s only for a few minutes, take some time to just give God praise by literally naming out loud all the things you are grateful for.  You can even start a gratitude journal!

3.   Look for Ways to Actively Practice Gratitude – Although this will look different for everyone, we must find ways to build a regular gratitude routine (daily, weekly, or monthly).  It can include things like:  visiting your parents more often, calling your pastors/ministers to tell them how much you appreciate their teaching, texting a friend to see if they need help with anything, or spending an uninterrupted day with your kids.

In order to cultivate a heart of gratitude we must be intentional every day about focusing on all the amazing things God is doing in our lives. 

Remember gratitude is not only something God says we should have towards him and others, but it is also good for us.  Don’t forget the physical benefits (better mood, focus, sleep, etc.) that we can reap when we pursue an attitude of gratitude consistently.

So lets do ourselves a favor by walking in obedience to God’s Word and making it a priority each and every day to be more grateful – to God and to others.

Additional Resource:   Gratitude Coloring Book

Encourage someone else today by sharing:

I am happy to see and reread this. I am grateful for all the things I have right now. I am also thankful for all that God has given to me!

This is so true! also, no matter what the circumstances are, we can be content if we continuously follow the instructions of the Lord.

Everything we do, we should be thankful to God. Not all blessings are positive, sometimes it is negative in order to protect you of something. It is really good to be grateful everyday, every moment of our lives. Thank you.

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The power of gratitude: 12 benefits of giving god thanks.

shared by Lisa Appelo | 94 Comments

Most of us know thanksgiving is a good practice. But do we know just how good?  The Bible shows the great power of gratitude. 

While practicing daily thankfulness may seem like another chore, I hope to convince you the power of gratitude far outweighs the few minutes it takes to practice it . There are so many reasons to intentionally cultivate gratitude! 

Let’s unpack the power of gratitude with these 12 benefits of giving God thanks. ( And go even deeper with this free 30-day Gratitude Bible Reading Plan .)

12 Benefits of Giving Thanks

1.gratitude glorifies god..

This alone would be reason to give thanks to God. Our gratitude glorifies God as we exalt not the gifts, but the Giver. Gratitude helps us realize all we have comes not because of us, but from God.

And as God’s grace reaches more and more people, there will be great thanksgiving, and God will receive more and more glory. 2 Corinthians 4:15

2. Gratitude helps us see God.

Gratitude opens our spiritual eyes. There’s a beautiful cycle in giving God thanks: the more we thank Him, the more we see Him working in us and around us. Gratitude helps us sense God’s presence, His personal care and His perfect timing.

Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights. James 1:16-17

3. Gratitude puts us squarely in God’s will.

We often make God’s will out to be some big, mystical plan when sometimes, it’s simply obedience. And part of His will for us is to be thankful, not just on the sunny days but on the hard ones as well.

…give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. 1 Thessalonians 5:18

4. Gratitude brings peace.

Count your blessings, not sheep we’re told to get rid of the worry keeping us up at night. Gratitude helps us see that God’s hand is all over our circumstances. And God tells us when we give him our thanks, He gives us supernatural peace.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:6-7

5. Gratitude draws us to God.

Gratitude for the magnitude of God’s undeserved kindness draws us to Him. We see that when Jesus healed 10 lepers. As Jesus walked by, all 10 cried out for healing. “Go, show yourselves to the priests,” Jesus commanded and as they went, they were healed! Fingers were restored and ulcers disappeared as full sensation returned to their faces and limbs. Certainly they were all happy, but only one was thankful. Only one came back to Jesus, fell as his feet and thanked him.

Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.” Luke 17:17-19

6. Gratitude brings contentment.

It’s said that gratitude makes what we have enough. If we aren’t grateful for what God has given us, getting more won’t satisfy us either. Being thankful is the key to contentment.

. . . godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and neither can we carry anything out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. 1 Timothy 6:6-8

7. Gratitude deepens faith.

Keeping a record of God’s past faithfulness is a faith boost when we face new difficulty. My gratitude journals are testimonies that on my hardest days and in the worst circumstances, God’s record of faithfulness is 100%. That’s why God commanded Israel to remember His great deeds.

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love endures forever. Psalm 136:1

8. Gratitude leads to joy.

The overflow of gratitude is joy. Realizing God’s abundant goodness, even in the hard, is a gateway for joy. Psalms 126 shows this so clearly as the Hebrew exiles sang their thanks to God for bringing them back to Israel. It’s a psalm I prayed in advance for years.

When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dreamed. Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy. The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy. Psalm 126:1-3

9. Gratitude defies Satan’s lies.

Satan is so wily! He whispers that God isn’t good; that He’s withholding good from us. But his scheme’s as old as the garden of Eden, where he questioned Eve: “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” When Eve responded only the tree of good and evil was off-limits, Satan suggested God was keeping good from them. “You will not certainly die. . . For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

In a garden that was perfect, that produced abundantly without work or weeding, where every single plant but ONE had been given to Adam and Eve, Satan focused on the lack. True gratitude for God and the abundance He gives protects us from caving to the enemy’s lies.

No good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly. Psalm 84:11

10. Gratitude guards against envy.

Envy makes us want what someone else has. I mean, we deserve it! Gratitude makes us realize God has given us far more than we deserve. Because there’s enough for everyone, we can cheer rather than compare. A heart wholly grateful has no room left for envy.

I will give You thanks with all my heart; Psalm 138:1

11. Gratitude helps us live in the present.

“Wherever you are, be all there!” Jim Elliot famously said. But that’s difficult to do in the worry and rush of life. Gratitude helps. Gratitude opens our eyes to the simple beauty of ordinary days. It lets us see this day and this moment as gifts and to take in the abundance right now.

Say not, “Why were the former days better than these?” For it is not from wisdom that you ask this. Ecclesiastes 7:10

12. Gratitude is a testimony.

When we thank God openly and acknowledge what He’s done for us, we proclaim a personal, caring God to the world around us. We show that contentment and peace come not from what we have but Who we know.

Give thanks to the LORD and proclaim his greatness. Let the whole world know what he has done. Psalm 105:1

Developing a grateful heart brings incredible blessing. My only regret in keeping a daily gratitude list? Not starting it sooner.

Want to access the power of gratitude? Go deeper with this free 30-day Gratitude Bible Reading Plan.

Find your way through grief in my ECPA

best-selling book LIFE CAN BE GOOD AGAIN.

WOW!!! Reading this tonight was wonderful but printing it out to reflect and meditate on each scripture (spending more personal time on each one) brings me much Confidence, Confirmation & Joy in Knowing God continues His work in me through the good times and what sometimes seems to be the impossible times. Ohh how much He loves us! An attitude of GRATITUDE is worthy of our prayers for one another. Oh what blessings it brings!!!

So glad, Deborah! I loved studying it!

This is what all human beings deserved to read through……

I will praise Him ,give thanks to Him ,honor Him ..I know my God will never felt me so Help me God of Almighty 🙏

I am to subscribe to your website, this study came at the right time for me, to tell you how much I love you this I am awake at about 12:05 I couldn’t sleep because of worries but reading this email has changed my mind . Thank you so much man.

The gratitude list .help me remember all the good things have happen and be thankful to god and don’t think about the negativity of things

May I subscribe to your website?

Yes, you can subscribe at this link. Email signup.

I hope it’s ok to share this lesson in our jail ministry. I will definitely give credit and share your web site. Thank you for all you’ve done to pull this together.

Yes, please feel free to share it. Thank you for your ministry.

I enjoyed reading and studying this its wonderful,I will share this in fellowship tomorrow

Thanks for the words of advice.

Thanks so much for this powerful message

Thank you for bringing a word in season. Looking forward to receiving your plan

I pray the gratitude Bible reading plan blesses you, Linda!

Good cultivation. This idea of showing gratitude. That’s the calmness of God, when in fury to foes…

Gratitude should be our breath

Lisa, I “stumbled” aross your blog after reading an article you had on crosswalk.com, and I am very impressed with your writings and wisdom which God has supplied through your trials. I intend to share this with my wife in as much as we have experienced a great loss 12 years ago in our lives with an estranged daughter from a very controlled marriage. (Grief, as you know, comes in many forms) Thank you for taking the time and energy to minister in this way, and may our great God continue blessing your words and ministry!

I’m so sorry for your loss. Yes, grief comes in many forms and though the wounds are deep, God’s love is always deeper.

Good day Thank you very much for encouraging words of wisdom. Perfect reminder of who we are on Christ; we are his beloved. Gratitude gratitude; all the way; brings us closer toour Creator.Thank you very much…. keep up the good job amd stay blessed.

Hi Lisa thank you so much , I enjoyed reading this piece. Please would you allow me to publish it in my church weekly bulletin so many more people can read? Thanks

Hi Charles! I’ll email you.

Thank you for those points of yours concerning the benefits of thanksgiving to God. Is a great one. Almighty God will continually sustain you to do more and we shall all inherit his kingdom in Jesus name.

Good morning beloved. Yesterday I experienced the power of God by showing me what I have versus to what others don’t have. He reminded me that all I so is ask ask and ask, take take and take and forget to properly give him thanks for all provision. After all, His name is Jehovah Jaireh, the Lord who provides and this experience has led me to your website as I was searching for the power of gratitude. Thank you so much for documenting it so well, so clear and so easy to follow. Remain blessed until the world call you BLESSED

I fill happy when reading I’m well please

Thank you for this. It came at the right time.

Thanks Lisa

Thank you my beloved Lisa for this soul refreshing teaching. It will uphold the proud, and will stir him or her to do the right thing

I really love reading this is so inspirational to me.

Satisfactory

I cannot thank God and your ministry enough for this timely message. I have been blessed in no small measure. God bless you richly as you continue to speak His Mind to generations in Jesus name.

Am indeed very thankful for this article, quite a great lesson I’ve learnt on being grateful to God, God bless you so much and may He give you more Grace and Revelation to continue enlightening the body of Christ with the living word.

This is just amazing. Thank you Lisa!!

Hallelujah hallelujah hallelujah what a wonderful sermon, I will let my congrigation hear it too, thanks alot

I read each one including the scriptures and, thoroughly enjoyed doing so.. This helps me with my walk with God. Thank you very much, may God continue to bless you.

Please correct this typo, please change 1 Corinthians 4:15 to 2 Corinthians 4:15 at the end of Gratitude Glorifies God.

I appreciate that catch, Laura, and made that change!

I want to thank you for the power of gratitude 12-step list it really inspired me is very inspirational and it helped me with some of the problems that I’m going through thank you

Thank you for allowing God to use you in bringing this message am blessed. Giving thanks to God and knowing He is in our lives is all that matters. Thank you ones again

This is wonderful. Lord I’m grateful to know more of the benefits of being thankful. Thanks you Lord for each day good or ‘bad’. God bless you for this teaching. Am I blessed!

Thanks for this. May I share with my Brethren in Church on Sunday?

Yes! Gratitude is life-changing.

I am so bless by studying This wonderful writing may the Lord bless and increase your ministry.

Am grateful for the opportunity to read it and I will do it again.thanks and May the Almighty bless you.

Very enlightening and encouraging regarding us being thankful!

I’m blessed

I’m blessed with the message and I felt the obligation to share it to others so they too, will be blessed. Thank you so much!

MY DEAR LISA.WORDS ALONE CANT THANK YOU ENOUGH,INFACT AM SHOT OF THEM,only GOD in heaven who sits on the throne of grace would reword you for this life changing ministration.my i call for grace upon you and your ministry to go keep going deeper and as far as spreading the light throughout the entire univers.thankyou lisa,am not only blessed but also challenged as the eyes of my heart got open to see who i was and how releaved i am.thankyou,i appretiate GOD bless you LISA.

What an inspiration

Wow tjis is siriually uplifting. I googled words about how to be grateful to God and this came up. Thank you so much Lisa. I have even highlited the verses on my bible and wrote gratitude how amazing is this!!!! Im going to bed now my two little persons have long been sleeping, so let me catch up whilst l can. So grateful for the find and the read l found.

Going through your sermon was mind blowing and very inspiring .I thank God for your life because a lot ungrateful heart has been replaced with heart of gratitude. I was really blessed. Funny enough my first daughter name is also Lisa. I want us to become family friend so that one day my daughter can talk to you. God bless you richly and enlarge your ministry in Jesus mighty Name

Great revelation, i will share with the church of GOD.feel blessed.

I am so bless with this sermon as it’s open my eyes to what I stand to gain if I appreciates God in all things.

This is wonderful, I was reading and everything is clear to me now. I think most of us are not giving God gratitude enough. We complain and grumble over everything because it’s not working out for us in our ways. I pray that this piece will give people the assurance God gives us when we thank him. I’m blessed with this writing, God bless you Lisa, your family and your ministry .

Thank You Ms. Appelo. Finding, reading and studying your message is a wonderful gift which I will indeed be sharing. Thank You and God bless You!

Praise to be God. I have inspired alot..may God bless you

God has blessed you Lissa. The word of God you have given me today has substance. It means so much to me as I am strengthen to work with it. Continue in the good work of revelation until Christ comes or calls.

Powerful word..God bless you

Just read the 12 msg on gratitude, it had really help me this night of 10/4/2021. I appreciate.cha

I have read the 12 benefits of giving God Thanx(gratitude) and feel so grateful for these.I love all of them.and am going to share them in my fellowship since it’s about giving thanx to God for what He has done for us.God bless you so much

Thanks for article, it really a good thing to give thanks to the Lord

Love this. Shared it with my prayer group. They loved it. Thanks and may God bless you

Good work in remaining us why we need to give thanks to God.

Praise and Thanks God Blessed Day Ma’am Lisa. I’m really blessed by reading this. I will share this to our devotion tomorrow. Thanks and Godbless 😇

Gratitude do a fabulous job of connecting with your friends and family. They carry the innermost sentiments of your heart and communicate them in the most beautiful manner that touches their soul. loved your article

Amazing points on gratitude.its a week of gratitude/ thanks giving in our church June 2021 and I find 12 good points from you on gratitude

Good information right here, Lisa. Permission to share it with others, please

Wonderful teaching. God bless you

This is highly inspiring and soul lifting. God bless you for taking me through this Kingdom character.

Thank you Sister Lisa for saying Yes to God calling in your and living for that purpose inspire of all odds. God bless you. Am really blessed, more grace in Jesus name Amen.

i am so edified reading this. This piece is so powerful and unique.

Thank you so much for sharing this, i have always been so casual in all i do especially in regards to my relationship with God, I believe this beautiful beginning is going to be an opening to many many more beautiful experiences in my life. May God bless you

Glory be to the most high God

I am so so blessed with these benefits of gratitude and I pray my God reachly bless and enlarge your coast in Jesus name. I will like to have more of your writings

Wonderful!!! Thanks you,😊…..Glory to God

This is awesome. God bless you.

J am really blessed. Thanks so much. God bless you.

This message was timely, it settled the issues of anxiety, worries, and depression. If God is our focus life journey will be peaceful.

Thanks for this message on thanksgiving you have shared with us l am blessed with it God bless you real good in Jesusname

I am so much blessed, words are not enough to express my heartfelt gratitude of this timely message, may i ask permission to share this to our division virtual convocation.

Great revelation through the Holy spirit.

It gives me joy to read your right up, it shall be well with you in all that your hands find to do. It changed my life and help me see the need gratitude and thankful to God for what He has done in our lives.

Thank you very much for this series,it was helpful.

The power of Gratitude is my best article and I love it too much, You listed in easy way to remember. God bless you and use all your effort’s for His Glory.

Thank you very much l needed this. May God bless you, lm so much blessed

This is great and inspiring. More grace of God in Jesus name

Hi Lisa, Allow me to share this article with my church. Thanks

Thank you for this wonderful message. It good to give thanks to God for everything He has done for us. If man were to be in position to give us the things of life, he would be partial and deny us what should have been free. Pastor Adewale Sunday

Thank you Lisa for the information I received from you am so blessed. I will testify the goodness of God

This is so powerful, may the Lord God Almighty continue giving you more and more wisdom reveal alot to you.

Thank you LISA for such a meaningful thoughts on being Gratitude. I am blessed.

YES, it is true that developing a grateful heart brings incredible blessings.

John Wesley, NSM Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India

Please send me teachings from this group. I will really appreciate it. Thanks.

Wow this is powerful. Thank you so much and God bless you.

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Grace upon Grace

Toward a Christian grammar of gratitude.

Gratitude to God is at the heart of Christian faith and theology. One comes to see the specific character of Christian gratitude—or rather, of Christian talk about gratitude—through an examination of the role it plays within, and the shape it receives from, the doctrine of God. For the doctrine of God is not only of God but extends to all things in relation to God. What it means to speak of God truthfully thus bears directly on our understanding of creation, redemption, humanity, virtue, and the church. Gratitude becomes a sort of red thread common to these topics, descending from the heights into the nooks and crannies of our daily lives.

Tracing this thread, one sees the ways in which the fabric of Christian confession is interwoven with thanksgiving. But, to switch metaphors, the theological sequence unfolds less as a linear movement and more as a kind of nesting doll. Each in the series of topics—or perhaps concentric circles—highlights interrelated, ever-expanding insights that cumulatively amount to a Christian grammar of gratitude. Such a grammar is catholic, in the sense that its content is rooted in a tradition common to the one church stretching from the apostles to the present. To affirm this is not to deny that it is also contested, for the church’s history is rife with division and disputation over the meaning of grace, the question of merit, the significance of Eucharist. Family fights are rarely trivial, after all. We battle over what matters.

Gratitude matters. We see its heart in Christian teaching about the Triune God’s works of creation and redemption, culminating in the Lord’s incarnation, terminating in his death, and sustaining us in and through the sacraments of his life. Each of these works sheds light on what it means for Christians to speak of gratitude to God, and in turn opens out onto new angles from which to see the same reality afresh.

The doctrine of creation from nothing ( ex nihilo ) is, in the words of John Webster, “a cardinal doctrine.” It has long served as a point of unanimous agreement among Christian theologians of every stripe. Its meaning might therefore be assumed to be self-evident or common knowledge, at least for believers today. But the doctrine itself is often misunderstood, and has come under fire in the last century. What then specifically does it teach, and why is it so important?

In simple form, it teaches that God creates all that is—all there ever was or will be—from nothing. God does not, that is, create from anything at all. God and only God, in Ian McFarland’s formulation, is “the sole antecedent condition” of the existence of anything that is not God: angels, humans, bacteria, dark matter, other universes (if they exist), this universe in its totality. God is, in Aristotelian terms, the single efficient, exemplary, and final cause of creation. As St. Thomas Aquinas puts it, “To create can be the action of God alone.”

This means, first, that God did not fashion the world out of preexisting materials; second, that matter is not itself eternal or coeval with God; third, that no other agent or principle served alongside God in the creative act; fourth, that God alone is sovereign over the created order; and fifth, that God is that to which all created being is ordered. “For from him and through him and to him are all things” (Romans 11:36), including ourselves. We are from him and for him; he and he alone is our source and end.

Creation ex nihilo is not, however, a doctrine about origins. It is a doctrine about the nature of created existence as such. If, contrary to fact, God had willed to create a universe without temporal beginning or end, such a universe would in fact still be ex nihilo , for the entirety of its being would depend, in every way and at every step, on the will and power of God its Creator. The doctrine, in short, is about the fact that there is and remains anything at all in existence that is not God, and how that can be, and why it is so.

Existence, on this understanding, is a gift so gratuitous that it lacks comparison with any created gift: it is sui generis , because it is the gift of being instead of not being. To exist, accordingly, is to be created: to be a creature, however great or small, is to depend at every moment on God as the infinite and inexhaustible source of one’s being; and to depend on God in this way is a fact to which creatures’ lives may be more or less transparent. For rational creatures, that transparency is found above all in gratitude; whereas ingratitude constitutes or reflects an opacity to God as one’s Creator. To live against the grain of dependence on God is finally self-denying: it is to stop up one’s mouth and nose in a vain search for alternative sources of oxygen. Whereas to live in grateful acknowledgement of God’s generosity in creating and sustaining oneself is by definition to flourish as a creature made from nothing.

In view of God as Creator and ourselves as creatures, therefore, gratitude to God is a special virtue, as Aquinas recognized. It properly orients us to the source and goal of our lives and disposes us to receive with open hands and hearts the manifold gifts bestowed on us so liberally by God. Such a disposition is well captured by David Kelsey’s term “doxological gratitude,” which he uses to characterize the proper response on the part of human persons to being the sort of creatures we are in the sort of world we inhabit. It further suggests, on the one hand, that prayer—here understood as thanksgiving to God made articulate by individuals and communities—must be central to an account of human flourishing; and, on the other hand, that gratitude to creaturely gift-givers be subordinate to, and analogously modelled on, gratitude to God.

Our lives are gifts and are constituted by gifts. Our happiness lies in gratefulness.

God alone, as we have seen, creates from nothing. But God is not alone. He is the Holy Trinity, the eternal, irreducible, and unquenchable life of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The shape of creaturely gratitude to God follows not only from his action to create but also from his identity as Triune. Before saying how, let me begin with historic conciliar teaching regarding God’s Triune nature.

There is no God but the Trinity; the Trinity is the one true Lord of all. His life has no beginning or end, no source outside himself, no terminus other than his own replete beatitude. In the eternal generation of the Son from the Father and their unity in the Spirit who proceeds from the Father—the Spirit in turn uniting the Father and the Son in the love the Spirit is—the one Triune God exists from everlasting to everlasting in a glorious plenitude of joy and freedom at once perpetual in motion and unshakable in repose. He is, in a word, though in the highest and fullest sense of the word, happy.

The upshot for creatures is good but initially off-putting, at least for some: God does not need us. We do not, because we could not, add to his happiness. He is happiness itself. Just so, he is our happiness, for we do need him, and have no satisfaction apart from him. Hence the character of creaturely gratitude: “You have made us for yourself,” writes St. Augustine, “and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

That is the first reason why the unqualified happiness of Father and Son in the Spirit is good news. The second is the Trinity’s lack of codependence with us. We are not pawns in a game he is playing for sport. We are not props in a play put on for his arbitrary desire. We are not the stage or theatre of his own self-realization or divine becoming. (Creation is not theogony, a sort of origin story for deity; here, then, the doctrine of the Trinity meets and finds mutual support in the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo .) God is who he is, and he does not depend on us for his status, identity, power, or good pleasure. That means, in turn, that his sovereign will to be our God, to act for our good, to bless and to save—to reach out toward us in glorious self-donation—is absolutely unrestricted. For God to give of himself entails no loss on his part, and nothing but gain on ours. That is evident preeminently in our creation, and it is only confirmed in our salvation. Perfect in himself and hence perfectly happy, the Holy Trinity who creates from nothing is threatened by nothing, disbarred by nothing, to be for us and our well-being entirely, without restraint.

Consider the Lord’s epiphany to Moses, the paradigm of the divine self-disclosure as simultaneously God free from us and God for us. The condition of the Lord’s ability to deliver Israel from bondage to the gods of Egypt is precisely his antecedent identity as He Who Is—“I Am Who I Am” or “I Will Be Who I Will Be” in Exodus 3:1–22. Only the God invincibly secure in his being and power may sovereignly will to save those in need. This connection between God’s life in himself and our life in the world, moreover, raises a speculative question. Theologians use the term “exemplary cause” to name the fact that, at some level, everything in creation reflects or corresponds to its divine source. Does it follow that there is something like gratitude in the Holy Trinity?

Let us say that the Son just is gratitude hypostatized, which is to say, his identity as a distinct person is nothing but gratitude: all that he is, he receives from the Father; but what he is, he has in himself, for thus is the Father’s gift in begetting him (see John 5:26). For this reason the tradition has understood the Son as the archetype of creation, not because he is any less divine than the Father, but because his fromness serves as a pattern for bringing into being that which is not divine. Hence his second and third proper titles: He is the eternal Word of God (John 1:1–3), through whose being spoken forth in time the world is made (see Genesis 1:3); he is the Image of God (Colossians 1:15), and in imaging the Father exactly (Hebrews 1:3), he is God as the Father is God (see 1 Corinthians 8:6). Whereas creation generally, and human beings particularly, image the Image.

Thus while the “gratitude” of the Son to the Father simply names the shape of his hypostatic subsistence as Word and Image, our gratitude is modelled on his, albeit doubly so. God does not need our gratitude, but we rightly want our very being as creatures to be synonymous with gratitude to God; our fallenness, however, bespeaks a fracture between our desired and our actual modes of being—a fracture we can do nothing to repair ourselves. In this way our deepest flourishing depends on a living, embodied thanksgiving that amounts to an imitatio Dei , even as our sin turns us in on ourselves, congenitally ungrateful and unable, even where desirous of the virtues of religion and piety, properly to pay the debt we owe to the One who gives us life itself.

In the words of St. Paul in Romans 7:24, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

The apostle gives the reply in the next verse: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” For, as he says in 2 Corinthians 8:9, this is “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.” Our creaturely gratitude, twisted and corrupted by sin, is now transformed and elevated by the wonders of forgiveness and deification. Expanding on this theme, St. Maximus the Confessor writes that “God took on himself [our nature] for our sake and thus renewed our nature, or better yet he created our nature anew, and returned it to its primordial dignity of incorruptibility through his holy flesh. . . . What is more,” he goes on, “he generously provided our nature with the gift of deification, which he could not possibly have failed to bestow since he was himself God incarnate, indwelling the flesh in the same manner that the soul indwells the body, that is, thoroughly interpenetrating it in a union without confusion.” Such seemingly spare metaphysical claims leave Maximus short of breath and grasping toward doxology: “And what could be more amazing than the fact that, being God by nature, and seeing fit to become man by nature, he did not defy the limits of either one of the natures in relation to the other, but instead remained wholly God while becoming wholly human?”

The incarnation is thus a mystery past recounting, a gift beyond measure. In it the uncreated Image of God becomes the creaturely image of God. “The Word became flesh and dwelled among us” (John 1:14). Or in the gloss of St. Athanasius, “He was humanized that we might be divinized,” an exchange Maximus calls “this blessed inversion.”

It follows that Jesus, as the incarnate Son, embodies gratitude to God in creaturely—wholly human—form. Indeed, because Jesus is very man and very God, the whole course of his life instantiates simultaneously the eternal intra-divine “gratitude” between Son and Father in the Spirit and the temporal gratitude proper to creatures in relation to the Creator. If, then, we want to know what gratitude looks like in a human life, we ought to look to Jesus, our exemplar and forerunner in this as in all the virtues.

But that is not the end of the story. Jesus is not merely Aristotle’s virtuous man or Paul’s second Adam. He not only lived a human life. He died a human death. And his death, the gospel proclaims, is saving: by his wounds we have been healed (1 Peter 2:24). To be—to learn to be—grateful to God entails, therefore, more than gratitude to God as the continuous gracious source of our very existence; it entails as well gratitude that God drew near and offered himself on the cross. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son . . .” (John 3:16 KJV).

In this way God’s love for us is inflected by his distinct modes of relation to us: creating us, reconciling us to himself, drawing us to eternal life with himself. The book of Psalms, wherein we hear the voice of Christ figuring his own passion and victory in advance, bears witness to this differentiated gratitude, full as it is of petition, complaint, lament, and thanksgiving. We are right to thank God for his gifts, in other words, but because his gifts are multiple and multifarious, we ought to thank him in different ways.

More broadly, we now see the wisdom of Karl Barth’s description of the relationship between grace and gratitude in the Christian life: “Grace and gratitude belong together like heaven and earth. Grace evokes gratitude like the voice an echo. Gratitude follows grace like thunder lightning.” Or, we might add, like a memory an event, or a meal a sacrifice.

The love of God, writes Paul, is shed abroad in our hearts through the gift of his Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5). The Spirit’s works of love in the church we call sacraments. In the visible words of baptism and Eucharist, we at once see God’s love, receive his gifts of grace, and surrender ourselves in grateful submission to his will. No wonder the principal sacrament’s literal name is “ Thanksgiving .” These corporate practices efficaciously mold and shape the members of Christ’s body across the course of their lives precisely in the sort of gratitude exemplified by Christ, into whose death and resurrection we are immersed, by whose body and blood we are nourished. And we learn gratitude first of all as a community, as a people defined by prayer. After all, how do children and catechumens learn to begin their prayers? They listen to the gathered assembly at prayer. And what do they hear? “O God, we give you thanks . . .”

So the church, as the corporate body of Christ fed by his sacramental body and drawn forward in time by his Spirit to the public manifestation of his risen body, is a community created and defined by gratitude to God. Indeed, the inception of the church is itself the occasion of a gift, the great giving of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost (see Acts 2). The Spirit who indwells the church and animates its life through word and sacrament bears the personal name of Gift, as Augustine recognized long ago. The singular Gift with which the Father presents the Son, thus eternally begetting him as the Son through the eternal breathing-forth of the Spirit on him, is one and the same as that which is poured out on the apostles during the great feast in Jerusalem, granting new life to the Son’s reconstituted body and holy Breath to the living temple of God—one not made with human hands (see 1 Corinthians 3:16–17; 6:19–20; Acts 7:48).

The shape of this community’s life is eucharistic from start to finish. It breaks bread in grateful memory of the Author of life (see, e.g., Acts 2:37–47), who died and rose again to grant eternal life to all who call on his name (3:15; 4:12). It offers itself to God on behalf of the world, and to the world on behalf of God. The source and summit of its life is gratitude in all its forms: Christ the hypostatic gratitude of God; Christ gratitude incarnate; Christ the human exemplar of gratitude; Christ the debt of gratitude paid to God; Christ the bread of gratitude offered and eaten on the altar; Christ the Spirit of gratitude shed abroad in the hearts of the faithful.

It turns out that, in searching for a Christian grammar of gratitude, the name of Christ is convertible with all our terms. His incarnation is indeed, in the formulation of Maximus, that “mystery for which and through which all . . . other things took place.” To speak well of gratitude to God, we need only speak well of Christ. Looking to him, we see all things, for in him “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3 RSV). Paul goes on: having “received Christ Jesus the Lord,” we therefore “live in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith” (vv. 6–7). The result: “overflowing with thankfulness” (v. 7 NIV).

To abide in Christ is to abide in gratitude. Receiving him, we receive everything (see 1 Corinthians 3:21–23); for what do we have that we did not receive (4:7)? It is all gift. And in the face of such a gift, our thanksgiving abounds all the more.

• January 13, 2022

Brad East is associate professor of theology at Abilene Christian University, Abilene, Texas.

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Gratitude Essay

500+ words essay on be grateful.

During difficult times, it’s easy to feel frustrated or drained by life. Negative feelings and thoughts can creep in, which can make it difficult to see the positive things in life. However, one simple practice of gratitude can help to eliminate these feelings. We take a look at the importance of being grateful through this being grateful essay. Students can also use this essay to practise more essays on similar topics like gratitude, being grateful, being grateful etc. Doing so will improve their writing section and increase their scores in the English exam.

What is Gratitude?

The word gratitude is derived from the Latin word gratia, which means grace, graciousness, or gratefulness. The word gratitude encompasses all of these meanings. Gratitude is a feeling of appreciation or thanks. It is defined as “a sense of thankfulness and joy in response to receiving a gift, whether the gift is a tangible benefit from a specific other or a moment of peaceful bliss evoked by natural beauty”. With gratitude, people acknowledge the goodness in their lives.

There are different ways of expressing one’s thanks. Gratitude is one such emotion. People feel and express gratitude in multiple ways. Some of them apply it to the past by retrieving positive memories and being thankful for elements of childhood or past blessings. Some people are grateful for the present as they do not take good fortune for granted. Some people show gratitude for the future as they hope for a better future and maintain an optimistic attitude.

Importance of Gratitude

Gratitude enhances the quality of life and makes existence more worth living. It opens the human heart and carries the urge to give back-to do something good in return, either for the person who helped us or for someone else. It establishes social harmony and creates an environment where everyone is appreciating and providing support to each other. It also improves the quality of personal lives and strengthens the bond with family and friends. Expressing gratitude keeps us happy, healthy and stress-free.

Feeling grateful reminds people of a joyous event, and expressing gratitude to others often strengthens relationships. Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships. When we are grateful for others, we do not compare ourselves with others based on their financial situation or other factors, we simply appreciate their achievements. Thus, it helps in elevating the feeling of comparison, jealousy and hate. Being grateful also helps people connect to something larger than themselves as individuals — whether to other people, nature, or supreme power.

How to Practise Gratitude

Everyone can benefit from making an effort to practise gratitude in day-to-day life. It can be achieved simply by paying attention to the good things that happen to us. We must appreciate and accept the importance of everything in nature and our surroundings. Also, we should not forget to return the favour at an appropriate time. Whenever possible, we should thank the people around us, who make our lives comfortable, such as washermen, gardeners, security guards, sweepers, delivery men, etc. We should make a habit of thanking God when we wake up in the morning and before sleeping at night.

Gratitude is the best way to return the favour to God, nature, society, friends and relatives for the thousands of good deeds that they do for us.

We hope students must have found this “Essay on Gratitude” useful for their studies. To access more study material and get the latest updates on CBSE/ICSE/State Board/Competitive exams, keep visiting BYJU’S. Also, download the BYJU’S App for interactive study videos.

Frequently asked Questions on Gratitude Essay

How to show gratitude towards others.

You can show gratitude by thanking people who help you and being courteous and friendly. You can iInvite people over for lunch/dinner to thank them for something they did for you. Always listen intently to what others are saying to show appreciation and care.

Why is showing gratitude so important?

Psychologists show that there is a positive impact on the brain and body of people who show gratitude.

What are the benefits of showing gratitude?

Showing gratitude helps in emotional regulation by reducing stress and burnout. It also increases your mental resilience because you are able to build meaningful relations with others.

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The Power of a Thankful Heart

• Debbie Przybylski Intercessors Arise
• Published Nov 17, 2015

Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.  ( 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 ).

It's Not Always Easy to Give Thanks

But this is the very thing we must do in order to see God’s will accomplished in our lives. 

This is how we move into higher realms of faith for ourselves, for our city, and for our nation. When we give thanks in the midst of difficulty, we bring pleasure to God's heart and breakthrough begins. He is looking for people who live in a realm of praise and thanksgiving where the enemy no longer has an ability to hold or manipulate. Satan is defeated when we have a thankful heart because thankfulness during difficulty is a sacrifice pleasing to God. Are you thankful?

Are you thankful for your present circumstances? 

Are you thankful for your salvation , your friendships, and your job? 

Are you thankful for the way God made you?

Thankfulness is a Key to Your Life 

It is the key that turns your situation around because it changes you, your outlook, and your attitude. There is power in a thankful heart. Thanksgiving brings contentment. An attitude of thanksgiving accepts and embraces God’s will. Begin to thank God for all the blessings he has given instead of dwelling on the negative. Discontent dries up the soul. Look at what Elisabeth Elliott, who lost her husband on the mission field and faced multitudes of hardships, says about loving God's will and being content: 

Look at the Example of Jesus

He followed the will of His Father to the very end. He obeyed without complaint. In Philippians 2:5-8 , Paul says that we should have that same attitude. Jesus made Himself nothing and took on the very nature of a servant. He humbled Himself and became obedient to death. We also are to have this same attitude with a humble and thankful acceptance of God’s will for our lives. Jesus embraced hardship without a complaint.

He thought carefully and said, “I would give more praise.”

This is a lesson for all of us.

To learn to be people of praise and thanksgiving to God all the days of our lives would be a great accomplishment. There is greatness and happiness in thanksgiving.

“Would you know who is the greatest saint in the world?... It is he who is always thankful to God, who wills everything that God wills, who receives everything as an instance of God’s goodness and has a heart always ready to praise God for it… Could you therefore work miracles, you could not do more for yourself than by this thankful spirit, for it turns all that it touches into happiness.” — William Law

David writes in Psalm 116:17 , " I will sacrifice a thank offering to you and call on the name of the LORD."  Did you know that thanking God for a difficulty is actually an offering that He highly values? You are bringing a gift of thanks to Him. It is so easy to complain. It is so easy to point the finger and find fault. But to come with the opposite attitude and give thanks brings breakthrough and joyful contentment.

How to Practice Thankfulness

Let each of us seek to have an attitude of gratitude and thanksgiving, and rise to a new level of holiness.  Here are some ways to practice this attitude in everyday life:

Thank and praise God for everything in your life.

Don’t allow yourself to complain about anything.

During the difficult times, be very careful to watch your tongue. Instead of complaining, think of ways you can verbally offer God the sacrifice of thanksgiving. Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe.  ( Philippians 2:14-15 )

Don’t compare yourself with others.

Don’t wish your life were different. God knows what is best. The Bible says that having a thankful heart is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. When we begin to thank God for what we have, rather than comparing ourselves with others, it opens the door for God’s blessings. Each one should test his own actions. Then he can take pride in himself, without comparing himself to somebody else.  ( Galatians 6:4 )

Most of Us Need Breakthrough in Prayer  

The enemy is fighting hard with fiery darts of discouragement and lies. The way we will begin to deal with the lies and the vicious ways he tries to destroy our joy is through the power of a thankful heart. As we cultivate a lifestyle of worship and praise in the magnificent splendor of God, we will be able to break through the strategies of the enemy. A worshipful and thankful life permeates the atmosphere with the presence of God, because worship is the atmosphere where God’s truth dwells. These new web sites on prayer will help you grow in your walk with God with an attitude of thanksgiving. They are filled with teaching on every aspect of prayer as well as Houses of Prayer - Intercessors Arise International and Nations House of Prayer Equipping Center . “God smiles when we praise and thank Him continually. Few things feel better than receiving heartfelt praise and appreciation from someone else. God loves it, too… An amazing thing happens when we offer praise and thanksgiving to God. When we give God enjoyment, our own hearts are filled with joy."  — William Law

Together in the Harvest, Debbie Przybylski Intercessors Arise International International House of Prayer Kansas City (IHOP-KC) [email protected] www.intercessorsarise.org

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• Living a Life of Thankfulness: Lessons from the Scriptures
• Matt Duckett
• November 20, 2023
• Featured , The Gospel and the Christian Life

The Scriptures are filled with examples of how to live a life of thankfulness. From Genesis to Revelation, we are admonished that the Christian life is marked by thanksgiving. It tends to be easier to be thankful this time of year, but what about when the holiday season is over? What about when trials of life come our way? How can we live a life of thanksgiving? 

I want to highlight three quick reminders for how thankfulness can be a defining characteristic of a Christian (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18). 

Thankfulness is Intentional

I once heard a pastor say, “Is the life I’m living worth Christ dying?” No one mistakenly lives a life filled with gratitude. Throughout the pages of Scripture, believers are called to be thankful people. Yet, since the fall of Genesis 3, thankfulness is not a natural disposition for us. Instead, ingratitude becomes the norm, and thankfulness becomes unnatural. Paul says that a life of lacking thanks is a characteristic of those who don’t believe (Rom 1:21). In Luke 17, we learn the story of the ten lepers healed from this horrendous disease. As they were healed, only one returned in gratitude and praise over the miracle unfolding. Because of our natural state of being ungrateful, we see that thankfulness is an intentional effort. 

The Pauline epistles are filled with a call to thankfulness. 

Thankfulness is Reflective

It is difficult to be thankful if you don’t remember what to be thankful for. Therefore, we are to remind ourselves of the glory of God continually. 

Ultimately, a low view of being thankful equals a low view of God. If we are to be thankful always, we are to look to God and see his hand working and surrender with a grateful heart to his sovereign plan for our lives. Scripture is filled with beautiful pictures of why we should reflect on who God is and what we should be thankful for. Let me share a few: 

• He is Good: “Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever!” (1 Chronicles 16:24)
• He is Holy: Sing praise to the Lord, You saints of His, and give thanks at the remembrance of his holy name” (Psalm 30:4)
• He does great things: “We give thanks to you, O God; we give thanks for your name is near. We recount your wondrous deeds.” (Psalm 75:1) 
• He gives grace: “I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given to you in Christ Jesus.” (1 Corinthians 1:4)

 Not only should we reflect on who God is, but we must also reflect on what God has done. Moment by moment, we are to be reminded of the reality of the cross. Through God sending His Son to live the perfect life and die a death he didn’t deserve, a way was paved for us to be in the right relationship with him. No longer do we stand condemned, but by the power of the blood, we stand clothed in the righteousness of Christ. 

Each moment we reflect on Jesus’ sacrifice, we lay our ingratitude at the foot of the cross, and in return, we are clothed with gratitude. 

Thankfulness is Worth It

It is no secret that discontentment is running rampant in our culture. People are continually dissatisfied, ungrateful, and looking for something else. Rather than letting uneasiness rule our hearts, we should fill it with praise (Psalm 69:30). Thankfulness is the opposite of discontentment. It is thankfulness that fuels contentment. When we are satisfied in the Lord and praising Him, we are content in his presence regardless of our situation. 

I have never met someone who regretted being thankful. One day, we will look back on our lives. We will see the pain, struggles, and temptations. With tears in our eyes, we will reflect on the grace of God that carried us through. So, Christian, rejoice always, find your thankfulness in the Lord, and press on. 

Matt Duckett is the Associate Pastor of Discipleship of Metro East Baptist Church in Wichita, KS. Before serving Metro East, Matt served churches in Dallas and Kansas City. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Wichita State University and a Master of Divinity from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is married to his wife, Sarah, and they have one son, Owen. Matt’s passion in ministry is to see lives transformed by the life-changing message of the gospel.

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Why does giving thanks to God matter?

Thanking God for Everything

This article is based on Pastor Adrian Rogers' message, Give Thanks in Tough Times .

Ephesians 5:20

Ephesians 5:20 says we should be, “…giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Is it possible to give thanks for all things?

To pretend that all things are good would mock God. Murder, cancer, and divorce are not good. So how can we thank God for these things? Because God is good. (See James 1:17; 2 Samuel 22:31.) It’s all right to ask questions, but always assume the goodness of God.

“We know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). God is sovereign, and causes all things—bad or good—to work for good , for those who love Him.

Here are seven good things that trouble may bring for you. You can thank God for them:

“For whom the LORD loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives….No chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Hebrews 12:6, 11).

God loves us enough to correct us. King David wrote, “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep Your word” (Psalm 119:67). If trouble brings correction, should you not thank God?

Dependence on God

The Apostle Paul was highly gifted with grace, as well as intellect and influence. Paul’s temptation was to depend on himself.

God blessed Paul with a vision. He was caught up into the third Heaven and saw things not lawful for a man to utter. But then, Paul said, “Lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me…I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. And He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (2 Corinthians 12:7-9).

Your greatest strength is God. But when we sail through life without difficulties, we tend not to depend upon Him. Blessings can become a curse unless God allows us to have trouble that brings us to Him. “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18). If your anguish causes you to depend upon God, can’t you thank Him for it?

It may be that deep sorrow gives you the greatest testimony.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God” (2 Corinthians 1:3-4).

God is the source of comfort, God comforts us in all tribulation, and God allows us to comfort others with the same comfort we received from Him.

The Apostle Paul, sitting in a dank, miserable prison, waiting to be executed, said, “But I want you to know, brethren, that the things which happened to me have actually turned out for the furtherance of the gospel” (Philippians 1:12).

Satan once said something like this to God, “The only reason Job serves you is because he has never had trouble.” (Read Job 1:9-11.)

God replied, in effect, “You don’t know my servant, Job. He loves me not because of what I’ve done for him, but because of who I am.” (Read Job 1:12-22.)

If trouble and pain cause you to have a stronger testimony, if trouble is a platform for God’s grace, can’t you thank Him?

“And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28).

“…His purpose.” What is God’s plan for you?

Health and wealth? Sorry—no.

Service and usefulness? Yes, God wants that, but that is not His highest plan for you.

“For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son” (Romans 8:29a). God’s plan is to make His children like Christ Jesus. Christ-likeness is maturity.

In difficulty, we learn patience. You won’t be a mature child of God until you learn patience. (See James 1:4.) And the only way to learn patience, or endurance, is to have something to endure.

So if God is using trouble to make you more like Jesus, can’t you thank Him?

Most of us ask, Why me, Lord? The Apostle Peter said, “Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you; but rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ’s sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy. If you are reproached for the name of Christ, blessed are you, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. On their part He is blasphemed, but on your part He is glorified (1 Peter 4:12-14).

Do you want the Spirit of glory and of God to rest on you? Do you want a fiery trial? Peter says it is the fiery trial that brings the Spirit of glory upon us. If your trouble and pain cause you to know this glory, then for God’s glory, can you not thank Him for it?

Maybe you are thinking, these reasons all sound good, but they don’t fit my case. Here is one that will: mystery . Some things, you will never know. Preachers may never be able to explain it to you. Why?

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” says the LORD. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9).

“The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law” (Deuteronomy 29:29).

God lets you know enough to obey Him.

Job said, in effect, “God, I wish there were somebody to argue my case to you. I don’t understand!” (Read Job 23:3-5.) But Job still obeyed. Even when Job’s wife said, “Curse God and die!” (Job 2:9), Job said, “You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?” (Job 10). Ultimately, Job concluded about God, “ Though He slay me , yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15).

We don’t have to understand all things in order to thank God. Not all things are good, but God is good.

Eternal Victory

“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18).

Paul is saying in this passage that the glory offsets the suffering. He is not saying that the glory will be just as good as the suffering is bad. He says the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared to the glory.

If these seven things are true—and every one is—then can we not, in everything , give thanks?

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Gratitude: Good for our Mind and Soul

Jeffrey froh (with response by giacomo bono).

Psychologists discuss the importance of gratitude toward God and others for living a flourishing life.

• Happiness & Well-being

“In ordinary life we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich.” -Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Click here for Giacomo Bono’s companion essay, “A Tour of Gratitude in Development: Spiritual Reflections for Thriving,” and Jeffrey Froh’s response.

“Daddy, daddy, look at that. Isn’t it beautiful?” said my then three-year-old daughter, Julianne, while tugging on my leg as we walked our dog one night. Turning around I stood in awe staring at a gorgeous sunset, which filled the sky with pink, lavender, orange, and magenta hues. I remember thinking to myself, “Thank you, God, for giving my little girl such an appreciation of beauty so young.” In the moment, I wondered if Julianne was experiencing genuine gratitude similar to myself; I wondered if she got a gratitude gene from me (I’m not perfect, but I am grateful), or if my wife and I had been successful at teaching her the importance of saying “thank you,” even to God for a beautiful sunset; I also wondered how Julianne might benefit from her grateful orientation if she maintained this attitude of gratitude. Though I’ve only been collecting data for 2 years since that magical moment, so far the results suggest that her grateful outlook is related with her happiness, kindness, strong social relationships, and love for God. But does science support my observations? Or am I only seeing what I want to see? Well, it turns out that the science of gratitude has exploded this past decade. And my observations, while still possibly tainted by rose-colored glasses, are justified. In this article, I’ll first discuss the science supporting gratitude’s link to happiness, kindness, and social support, and then I’ll discuss gratitude’s influence on spiritual well-being.

Gratitude and Psychological Well-Being

Emotions are a person’s readiness to create, keep, or change circumstances. Because gratitude concerns circumstances where benefits are exchanged, it enables one to notice, understand, and capitalize off kindness exchanged with others. Often manifested in offering genuine thanks to a benefactor, gratitude acknowledges the beneficial exchanges and positive relationships in which they occur. It helps secure and build important resources (e.g., assistance and cooperation from others, knowledge, opportunities) and establish supportive, fulfilling relationships—all benefits that are mutually reinforcing. Thus, gratitude may be a vital social skill because it broadens people’s horizons so that they can purposefully approach the future. The earlier and more often in life people hone the genuine experience of gratitude, the better their chances of achieving success, stability, coherence, and well-being.

Gratitude is associated with many positive states and outcomes. Research on gratitude as a personality trait consistently shows that grateful people, regardless of age, tend to be happy people. For example, compared to less grateful people, grateful people report experiencing more life satisfaction, optimism, and vitality, and less depression and envy; they also tend to report greater religiousness and spirituality. Grateful individuals also endorse high levels of agreeableness, extraversion, openness, and low levels of neuroticism. What’s impressive is that gratitude’s relation with all of these positive outcomes remained whether the questionnaires completed in this research were answered by the grateful people themselves or their peers, suggesting that gratitude and its positive correlates are visible to oneself and also friends, relatives and romantic partners. Other research on adults has also shown that grateful people tend to experience greater positive emotions, such as more frequent contentment, joy, and hope, as well as fewer negative emotions. Thus, if your goal is to become a better version of yourself, research suggests that you should try to become more grateful.

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The regular experience of positive emotions can make people healthier and more resilient, fueling an upward spiral of positivity and well-being. Positive emotions broaden how you view the world and can undo the physiological effects of negative emotions. Indeed, one reason resilient people bounce back from negative life events better is that they experience positive emotions regularly and use them more often in response to stressful situations. Given its relation to positive emotions, gratitude may be used to engage this upward spiral. For example, after compassion, gratitude was the second most common emotion experienced (out of 20 emotions) after the September 11 attacks in 2001. Thus, gratitude appeared to be a powerful factor that helped people to cope with the disaster. Such effects may occur with youth, too. For example, in an archival study of newspaper accounts of things children were thankful for, themes of gratitude for basic human needs (e.g., family, friends, and teachers) were found to increase after 9/11. There’s no way to tell, however, if positive emotions helped the children cope with the disaster. Nonetheless, evidence suggests that gratitude may be a powerful emotion for coping with adversity.

Grateful people tend to be more helpful toward others. Indeed, gratitude as a personality trait was associated with being more helpful, supportive, forgiving, and empathic toward others. Again, these associations held using self-reports and peer reports as well. Other research has shown that relatively grateful people are also less narcissistic. Here, too, there’s evidence to suggest that gratitude may be helpful to adolescents for building supportive relationships. In addition to being satisfied with their friends and family, early adolescents also reported greater perceived peer and family support. Together, the evidence then suggests that gratitude is geared toward upholding supportive and caring ties to friends and family, and perhaps other social relationships in general.

Recent experimental research has demonstrated that gratitude can actually cause kind behavior. The experience of gratitude can cause people to act kind to their benefactor (i.e., direct reciprocity), or even strangers (i.e., upstream reciprocity). In one study with adults, people were randomly assigned into either a gratitude or chance condition. The gratitude condition was intended to induce feelings of gratitude by leading people to believe they received money from another participant as a favor. The people in the chance condition were made to believe they had received money by chance. People in the favor condition reported being more motivated by gratitude to act kindly, thus donating some money to the other participant. Those participants in the chance condition didn’t report feeling that they wanted to be kind by donating money. Thus, the distribution of money seems to have been influenced by gratitude’s ability to motivate people to be kind to others.

Gratitude and Spiritual Well-Being

The concept of being grateful and giving thanks to God is common to Christians. Themes of thanks, blessings, and thanksgiving are found throughout the Bible.

Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. (1 Thessalonians 5:18) And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (Colossians 3:17)

Scripture is very clear about the lifestyle we should lead. Yet when faced with the daily trials and temptations, cultural status quos, time pressures and other stressors, it’s easy to forget about this and to feel jealous, envious, selfish, greedy, and, well… ungrateful. Given the frequency that thankfulness is discussed in the Bible and our desire to thank God for His blessings and for sending His Son to die for our sins, we can agree that thankfulness and gratitude are worthwhile goals for individuals and families. But can gratitude for God and His grace help make us grateful?

“Gratitude is the natural reaction to the perception of grace”

My colleagues and I recently followed over 700 early adolescents for four years, tracking their gratitude development, well-being, risk-taking behaviors, self-control, and religious practices, among other variables. Preliminary analyses indicate that teens who regularly say grace with their families were more likely to increase in gratitude during the four years; perhaps saying grace helped the teens slow down and take inventory of the blessings in their lives, thus making them more grateful. This relation, however, is correlational. So it’s just as likely that teens who became more grateful during the four years started saying grace more frequently with their families; perhaps becoming more grateful made teens more aware of God’s influence in their lives and saying grace helped them recognize it and express thanks. Nonetheless, Grace is another term strongly associated with gratitude. Indeed, some researchers have noted that grace and gratitude go hand in hand, suggesting that gratitude is the natural reaction to the perception of grace.

Growing up, my family and I didn’t attend church regularly, nor did we volunteer there. Neither did we have deep, meaningful conversations about God’s role in creating everything we know and giving us everything we had. This isn’t to say that I was an entitled brat; I’d like to think I had some sense of appreciation. But I definitely didn’t know that God was the source for all of my good fortune, nor did I appreciate that I was a part of His plan or that He gave me my health. When I was born I had severe oxygen deprivation, and the doctors told my parents that I would likely be blind, deaf, severely mentally handicapped, or even die. But if asked, “Got God?” when I was a kid, I would’ve said, “No.”

By contrast, my wife and I consistently tell our children that we live such a privileged life because God continues to fill our lives with His love and grace. To illustrate, we attend church weekly and volunteer together. At night, we also pray as a family, and my wife and I always include prayers of thanksgiving. Recently, my wife said, “Thank you God for my wonderful family. I’m so very blessed to have them in my life; I love them very much.” I, too, am very heavy on prayers of thanksgiving. That same night I thanked God for helping my son’s finger heal after surgery. Hearing such prayers regularly, my children’s prayer lives have become enriched, thus has their relationship with Jesus and God. For example, beyond praying for someone, which was their typical prayer, my children now always include at least one prayer of thanksgiving. My son, James, might thank God for helping him do well on an exam in school, and my daughter, Julianne, might thank God for her Uncle Kevin. Regardless of what they thank God for, expressing gratitude to Him is now standard.

While my colleagues and I are still trying to unpack the relation between gratitude and religious practices, such as saying grace, I think it’s safe to say that the two are connected. Thus, if you’re looking to become more grateful, you should consider saying grace before meals regularly. Worst case scenario saying grace doesn’t make you more grateful; but it will make God feel loved and appreciated. And that’s a good thing. Now will saying grace as a family keep Julianne on the path to gratitude? I hope so. But she’s only 5 years old. So God willing, I’ll have many more years to collect data.

Response from Giacomo Bono

Gratitude is at once simple and universal yet complex and personal. The personal story Jeffrey opens up with illustrates this. He’s enjoying the sunset one evening with his daughter while walking their dog. Though the story describes common experiences many of us may have had before, the pleasant event contains more about how families can live gratefully and instill gratitude in children than you might appreciate at first. And ironically, the trick with gratitude is to become mindful of the meaning contained in everyday experiences and intentionally plan more of such experiences into your life. So let’s revisit the sunset story to see how we can intentionally live with more gratitude.

Gratitude and appreciation are often used and experienced interchangeably, but research is finding that appreciation is a more general behavior than gratitude, which comprises some of the varieties of appreciation (Rusk & Waters, 2015). However, because positive psychological interventions or experiences tend to be more powerful the more they are personalized and the more they involve a fresh mix of experiential qualities, we are more likely to create a grateful orientation in life if we incorporate more appreciative functioning into our life. Exploring the different ways people experience appreciation, Adler and Fagley (2005) derived a definition of appreciation as ‘‘acknowledging the value and meaning of something—an event, a person, a behavior, an object—and feeling a positive emotional connection to it’’ (page 81). Further, they discovered 8 distinct types of appreciation, and they came up with a model they called “HARPSGLI” Jeffrey’s opening story illustrates many of them, and it’s worth applying this model to his story, and his article in general, so that we could consider how we can more deliberately choose to appreciate the things and people in our lives daily so as to become more grateful.

While the prospect of walking the dog could sometimes be considered another chore at the end of the day, it ended up gracing Jeffrey and his daughter with a loving, memorable exchange that evening. If walking the dog was simply a chore, then Jeffrey might have scuffed off the tug at the leg to check out the sunset. The truth is to become a more grateful person, and pass gratitude on to others, we have to choose gratitude regularly. One of the easiest ways to increase our gratitude numbers is to consciously switch complaints to an appreciative focus. Neurologically, negative events are like Velcro for our brains, whereas positive events are like Teflon. Thus, it takes effort to overcome this state of affairs to choose a focus on what we have—rather than on what we lack or on our burdens—and valuing it. We can choose to focus on anything we experience as being with us or connected to us in some meaningful way, and the list of what we have goes beyond tangible possessions. For example, we can have some degree of health, community with family or friends, beliefs and values, certain privileges, a connection with God, etc.

Feeling awe or wonder, and having a sense of transcendent connection to nature, God, beauty, or life itself creates a deep, emotional, spiritual experience that we are part of something larger. Seeing and feeling the beauty and splendor of the sunset together with a friend, a partner, or our child can leave us speechless because we lose ourselves in a state of collective compassion and concern. Engaging our senses during such moments stimulates our curiosity and wonder and enables us to feel a greater love for humanity or the divine. This is more important than ever as adults and children in our society spend more time working or being on digital screens and less time outdoors and physically interacting with other people. Making time to notice the beauty of the natural world, attend art or music events, and explore the outdoors not only protects us from larger cultural trends focused on individualistic or materialistic pursuits, but it helps us stay connected to our own humanity and to living out God’s love.

This aspect of appreciation represents performing acts that foster appreciation. While many ceremonial acts from religious teachings can help, we can also create our own personal routines to cultivate an awareness of people and things around us to appreciate. For example, beyond walking the dog during sunset, we could set rituals as a family, a classroom, or a group of friends to greet each morning with thanks for another day, to recognize a safe arrival to a new destination, to acknowledge supporters or helpers at meals and events, etc. The nice thing about rituals is they introduce consistency, which is valuable for bringing order into the developing child’s life, but also for practicing appreciation more often.

Present Moment

Savoring the present moment grounds us by keeping our cognitive and emotional states in tune with the positive qualities of a special event. We can cultivate mindfulness not just by taking in the colors and sensations of a glorious sunset, but by creating other occasions or spaces where we use our other senses to appreciate more deeply something we love (e.g., chocolate, raisins, or ice cream) or our own capacity for self-compassion and self-control (e.g., when we feel our emotions rising in traffic, at the office, or with friends).

Self/Social Comparison

This aspect involves appreciating how our current status may be better than our status in the past (self-comparison) or other people’s status (social comparison). Though it does not factor into Jeffrey’s opening story, this type of appreciation enables us to feel grateful for conditions improving in our lives (e.g., being able to travel internationally for vacation for the first time) or for things we can easily take for granted (e.g., having shoes or healthy food, when others do not). Making use of such reference points regularly helps us value and stay grateful for what we do have in our lives.

When we notice and acknowledge a gift, whether from another person or a deity, and feel thankful for the efforts, sacrifices, and actions of benefactors for making our lives better or easier, then we feel love and belonging thanks to having such special relationships in our lives. Beyond feeling grateful to God or your spouse for the strengths and talents your child exhibits, you can find other benefactors to be grateful for (i.e., teachers, pastors, neighbors, relatives, or coaches) who have supported or nurtured those qualities in your child. Expressing thanks to these people for these benefits not only validates and models the importance of these special relationships in your families’ life, it can energize you, your family and the benefactors themselves to keep practicing God’s love.

Loss/Adversity

Experiences of loss and adversity can raise our awareness of things we may have taken for granted and can help us appreciate the people who have helped us through difficult times. Though this aspect of appreciation also does not factor into Jeffrey’s opening story, practicing appreciation through loss and adversity not only helps us stay grateful for the good things and people we have in our lives still but helps us grow resilient too. This concept is illustrated in the study Jeffrey described—of gratitude helping children cope with the 9/11 tragedy.

Interpersonal

This aspect of appreciation involves noticing, acknowledging, and feeling positively about the people in our lives, and it includes appreciating moments of being understood, cared for, helped, or supported by someone. Though this type of appreciation did not factor into Jeffrey’s sunset story either, it is illustrated in other parts of his article that describe how gratitude produces psychological well-being. Because humans are fundamentally social beings, relationships are a vital source of thriving. Valuing the contribution that our social relationships make to our lives and our well-being by thanking the people responsible is a reliable way to strengthen our relationships, become part of a community, and discover ways we can help others and society in return. Thus, a way to feel energized by the gratitude felt for healing, for doing well on an exam in school, or for the uncle who always lifts your spirits, is to follow up thankfulness to God for these things with notes of thanks to the benefactors involved—the doctor, the teacher, or uncle. By sharing our gratitude with these people, we let them know that their efforts matter and we create a sense of hope and community. Everyone is more likely to put in their best effort moving forward.

I started this essay with the following thought: Gratitude is at once simple and universal yet complex and personal. As research on appreciation shows, there are many different ways to practice gratitude. I hope this article helps spark some ideas for how you can bring more appreciative functioning into your own life to achieve greater psychological and spiritual well-being. With each choice to appreciate the good things and people in our lives we introduce a little more love and meaning into our life story. That we share this gift and succeed better together casts gratitude itself as a gift from God that we should all aspire to experience and spread, day after day, in pursuit of a better world.

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Thankful: Conclusion

Over the last few weeks, we have considered some reasons why we are to be thankful to God. We are to give thanks for His word because it shows us the way of salvation and what we should do to please Him. We are to show gratitude for the blessings that we receive in this life that have been provided to us by God. We must be thankful for God’s mercy which allows us the opportunity to be forgiven of our sins and have fellowship with Him. We also ought to always be grateful for the hope that we have through Christ that allows us to look forward to an eternal reward in heaven.

As we noticed at the beginning of this study, there are five things that are necessary for us to be thankful:

• A giver – The giver of all good things is God (James 1:17).
• A recipient – We have received the good things that God has provided.
• A gift that is accepted – We must be willing to receive the gifts that God provides and not reject, neglect, or discard them.
• An appreciation of the gift – This involves us recognizing what God provides us and appreciating the value of these blessings.
• A demonstration of gratitude – Through our words and our actions, we are to offer our sincere thanks to God.

In this series, we have only scratched the surface of all the things for which we should be thankful. During the Thanksgiving season – and at all times throughout the year – let us reflect on all of the good things that we have and continually thank God for them.

There is always a temptation to focus on the negative things in this life – the challenges, hardships, and trials that we face – and forget to thank God for all of the good things He has provided us. Let us not make that mistake. God has abundantly blessed us far more than anything we deserve, especially as we look beyond this life. Let us regularly offer praise and thanks to Him!

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Five Reasons to Express Your Thankfulness to God

Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!

─ Psalm 107:1 ESV

How often do you come to God with a list of all the things you want Him to do for you or to help you with? He’s a loving Father, and He wants you to come to Him and ask Him for what you want or need. But He also enjoys when you express your gratefulness toward Him.

In Psalm 107:1, the verse for today, and in many other places throughout scripture, we are encouraged to give thanks to the Lord.

How often do you intentionally just step into His presence for the sole purpose of lavishing Him with thanksgiving and praise for who He is and who He created you to be. Our list of reasons to thank God are endless, but sometimes we have difficulty thinking of those reasons to thank Him because the challenges in life seem so big that we can’t see past them to the amazing things God has done for us.

No matter what you’re facing, you can express gratitude to God. Amid your praises and thanksgiving, His joy becomes contagious and He lifts you above your problems so that your focus is on Him.

Here are five reasons to be thankful to God.

• God gave you His greatest gift, salvation through relationship with His son (John 3:16).
• He answers your prayers (John 11:41).
• He provides for your every need (1 Thessalonians 5:17-18).
• He showers you with blessings (Philippians 4:6).
• He protects and keeps you (Psalm 91).

Today’s One Thing

Choose to spend this day expressing your thanks to God. Choose one of the five reasons to be thankful in the list above and focus on that throughout the day. Share your stories of gratefulness to God with others that come across your path today as well.

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Essay on Gratitude

#1 Essay on Gratitude Towards Parents

#2 essay on gratitude towards teachers, #3 essay on gratitude towards friends, #4 essay on gratitude towards god, #5 essay on gratitude towards school, #6 essay on gratitude day.

Gratitude is one of the most underestimated ways anyone can use to enrich their lives. It is the feeling and attitude of appreciation and thankfulness for the good that we receive in life.

Scientists have proven that when we express our gratefulness towards other people, we tend to feel happier, calmer and as a result, it opens up more channels for goodness to enter into our lives.

Imagine going through a day where strangers smile at you, greet you, and people hold the door open for you, and more importantly, you feel that this world is full of kindness and people are willing to help you without expecting any return. How would that make your day?

The best part about being grateful and to live a good life, you can do not have to wait for people to do good to you, instead, be the first one to act and express your thankfulness to them, especially your parents.

Why Do You Need To Show Gratitude Towards Parents

Robert Emmons, one of the world’s leading scientist and expert on the subject of gratitude reveals that feeling grateful have many benefits for your body, mind, and relationships, especially towards your parents.

You have to understand that your parents are the closest people you have when you were young and they are the ones that you spent the most time with. Well, this may not be true for everyone, but it is true for the majority of the people out there.

Kindness and success start from home. Another important point to remember is that you will someday become a parent too. And thus, how you treat your parents will somehow leave an impact on your relationship between you and your children.

If you are grateful for your parents and always be thankful for the good that they have brought into your life, you will feel the same when you become a parent.

What Are The Best Ways To Express Your Gratitude Towards Parents

There are plenty of ways how you can express your gratitude and thankfulness toward your parents. One of the easiest and most effective ways is to just say “Thank you”.

When your parents cook a meal for you, when they help you solve a problem, when they do something for you, when they guide you, when they buy you a new shoe, when they give you money to live, do not forget to say thank you.

Another good way to express your gratitude towards your parents is to spend more time with them and accompany them. You do not have to wait until when their hair turns gray or when they are 80 years old only to spend your time with them. Remember how your parents spend their time and life nurturing you, feeding you and making sure that you grow up becoming who you are today? Do the same and take good care of your parents, this is one of the best ways to express your thankfulness to them.

Some people express their gratitude through composing a song, some write thank you letters, some show it through hugs and kisses, and some bring their parents for vacation. What about you?

Regardless of what you do to show your gratefulness towards your parents, the key is to make sure that you do it before time runs out.

• huffingtonpost.com/dr-hyder-zahed/feel-and-express-gratitude_b_11304630.html
• sbnonline.com/article/why-it-is-so-important-to-express-gratitude-in-your-business/
• greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_gratitude_is_good
• philstar.com/sunday-life/506384/what-best-way-show-gratitude-your-parents

As you might already know, expressing your gratitude towards people is something that will not only enrich your life but also enrich the lives of the one you express your thanks to.

Studies have shown that expressing your gratefulness toward someone has many benefits including raising your self-esteem, making you happier, and also giving you a sense of fulfillment in life.

And when it comes to showing your appreciation, one of the most important figures you should be thankful for will be your teachers. Most people who practice writing gratitude lists often miss out their teachers in the list because they only interact with their teachers in school. And after they get into the working world, materials and people around them are their main focus.

Do you know that teachers are the people who you spend the most time with besides your parents and friends? More importantly, a teacher’s mission is to educate you and make sure that you learn what you are supposed to learn in school. Their mission also often intertwined with life and inspirational lessons to motivate you to succeed in life.

Take Les Brown, the motivational speaker as an example. In his motivational speech, he often quoted the person who inspired and changed his life, his teacher, Leroy Washington. Brown was born poor and was labeled as “educable mentally retarded”. Despite the fact that Brown was a slow learner, his teacher never abandoned him, instead, he inspired him by telling young Brown, “Never let someone’s opinion of you become your reality”.

As you can see, your teachers play an important role in shaping who you are today. You are where you are right now because of the influence of your teachers. Regardless of whether your teachers have positively impacted your life, you should feel grateful for them at all times.

There are plenty of ways how you can express your gratefulness toward your teachers, including:

1. Write a thank you essay to your teacher. Show your appreciation through words and this is not a test, hence, write with an open heart and sincerity.

2. Buy a best-selling book for your teacher. Somehow, teachers should love to read and always pursue for improvement, be it in career or at life, right?

3. Show your appreciation by doing homework and follow the advice from your teachers. This is one of the easiest ways to show your gratitude towards your teacher. Just do your best and excel in school.

4. Say a simple “Thank you”, after every class. This small and simple act will profoundly change your teacher’s life.

5. Remember your teacher’s birthday and buy him or her a gift as a token of appreciation. And your teacher will remember you for the rest of his or her life.

The above are just some of the ideas on how you can show your thankfulness towards your teacher. It is not the idea that matter, the key is that you do something that your teacher will remember and receive your appreciation. Even if it is as tiny as a simple “thank you”, your teacher will feel it.

As students, many teachers and educators will pass through your life without remembrance. Therefore, starting from now on, do something and to express your gratitude to the people have guided you in life.

There is an old saying, “A friend in need is a friend indeed”, and friends hold a special place in our heart as they are the ones who will always be by our side whenever we need them. We simply cannot live in this world all by ourselves without friends.

Thus, it is important to express our appreciation toward our friends, especially those who have helped us when we needed them. There are many types of friends, some you will want to keep no matter the situation, some you will want to leave or spend less time with, and some are good for social and sharing.

Writing an appreciation essay or letter to express your gratitude toward your friend is not something new. In fact, it has been around for ages and a lot of people are using this method to show their gratitude and build better and more intimate relationship with the people they spend their time with. You do not really have to follow any format when writing the essay to your friends. They are your best friends, they know you and they will accept whatever you good you are trying to tell them.

However, no matter how informal you are, you have to be sincere in writing it. You will lose the point of the gratitude letter if you sound fake and are not serious. All you need to do is to express how you feel about them. Tell your friends how much thankful you are and how much they meant to you in your life.

Besides that, to make your gratitude letter more powerful, you can include a small gift with it. It can be a keychain, a pen, a book, or even just a mint, your friend will appreciate your effort even more. You do not have to wait for the right and perfect moment to do this. If you seriously are grateful for your friends right now, take out a piece of paper, and write down your thoughts and thank them.

There are many blessings that come from being grateful for the good things we enjoy in life. And everyone has their own religion in their hearts. Deep within you, you believe in something, a higher power, a God, or something that has the power to create the world. Simply put, God wants us to learn to be grateful and thankful for all the gifts He has created for us.

This is not only about being spiritual, in fact, science has shown that people who are grateful for their Gods tend to be healthier and happier. You have probably heard the saying, “Count your blessings”, and do you know that when you literally count your blessings, you will increase your emotional and mental health? When people are not grateful, they tend to complain and blame everything and everyone. This is a negative act that will destroy your life. When you think something negative in your mind, you will feel stress, anxious, frustrated, and also angry. This will directly affect your health.

Therefore, learn to be grateful for everything in your life, especially God, the higher power that created you and everything else in the world. When you show your appreciation, you will access a calmer state, you will feel more peaceful and this makes you feel good about yourself, and your life.

One very simple act of showing your gratitude toward God through praying. Depending on what religion you believe in, everyone prays differently. The method how you pray does not really matter, the key is that you are sincere in showing your gratefulness. Furthermore, you can practice writing a gratitude list. Just write down whatever things that you want to be grateful for. It can be your cat, your dog, your house, your wife, your children, your boss, the air you are breathing, the computer you have, or whatever you can think of. Feel the appreciate and express the gratefulness deep within you.

School is one of the most important places in our lives because it is where almost everyone spends the most of their time there. It is a place that is meant to nurture us, guide us, and equip us with the necessary knowledge to prepare for the world. Everyone has their own unique memories about their school, some were meaningful and nostalgic, some were funny, and some were embarrassed.

Whatever thoughts and memories you have about your school, it does not really matter now as you have gone through it and the past will remain history forever. You simply cannot change that, but there is one thing that you can do that will impact your future life, and it is to show your gratitude toward your school and your teachers.

Schools are great places where young people get together and learn not just academically, but also about friendship, teamwork, leadership, life, and also love. On average, a normal person about 12 to 20 years in a classroom and this is where we learn to interact with others and this is also where our characters and attitudes started to grow.

So how can you show your appreciation toward your school and be grateful for what you have gone through? Well, you can start with two parts. First, you can show your gratitude toward your school by helping your school. You can make a donation when you have extra money or you can spend time into helping your school such as cleaning or repainting the building.

Next, you can also show your gratitude by writing appreciation letters to your teachers. You set a good example of being a grateful person by expressing your thoughts and let the new young generation to follow. There are plenty of ways how you can contribute to your schools and teachers. When you have the sincerity, the ideas will automatically come to you.

What is a Gratitude Day? It is a day to show appreciation for all things, big and small. Gratitude Day was first celebrated in 1965, and it was officially adopted by the United Nations Meditation Group and recognized as a day where people from around the world and from all walks of life show their gratefulness on whatever things in life.

Studies have shown that people who are grateful for the things they have and the life they are living right now are happier, calmer, and able to perform and achieve more. According to the Law of Attraction, the more you appreciate what you have, the Universe will give you more of it. For example, if you appreciate and are grateful for the money you have, you will have more of it.

So how can you celebrate this day and make it meaningful and interesting? First, you can take a moment to appreciate your family tree. Pay attention to your family members, notice how they have supported you in the past, and then express your gratefulness to them. Tell your family how much you love them. Buy a gift for them if you want to.

Next, be thankful for your community. From the server at your local restaurant, the policemen, the nurse, to the baker down the street in your neighborhood, say thank you to them. Give and show your gratitude to them. And do not forget about your friends too. Your friends are an important part of your life because you have gone through the thick and thin with them.

Besides that, thank yourself for being who you are right now and for whatever you have had in your life. When you appreciate yourself, you will have more confidence and thus, able to accomplish more. When you show your gratitude toward the things you have in life, you will appreciate them and in return, you will live an abundant life.

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Thankful for God’s Creation

Psalm 90:2 (watch our video ) by Bob Burridge ©2019

The fact of Creation is one of the most amazing things to think about. For an infinite time in the past, before anything else existed, there was only God. Then in an instant, there was something else. We don’t know the details of this event and probably couldn’t comprehend them if we did.

The Bible begins with these familiar words, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” (Genesis 1:1-2)

Unlike all the universe that he made, God is eternal. Psalm 90:2 says, “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.”

God had no beginning and will have no end. Things we know in this world and universe seem to be always changing, but God is always the same. James 1:17 refers to God as “… the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” His promises and power are never diminished, never less than what they have always been and are today. His word is always true as our reliable guide for daily living. It assures all his redeemed children of eternal joy in his presence.

When God made the universe, it started by his spoken word. Genesis 1 continues in verses 3 through 5, “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.” Where there was darkness, light started to shine!

The whole Triune God was active in creation. God the Father spoke, the Holy Spirit was hovering over the waters. Even Jesus Christ as God the Son was part of creating all things. John 1:1-3, was speaking of God the Son when it said, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.”

Our Creator made all that’s in the universe to declare his glory. That’s the purpose of it. It’s not here for his entertainment, or so that we, his creatures, can get things. It was so that his nature and wonder can be displayed, and that he would be worshipped. Psalm 19:1-2 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.” As God’s children we need to appreciate and point out God’s glory all around us.

The unbeliever can’t appreciate what the universe tells us so clearly. We are a fallen human race since the fall of Adam in Eden. Romans 3:10-12 summarizes a sobering and hard biblical truth: “as it is written: ‘None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.’ ”

The Astronomer sees the planets, stars, nebula, and galaxies. He measures the light from them, and measures the movements of them all, but if he doesn’t see the glory of the Creator in them, he refuses to admit to the most important data that’s clearly there.

Romans 1:18-21 makes this clear. There it says, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth . For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.”

The Biologist can classify the birds into all their species and sub-species by their Latin names. But those who know Christ can also see them as beautiful creatures that declare the Glory of God, their Creator.

To unlock these wonders the person needs to turn to Christ in repentance and faith. Only when restored to fellowship with God by the work of the Savior can the sin distorted mind see what’s really there — a universe that’s pouring out the wonders of the Creator day and night.

There’s an amazing message in the skies, and on all the earth. It’s the wonder of the Creator displayed in all things all the time.

Light itself is an amazing tool for God’s revelation. It’s the first thing God tells us he created. Out of nothing but the intention of God came this radiant energy that still somewhat mystifies us. He made it to display the things he made, and he gave us eyes to receive the message.

It’s speed alone is unimaginable to us. It travels through space at 186,282 miles per second, that’s over 670 million miles per hour. In a small building just 40′ wide, in one second a beam of light would travel from one side to the other 24,589,224 times.

God made all the wonders of the universe, and of this whole world. How could we doubt such a powerful and detailed God? If he can call all the universe into existence out of nothing but his own desire to do so, he can certainly handle what ever comes our way to test us, shape us, and challenge us.

Think of that familiar verse in Jeremiah 32:17, “Ah, Lord GOD! It is you who have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for you.”

When you give thanks to God for something he has provided for you or done for you, think also of the ground you stand on, the air you’re breathing, the whole universe that surrounds you. Thank the Creator for the awesome display of his wonder and glory we so often take for granted.

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(Bible quotations are from the English Standard Version unless otherwise noted.)

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We should thank god every day for our blessings.

We all have many things which we can be thankful for this week. God is so good to us each and every day. We are grateful that we can get up and go about our business.

We are thankful that we have food to eat and clothes to wear. We are thankful for the strength God gives us to go to our job or school every day.

We should always be mindful of the many opportunities we have to help our neighbor and to help ourselves. Do you know there are many who can't help themselves?

Our hospitals and nursing homes are full of people who are hurting and can't help themselves like they once could. Think of all those people who would give anything if only they could get up and do the things that others do.

As followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, being thankful should be a part of our daily lives. A day should never pass without thanking God for His abundant blessings and goodness to us.

You hear people say things like, "The Lord knows that I am thankful for how He has blessed me." Yes, He does, but there is nothing like telling Him with our lips and just focusing on Him. He wants to hear it from our soul, spirit and body.

The Psalmist David says in Psalm 100:4, "Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name..."

Praise and thanksgiving go hand in hand with one another. You can't really thank Him without praising Him, and you can't praise Him without thanking Him.

There are many people who are down on themselves and even on God. They are so critical of everybody and they are miserable in the world they live in. They are always looking on the bad side of life. You hear them say things like, "Why should I give thanks to God? He never blesses me."

Have you wondered what a day without God would be like? It frightens me just to think about it. We would not make it. We all would die. The whole world would be in chaos. God keeps the whole universe in working order in ways that we don't even recognize yet and maybe never will.

In Philippians we read these words, "Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your request be made known to God."

Thanksgiving is more than just our words, but it includes how we live our lives, too. If we are truly grateful to God for His blessings, then we will show it in the way we live our lives.

If are truly grateful, then we will show it by going to the house of the Lord every week and we will make every effort we can to become what He wants us to be.

The Lord loves you so very much, my friend. He loves you in a way that you and I will never know. We cannot begin to grasp just how much He cares for us. We may have many sins, faults and trials, but he loves us anyway. His grace is extended to us even if we can understand it or not.

People may ask, "How can He accept me as I am?" It makes no difference where you have been or the kind of life you have lived. All He asks from anyone is to come just as you are.

When you get right down to it, this is the only way any of us can come to Him. We can't be something that we're not, especially when it comes to the Lord.

He knows all there is to know about you. He knows where you have been and where you are going. The truly amazing thing about it is that He knows all this and He still bids you to come to Him.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone, and God bless.

If you would like to correspond with Billy about this or any other of his columns, you can e-mail him at [email protected] .

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Gratitude Essay

500 words essay on gratitude.

Gratitude is a beautiful way of enriching our lives. It refers to the feeling and attitude of appreciation and thankfulness for the good which we receive in life. It has been proven scientifically that when we express our gratefulness to other people, we feel happier and calmer. Thus, it allows goodness to enter our lives. For instance, when a stranger holds the door for you or greets you, it makes you feel happy. Thus, a gratitude essay will teach us how advantageous gratitude is.

Advantages of Gratitude

Gratitude can have a lot of advantages to our personal as well as social life. First of all, it strengthens our relationship with others. When you have a thankful feeling, it will strengthen the bond with the other party and enhance the trust factor and feeling of respect and love .

Moreover, it also makes us happy. When we express gratitude or receive it, we feel happy either way. As a result, people who have gratitude do not stress out a lot. Similarly, being full of gratitude makes society sensible.

In other words, people become considerate and never leave a chance to say thank you to others. Thus, it helps society to progress in the right direction with the right tools needed for the development of it.

Most importantly, gratitude reduces comparisons and promotes acknowledgement. When we become thankful, we do not compare ourselves to others. Thus, it helps us acknowledge our own achievements and blessings and remain content.

How to Practice Gratitude

There are a lot of ways through which we can practice gratitude. Some of the most effective ones include making a note of every good thing which happens to us every day. Moreover, also note the people behind it.

This will help you to return the favour at an appropriate time. Never forget to return this favour as they deserve it too. Moreover, always make sure to appreciate everything in life ranging from nature to animals .

We are lucky enough to have animals, green plants, fresh air and much more. Thus, never stop acknowledging the importance of these essential things. Moreover, always remember to say thank you to different community helpers.

It can be anyone, whether your gardener or sweeper or even the police officers. Make sure you thank them for their service whenever it is possible for you. Remember that to wake up every day is no less than a blessing itself.

So, make sure to be grateful for a new day and thank the almighty for making you wiser and stronger with each passing day. Most importantly, try to avoid complaining about things when they don’t go your way. You don’t know about the blessing behind it.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Conclusion of Gratitude Essay

All in all, gratitude is the most essential human expression which proves that humans are sensible and have emotions. Moreover, this emotion does not just limit to humans but also animals. Often, we see then express their gratitude and return the favour. Thus, we must always express our gratitude.

FAQ of Gratitude Essay

Question 1: Why is gratitude important?

Answer 1: Gratitude is strongly and constantly connected with greater happiness. It is what helps people feel more positive emotions, appreciate good experiences, advance their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships.

Question 2: How can gratitude change your life?

Answer 2: Gratitude can change your life as it makes you appreciate what you have rather than what you don’t have. It can change your life  because it is the single most powerful source of inspiration that any individual can tap into if they simply stop and pay attention to the simplistic beauty and miracle of life.

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