On this Thanksgiving Day, here are five encouragements to God-honoring gratitude:
“A gracious soul is thankful and rejoices that he is drawn nearer to God, though it may be by the cords of affliction.…When God has a rod in his hand, a godly man will have a psalm in his mouth.” [Thomas Watson, A Godly Man’s Picture.]
“See what cause the saints have to be frequent in the work of thanksgiving. In this Christians are defective; though they are much in supplication, yet little in gratulation. We meet many Christians who have tears in their eyes, and complaints in their mouths; but there are few with harps in their hands, who praise God in affliction. To be thankful in affliction is a work peculiar to a saint.” [Thomas Watson, All Things for Good.]
“Gratitude that is pleasing to God is not first a delight in the benefits God gives (though that will be part of it). True gratitude must be rooted in something else that comes first — namely, a delight in the beauty and excellency of God’s character. If this is not the foundation of our gratitude, then it is not above what the ‘natural man,’ apart from the Spirit and the new nature in Christ, experiences. In that case ‘gratitude’ to God is not more pleasing to God than all the other emotions that unbelievers have without delighting in Him.” [John Piper, God is the Gospel.]
“Joy is what you experience when you’re grateful for the grace that’s been given to you.…Grace and gratitude belong together like heaven and earth. Grace evokes gratitude like the voice of an echo. It’s as though God stands over the abyss of human need and He says, ‘Grace!’ And it all comes back, ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you…’ Gratitude follows grace like thunder [follows] lightening.” [Ben Patterson (start at minute 57)]
“Preoccupied with ourselves, we have lost the grace of being thankful. It is sad to live in a world where there is no one to thank because we ourselves have become the cause and source of all good thing.” [John Hannah, How Do We Glorify God?]
Words of Grace 