It’s very nearly Thanksgiving, so everyone, as usual, is talking about being thankful—why you should be thankful, what you should be thankful for, how to express thanks, etc. And, of course, I have something to say on the subject, too, but I want to approach this not from a why or what perspective, but from a how perspective, because we sometimes forget that certain things carry more weight than others.
When my dad and I would get upset at each other as I was growing up, sometimes conversation turned to me being an ungrateful child, and in many ways, I was. Not because I, myself, felt ungrateful for the things that were done for me, but because I often acted like I felt that way. It was always easy to be thankful with my words rather than thankful with my actions, and that created a disconnect between what I thought and felt and what I showed/proved to be true to my dad.
It’s rather easy to be thankful with your words—the phrase “thank you” is an incredibly easy one to say, even when you don’t mean it, which somewhat takes away its power. That’s why some people might even consider a “thank you” to be meaningless until the sentiment behind it is proved in some other way.
And I say all this to get to my final point: in terms of gratefulness, actions truly do speak louder than words. You can’t just talk the talk of gratefulness, you must walk the walk, lest you risk demeaning the gift given to you, and in a way, the person who gave you that gift as well.
Don’t you think, then, that you should be grateful to God in the same way? Don’t you think you should show your appreciation for His gift of eternal life by obeying Him, by doing as He asks? I do. I truly think that you demean the gift of salvation if you don’t go out of your way to show how grateful you are to have received it. In that case, you should be giving thanks to God by going out and pointing others to Him so that they might receive the gift as well.
I like the Sidewalk Prophets’ song “Live Like That” for this reason. I think it captures quite well what we should all be doing to thank God for the gift of eternal life, to express the feelings of a grateful heart.
Was I love
When no one else would show up
Was I Jesus to the least of us
Was my worship more than just a song
We likely all know that worship and praise are part of us being grateful to God. We praise Him because of who He is and what He did and does. But the last line of this second verse points to what I said earlier—your praise and worship have to be more than going through the words of a song in church or whispering a practiced prayer. There must be feeling involved, a heartfelt expression of gratitude.
One of the best ways to express gratitude is to be who we are meant to be, who God wants us to be, by becoming more like Jesus and loving like He did and does because it requires more from us than to express thanks verbally, it requires a real change of who we are and how we act.
Am I proof
That You are who you say You are
That grace can really change a heart
Do I live like Your love is true
People pass
And even if they don't know my name
Is there evidence that I've been changed
When they see me, do they see You
When my dad said I was being ungrateful, it was because I didn’t show proof of my being grateful through my actions. When he did good things for me, I didn’t treat him better—his gifts and hard work didn’t change my heart or attitude—or a better explanation is that I didn’t allow what he did to impact me. He was looking for evidence of me changing and finding none, despite the fact that there should have been some.
And when you accept God’s gift and choose Him as your Lord and Savior, there should be evidence of change, proof of a changed heart out of your gratefulness towards Him. You should treat God better, treat others better, and treat yourself better. You should have a different attitude—evidence that you were impacted by the gift you received.
I want to live like that
And give it all I have
So that everything I say and do
Points to You
If love is who I am
Then this is where I'll stand
Recklessly abandoned
Never holding back
In the end, the theme behind everything I write always turns back to love—to true, selfless, sacrificial love. And for good reason—sacrificial love is who God is, and it is who we should be also.
When you’re truly grateful for something, you find yourself trying to pay back the one to whom you’re grateful in equal measure to the gift you received. If someone buys you a $25 Christmas gift, it’s only fair and right to give them a gift of the same price in return. If someone gives an hour of their time to help you with something, it’s only just to give them an hour of your own time to help them when they’re in need.
Now, you can’t work your way to being even with God; you can’t pay the debt that would incur if you were to buy the gift He freely gave. That’s not what this is about. But you can show you’re grateful to Him by sacrificing yourself for Him the same way He sacrificed Himself, Jesus, for you. Jesus gave His life for yours; I think it’s only fair to give your life to Him. Isn’t it? That’s the same kind of love He showed when He did it. He held nothing back. Why should you?
Express your thanks in more than just a few words from a worship song or a nightly prayer—truly show your gratefulness by handing yourself over to God for Him to lead.