Have you noticed how we struggle
with gratitude these days? Nobody wants to be grateful to another: but how can
we appreciate goodness when we keep wanting more so that no one ever does
enough to make us owe them gratitude. We quickly forget the good people do or we
tell ourselves that they owed us that act of kindness just so that we don’t owe
them gratitude. Sometimes we have such great arguments that by the time we are
done, the other party feels like they truly owe us even for the opportunity to do
them good.
My pastor describes thanksgiving as
a product of deep thinking, which as we know, a number of people are incapable
of today. We are so lacking in depth that we are unable to be appreciative or
show appreciation even to God. When we manage to thank God, we often do it
perfunctorily, either at the beginning or end of our prayer. We have become so
selfish that we even feel God owes us and so we owe Him no gratitude. Ingratitude
is more than bad manners; it is a major character flaw that should not be
ignored. If you find you have difficulties with being grateful, please be true
to yourself; admit and deal with it. As the saying goes, “to yourself, please
be true.”
Romans 1: 21 “Yes,
they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks…as
a result, their minds became dark and confused.”
I dare to suggest that pride,
which is one of satan’s most potent tool for destroying man, is often an
underlying reason for ingratitude. People with deep sited pride must find a
reason why they ought not to be grateful. The Levites who rebelled against
Moses and Aaron would testify to this. Ingratitude is a terrible thing and may
cost you very dearly just like it cost these Levites dearly; so dearly, almost
their entire tribe, including the princes of the tribe, perished when the earth
swallowed them. Meanwhile the Levites were a people once cursed but restored to
a place of honor because they humbled themselves and sided with God in the time
of Moses; but they ceased to think deeply and becoming ungrateful, they preferred
the office of another and eventually incurred God’s wrath.
Numbers 3: 11-12
“And the Lord said to Moses, Look, I have chosen the Levites from among the
Israelites to serve as substitutes for all the firstborn sons of the people of
Israel. The Levites belong to me.”
We have to realize that in
thanking man, we learn the art of thanksgiving which does not come to selfish
man naturally. Also, in thanking man, we are ultimately appreciating God who
placed the desire and will to do that good in the doer. For man in himself is
not good; so, it takes God to place the desire to do well in any man. We must
never forget that only God is good. Moreover, if we learn to identify and
appreciate the acts of kindness of man, it causes thanksgiving to abound to
God; because after you have thanked the man, you are still so full of thanks
that you begin to thank his God. Let us learn to be thankful and also teach our
children to be thankful.
Philippians 2: 15 “For
God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases
Him.”
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