A couple of weeks ago there was a news story, or maybe a cycle of news stories about Megan Rapinoe (RAP-EEE-NO). She is one of the most decorated women’s soccer players in the US having played in the Women’s World Cup four times, winning in 2015 and 2019 and won Olympic gold in 2012 this is in addition to her many individual achievements.
On Nov 11th what was going to be her last game as a professional soccer player, she suffered a torn Achilles tendon just three mins into the game. To make it even worse she suffered the injury while just running down the field with no one hitting her.
I can only imagine the great disappointment it was getting hurt in her last game of a long career in such a way but her response was what really caused a stir. Here is what she said during the press conference after the game when a reporter asked about her injury:
“I thought about it a little bit. I mean, I’m not a religious person or anything, and if there was a God, like, this is proof that there isn’t,”
She follows up with a number of choice words on what type of situation it was. Some said she was just being sarcastic. We can’t know how much of this was her being sarcastic but the sentiment is one of extreme ungratefulness. She could have thanked the fans who gave her a standing ovation as she left after the injury, she could have thanked her teammates and coaches, she could have thanked the trained who had kept her relatively healthy throughout her career, or even the two doctors who healed her two torn ACLs in college that even a decade early would have cut short her career before it even began. Instead she claimed that because she was injured in her last game that was proof there was no God.
As I said getting hurt like this in your last game is disappointing for sure, but Megan Rapinoe (RAP-EEE-NO) had a long career 14 years as a professional had from what I quickly read had two serious injuries in college but only had one other injury as a professional before her last game. She was blessed being able to play a game at a high level for almost a decade and a half and all she had at the end was ingratitude that she couldn’t play the entirety of her last game.
Contrast that with the Pilgrams whose example of thanksgiving and gratitude in the toughest of hardships is the foundation of the Day of Thanksgiving that we celebrated a couple of days ago. I want to read from The Pilgrims Settle Plymouth, Massachusetts, by John Stetson Barry from the mid-1800s
The whole of this first winter was a period of unprecedented hardship and suffering. Mild as was the weather, it was far more severe than that of the land of their birth; and the disease contracted on shipboard, aggravated by colds caught in their wanderings in quest of a home, caused a great and distressing mortality to prevail. In December six died; in January, eight; in February, seventeen; and in March, thirteen; a total of forty-four in four months–of whom twenty-one were signers of the compact. It is remarkable that the leaders of the colony were spared. The survivors were unwearied in their attentions to their companions; but affection could not avert the arrows of the Destroyer.
It goes on talking about the lack of food, shelter, warmth. Of the 102 original Mayflower passengers, only 44 survived. And survived is the best way to describe it, they did not even have the basics of what we might expect today, yet those that did survive worked through the summer as the Native American’s helped them they were able to produce what they called a bounteous harvest and build shelter, cut wood, etc. that would allow them to have a much higher likelihood of survival through the next winter. It was because of their survival and this harvest that they celebrated three days thanksgiving to the Great Almighty God.
What a stark contrast between these two examples. The Apostle Paul told Timothy that in the last days which would be perilous there would be all kinds of ungodly behavior and one was being “unthankful” (II Timothy 3:2). We do indeed live during a time of great ingratitude. Human nature is not thankful by default. Our default state is to have a short burst of gratitude when we get something we want but it is quickly overwhelmed by our desire for more.
Science has shown though how powerful gratitude can be. It can change our bodies and minds. In an article published Frontiers in Psychology Volume 6 – 2015 by Glenn R. Fox, Jonas Kaplan, Hanna Damasio, Antonio Damasio
I want to read a few excerpts.
“The limits to gratitude’s health benefits are really in how much you pay attention to feeling and practicing gratitude,” “It’s very similar to working out, in that the more you practice, the better you get. The more you practice, the easier it is to feel grateful when you need it.”
Gratitude has distinct neurobiological correlates, including in brain regions associated with interpersonal bonding and stress relief … which are associated with moral cognition, value judgment and theory of mind.
“Benefits associated with gratitude include better sleep, more exercise, reduced symptoms of physical pain, lower levels of inflammation, lower blood pressure and a host of other things we associate with better health,”13 including improved resilience.
“I think that gratitude can be much more like a muscle, like a trained response or a skill that we can develop over time as we’ve learned to recognize abundance and gifts and things that we didn’t previously notice as being important. And that itself is its own skill that can be practiced and manifested over time.”
Rather than a magic bullet, it’s the regular practice of being grateful that makes a difference: It’s like water cutting rock through a canyon,” . “It’s not done all at once, and it’s just steady practice is where you start to get things.”
Science now sees what God knew from the beginning because He is our creator. God knew that gratitude was something that while not being our nature is important for our mental, physical and spiritual well-being. Much like it is needed to live a healthy and fulfilled physical life it is something that we will need for all eternity.
Paul when he wrote to the Romans about God’s invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made (Romans 1:20) they did not yet have this type of science where science can see living God’s way of life will make us healthier, live longer, live more fulfilled lives and if that is how it can benefit these frail physical bodies what will it do for us and how important will it be for all eternity.
The quote from Glenn Fox about the more you practice gratitude the easier it is to fill grateful is interesting as it is very common as science studies the characteristics of God that many, probably most and maybe all have to be practiced to “get good at them”.
Like Love, Joy, Peace, Longsuffering, Kindness. Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, Self-Control, Humility, and others, God is looking for us to practice these Godly Characteristics, even imperfectly in this life because they will be only way we live into eternity. These aren’t our natures but with God’s Holy Spirit we can turn our natures into these.
What is gratitude? I want to again read from an expert but as we will see humans through our advanced scientific processes are just catching up in this space with what God both knew from the beginning but also designed into His creation.
Robert Emmons, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis, and an expert on gratitude, defines it as a two-step process.
As explained in “The Science of Gratitude,” a white paper by the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, the two steps include “1) ‘recognizing that one has obtained a positive outcome’ and 2) ‘recognizing that there is an external source for this positive outcome.’”
Recognizing one has obtained a positive outcome and that the positive outcome comes from an external source. What does that sounds like?
It sounds like recognizing God’s Grace working in our lives. Let’s read one verse from the NIV. It is from Colossians 3. Where Paul is talking about putting on your new self. Basically reminding the Colossians and us that Christ died for us and because we are dead outside of Christ now we will become like him. Pau goes through a whole series of things we must put off on and then a series of characteristics we must put on. He ends with this
Colossians 3:16-17 — – Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
“singing to God with gratitude in your hearts” – This word for gratitude is translated grace in the NKJV. It is the Greek word Strong’s G5485. Which is used throughout the bible talking about God’s Grace towards us but also our Grace back to God and others.
graciousness (as gratifying), of manner or act (abstract or concrete; literal, figurative or spiritual; especially the divine influence upon the heart, and its reflection in the life; including gratitude):—acceptable, benefit, favour, gift, grace(- ious), joy, liberality, pleasure, thank(-s, -worthy).
It is a cycle that we must maintain with God. God shows us His favor through unnumberable ways. Physical, Mental, Spiritual ways. Big ways, small ways, ways we know, ways we don’t know. If you can count all the ways God shows us His favor, His pleasure, His grace towards us, I am certain you can also count the stars in the sky.
But how can we show our favor, our pleasure, our grace back to him? Gratitude, thankfulness. Not just saying thank you because we are being polite as we can often do, but really taking the time the space to understand how much, really all the good things in our life and no matter your station or your situation you have so much to be grateful for, and then recognizing who little our hand had in those good things that happen in our lives.
When you stop to have this gratitude you will change. Not just physically and mentally as science has shown but most importantly spiritually as God and Christ have intended for you to change.
The problem in this though is that our human nature is to look over the good things especially as they increase and become routine and only focus on what we don’t have or what we want more of or what bad things are happening in our lives.
When you look at you and I today, in this nation we hit the jackpot of physical blessing through all of human history. Even the poorest among us have access to things unimaginable even 50 years ago. Just one small example Solomon in the proverbs alludes to the refreshing nature of snow put into a drank in the summer time(Pro 25:13) which would have been a great luxury and today we have ice for our drinks at our finger tips and can even decide if we want ice cubs, ice pebble, crushed ice, iced mugs and so on. What a contrast in physical luxuries where we take for granted what one of the richest men ever saw as a great luxury. Yet gratitude is at all-time lows even as our science shows how important gratitude is for us.
This though isn’t just a modern problem but as I said one that is a human nature problem. Probably the most famous examples is the story of the 10 Lepers. This is in Luke 17:11-19.
I won’t read it all but basically 10 lepers came to Christ asking for mercy. He told them to show themselves to the priest and all of them having faith did and were cleansed. If this was where the story ended it might just be another story of God’s mercy but it continues
Luk 17:15 — And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, returned, and with a loud voice glorified God,
Luk 17:16 — and fell down on his face at His feet, giving Him thanks. And he was a Samaritan.
Luk 17:17 — So Jesus answered and said, “Were there not ten cleansed? But where are the nine?
Luk 17:18 — Were there not any found who returned to give glory to God except this foreigner?”
9 out of the 10 who were healed of the worst of the diseases in the ancient world could not even take the time to come back and show gratitude to the one who had healed them. Now we could say to ourselves that we would have been that one but remember all 10 showed faith only one showed gratitude. This is a warning to us that even when we ask, show faith and are given what we ask for our Christian journey is not complete until we show gratitude.
Given how unlikely we are to show gratitude to God, to our brothers and sisters how can we increase our ability to show gratitude. I want to walk through three Biblical ways of how we can both show gratitude but also increase our ability to be grateful.
Service For the first one let’s turn to I Thessalonians 5:16
1Th 5:16 — Rejoice always,
1Th 5:17 — pray without ceasing,
1Th 5:18 — in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
Rejoicing and giving thanks are examples of showing gratitude especially through pray and what does Paul pair it with? Let’s read the two verses above 14 and 15.
1Th 5:14 — Now we exhort you, brethren, warn those who are unruly, comfort the fainthearted, uphold the weak, be patient with all.
1Th 5:15 — See that no one renders evil for evil to anyone, but always pursue what is good both for yourselves and for all.
What does that sound like? Service, service others is a biblical way of increasing your ability to show gratitude.
There are many examples of this in the bible but one that is powerful to me is the story of Hanna the mother of Samuel in 1 Samuel 1:1-28. Here was a woman who wanted so much to be a mother that she was willing to serve God the rest of her life by devoting her first born son to God. If you recall the story, Hanna was one of two wives the other wife had sons and daughters but Hannah was barren. The other wife it said provoked Hannah because Hannah was barren and this went on it says this went on “year by year” such that it caused her to weep and not eat. This was severe mental anguish for Hannah. One year it was so much that when they were at the tabernacle Hannah went and prayed to God that if only He would give her a child she would dedicate that child to God’s service. Now for her that meant giving up that child to God, the one she so desperately wanted for God’s service which was an act of service herself. As we read later she was only able to see Samuel from a young age once a year.
God then grants Hannah this son, an act of grace and then Hannah in returns brings the boy to Eli. Let’s read:
1Sa 1:25 — Then they slaughtered a bull, and brought the child to Eli.
1Sa 1:26 — And she said, “O my lord! As your soul lives, my lord, I am the woman who stood by you here, praying to the LORD.
1Sa 1:27 — For this child I prayed, and the LORD has granted me my petition which I asked of Him.
1Sa 1:28 — Therefore I also have lent him to the LORD; as long as he lives he shall be lent to the LORD.” So they worshiped the LORD there.
So in performing this great act of service, giving up as a young child this boy who was born to her Hannah shows her deep gratitude both in word and deed.
Service is a great way you and I can show gratitude to God and strengthen our ability to be grateful. Service is essentially taking the invaluable grace we receive from God and pay it forward to others allowing God’s grace for others to be worked through in a small way by our hands. These acts of service just like God’s acts can be great or small, seen or unseen and show as Paul said be done in the pursuit of good both for ourselves and the benefits that gratitude brings to us and also to others carrying forward and magnifying even in a small way the grace God has given us.
Sacrifice To start looking at the next way let’s turn to
Psa 116:16 — O LORD, truly I am Your servant; I am Your servant, the son of Your maidservant; You have loosed my bonds.
Psa 116:17 — I will offer to You the sacrifice of thanksgiving, And will call upon the name of the LORD.
Psa 116:18 — I will pay my vows to the LORD Now in the presence of all His people,
Psa 116:19 — In the courts of the LORD’s house, In the midst of you, O Jerusalem. Praise the LORD!
Psalms 107: 22 and Amos 4:5 also talk about the sacrifice of thanksgiving.
This sacrifice of thanksgiving was possibly pointing back to the peace offering. That offering described in Lev 3, and Lev 7:11-34. One reason to offer it as described in Lev 7:12 was to offer it “for a thanksgiving,”
We can do this today in many ways through our offerings.
One such powerful example was the widows mite
Luk 21:1 — And He looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury,
Luk 21:2 — and He saw also a certain poor widow putting in two mites.
Luk 21:3 — So He said, “Truly I say to you that this poor widow has put in more than all;
Luk 21:4 — for all these out of their abundance have put in offerings for God, but she out of her poverty put in all the livelihood that she had.”
This is a recurring theme in gratitude is that the greatest examples of gratitude are often in our lack of things not in our abundance.
God taking you through trials The last one can also be the hardest way to learn how to show gratitude.
Heb 12:5 — And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons: “MY SON, DO NOT DESPISE THE CHASTENING OF THE LORD, NOR BE DISCOURAGED WHEN YOU ARE REBUKED BY HIM;
Heb 12:6 — FOR WHOM THE LORD LOVES HE CHASTENS, AND SCOURGES EVERY SON WHOM HE RECEIVES.”
Heb 12:7 — If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten?
This word chastise mean training, discipline. Going back to gratitude being like a muscle we have to train and the more we train the stronger our gratitude. God like a Good Father helps us train Gratitude, disciple our ability to show gratitude.
Much like the Pilgrams who went through a great trial and showed deep gratitude after it, there are many examples of this in the bible.
James talks about this in
Jas 1:2 — My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials,
Paul in talking about his many trials says
2Co 12:10 — Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
Job is a great example of this. He went through a severe trial losing all his possessions, his children, being struck with a painful bodily disease and then to have his friends come and blame him for all of this in his misery. That is an extreme trial and then if that was not enough God comes and shows Job his pride. But in the end how did Job answer God
Job 42:1 — Then Job answered the LORD and said:
Job 42:2 — “I know that You can do everything, And that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You.
Job 42:3 — You asked, ‘Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.
Job 42:4 — Listen, please, and let me speak; You said, ‘I will question you, and you shall answer Me.’
Job 42:5 — “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, But now my eye sees You.
Job 42:6 — Therefore I abhor myself, And repent in dust and ashes.”
Brethren we live in a society full of physical blessing, overflowing, greater then have ever been known throughout human history, yet we live in an age of ingratitude. It can be seen throughout our world. If we, those who have not just overflowing physical blessings but also spiritual blessings which do not even compare in value, are not careful we can fall into that same trap. The trap we saw in the 9 lepers who having faith were cleansed yet could not even take the time to show gratitude to the one who
We must, as followers of Christ and sons and daughters of the Living God, be a thankful, grateful people. We must recognize the grace which God has, is and will show to us and show gratitude in word and deed for that unearned favor. Thanking God at all times and in all circumstances for the wonderful and great things He has, is and will do for us as His beloved children.
To do this though we have to practice and train ourselves to show gratitude. Three ways to do this is through service, through sacrifice and through trials which God take us to help us train our ability to show gratitude. As we close lets read a Psalms of Thanksgiving to our God.
Psa 105:1 — Oh, give thanks to the LORD! Call upon His name; Make known His deeds among the peoples!
Psa 105:2 — Sing to Him, sing psalms to Him; Talk of all His wondrous works!
Psa 105:3 — Glory in His holy name; Let the hearts of those rejoice who seek the LORD!
Psa 105:4 — Seek the LORD and His strength; Seek His face evermore!
Psa 105:5 — Remember His marvelous works which He has done, His wonders, and the judgments of His mouth,
Psa 105:6 — O seed of Abraham His servant, You children of Jacob, His chosen ones!