I lead small group this week on gratitude. The discipline of being grateful, especial grateful to God.
We’ve looked at a whole of load of spiritual disciplines but there’s something about gratitude that makes it very accessible and very uplifting to practice both for yourself and for the people around you.
Gratitude is best practiced not just in our time with God but in our every day lives. It’s about taking an attitude of wanting more and turning it into an attitude of abundance. When we look on what we have with an attitude of abundance we take away room for jealousy and bitterness and comparison. Living with an attitude of abundance allows us to see just how very much we have.
I know it’s easy to look at hard times in life and think well what do I have? I suspect there is a part of me that does this when I think about missing my mum. God did something very wise in me when he blessed us with Sully just two weeks after mum died. It stopped me from constantly dwelling on what I did not have. To be grateful and excited for a little baby on the way at the time was incredibly hard. How can you mourn and be excited at the same time? You can’t really. You bounce from one emotion to another, feeling guilty about both emotions because you feel you should feel sad but feel guilty because you should also be happy. But as I look back on it now I see that the blessing of Sully, and Zac, and Ross and all of my precious friends, stopped me from dwelling too hard and too long on what I did not have.
God has a generous heart. By sending Jesus he gave us more than we ever deserved. When we are at rock bottom our gratitude remains because our gratitude is not based on our circumstances but on a person, Jesus Christ.
When we give God the praise and thanks that he deserves for everything from running water to new jobs, from growing flowers to financial provision, from roofs over heads to clothes on our back, we live knowing that God has given us SUPERABUNDANTLY more than we deserve.
How great He is and how remiss I am in recognising just how much He provides.
Gratitude needs a response. Without a response gratitude is like wrapping a present but never giving it!
