One of the hallmark attitudes of a focused Christian life is being thankful. The very foundation of our Christian beliefs is the fact that being redeemed from sin and death by the love and sacrifice of Jesus is a gift that is in every case beyond our ability to earn or deserve. We are freely given life in Christ, and therefore we have great motivation to live in a state of gratefulness. That being said, how far should this grateful attitude go? Is it really supposed to encompass each and every experience we have? Does being thankful in everything mean we should never be sad or anxious?

There is a profound challenge requiring a necessary spiritual discipline before us if we are attempting to live with gratitude in all circumstances. We base this on 1 Thessalonians 5:18: “In everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” This teaching builds on two prior principles— “Rejoice always” and “Pray without ceasing”—to form a triad of Christian conduct that fosters spiritual resilience and peace.

To meet this challenge, we must accept that true thankfulness is not a fleeting emotion but is instead a cultivated state of perception. It means viewing life’s hardships—grief, loss, uncertainty—through the lens of trust in God’s providence. The Apostle Paul models this in 2 Corinthians 12, where he expresses gratitude for unanswered prayers, recognizing that weakness becomes strength when Christ is present.

• A spiritual lens that reshapes how we interpret suffering.

Paul’s Epistles demonstrate that thankfulness should be expressed both to God and to others. His joy over the Thessalonians’ faith despite their persecution illustrates how mutual encouragement strengthens the body of Christ.

There are MANY reasons for us to be thankful daily.

Ultimately, thankfulness is a spiritual discipline that equips Christian believers to endure trials, uplift others, and align with God’s will. It’s not about denying pain. It’s about trusting that even in pain, God is present and purposeful.

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Most of us don’t realize just much of our lives come down to our own personal choices. We have far more power over how we handle our everyday experiences than we give ourselves credit for. Why wouldn’t we claim this power so we can better influence our path? Because we subtly and regularly fall into habits of thinking that lull us into a lukewarm and compliant attitude of submission. The Apostle Paul was all about helping us, as his fellow disciples of Christ, challenge the status quo and reset our minds so we can daily think and choose with spiritual clarity. Much of the letter he wrote to the Philippian Christians focused in on the adverse conditions in life and how to think through them. Examining this letter is the first step to better focusing our Christian thinking!

The Apostle Paul really loved his fellow Christians at Philippi. While on house arrest under Roman guard, he wrote them a comprehensive letter concerning their Christian growth and development. One of his conclusionary teachings in this letter is found in the commonly read verse of Philippians 4:8. Paraphrased it says, “Finally, whatever is true, honorable, right, pure lovely or of good report, if there is anything excellent or praiseworthy, dwell on these things.”

This letter to the Philippians is a tutorial on several of the high standards that true discipleship requires. Paul showed us how to handle limiting circumstances by talking about his own imprisonment. He implored all of his brethren to work through their issues in a unified fashion. He focused us on the importance of leaving our old standards of success behind and instead seeking success in a life of sacrifice. These and many other teachings were all in place to address the building up of a mature Christian mind.

Paul then gave us the list of things he pointed us to and what we should dwell upon. This was no mere listing of nice things to preoccupied us. This was a list of solid, connected, sequential and spiritually-sound priorities. Dwelling on them meant we were to use them as solid foundation stones of our Christian lives.

First on this list was the instruction to dwell on what is true. As we dig more deeply into his teaching, we realize the apostle was pointing us not to general worldly truth, but to godly eternal truth. All of the rest of his “think about this” list had its foundation in this solid beginning. Check out our May 15, 2023 podcast, “We Are What We Think About, So What Are We Thinking About? (Part I)” for more. After comprehensively summarizing the letter to the Philippians, we delve into the meaning of what is true, what is honorable, what is right and what is pure. What we find is the beginnings of a profound and life-altering approach to setting our minds up for true Christian thinking. Join us as we begin to learn what to think about and how to think about it!

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“Let go and let God.” This simple statement is focused on faith and trust, two fundamental challenges for Christians. We may think it’s easy to have faith, but when we are in times of difficulty, the depth of our true faith is revealed and sometimes revealed as seriously lacking. We may think that we have trust, but when pressed, when we feel like we need answers or changes or insight, our trust becomes scarce while anxiety abounds. All of this can be depressing! We can feel like we are letting God down. The good news is that we are not alone in this struggle to let go and let God. Many of God’s faithful had these same struggles. Because their experiences are recorded in Scripture, we can not only read about their struggle but see how God’s blessing worked in spite of their weakness!

Way back in Genesis, Abraham and Sarah were given an amazing promise. God told Abraham to leave his father’s house and go to a new land that God would show him. Abraham listened. He took Sarah and his household and journeyed to this undisclosed location. As dramatic as this was, it wasn’t the biggest part of God’s promise. God also told him that his descendants would inherit this land. The only problem was Abraham and Sarah didn’t have any children. Worse than that, Abraham was already 75 years old and Sarah was 65! While God’s promise was powerful and exciting, it also seemed like it pushed the limits of their reality.

Abraham and Sarah were classic examples of having been given a direction to follow but not understanding how to get there. Time went on and Sarah did not become pregnant. Years went by and both Abraham and Sarah became perplexed. However, their perplexity was not in relation to doubting God’s promise; rather, it was about how that promise would be fulfilled. After about 10 years with no child, they took matters into their own hands. Sarah gave her servant Hagar to Abraham, and she conceived a son.

This account is full of lessons and guidance for us. First and foremost, it is all about trying to do God’s will. Just like Abraham and Sarah, we sometimes run ahead of what God would have us to do. In their case the result was not fatal, but it did add lots of difficulty and stress. Why would we expect anything less?

Check out our October 31,2022 podcast, “How Do I Let Go and Let God?” for more. We walk through the 25-year account of Abraham and Sarah, beginning with the promise of having a son all the way to the birth of Isaac. What we find are striking and relevant lessons for us to apply in the here and now of our own lives. Join us as Abraham and Sarah’s experiences teach us the depth of faith and trust required to truly let go and let God!

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It is easy to live with bitterness. I am not suggesting it’s initially comfortable, but I am suggesting that being bitter towards one or many people or circumstances is considered acceptable. We know it’s acceptable because if we pay attention, we will see that the harsh and angry results of a bitter temperament are widely encouraged. Bitterness can enter at every turn and enters easily and stealthily. Once in, it quietly takes root, masked as what we might consider justifiable anger or a justifiable reaction to wrong, or simply a justifiable defense of one’s own self. Then it grows – quietly and under the surface at first so that we get comfortable with it, until one day we wake up and it rules our life.

Bitterness is more destructive than we like to think for several reasons:

If I have been terribly wronged by someone’s purposeful action and suffer lasting consequences, bitterness can be natural and understandable. Allowing my bitter feelings to be at home in my heart is easy, as they provide a way for me explain away my now stagnating life. This produces comfort. Once we get comfortable with something, we no longer question it. Without my conscious permission, my life perspective has now changed. I see the world differently. Over time, I will inevitably be presented with several opportunities along the way to ease that bitterness, but I will most likely reject them as disruptive or useless.

Being bitter often brings us to being sad, disillusioned, angry and disappointed. Each of these are challenging symptoms all on their own. Routing out any one of them can be a mammoth challenge. Even when we do manage to get one or more of these under control, we still have the root cause of bitterness alive and intact within our hearts.

In the New Testament, the Bible basically defines bitterness as poison. How much poison are we willing to live with? You can dilute poison with lots of water, but are you still willing to drink it? Are we willing to rationalize and say that our bitter feelings are not as bad as someone else’s, so we’re okay? The Bible frames being bitter as a significant target for Christians to overcome and not tolerate.

Check out our January 10, 2022 podcast, “Am I Too Bitter to Be Better?” for more. We look at several biblical examples of bitterness to see what drives them and what can derail them. What we find is both alarming and hopeful. First, we find that bitterness can upend our lives in ways that we might never have thought of. But we also find that there are many things we can do to dig down and root out our bitterness. Join us for a journey of growth and change as we seek to root out the poison of a bitter heart.

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Every Christian wants to be faithful in living their life with thankfulness. One immediate question that arises is, what causes us to be thankful? What life experiences bring us to gratitude? Most of us would answer that we feel appreciativeness when things fall into place or when a hard experience yields a righteous result. These are great times to give honor to God, but what about when the opposite happens? What kind of acknowledgment do we give to God when our opportunities are cut off for no good reason? Would we be grateful if we were singled out to have our personal freedoms to spread the gospel stripped, and we were instead literally locked in our house? The Apostle Paul was. The last several years of his life were mostly spent as a prisoner of Rome. What was his secret to rejoicing?

Imagine you lived at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion, and you were converted to follow his gospel message. Imagine being so moved by that message you, for the next 20 years or so, travel throughout the Roman Empire preaching this gospel. The joy of the gospel provokes you to speak on street corners, in synagogues and before authorities. Through God’s love and grace, you heal the sick and debate religious philosophy. You are often falsely accused as a troublemaker and yet you never stop moving. But you never stop teaching, preaching, healing, converting. You never stop standing in public places for the name and cause of Christ. You rejoice! For 20 years, the joy of the Lord has driven you, inspired and provoked you to change thousands of lives.

You are taken prisoner and brought to Rome and confined to a rented house for two years. You are under constant guard. Now your only freedom is within the walls of that small house. Your life of adventure, fellowship and witnessing to the Gospel of Jesus Christ is over. Or is it?

Do you take these shackles as a sign that you had a good run? Do you see this as an ending of an era, and you have now been removed from active service? This could be an easy path to follow, but it is not the only path. You could decide that by God’s grace you are here. You could choose to bring as much gospel activity to your little house as can possibly fit. This is exactly what the Apostle Paul did.

Check out our November 22,2021 podcast, “How Can I Rejoice in Trials?” for more. We break down the mindset the Apostle Paul had while in prison by examining four of the letters he wrote while bound by chains. In these letters Paul’s rejoicing in God’s providence is palpable. His clarity on teaching the most important things is inspiring. Join us as we observe the Apostle Paul rejoice in his trials, and we then follow Paul as he followed Christ

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This of the most basic manners we teach our kids. We generally start by instructing them how to appropriately make a request for something and how to graciously receive it.  How do you ask?  “Please!” What do you say? “Thank you!” These two simple communication tools (which incidentally seem to have been misplaced in our social media world) are not merely expressions of good manners, they are declarations of good character! As we approach the American holiday of Thanksgiving, we want to focus on being thankful in a way that goes beyond typical platitudes. How can we be truly and deeply thankful – even when our life experiences are difficult and harsh? How can we make true thankfulness a way of life and not just words of praise?

We often think of gratitude as an act of reciprocity – someone does something that has positive benefit and we show appreciation by being thankful. While this is a good place to start, true gratitude can be expressed for many wider and deeper reasons. Take loyalty for example, the ongoing experience of having someone exhibit life-long loyalty towards us. True gratitude is not expressed in a simple gesture of thanks to them. It is expressed in our transformed life actions their loyalty affords us. This kind of thanksgiving makes us better, as it continually draws us up to a higher standard and quality of life.

As we begin to understand the broad application gratitude can have, we need to pause and consider its role in our hard life experiences. Pain and thanksgiving are not obvious partners. As a matter of fact, some of our greatest gratitude experiences are driven by pain and suffering leaving us. This is the gratitude of relief, and it is important and appropriate. As Christians, it is our charge to rise to higher levels of thanksgiving. A verse in 1 Thessalonians instructs us, “In everything give thanks.” The obvious implication here is to grow into an attitude of life that is able to express thanksgiving not only when a bad experience ends, but as we are going through it as well.

Being thankful in the midst of pain and suffering is not natural, it is not easy and it is, frankly, not even expected by our peers. Yet, this is our goal. Check out our November 25, 2019 podcast, “How Can We Be Thankful When Life is So Hard?” We not only walk through biblical principles of gratitude and its application, we also share a dramatic personal testimony from a Christian woman. This woman lives with chronic and severe pain daily and has for years. It has completely changed her life and essentially taken away many of her previous opportunities. In her testimony, she recounts how she has learned to accept this hard way of life. She also shares the new-found power and privilege she has been given because of this trial.  Don’t miss this inspiring view of gratitude!

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Everybody complains.  Sometimes, well…actually occasionally, we do it from a positive perspective for the purpose of effecting change and that’s good!  But most of the time we complain because someone or something is irritating us, or putting pressure on us or challenging us or contradicting us. Most of our complaints are not for the purpose of truly solving any issue; rather, they are for the purpose of being heard, of having our position or circumstance or opinion verified.  We complain for attention, for sympathy and to reinforce our ego.  We often use complaining as a tool of destruction against those we oppose.  For the most part, complaining doesn’t sound all that productive.  So, what do we do about it?  How do we stop our complaining or transform it into something good?

We have all either heard or said this very thing at one point or another in our lives…and most likely it had to do with kids.  Whether you were the adult or the kid doesn’t matter – what matters is the exasperation response that complaining can produce.  What if, instead of going down that road of response, we responded to the incessant whining of a child with, “Look, I know this isn’t the way you want it to be and instead of lamenting so boisterously, why don’t you learn to reframe your complaints in a constructive manner and express them to someone who will not get emotionally caught up with you and will instead help you manage the burden that you are carrying!”  I know – that’s ridiculous. But the thing is, it’s true! Can we minimize the role complaining plays in our life?

David, the writer of most of the Psalms, was a complainer – but NOT like the example above.  On the contrary, David perfected the art of complaining to such a degree that we now read many of his complaints and walk away inspired for good!  How is that possible?  Instead of complaining so much that one would lose count, David made his complaints count.  That’s right, David found and taught a formula for constructive complaining.  One of the really cool things about this is when you read current studies about complaining and how to turn the tide towards a positive result, you realize that David, thousands of years ago, did exactly what these experts say we should do now! Very cool!

The good news here (actually, the GREAT news here) is that David’s constructive techniques are not only transferable, they are easy to understand.  This means that we – you and I – can learn how to reframe what we complain about, how we do it and to whom we do it to actually achieve positive results.  This means we can complain, in the right form, place and delivery, so it is a positive exercise to help us to grow and mature!  It sounds weird, so check out our December 11, 2017 podcast, “Does Complaining Ever Help?” and see for yourself.  Complaining may never sound the same to you again!

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Human nature is a funny thing.  We live in an age of instant gratification, an age of virtually no waiting for anything.  We send a text, a tweet, a message or we post, and our expectation is for an almost instant answer or follow or response or reaction.  What we want we not only assume we can get, we assume we can get it immediately in just the right color, brand and style.  Getting and having have become so easy and expected that we have begun to overlook the value of patience, waiting and doing without. Human nature IS a funny thing.  In this age of abundance, we are experiencing a very high rate of dissatisfaction and unhappiness.  Why?  One reason is that we have all but forgotten the preserving and healing power of gratitude.  It’s really simple – for happiness and contentment to flourish, they require gratitude to be their constant companion.  Let’s take a look and see how it all works…

The first thing to realize about gratitude is that it is a basic building block and ingredient for anything that is good to make it long lasting.  Consider these simple examples:  You have lots of money and lots of stuff.  This can be good – really good – but without gratitude for all of it, you might find yourself being dissatisfied, paranoid or just plain miserable.  Check the statistics on this – it is frighteningly true.  How about this – you are in a wonderful and loving relationship.  This can be really good – even great – but without gratitude for the other party, your relationship will slowly begin to go stale, or even spoil, and all you will end up with are memories that are bitter or bewildered.  You see, gratitude is the glue that holds a contented and productive life together!

The second thing to realize about gratitude is that it is a basic building block and ingredient for finding ways to cope with tragedy and difficult circumstances.  Consider these telling examples:  You are broke and have very little. This is difficult, to say the least, and we often find ourselves focusing on our misery which closes our hearts and minds to anything else.  Gratitude in such times focuses your being on appreciating the precious good that you DO have and that opens you up to being able to see past the misery and notice opportunity.  How about this – your spouse is dying of cancer, and they are too young and it’s not fair.  Without gratitude, the stress of the situation eats both of you up and you lose your affection and appreciation for one another.  With gratitude, the cancer becomes an event, difficult as it is, it does not hurt your relationship; rather, it becomes a tool to enhance it.  I actually watched this happen recently, so I know it works.

The bottom line is, you and I need to understand how to have gratitude alive and well in our daily lives.  The process for this can actually be an easy and enjoyable experience.  Check out our November 20, 2017 podcast, “How Do I Make Gratitude My Constant Companion?” and see how it all works.  Take this seriously…it could have a life changing impact on your every day.  Thanks!

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