Gratitude

By Dr. Ed Jordan, pastor, Gwynn’s Island Baptist Church, reprinted with permission from November 21 issue of Lifelines. 

Gwynn, VA – It is the season for giving thanks to God. But then, every season, and every day is the season to give thanks to God.   Psalm 136:1 (CSB) exhorts us to: “Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good. His faithful love endures forever!” When was the last time you gave thanks to God, heartfelt, and from a heart overflowing with gratefulness?

We live in a secular sinkhole, sinking deeper and deeper into depravity and ingratitude.  It is a “dog eat dog” world. But the state of our world is not God’s fault.  God has not changed. We have changed. We have become obsessed with lies and bitterness, rage and hatred. Those are byproducts of mankind when it rejects God. You can’t turn on the news without listening to hateful bitter people. Their blind hate is eating them like a cancer, and they think that their life is grand as they decay before our very eyes.

Whenever I see evil spewing out of them, it causes me to pray that God would break through their hatred, to deliver them. But people must want to change. And unfortunately, they have hated others for so long that hatred is what they think is normal.

Ironically, seeing the worst in humanity makes me grateful. I am grateful that God pulled me out of that lifestyle many decades ago.  I am grateful that my relationships with others are loving ones, instead of bitter and destructive ones.  Without God, I would be stuck in bitterness.  But I am not a better person than anybody else; I am just a person who called out for God to transform me and deliver me. God in His mercy, and through His generous grace, rescued me from myself, and gave me the power to live a new life, with values that empower me to want to build people up, instead of tearing others down. 

The Psalmist teaches us to give thanks to the Lord, because He is good.   When we come to the reality that God is good, and loves us, we are first humbled. How could sinless, perfect, all-powerful and totally sinless God love me? How could God ever want to have me in His home for eternity? Because God is good. His nature is good. He has no evil intent or malice. All God ever wanted for each of us, was for us to come to Him and experience His love and goodness towards us. 

Our human concept of love is that love must be earned, that love should only be extended to nice people, people who are flawless … as compared with us, that is. Yet there are no such people. All of us have sinned, the best any of us can put together in a concept of goodness is a pile of oily rags compared to God’s perfection and majesty. And yet God loves each of us so much, that He sent Jesus, His only begotten Son (John 3:16), so that anyone who believes in Him, i.e., commits their life to Him, will not perish but instead have everlasting life. Jesus lived among us so that we could see the goodness of God in living flesh. He came to us while we were in darkness, while our minds and lives were filled with darkness.  While we were raging hatred toward Him, He showed goodness and love toward us. That is why we should gladly, and gratefully, give thanks to the Lord.  He poured out His love upon us, and was good to us while we were still being mean to Him.

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good. “Is” is the present tense of the verb “to be.” Jesus is always good to us. God is always good towards us.  Furthermore, this verse goes on to say that we should give thanks to God, for His faithful love endures forever.  God’s love is not fickle.  It is not a “I love you today but won’t tomorrow” kind of love. Once we commit ourselves to Him, He is faithful to us. He is faithful to us, even when we are not faithful to Him.

So, there are three things to give thanks for in this one little verse: Give thanks to God that He is God and nothing can thwart Him. Give thanks that God is good, and always has our best interests at heart. Give thanks that God is faithful to us, even when we are not faithful to Him.

Give thanks and express your gratitude to God.

Award-winning columnist Dr. Ed Jordan is pastor of Gwynn’s Island Baptist Church, Gwynn, VA. He used to serve in Pocatello, Idaho. He can be reached at szent.edward@gmail.com