Watch as RD unpacks Psalm 9:1 on Thanksgiving Sunday.
The Scripture
“I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart; I will recount all of your wonderful deeds.” Psalm 9:1
The Core of a Joyful Life
Thanksgiving is something that should happen on more than just one day of the year. It is good to hit pause and reorient our lives around gratitude. The idea of the meaning around the words ‘thanksgiving’ and ‘gratitude’ has become thin and wimpy. But true thankfulness is anything but wimpy. A thankful heart is right at the core of a joyful life. If you are lacking joy in your life than return to a place of thanksgiving.
Gratitude is Countercultural
To live a thankful life is countercultural. Our culture values most self-made men and women, people who have put their lives together all by themselves – but to be a Christian person is to recognize that you are not the hero of your own story. The best things in your life are not about you – they are about the Lord God.
For the Christian person, thanksgiving is not a vague feeling of thankfulness. It is a realization that there is a God and he is not capricious and evil. He is not inclined toward your demise – he is inclined toward your good, so you give him thanks.
The Delusion of Control
In life you are either fundamentally thankful, or you are ungrateful and demanding. If you are ungrateful about your life – it is because you have put yourself at the centre of your story. You are living a delusion – a delusion of control and a delusion of self-determination – that will work just fine until the bottom falls out of your life.
Thankfulness is a Litmus Test
To be truly thankful is to recognize the goodness of the Gospel. It says that we as humans don’t get what we deserve. We are sinful creatures that deserve death, destruction and God’s just wrath and judgment. All our lives we accrue a debt we cannot pay. But the Gospel says that you don’t get what you deserve – you get what Jesus deserves. It means that not only do you escape death – you also receive glory. You receive Christ’s righteousness and riches.
Your thankfulness is the litmus test for your understanding of the Gospel. If you are not living a thankful life, maybe you need to be better rooted in the Gospel.
God deals with us graciously moment-by-moment, day-by-day. It’s easy to take it for granted, but at all times He surrounds us, and upholds us.
Everything is Grace
Stop. Take stock of your life. And realize that everything in your life is grace. Everything. You can’t take credit for it.
Your next breath and heartbeat is a gift from God. Thanksgiving is right at the heart of the Christian life.
Full Expression
If you are struggling with not feeling thankful about your life, how do you get to that place of thanksgiving? Well, growth in the Christian life is not about limiting or suppressing your desires – it is about giving full expression to rightly-aligned affections. It is about a heart on fire with the truth that the Spirit of the Living God is alive in you. Find and foster a deeper love.
C.S. Lewis said,
“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
A Wide Open, Full Heart
A Christian faith that is marked with thanksgiving and gratitude is not about asceticism – it is rooted in a wide open, full heart towards the Lord. The remedy for an ungrateful heart is to awaken to the reality of who you are in Christ. To whole-heartedly awaken to the reality of the Spirit of God living in you. A thankful heart is one that has been set on fire by God. The Spirit of God is shaping you to uniquely demonstrate and display the character of God for His glory. This is a completely different way of looking at yourself. A heart of gratitude is not found through denial and detachment, but rather in a fully awakened and alive heart.
Humanity’s Desires Need Realignment
Our deepest place inside of us is not our heads – but our hearts. But we need our desires to be properly aligned. Humanity’s desires are eschewed. They need alignment. Our unhealthy patterns of destructive behaviour are as a result of our improperly aligned desires. Realigned affection and desire will change our behaviour – behaviour modification won’t get us anywhere.
But we all know that changing our affection is difficult. It is a process. Identify your loves and desires. Identify what you value most. Understand where those desires come from and decide whether they are rooted in true or false narratives about the Gospel.
Now prioritize your desires. There is usually a huge gap between our idealized desires and our functional desires. You have to be honest with yourself. Would someone doing a forensic analysis of your life – your chequing account, know that you truly believed in an eternal heaven and hell? Would someone who took a close look at your time and your money conclude that you believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ?
There’s a process to reorienting your desires- a process of falling more in love with the Lord. Stop putting out fires, instead spend your energy falling more deeply in love with the Lord.
God Has Given Us New Hearts
Realigning your affections is a process, but in your own strength it is actually impossible. But this is the goodness of the Gospel – God has given you a new heart. The Gospel message is not that God gives you a second chance to do your life over. He doesn’t give you a second chance – he gives you a new heart. You are a New creation in Christ. The old has passed away, the new has come. In your inner being has given you new desires. There are still struggles, but you fight against sin from victory, not for victory.
God did not set you free to sin – He gave you power over sin. With your new heart you can battle against the sin in your life from victory. When patterns of behaviours draw you into the weeds and sin competes for your affection and desire, you can stop and remember that you’re not that old person anymore. God has made you new and given you His power to wage war against the sin your life.
Recount God’s Wonderful Deeds
Pause and recount all of God’s wonderful deeds in your life. Let it displace the fears, insecurities, pride and arrogance. The Lord has been good to you. Look to the cross. You don’t get the hell you deserve – you get the heaven Jesus deserves.
