Change thinking to be more thankful

So Thanksgiving is at hand, the holiday that shares its name with a type of prayer. In the interest of transparency, I’ll admit I’m not great at it.

This bugs me a little because I see the Bible constantly urging us to give thanks. I’ve therefore given the matter some thought, and I’ve come up with these reasons why giving thanks is harder for us than it ought to be.

First, I think we’re bad at it on the one day we ought to be great at it precisely because we don’t focus on it much all the other days. As my favorite pro athlete says, “You don’t get better at something by not practicing.”

We don’t practice giving thanks, and so we stammer and stutter on the fourth Thursday of November. Prayer, of course, is where we ought to practice thanksgiving. Instead, we spend too much time asking for stuff and too little being thankful. One read through the Psalms would fix some of those priorities.

Next, I find that giving thanks is hard when you’re not certain you’ve actually received anything. Maybe your relationship with the Lord is, well, sketchy. Maybe you doubt all his good promises toward you are really good or that they’re really for you. It’s hard to thank God for his promises when you’re not certain you have any right to them.

On the contrary, Jesus is the “Yes” and the “Amen” to everything God has given. The Christian has confident access to all of those things.

In fact, Jesus taught in Mark 11:24 that one of the keys to effective prayer is we ought to believe we have received what we ask for. Without great faith, that is a tall order indeed. However, if we do believe it, wouldn’t thanksgiving be the normal response? Thanking God in prayer should probably replace our begging God in prayer.

We don’t practice, so we’re bad at being thankful. Next, we tend to doubt God actually will make good on all his promises toward us. One last reason we don’t give thanks also is a tough thing to admit, though it’s blatantly obvious.

That is, we are slow to give thanks because, deep down, we think we deserve all the good that comes our way. This explains why, though we are generally unthankful, we are lightning-fast to complain when stuff doesn’t go our way. We’ve convinced ourselves we are the good people to whom only good things should happen. Anything short of that is a cosmic miscarriage of justice.

When God showers us with blessings, we remain silent and act like this is just the way it ought to be. I’ve earned it, after all. Bad things should happen to bad people, of which I am not one. Praise God.

That ancient-looking man in the back of the room, raising his hand meekly and clearing his throat, is named Job. He’s got a self-titled book he’d like us to read. It just might have the power to help us think more clearly … and more thankfully.

Gordan Runyan is the pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Tucumcari. Contact him at:

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