If you look around this time of year, it almost feels like Thanksgiving is getting smaller. Store shelves leap from skeletons to snowmen, from cobwebs to candy canes, and somewhere in the middle there’s this quiet little day about gratitude that can easily get squeezed out. No costumes, no glittering lights, no marketing mascot to carry it—just the simple call to say, “Thank You” to God. And maybe that is exactly why the enemy works so hard to drown it out. A truly thankful heart is dangerous to his kingdom.
The Bible doesn’t treat gratitude as seasonal décor. It treats it as the will of God for His people. Paul writes, “In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you” (1 Thessalonians 5:18). That’s not a verse to be stitched on a pillow and ignored; it’s a call to a whole way of living. Yet if we’re honest, most of us live with a mixture of gratitude and complaint, praise and quiet resentment. We say “thank You” with our lips, but anxiety and frustration often sit heavy in the corners of our hearts.
It helps to realize that not all “thank you’s” are the same. Gratitude has layers—habits, feelings, and something deeper still. And God, in mercy, is trying to grow us from surface thanks into a life of worshipful thanksgiving that can stand when the world is shaking.
There is first the gratitude of habit. This is where we start, and it’s not a bad place. We teach our children to say, “Please,” “Thank you,” “Excuse me.” We bow our heads over meals and say a blessing. We send a note after receiving a gift. These are small ways we live out courtesy, respect, and humility. Habits like these don’t grow by accident; they’re planted, watered, corrected, and practiced.
But if all we have is polite gratitude, we’ll find that it evaporates quickly in the heat of trouble. The Lord, in His kindness, often leads us further, into felt gratitude. This is when thanksgiving isn’t just something we say; it’s something we feel. Someone reaches out with help just when we weren’t sure how the bill would be paid. Someone prays with us, or sends a message at precisely the right hour. God provides in ways that are too exact to be coincidence. Like the one leper in Luke 17, gratitude rises almost without effort: “And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, And fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks: and he was a Samaritan” (Luke 17:15–16). Many of us have had moments like that, where we feel we could almost fall at Jesus’ feet because we know we’ve been seen.
That kind of emotional gratitude is good and necessary. But if my thankfulness stays tied mainly to visible blessings—health, income, safety, smooth relationships—then my thanksgiving will rise and fall with the stock market of my circumstances. When my life is full, I feel thankful. When things are stripped away, my song dies on my lips. Deep down, I may start to believe that God is good as long as life is good.
The New Testament pushes us further. When you trace Paul’s thanksgivings, something striking appears. He does not focus on comforts and possessions. Instead, he blesses God “who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ” (Ephesians 1:3). He thanks God for growing faith, abounding love, grace given, the victory we have in Christ, the spread of the gospel, the transformation of sinners into saints. His eyes are fixed on spiritual realities that no chain, no famine, no emperor can touch. When our gratitude shifts toward these eternal gifts, the poorest believer can be as rich in thanksgiving as the wealthiest.
But Scripture doesn’t stop at habitual and emotional gratitude. It takes us into a realm that almost feels impossible apart from the Holy Spirit: sacrificial gratitude. Hebrews says, “By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name” (Hebrews 13:15). A sacrifice costs something. It goes against what our flesh would naturally choose.
This is where some of the strongest verses on thanksgiving press us hardest. Paul says, “Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 5:20). He says again, “And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him” (Colossians 3:17). And we’ve already heard, “In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you” (1 Thessalonians 5:18). “Always,” “for all things,” “whatsoever ye do,” “in every thing”—these are big words.
It is one thing to thank God for the meal on the table; it is another to thank Him when the cupboard is almost bare. It is one thing to praise Him when the diagnosis is good; another when the doctor’s report changes your future in a single phone call. It is one thing to sing when the church is full and happy; another when the pew beside you is empty because someone you love has walked away.
How can God ask us to give thanks “for all things” and “in every thing”? He is not asking us to call evil, good, or to pretend that pain does not hurt. The Bible never invites us to deny reality. Habakkuk names the losses in brutal honesty: “Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls:” and then adds, “Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation” (Habakkuk 3:17–18). That little word “yet” is the doorway into sacrificial thanksgiving.
Romans 8:28 gives us the foundation under that “yet”: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). We don’t know how God will weave it together, but we know His character and His purpose. We know, too, that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38–39). Gratitude rooted in that truth is no longer chained to what we see; it is anchored in Who holds us.
This kind of gratitude is not a personality trait or mere optimism. It is the fruit of a deep inner work where the Lord loosens our fingers from this world and fastens them to Himself. Thanksgiving becomes less about what is in my hand and more about Who holds my hand. The circumstance may be bitter, but the character of God is still sweet. When I give thanks in the dark, I am laying something on the altar—my demand to understand, my insistence on comfort, my quiet accusation that God must prove His love by arranging my life according to my preferences. I am, in a very real sense, living out what Psalm 50:23 describes: “Whoso offereth praise glorifieth me: and to him that ordereth his conversation aright will I shew the salvation of God” (Psalm 50:23).
We need this kind of gratitude now. The world is shaking. Natural disasters seem to come faster and hit harder. Economies tremble. Freedoms erode. Hearts fail for fear. Daniel foresaw a time like this: “And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book” (Daniel 12:1). A thin, seasonal gratitude will not carry us through such a time. It will be a life so rooted in the goodness of God that even when “the fields shall yield no meat,” the song still rises: “The LORD God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds’ feet, and he will make me to walk upon mine high places” (Habakkuk 3:19).
That doesn’t grow in a day. The Lord tutors us into it, step by step. He starts in small things—an inconvenience, a delay, a plan that falls through. In those moments we have a quiet choice: will I murmur, or will I worship? Will I stew over what I lost, or will I say with faith, “Father, I do not like this, I do not see the good in it, but I thank Thee that Thou art wise, that Thou art with me, and that nothing can separate me from Thy love”? Hidden inside those little choices is preparation for larger storms. If I learn to say “thank You” when the traffic backs up, I will be more ready to say “thank You” when my life takes a turn I never expected.
Another precious gem in all of this is that thanksgiving is how love breathes. Love notices. Love remembers. Love rehearses what the Beloved has done. When we speak thanks to God—not just once a year, but woven into the ordinary rhythm of our days—we are drawing near to Him. Hebrews 13:15 calls us again: “By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name.” To thank Him is to glorify Him; to glorify Him is to love Him.
And sacrificial gratitude is also a rehearsal for eternity. One day, faith will be turned to sight. Paul says, “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face” (1 Corinthians 13:12). In heaven, no one will thank God by faith for unseen mercies; we will see the whole story and marvel. Right now, while we still see “through a glass, darkly,” we have the rare privilege of honoring God in the dark. In that sense, every time we choose to say “Thank You” through tears, we are giving Him a kind of worship that belongs only to this brief, painful chapter of the great controversy.
So as another Thanksgiving season approaches, we can certainly enjoy the family traditions, the recipes, the familiar blessings around the table. Let’s teach our children to say “please” and “thank you,” to write notes, to bow their heads politely before they eat. Let’s also pause long enough to name our spiritual blessings—grace that forgives, truth that guides, the presence of the Holy Spirit, the hope of Christ’s soon return. Above all, let’s ask the Lord to do something deeper: to write gratitude into our character. Paul testified, “I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content” (Philippians 4:11). That is the heart of true thanksgiving.
“Whoso offereth praise glorifieth me,” God says (Psalm 50:23). May He teach us to be among those who glorify Him that way.
Heavenly Father, teach us that kind of thanksgiving. When our feelings are weak, let our faith answer. When our circumstances are hard, let our hearts remember that Thou art good, and doest good. Help us to offer Thee, through Jesus, ‘the sacrifice of praise… the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name’ (Hebrews 13:15), until the day we stand before Thee and our faith is turned to sight. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
If this Fireside Chat warmed your spirit and sparked fresh resolve to live what you believe, fan that flame with Scripture—“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly” (Colossians 3:16). Pull a little closer to the Light, and carry it into the week ahead.
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