What is Thankfulness?

Reaching Your World with Luis Palau

As a kid, did your mom or dad ever make you write “thank you” notes? Maybe after your birthday party or after Christmas, they would sit you down at the kitchen table with a stack of notecards and stamps. You would have to write until your hand hurt, sentences like “thank you for the socks.” I know some of those thank-you notes were probably done because your parents were making you do it. It can be hard to be thankful for socks when you are a kid. But still, you wrote the notecard. Sometimes people associate thankfulness with obligation. Sometimes we feel forced to be thankful, because sometimes things in life don’t go well. In those situations, it can be hard to be thankful. Yet, the Bible calls those who love God to be grateful. In Psalms, it says, “I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving and call on the name of the Lord.” Thankfulness is called a sacrifice. Sacrifices are often difficult. It means we give up something, or we have to lose something – time, or habits, or other difficult things. Yet this sacrifice is what God asks of us. Our gratefulness is not based on our circumstances – it is based on our love for God. The love of God is truly something to be grateful for, regardless of our circumstances. We don’t deserve God’s love, yet He lavished it on us. Let’s share this thankfulness with the world. This is Luis Palau.