Gratitude: A Spiritual Accelerator

This week begins the official "Holiday Season" here in the United States; this Thursday is Thanksgiving; the annual celebration of the harvest started by the Pilgrims when they emigrated to America (although let's be real, functionally it's more like "national overeating day"). This year, like everything else, the holiday season is bound to be different and strange. A mixture between our favorite traditions, foods, and activities, and the staggering difference in the way we'll have to do things this year with the way we always have in the past. I find myself not quite sure what to expect. Will this time of year feel magical in the same way it usually does, or will it feel like a disappointing end to the end of the year? I suppose time will tell.

Along with many others, I find myself reflecting on thankfulness. It's an odd moment; on the one hand it might feel like there is far less to be grateful for, and yet at the same time perhaps there is much more. Doubtless many of us take our health for granted far less than we did 12 months ago, and the same could be said about our connection to others, our employment, and much more. Hard times have a way of highlighting what we've had all along and possibly not even noticed.

I've always appreciated Thanksgiving; any cultural moment that encourages us all to stop and cultivate something praised in the Bible is a good thing in my book. For sure not everyone is grateful for the right reasons or about the right things, but would you rather have a holiday about ingratitude? I wouldn't.

Over and over, the Scriptures commend us to thankfulness. A quick google search about how many verses there are about thankfulness yields a multitude of articles, some of them yielding more than 100 verses! The Bible is replete with the topic.

A few years ago I was reflecting on this topic. I'm aware of the psychological benefits of thankfulness, but I've always had the sense that the Scriptures were talking about something going beyond mental health (as important as that is). One morning, I read a passage in Colossians about thanksgiving:

Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. Colossians 2:6-7

It hit me like a ton of bricks; I noticed the connection between walking our Christian walk, being established in faith, and abounding in thanksgiving. The first two seem obvious; the Christian walk is a journey of faith, but I had never before noticed the connection between being built up in our faith and thanksgiving before.

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When does our faith grow?

I'm not sure about you, but when I ask myself when my faith grows into new areas, it's usually when I'm being stretched. It's when things are hard and I feel in over my head that my faith begins to press into new spaces. In other words, I tend to associate growing in my faith with doing something hard! There is certainly a connection between faith and walking through difficult things. The infamous "hall of faith" in Hebrews bears witness to this:

And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets—who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received back their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Hebrews 11:32–35

Faith does help us through hard places, and often when we hit a hard place, we need our faith to grow to get through it. What Colossians 2 was telling me was something different, something deeper than that; the our faith growing doesn't necessarily mean walking through something challenging. If you think about that for a minute, that's kind of a strange thought; so wait, I need a problem to grow in my faith? Isn't it possible to grow in my faith without a problem?

It turns out, the answer is yes, we can grow without a problem, because it's not problems that grow our faith, it's our focus. This is what Hebrews goes on to tell us:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith... Hebrews 12:1–2a

We are instructed to "look to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith." It's looking to Jesus that grows our faith, not having a problem. The issue isn't that we need to be stretched to grow in our faith, it's that many of us don't start seriously tuning in to Jesus until we are being stretched. Challenges don't make us grow, challenges get our focus on Jesus in the way that it could be all the time, we just don't choose to live that way.

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Spiritual Acceleration

Consider for a moment the hardest season of your life that you walked through in relationship with Jesus. Did you grow then? My guess is it stretched and grew you in your faith tremendously. For many of us, while the processes aren't fun, they also yield some of the most precious fruit in our lives. Here is my question for you: how would you like to grow like that all the time? How would you like to experience dramatic spiritual growth without the pain and difficulty of those challenges? If you're like me, that sounds really intriguing.

Welcome to thanksgiving.

What is so profoundly amazing about thanksgiving is that it gives us a way to tune in to the Lord without a problem. Rather than focusing on Jesus because of negative things in our lives, gratitude focuses on Jesus with the positive things in our lives. We receive them, not as random things that happen to be in our lives, but as gifts from God himself, from which everything gift in our live ultimately comes:

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. James 1:17

By giving thanks to God for the gifts he has put in our lives, our focus turns towards the Lord and in that, Jesus continues the work of authoring and perfecting our faith. And here is the profound thing to me: nothing is ever stopping us from doing this, because it doesn't seem important how big or small what we're being thankful for is.

As I write this, I'm awaiting the results of a COVID test and working from home. It turns out I was exposed last week and now I'm going through the process of isolating from others, etc, (although don't worry; I don't have any symptoms to date, I'm doing well). If nothing else the disruption of this could be the source of frustration - or I can choose to see and be grateful for the things I have, even though this is different from my normal. I'm grateful for a quieter morning where I can write from home. I'm grateful for the cup of chai tea I'm drinking as I write. I'm grateful I have music to listen to that helps me relax and focus. I'm grateful it will soon be Thanksgiving, and hopefully I'll still have my sense of taste. I'm grateful my kids are on break and I can hear them playing Minecraft in the other room. I'm grateful that because I'm working from home, by wife Brittany can go out and get some grocery shopping done this morning by herself, a small perk she doesn't always get.

With each one of this, I can simply be positive about it, or I can take just one second and trace the line back to God and thank him. I can thank God that I have this moment to write my thoughts, or that I live in a time when chai tea is cheap and easily accessible. I can thank him for the wonderful children he's given us. As I do that, I'm training my focus to tie into God, growing my inner confidence and reliance on him. I feel the internal alignment and the release of grace towards me. This is the difference between thanksgiving as a psychological habit (cultivating positivity), and a spiritual discipline (reinforcing my focus on the Lord).

This revelation has really unlocked thanksgiving for me - made it more than a positive habit, but a real way I can cultivate my faith on purpose. That's precisely what I want to do; be "built up in him and established in the faith, abounding in thanksgiving." Care to join me? It's the perfect time of year to start.