Gratitude and Grace

Dannah Gresh: Gratefulness is connected to grace. So, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth has an important question for you and me.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Is the gratitude that flows out of our lives as abounding, as overflowing, as the grace that has flowed into our lives?

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Choosing Gratitude, for November 17, 2022. I’m Dannah Gresh.

I think all of us can stand to grow in gratefulness. That’s true no matter whether you’re making preparations for company and turkey and dressing today or not. Any time of year, all year around, Christians need to be the most grateful, the most thankful, the most full of gratitude.

I just mentioned Nancy’s book, Choosing Gratitude. Stay tuned because later on I’ll let you know how you can get a copy of that book. But first, here’s Nancy to help us understand more of what Christian gratitude is all about.

Nancy: Recently I was asked to speak to the staff of a business that’s located here in Michigan on the topic of gratitude. As I was preparing for that opportunity, it was so good for me to go back and pick up a copy of a book I wrote back in 2009 called, Choosing Gratitude: Your Journey to Joy.

It’s been re-released in more recent years, but as I went back through that book, I was just so freshly challenged with the importance of having a grateful heart. I wanted to take today and tomorrow to share with you some of what I shared with that group not too long ago.

As I went to the business’s website, I looked at their core values, just to kind of give me a sense of who they are and what they believe and what they’re about. And their core values included things like: stewardship, faithfulness, relationships, humility, joy, and gratitude.

I love that! This is not a Christian ministry. It’s a business that was founded by believers, but they’ve worked into the whole warp and woof of their business these core truths, beautiful values that include humility, joy, and gratitude.

As I looked at what this company is about, I thought about those values. I thought, “That’s a picture of Jesus. This is who He is. He is faithful. He is a Savior who brings relationships about, relationships with us and God, and with us and each other. A Savior who modeled for us humility and joy and yes, gratitude.

These qualities that this business has at the foundation of who they are and what they’re about, they are qualities that not only are exemplified for us by Jesus, but they’re also qualities that our world so desperately needs. They are in short supply in our world—good stewardship and faithfulness and healthy, wholesome relationships. Certainly, humility and joy and gratitude are in short supply in our world.

That’s why our world needs to see Jesus in us, those who follow Him, those who love Him, those who belong to Him. These are the qualities we need to be demonstrating in our world.

Now, “gratitude” is the value that that business was focusing on the particular month they asked me to speak. So that’s why they asked me to talk about that quality. And, you know, our world has some sense of the virtue and the value of gratitude.

You walk into a Hallmark store, and you see a huge assortment of thank-you cards, thank-you notes. So the world is familiar with the concept of thankfulness, of gratitude.

In fact, I remember years ago an Ann Landers’ column (if you’re old enough to remember Ann Landers). One of her columns included something that a reader had sent her. It was a list of “Things to Be Thankful For.” Let me read to you some of the things that were on that list. It said:

• Be thankful for the clothes that fit a little too snug, because it means you have enough to eat.
• Be thankful for the mess you clean up after a party, because it means you have been surrounded by friends.
• Be thankful for the taxes you pay, because it means you're employed.
• Be thankful for your heating bill, because it means you are warm.
• Be thankful for the laundry, because it means you have clothes to wear.
• Be thankful for the space you find at the far end of a parking lot, because it means you can walk.
• Be thankful for the lady who sings off-key behind you in church, because it means you can hear.
• Be thankful when people complain about the government, because it means we have freedom of speech. [And here was the last one on that list.]
• Be thankful for the alarm that goes off in the early morning hours, because it means you're alive.

Those are fun. Those are cute. Those are true. They’re good. It’s a reminder that even in our world, people that don’t know Jesus acknowledge that thankfulness is a good thing. It’s a necessary thing. It’s a good quality.

But Christian gratitude takes on a deeper hue, a deeper significance. It’s something that qualitatively is more robust and different than our world’s concept of gratitude.

As I’ve thought about gratitude over the years, I’ve come up with just a simple definition. It doesn’t include everything that could be included, but it’s a start. Here’s how I think of it:

Gratitude is recognizing and expressing appreciation for the benefits that we have received from God and from others.

 

Okay, think about that. It goes two directions: upward and outward. It’s recognizing and expressing appreciation for the benefits we’ve received from God—upward—and for the benefits we’ve received from others—outward.

It’s not just enough to recognize these benefits. I like to think about these things in my heart. I’m so thankful for what God has done for me, what a friend has done for me, what my mate has done for me. But gratitude involves expressing that appreciation—not just keeping it in the heart, not just seeing it and thinking about it. But actually saying something about it, expressing gratitude.

As I was working on this session in my study this morning, I was thinking about one of our staff, Phil Krause who day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year has been the producer for this Revive Our Hearts podcast.

I’m so thankful for him. I’m so grateful for how over all these years he and so many others on our team, behind the scenes—their names aren’t in the spotlight—but they have served so faithfully. They make this ministry and this particular program possible. I think that a lot. It was on my heart this morning. So when I came to our studio today to record and we were praying at the beginning of this session, Phil prayed, as we always do at the start of a recording session. Then I took a moment to pray and to thank the Lord for Phil and included in that many others on our team who serve and sacrifice to make this ministry possible.

It’s not enough for me to think that thankfulness. It’s important to express that thankfulness.

And as the apostle Paul did often in the Scripture, “I thank my God every time I remember you.” He thinks about the people who have blessed and benefitted his life, and then he gives thanks to the Lord for those who have served him, who have blessed the ministry.

This thankful heart, this Christian gratitude—recognizing and expressing appreciation for the benefits that we have received from God and from others.

Now, gratitude is something that is inherent and implied in the gospel. It’s a gospel characteristic. It’s a gospel quality. In fact, if you think about how the gospel works out, here’s an equation that helps me to think about the gospel and gratitude.

We start with our guilt. We are guilty sinners before a holy God. All we deserve is God’s judgment, His wrath. We are born sinners. We sin because we are sinners. We are born as rebels against God. We are guilty before God, and we deserve His judgment and His wrath.

But instead of giving us His wrath, God has offered to us, extended to us, His grace, His favor because Christ was willing to take the payment, the penalty, the judgment, the wrath that we deserved for our sins. He took our guilt upon Himself on the cross.

So, instead of pouring out His judgment on us for our guilt, God has poured out His grace upon us. He’s received us into His family as His children. He has bestowed upon us the righteousness of Christ. This is unbelievable grace.

So when we realize that we are guilty, and instead of giving us the wrath we deserve, God has poured out His grace upon us, what’s going to flow out from our hearts? It’s going to be gratitude. Not grouchiness, but gratitude. Lord, You’ve given me what I don’t deserve. You haven’t given me what I do deserve. And of all people who should be grateful, it should be those of us who have received the grace of God.

And then what flows out of our gratitude is—another “G”—generosity. Guilt plus grace results in gratitude. And grateful people, people who have been filled with the grace of God, become generous people because they have been given so much. They have a lot to share. They are happy and joyful to share with others, to be generous because God has been so generous with them.

In fact, if you think about some of the words that have been used in the Greek New Testament, this is really a family of words, and they fit together. The word “grace” is the word charis. You heard us talk about somebody having charisma. The gifts of the spirit, charisma. This is the gifts of God, the benefits God has given us, the favor of God, the bounty of God. These are ways that that word charis is translated sometimes in the New Testament. That’s the word for “grace.”

Then we have that word that comes from an English word, “eucharist.” Charis is in the middle of that. Eucharist is sometimes the word that is used for the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, Communion, the Eucharist. That word comes from a Greek word, eucharista. It means to give freely.

The Eucharist means thankfulness, giving of thanks. So when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, it’s an act of giving thanks. Thanks for what? Well, thanks for what Jesus did on the cross for us, paying the debt for our sins.

So when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, we take that bread, we take that juice, we give thanks, eucharista for the favor and the grace that God has shown to us.

So this word “grace” is closely related to the word for gratitude.

In fact, for our Spanish-speakers, you know the word for “thank you” is what? Gracias—grace—gracias. Giving of thanks relates closely to grace.

So you see this in all the epistles in the New Testament. The apostle Paul, take for example the book of Colossians . . . The next time you read the book of Colossians, look for all the times you see the word “thanks” or “thankfulness” or “thanksgiving” or “gratitude” or “grateful” or “grace.” These words are closely related.

For example, Colossians chapter 2, verse 6, “So then, just as you have received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to walk in Him.” You’ve received this grace of Christ. You’ve received His goodness and His favor in your life.

And then it says we should be “rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, and overflowing with gratitude.”

You’ve received Christ Jesus as Lord, now you should be overflowing with gratitude.

That word “overflowing” in the original language pictures . . . Think of a river bed. It’s got banks on both sides, but it’s at flood stage, and the waters are overflowing the banks. They’re spilling over onto the ground around that river. That’s the kind of gratitude we’re supposed to have—overflowing with gratitude because we have received such overflowing grace from God.

In fact, a question I like to ask myself, and a question I want to ask you: is the gratitude that follows out of our lives as abounding, as overflowing, as the grace that has flowed into our lives?

Think about the way we talk, the things we say, just in the past twenty-four hours. Has my life been characterized by overflowing gratitude? And if my gratitude is stingy, does that mean I’m not really conscious of how overflowing and abundant the grace of God has been in my life in those twenty-four hours?

In this area of gratitude, I’ve had some wonderful examples in my life. Starting with my own dad, Art DeMoss. He’s been with the Lord now for over forty years, but I can remember as a kid, when people would ask my dad, “How are you doing?” He would often say, “Better than I deserve.” Better than I deserve.

Now, why did he think that way? Well, my dad until his mid-twenties was a rebel. He was a hellion. He was far from the Lord, as we all are before we come to faith. But he had no interest in spiritual things, no interest in Christ. And on Friday, October the 13, 1950, the Lord reached down into that young twenty-something heart and snatched my dad out of his rebellion and ingratitude and poured out his grace on my dad.

My dad heard the gospel. He believed. He was radically converted. His life was dramatically changed. He never got over the wonder of the fact that God would have saved him. It was always astonishing to him.

One of his favorite verses was that one in the Psalms that says, “This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles” (Psalm 34:6).

So he always felt, “Whatever is happening in my life, it’s better than what I deserve,” which is the judgment of God.

Now, my dad had plenty of opportunities to express gratitude when things were going well in the business that he started but also when things weren’t going so well. In fact, I remember in the seventies where my dad’s business faced some enormous challenges, some tough reversals, and a lot of opposition. And for quite a period there, he was losing money hand over fist much faster than he had ever been able to make it in his business.

During that same period of time, my mother went through a life-threatening brain tumor. The Lord spared her life, but there were just lots of challenges. The home we lived in at that time burned in a fire overnight one night.

So there were a lot of challenges and obstacles, but during all that time, I can’t remember my dad being anything other than grateful. He always felt, “Whatever is happening in our lives, it is better than we deserve.” He was a grateful man. I’m so thankful for that example in my life.

And then when I went away to college in Southern California for my last two years of college. I lived in the home of a precious couple, Ed and Joyce Johnson. Their children were grown, and they opened their home to me for those couple of years. They were such a special part of my life. I referred to them affectionately as “Dad and Mom Johnson,” or “Dad and Mom J.”

Ed died in 2004 at the age of ninety-four. He’d been the chairman and president of a multi-billion dollar savings & loan company in California. I remember calling “Dad J” on his eighty-nineth birthday when he was frail and not in good health. But I remember him saying, “Nancy, when I’m gone, if I’m remembered for anything, I want it to be that I was a grateful man.”

Now, you might hear that and think, Well, it’s easy for a man who runs a billion-dollar company, a successful businessman, to say that! But Dad Johnson’s grateful lifestyle was forged in the fires of affliction.

His mother died before he turned two. When he was in his mid-twenties, he lost his dad. And then he and “Mom J” faced the loss of their oldest child, a daughter named Karen, when she was seventeen years old, less than two weeks before her high school graduation, in a fatal car accident.

I heard the Johnsons tell this story many times about how their family was spending that weekend at a vacation cottage in Southern California. And how Mr. Johnson saw a friend out the window, accompanied by two other men, approaching the cottage. So he went outside to find out what they wanted. And that was where they broke the news to him that Karen’s car had been hit by a drunk driver, and she had not survived that accident.

Mr. Johnson into back that house, gathered his wife and four younger children together in the living room, and he told them. Many times I heard him say this over the years how he began by saying to them, “Before we ask God why He took Karen home in a head-on collision a few hours ago, let's thank Him for the seventeen years we had her.”

Wow! That gives me goosebumps! But that was the heart of this man. That was the heart he built into his children. “Let’s thank God before we ask Him ‘why?’.”

I saw this same heart lived out so beautifully in another man, Scott Melby, who served for a number of years on the board of Revive Our Hearts. He and his wife Karen were precious friends of mine. Karen still is a very close friend. Karen watched as her husband went through the slow process of dying of leukemia.

I had the opportunity a couple of times to visit Scott and Karen in the hospital when Scott was very sick. It was getting toward the end. He was in great pain. He would moan and groan. He could hardly get words out of his mouth. But I remember him in that distress saying two things over and over again.

He kept saying in a strained, broken voice, “God has been so good to us! God has been so good to us!” And then he would say, “We have so much to be grateful for!”

This is a dying man in great pain, focusing on the goodness of God, the greatness of God, the grace of God, and how much he had to be thankful for.

Psalm 107 urges us, “Give thanks to the LORD for He is good; his faithful love endures forever” (v. 1).

So at any moment of life, in the high points, the low points, the mountain tops, the deepest of valleys, wherever God finds you, He’s still good. His faithful, steadfast love endures forever.

Could I just encourage you to say wherever you are today, whatever is happening in your life, to just affirm, “God, You have been so good to me. Thank You.” And to say to the Lord and perhaps to those around you today, “I have so much to be grateful for.”

Oh Lord, we want to have grateful hearts. You’ve poured Your grace into our lives. When we deserved Your wrath, when we were guilty, You came and found us and saved us and rescued us. With all our hearts we want to say, “Thank You.” We want to have the attitude of gratitude. We want to be overflowing with gratitude because You are so good, and Your steadfast, faithful love endures forever.

We give You thanks, in Jesus’ name, amen.

Dannah: Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth has been showing us some of the distinctives of Christian gratitude. And that’s something I think we could all stand to think more about. Don’t you think?

Now, Nancy, as you were saying earlier, you wrote a whole book on this topic. It’s called Choosing Gratitude: Your Journey to Joy. I don’t know about you, but I know that when I’ve written books, it’s something God uses to help me grow, too. I mean, I have my readers in mind, but, really, I’m standing at the front of the conviction line, learning and repenting.

Nancy: For sure, Dannah. Writing this book is something that influenced me in such a significant way. It’s true of every book I write. But while I spent the months working on this book, its message was working in my own heart. It exposed to me areas of ingratitude and my need to step up my gratitude game.

It’s been over a decade since I first wrote that book. It’s convicting to me to go back and review what I wrote all those years ago and be reminded of things like the power of gratitude and the reasons for gratitude and practical ways to express gratitude. And then, also, about the sacrifice of thanksgiving.

In this book I share a number of stories that people I’ve known or read about who gave thanks in the hard places, and the power of gratitude to restore and to heal and to give us perspective even when it’s a sacrifice, and we’re saying thank-you to the Lord through our tears.

In fact, the forward for this book is written by my precious friend, Joni Eareckson Tada. Of all people who could have reason to be grumpy, morose, ungrateful, or a whiner, it would be Joni. And yet, I would say that Joni is without a doubt one of the most grateful people I have ever met.

She makes a daily, deliberate choice to say, “Thank You,” when she’s in excruciating pain or limited in her body, which basically holds her as a prisoner. But she knows one day soon that body is going to be liberated. She won’t be a prisoner anymore. She’s going to get a new body in the resurrection. So in the meantime, she’s a thankful woman, by faith, and as an act of her will. That’s the kind of woman I want to be.

Dannah: Me, too. And if you do, you’re going to want to get a copy of Nancy’s book, Choosing Gratitude.

Just go to ReviveOurHearts.com, make a donation of any amount, and we’ll send you, not only Nancy’s book, but also a set of sticky notes that say, “I choose gratitude,” at the bottom. These notes are a handy way for you to post what you’re thankful for, somewhere in your home or work place, as God brings things to mind. They’ll serve to remind you to choose gratitude over discontentment.

Again, Nancy’s book and the special, “I choose gratitude” sticky notes are just one way we’d like to say, “Thank you” for your donation of any size. Your gift helps support the many outreaches of Revive Our Hearts, including this podcast.

To make a donation, just visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959.

Tomorrow, Nancy will help unpack more of what characterizes Christian gratitude. She’ll tell us how she and her husband Robert put some gratitude sticky notes to use themselves. Please be back for the next episode of Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, inspiring you to remember God’s grace in giving you freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

All Scripture is taken from the CSB.

*Offers available only during the broadcast of the podcast season.