"Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that
4. GRATITUDE IS MORE THAN JUST A FEELING "Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously." ― Ralph Waldo Emerson As we work on growing gratitude in our lives, we must also watch for the things that limit real thankfulness. One of the most common of these problems is the misunderstanding that gratitude is just a feeling. Many people think of gratitude as a feeling or emotion that we experience when we become aware of something we are fortunate to have received. But true thankfulness is much more than an emotion. As we will see in this chapter, there are three very good reasons we need to move beyond this view of gratitude. Feelings Are Fickle An important reason we should not view gratitude as a feeling is that, ultimately, our feelings cannot be trusted in this regard. Remember the Pharisee in Jesus' parable who prayed: "… God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector" (Luke 18:11, emphasis added). The Pharisee felt thankful, but his emotion was based on wrong feelings of comparison and self-satisfaction!
Even when our attitudes are right, we can still be led astray by our feelings. If you and I were to tour an area where some of the poorest people in the world live, we might well experience deep feelings of gratitude for what we have. Yet if we were to tour, even a few hours later, a community in which the very rich live, we might feel no gratitude at all and might even feel dissatisfied with some of our own possessions – yet nothing would have changed in terms of what we actually have.
Seeing gratitude as a feeling we experience can lead to situations where we only express appreciation when we feel thankful and not at the many other times when it should really be in our minds. True gratitude is understood in the mind and heart even when it is not felt. That is why Paul could write:
… I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want (Philippians 4:11-12). When the apostle says he has learned to be content, the word he uses means to be content independent of external circumstances. For Paul this involved being appreciative of what he had – no matter how little or how much. As he had told the Philippians only a few verses earlier: "Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God" (Philippians 4:6, emphasis added). In that sense, the "secret" Paul says he had learned was doubtless one of appreciation and contentment apart from how life "felt" in the moment (1 Thessalonians 5:18).
The positive side of understanding that feelings by themselves are fickle and that we cannot base our gratitude on them is that we can learn to give thanks even when we may not feel particularly thankful – and those thanks will be just as valid as when we feel full of appreciation!
Gratitude Needs to Be Spoken We can fall victim to another kind of problem when we know that we "feel" thankful, but do not express our feelings. The truth is, feeling appreciation without expressing it is often simply being pleased with the gifts we have received. The American writer William Ward expressed this fact colorfully when he wrote: "Feeling
gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it." We may feel thankful, but we need to give thanks for the gratitude to be real. At the human level, sadly, many parents and grandparents experience sorrow when gifts that they have given to their children or grandchildren are never acknowledged by them. Perhaps more than anyone else, parents often give without expecting any return or appreciation, but when children do not learn (or are not taught) to express appreciation, they end up seeing only the gift and not the love that lies behind the gift.
The same is true in our relationship with our heavenly Father. That is why the Bible continually tells us to "give thanks" rather than to just "feel thankful" – gratitude must move beyond inner feelings to outward expression if it is to be complete. We saw earlier how praise and thanksgiving are related in the Bible and how the two go hand in hand.
So, when King David wrote: "I will give thanks to you, Lord, with all my heart; I will tell of all your wonderful deeds" (Psalm 9:1), we see that giving thanks and speaking what God has done for us are synonymous. That is why we include thanksgiving in our prayers, of course. Have you ever noticed what the Bible says about Daniel (apparently one of the most righteous individuals to have ever lived – Ezekiel 14:14): "… Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God …" (Daniel 6:10). For righteous Daniel, expressing thanks to God was a central part of prayer.
Yet praising and thanking God are not the only reasons why our gratitude must be expressed. It is as we express gratitude faithfully and regularly that we grow to be more grateful for the things for which we may not even feel thankful at a given time. Just as in C.S. Lewis' famous comment that even if we do not particularly feel love toward others, if we act the love, we will come to feel it – so it is with appreciation. It is sometimes only as we thank that thankfulness awakens within us.
Of course, our words of gratitude must be sincere even if they are not backed up by our emotions. Saying that we are appreciative of
something when we really don't appreciate it at all is just as bad as feeling thankful and not saying it! But the point should be clear. Just as children must learn to express appreciation, so we as adults must also learn to express thankfulness in various situations, and it is in expressing thanks that we grow to be thankful at those times.
Thankfulness in Action There is yet another reason why gratitude must be more than an experienced emotion. Fully developed gratitude is applied appreciation – it is thankfulness in action. As the Christian scholar and writer W.T. Purkiser wrote: "Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our thanksgiving." It is often said that those who are most thankful share the most, and there may be truth in this. Certainly, the more we are aware of our blessings, the more we feel how extensive they are – and thus may well feel that we have much that we can share.
The Bible does make it clear that thankfulness and sharing are related. The apostle Paul's writings underscore this in a number of ways. We see the connection especially in his letters to the Corinthian church – letters that include much that we might call "lessons in applied thanksgiving."
Notice, for example, what Paul tells the Corinthians regarding good works: "This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of the Lord's people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God" (2 Corinthians 9:12). Here we see service to other people leading to their giving thanks, but Paul speaks just as much about our giving thanks in things we do – including even participation in the Lord's Supper: "Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?" (1 Corinthians 10:16). Paul makes it clear that thankfulness for the sacrifice of Christ and participation in the sacrament cannot be separated.
Paul even shows that thanksgiving should be linked to action in terms of public expressions of gratitude. He stresses this in the context of people in the Corinthian Church who were "speaking in tongues":
… when you are praising God in the Spirit, how can someone else … say 'Amen' to your thanksgiving, since they do not know what you are saying? You are giving thanks well enough, but no one else is edified (1 Corinthians 14:16-17). In other words, Paul stresses, our public expression of gratitude should lead, as much as possible, to other people being edified – our thanksgiving should be tied to action that helps others.
Moving beyond Feelings In all these ways – and perhaps more – we see that we can and should grow beyond simply "feeling" thankful. For gratitude to be complete, it must often be based not in feelings, but in careful thought. We must also learn to express our gratitude, knowing that unspoken thanks are not really thanks at all. And finally, we can learn and grow in the understanding that our gratitude is made complete when we pair it with action that demonstrates our thankfulness. As we learn to apply these principles, we come to be more thankful, to better thank the One from whom all gifts ultimately come (James 1:17), and we move beyond simply giving thanks to living thanks.