How Being Thankful Changes Us
There is a small yet powerful choice you can make that will change you.
It will make you more content in your life. It will give you a steady confidence. It will teach your heart to hate sin and love God. It will make you more loving to your spouse. It will help you forgive those who wrong you. It will help you be more patient. It will give you peace in the deep parts of your heart. It will erode your persistent bitterness. It will soften what has become calloused in your soul.
Do you want those things? Then you must learn the art of being thankful.
how it changes us
You should be skeptical and ask “How does being thankful produce all of those changes in us, over time?” It does seem a bit optimistic, doesn’t it? But I want to show you a text that has a profound wisdom for us. Colossians 3 is well known as being the “put on the new self” passage of scripture. Paul instructs the members of the Colossian church to live Godly lives.
One of the great ways we have devalued morality in the western world is by viewing it as simply something we shouldn’t do. We grow up in cultures that say “if you are to be a Christian, you should not cuss. You should not steal. You should not cheat on your spouse…” And while all of those things are good pursuits, if we stop at what we shouldn’t do, we severely diminishes the point of morality and go against what Paul is talking about in Colossians 3.
Paul has two arguments that blend together in this text. In verse 5, he says: “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you…” then he gives a long list of things that as Christians we are to remove in our lives. Many of us grew up in a Christian culture that the framework for moral living was simply “don’t do X.” But we will never live lives of deep change, and we will miss the beauty of living moral and godly lives if we do not go further.
Paul’s second argument is in verse 12: “Put on then…” and then he lists a long list of attributes we are to aspire to. To build into our lives Love, kindness, humility, meekness, patience.
We are incomplete Christians if we live our lives putting off sinful things and never replacing them with godly ones. Christianity is not a behavioral modification program, where dirty rough people come in and leave squeaky clean boring version of themselves. That’s a shallow understanding of morality in the Christian life. As if God is only interested in changing your outward expressions. No, God is after far more than that. He is after changing your very heart which has far reaching implications for how you live and the pleasure in which you receive from this world.
How you change is not simply what you remove from your life, but what you add.
A better way
We miss the point if we simply seek to put off bad things in our life, never getting around to replacing them with good things. It’s a bit like killing the weeds in your garden. It’s good the weeds are gone, because they are ugly and they kill life. But your garden is still ugly and not full if you do not plant new things in the new soil. Pauls second exhortation to “Put on then…” is the planting new things.
At the end of Paul’s exhortation, he ends by saying in verse 15: “And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.”
Heath Lambert, commenting on this idea of thankfulness says:
"Colossians 3:15-17 is the end of this section on the new ways that believers are to behave in Christ and, as such, concludes Paul’s section on the put off and put on. It’s interesting that when Paul was looking for a killer ending to this section, he chose to go out with more references to thankfulness than anything else he had mentioned. I take it that if we are interested in changing in a way that honors Christ we need to learn to be thankful."
There is something to be said about how Paul ends this section on change. “Be thankful”. Might I suggest to you, one of the virtues to plant in the preverbal garden of your soul that not only takes the place of weeds, but kills them, is thankfulness.
Thankfulness as a discipline, not a reaction
Often in our lives, we view thankfulness as a reaction to good things. You get a new job, you are thankful. You barely miss getting in a car crash, you are thankful. The girl you love finally agrees to go on a date with you, you are thankful. But what if we thought of being thankful as a discipline?
What would it do in us? What implications would it have? If you integrated in your prayer time, a specific section for recounting things you are thankful for, wouldn’t it change you? If you practice thankfulness in your life, it will kill the roots of your persistent sins.
When you’ve marveled at God’s grace in your life the small interruptions in your day begin to seem trivial. When you’ve thanked God for small gifts in your life, like a drink after a soccer game with your friends. Or the warmth of family during a thanksgiving meal. Or the joy of a good book in the afternoon. That has a way of reframing your perspective on life. You’re less likely to be bitter when you’ve been reminded of the good things in your life. You’re prone to be more patient when you’ve, in thanksgiving, become aware of how patient others have been with you. You’re less likely to look at porn because you’re content with the life you have, not envying some other life.
Being thankful is a mindset that also humbles us because through it we are acknowledging gifts that we have received from others and God.
If we were to treat thanksgiving as less of a trite idea and more of a powerful agent of change in our lives, we will have begun to understand what Paul was saying when he said: “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”
This is hard in our fast paced age
The computer age is training you. Have you wondered why it’s harder than it used to be to slow your mind down? To not reach for your phone or computer in moments of boredom? It’s because our minds are being trained and discipled by our devices. We are all susceptible to it. I feel it even now, writing this article. It’s hard to focus.
This training from our devices makes it incredibly hard to practice thankfulness as a discipline. For two reasons:
1- You are bombarded by others lives. Both in marketing and in social media. Always making you feel a little bit under where you should be. We can’t be thankful when we are envious.
2- We are no longer wired to be creatures with the capacity to slow down, which is required for being thankful. Because to sit down and recount things you are thankful for to others and to God, means you must slow down and be introspective. You must quiet down your heart and your mind in such a way that you can look over the time-spawn of your week or month or year.
So if we want to be integrating thankfulness into our lives, we must help ourselves slow down.
Practical ways to be thankful
Take walks without your phone. Practice praying and being thankful during this time.
Don’t wait to be thankful for big things, be thankful for small ones.
Consider starting a thanksgiving journal.
Practice telling people when you are thankful for something they did for you.
Often remember the Gospel. Where Jesus was gracious to you, despite your sin. Marvel at being forgiven.
Turn off your car radio for half of your commute/drive and think about what you are thankful for. Tell God.
Practicing thankfulness in your life will change you. It will allow you to replace the bad with better things. I am convinced one of the reasons God has called us to live moral lives is because it is truly in living how God has designed that leads to the most pleasure, the most joy, and the most flourishing in this life. Not the kind of flourishing or pleasure that comes from the prosperity gospel that if we simply trust God we will live our best lives now.
But the kind of flourishing that will lead us to peace both in good times and hard times. Because we are aware of how good we actually have it. That God loves us. That we have friends and family in our lives. That forgiveness is real. And that God longs to help us change.
Do you want to change sinful things in you? Practice thankfulness. Thankful people are content people. And content people are people at peace. This seeps into every aspect of your life.
Thankful,
Josh.
