Practicing Gratitude in Every Moment
This week at The Journey, we explored gratitude—not as a nice extra for when life is going well, but as a way of seeing the world with God at the center. Scripture invites us to “give thanks in all circumstances,” and we practiced that together by naming God’s good gifts, big and small, and by choosing humility instead of entitlement and grumbling. The teaching ended with a very practical challenge: make a gratitude list, pick one person from it, and tell them how thankful you are—while we come to the Eucharist table with the same spirit of thanks Jesus showed on the night before His death.
This week’s sermon: Thanksgiving: Growing in Gratitude
Key Takeaways
- Gratitude is not optional in Scripture; it’s part of God’s will for who we become.
- To be grateful, we must intentionally look for good in a world wired for fear and negativity.
- Every good and perfect gift in our lives ultimately comes from God.
- Gratitude grows best in humility, not entitlement or grumbling.
- Every moment—ordinary or painful—is an opportunity to say “thank You” to God.
Sermon Highlights: Practicing Gratitude in Every Moment
A World Filled with Gifts
There’s something deeply spiritual about sharing a meal together. We opened this week’s service with worship and with pie—celebrating “Pie Day” and all the meals in Scripture where Jesus taught, healed, and revealed God’s heart around a table. Food becomes a reminder of God’s care and sustenance: “You take care of us and you’re with us.”
From that place, we turned toward gratitude. Not just the word “thanks” on a holiday card, but a posture of heart that Scripture describes as central to God’s will for us.
Paul writes to the church in Thessalonica:
“Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”
God’s will, the teaching reminded us, is less about what we do and more about who we become. We are called to be people who give thanks—period. In all circumstances. Highs and lows, feasts and famines, joys and sorrows.
The Big Idea: Gratitude Is a Practiced Way of Seeing
Across several letters, Paul keeps returning to the same theme:
- To the Ephesians, he urges them to “always give thanks to God the Father for everything.”
- To the Colossians, he ties peace and gratitude together: let Christ’s peace rule in your hearts, and “be thankful,” singing to God with gratitude.
The message for us was clear: gratitude is not negotiable in the life of faith. But it’s also not automatic.
Some of us grew up being trained to say “thank you” for everything, and that habit slowly became part of our character. Others of us struggle to feel genuinely grateful, especially when we’re tired, discouraged, or overwhelmed. The teaching named this honestly: we won’t become grateful people by accident. We have to practice gratitude.
So as the sermon continued, everyone was invited to do something very concrete:
Take the blank piece of paper near your seat and start a gratitude list.
Write down names, moments, experiences, even hard seasons where God met you. Keep writing throughout the teaching as God brings things to mind.
Gratitude is not just a concept. It’s ink on paper, a list in your hand, a conscious choice to notice.
1. Gratitude Begins by Seeing the Good
Our brains are wired to scan for danger. We notice threats, problems, and everything that’s broken. That’s useful for survival, but if we live from that place all the time, we can end up believing all of life is bad, or that we’re victims of everything happening around us.
Psalm 103 offers a different lens:
“Praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all his benefits…”
The teaching unpacked that word “benefits”—from the Latin bene, meaning good. God is a benefactor, a “factory for good,” constantly pouring out good things on us:
- Forgiving our sins
- Healing our diseases
- Redeeming our lives from the pit
- Crowning us with love and compassion
- Satisfying our desires with good things
Those gifts don’t disappear when life is hard; they’re often just harder to see. Gratitude begins when we deliberately look for God’s benefits and write them down: the people who’ve stood by us, the comfort in suffering, the food we enjoy, the sleep we needed, the grace we don’t deserve.
2. Gratitude Sees That God Is Everywhere
The sermon used a beautiful phrase: we live in a “God-bathed world.”
It’s easy to focus on chaos—news cycles, global crises, personal stress—and quietly believe that God is not in control. But James reminds us:
“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights…”
Good things in your life are not random accidents. They come from Someone. That’s why everyone was encouraged to literally write “God” on their gratitude list.
When we recognize that God is always at work for our good—even through our own messy decisions and consequences—gratitude shifts from generic optimism to a response to a real Person who loves us.
The book of James also challenges us to release what we can’t control and focus on what we can: the small, daily ways we respond, choose, and love. That shift—from global overwhelm to local faithfulness—opens our eyes to countless gifts we were overlooking.
3. Gratitude Grows in Humility, Not Entitlement
At its core, gratitude is the opposite of entitlement.
When we feel like we’re owed something, it becomes almost impossible to say “thank You” from the heart. The teaching used a simple picture:
If someone hands you a car for free, you’re stunned and grateful. If you pay full price for that same car, it’s a fair transaction—you don’t feel like you’ve received a gift.
God does not want a transactional relationship with His children. He wants us to live in humility, recognizing that life itself is sheer gift.
Scripture warns us against grumbling—that low-level muttering, the constant sense that life is unfair and we’re not getting what we deserve. Grumbling and gratitude cannot coexist. When our hearts are full of complaint, it’s a signal to re-examine our entitlement and return to humility.
The sermon invited us to notice this:
If you find yourself too mad, too anxious, too annoyed at people and situations—especially things you can’t control—it might be time to ask, “Have I become entitled? Have I forgotten how much I’ve been given?”
Humility says: I am not owed this day, this breath, this food, this job, this relationship, this body. And humility naturally opens into gratitude.
4. Every Moment Is an Opportunity for Gratitude
If God’s will is that we “give thanks in everything,” then any moment can become holy ground:
- When you wake up and put your feet on the floor, you can thank God for another day to love and serve.
- When you see the Colorado sun after a gray week, you can be thankful for light.
- When you exercise or work, you can be grateful for a body and mind that can still be used.
- When you get a paycheck—large or small—you can thank God for provision.
- When you receive care, kindness, or generosity from someone, you can thank God for that person.
That’s why we were invited not only to make a list, but to choose one name on that list and circle it—someone who has impacted your life for good. The challenge:
Sometime today, write them a letter (or a substantial message) telling them why you’re grateful to God for them.
Not just a quick text, but a meaningful note of thanks.
You can give it to them, call and read it to them, or share it over coffee. It might feel awkward or vulnerable—but often the places that feel hardest to be grateful are the places where God most wants to grow us.
Gratitude at the Table of Jesus
The teaching ended at the Eucharist table—literally the “thanksgiving” table. On the night before His death, knowing He would suffer and be crucified within hours, Jesus gathered with His disciples for a final meal (Luke 22). He took bread and wine, and He gave thanks.
In the very moment He was facing betrayal, violence, and death, Jesus chose gratitude. He broke the bread and said, “This is my body, given for you.” He held the cup and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, poured out for you.”
We were invited to come to the table in that same spirit—to remember that in plenty and in need, palaces and prisons, we have a God who has given us His Son, His Spirit, and a community to walk with.
As we dip the bread into the wine or juice, we remember:
We are not alone.
We live in a God-bathed world.
Every good gift comes from a Father who delights to give.
