Introduction

So far, the author of Hebrews has contrasted the Old Testament way of worship — oriented around the Law and ritualistic sacrifices — and the New Testament way of worship — a lifestyle oriented around loving God and loving others. This vertical way of worship focuses on gratitude for who God is and what He has done, while the horizontal elements focus on loving everyone, God’s view on sexuality and love, and the importance of generosity.  

We come now to a vertical element of the new worship lifestyle, an element so important that the author starts and finishes this passage with reminders to worship God this way.

Read Hebrews 12:28 — the heart of our worship is an ongoing, humble gratitude to God; “let us be thankful” is present-continuous.  Read Hebrews 13:15 — we should “continually” offer up a thank-offering, not of our flocks or fields as in Old Testament worship, but of our lips, speaking praise and thanks to God.

Not surprisingly, the rest of the New Testament places huge emphasis on this same theme. The frequency of these words and their synonyms is impressive: In the New Testament epistles, note the frequency of the related terms used in this sense: "thanks" (50), "blessed" (84), "praise" (28), "rejoice" (25).

So, cultivating a lifestyle and disposition of praising and thanking God is right at the heart of the new worship.  Here is a searching spiritual question as you consider the quality of your worship: Are you becoming a more rejoicing, grateful, thankful person?  

Would your work associates say this?  What would your spouse, children, and close friends say?  Or would they say that you are generally negative, gloomy, complaining?

Would you say that your prayer life is increasingly characterized by praise and gratitude?  Or is it dominated by whining requests and demands?

If you could record the last month's thoughts of praise and gratitude versus envy, self-pity and complaining, how would the ratio look?  Which direction is this headed?

Why is this so important?

Why would God want us to praise and thank Him all the time?  What would you think if your spouse, best friend, or supervisor told you: “You should spend time every day praising and thanking me.”  Why is this inappropriate for people, but not for God?

For one, people who want you to praise and thank them are usually insecure — they do not believe they are competent or worthwhile, so they need others to constantly affirm things about them when they doubt themselves.  But God is completely secure — He is all-powerful and has no needs.  Therefore, God’s desire that we praise and thank Him is for our benefit, not His. God is pleased when we thank Him for the same reason that good parents are pleased when their child thanks them — not because it validates them as parents, but because it shows that their child is maturing.

What is it about being a grateful, thankful person that is so integrally related to spiritual health and maturity?  There are actually two answers to this question.  We can use a medical analogy to explain these two relationships.

1. Gratitude is a “thermometer” that indicates the state of your spiritual health.

A thermometer is a tool that tells you whether you have a fever, one of the symptoms of physical illness.  It is not a medicine — you do not put the thermometer in the refrigerator and then stick it into your mouth to break your fever.  You put it in your mouth and it tells you if you have a fever.

In the same way, an attitude of thankfulness toward God is the most reliable indicator of your spiritual health.  More than anything else, it tells me whether or not I am thinking accurately about myself and God, and whether or not I am relating properly to God.  Conversely, an attitude of complaining and entitlement — that I am not getting what I deserve or that others have it better than me — indicates that I am in a fundamentally unhealthy spiritual state.

Why?  Because gratitude is the normal and natural response to one who has received grace.  “Grace” means undeserved charity.  In fact, “gratitude” comes from the Latin word for grace, which is “gratio”.  A biblically grateful person is someone who appreciates both how undeserving he is before God and how charitable God has been to him.  An ungrateful person feels he is deserving, and therefore expects God to give him his due.

Imagine a man who has maliciously committed theft and property destruction against another man.  He is arrested and discovers to his horror that the judge officiating his trial is the very man he committed his crimes against!  He drops any pretense of a defense, admits his heinous guilt, agrees that he deserves the full legal penalty for his crime, and faces the judge to receive his sentence.  Now imagine that this judge forgives him of his crime, refuses restitution, pays the court costs, and gives him a good job in his court.  What would the judge’s “grace” produce in this man?  To respond in any other way than profound gratitude is almost unthinkable!  Can you imagine this man grumbling about the verdict, or complaining about his pay or work conditions, or harboring any suspicion about the judge’s good will?

This is a ridiculous story, but the central message of the Bible is that you and I are far more undeserving than this man, and that God is far more gracious than this judge.  Read Titus 3:3-7.  If you truly personalize this, the discrepancy between your guilt and God’s grace produces gratitude.  What would it mean if you lack this gratitude?  It depends.

If you cannot relate to ever experiencing gratitude to God for His grace through Jesus, it probably means that you are not yet repentant of your sins.  I do not care how religious you are —  if you have good church attendance, if you have been baptized and take communion regularly, if your  Biblical doctrine is sound, etc. — if you have never been blown away by God’s grace, if your heart has never been pierced by how undeserving you are of God’s forgiveness, you have probably never truly met Jesus.

If you have experienced gratitude for this in the past, but your heart presently has no gratitude for God’s grace, what does this mean?  It probably means that you are God’s child, but you have allowed yourself to buy into lies that collapse the tension between your sin debt and God’s amazing grace.  These lies emerge spontaneously from our own fallen hearts, and they are constantly reinforced by our culture:

• the lies of narcissism: I am the most important person — not God.
• the lies of therapeutic positive self-esteem: I am fundamentally good — not a wretched rebel against God
• the lies of entitlement: I have the right to material abundance, comfort, good health, etc. rather than the responsibility to trust God’s goodness and wisdom and serve wherever He places me

To the extent that I listen to these lies rather than to God, I become more deserving in my eyes and God’s grace becomes less amazing in my estimation — causing my gratitude to be replaced by pride and envy.  This is one good reason to regularly read God’s  Word — it helps me stay aware of the depth of my sin and the height of God’s grace.

2. Gratitude is a “medicine” that promotes your spiritual health.

The wonderful thing is that gratitude is not only the “thermometer” — it is also the “medicine.”  If my lack of gratitude indicates that I am spiritually unhealthy, I can improve my spiritual health by cultivating a grateful attitude.

And you will find that cultivating a grateful attitude will result in experiencing more true happiness.  

The Bible promises this in Philippians 4:6-7 and throughout the book of Psalms.  Even secular psychologists Christopher Peterson and Martin E.P. Seligman confirms this in their book, Character Strengths and Virtues, “Grateful people report higher levels of positive emotions, life satisfaction, vitality, and optimism and lower levels of depression.... Grateful individuals place less importance on material goods... they are less likely to be envious of wealthy persons and they are more likely to share their possessions with others... Grateful people are more open to experience, more conscientious... more agreeable, and less neurotic than their less grateful counterparts.”

What is involved in cultivating a grateful attitude?  Let us break this into two general areas.

1. First, you need to reject two common misconceptions that stop you before you start:

• The first misconception is: “I cannot be grateful unless my circumstances are good.”  The amazing truth is that circumstances have ultimately nothing to do with gratitude.  Some of the most grateful people I know have or had horrible circumstances, and some of the most ungrateful people I have ever met have great circumstances.  Gratitude is rooted in two great promises from God — He has forgiven me even though I deserve His judgment, and He is at work for good in all of my circumstances (see Romans 8:28 and  Ephesians 5:20).
• The second misconception is: “It is fake to give thanks when I do not feel thankful.”  Actually, it is faith to give thanks on the basis of what is true, even if you do not feel thankful.  And it is choosing to give thanks, even and especially when you do not feel it, that will lead to feeling thankful.

2. Second, you need to practice gratitude in several ways.  Consider these examples, and take action on the ones God draws your attention to:

• Prioritize thanksgiving in your prayer life (see Colossians 4:2) versus letting it get crowded out by petition.  Always include it, and sometimes focus on it alone.
• Focus on all aspects of your salvation and personalize it: adoption and sovereign care, forgiveness, revelation and role, inheritance, Holy Spirit, freedom from sins and Satan's authority, and so on.
• Take note of “small” blessings — existence, nature, health, beauty, and so on — and actually express thanks to God for them versus taking them for granted and acknowledging without expressing thanks.

• Utilize spiritual songs (see Colossians 3:16).  They often have the power to lift my eyes and heart when nothing else does.
• Ask God to sensitize you to internal negativity and complaint.  When He does this, promptly turn away from these thoughts and replace them with thanks in the related areas.  
• Give others, such as your spouse, children, or friends, the permission to let you know when you are being ungrateful.
• Keep a regular, ongoing journal of what you are thankful for day by day, week by week.  
• Set aside time to reflect on how God has worked through past negative situations for good in your life.  This will help you believe that He is doing so in present negative situations — and thereby help you to thank Him now.
• Warmly thank people who bless you in the small, mundane moments.   This will complete your enjoyment of the blessing, and it will increase your capacity to see other blessings.

This is a documented key to a good marriage, and absent in almost all failed marriages.  This is also a key part of being a good witness in this cold, ungrateful world!

Spend quality time with  grateful people and people who are committed to becoming more grateful.  They will convict you of your ingratitude and inspire you to become like them!  This is one of the greatest benefits of being in fellowship with other growing Christians.