WHAT HAS GOD EVER DONE FOR ME?” The question was asked in all seriousness, but I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
Most people in the world today and most people who have ever lived on this planet would consider the young man who asked the question highly privileged. He grew up with parents who loved him and gave him all kinds of opportunities to learn and explore life. He had been healthy and strong all his life. He was intelligent and well educated, haviång attended some of the best of schools up through college. He had traveled around the world and seen things most people will never have the opportunity to see. And he grew up attending church with his family and hearing the Bible read and taught by his parents, by pastors, and by gifted Bible teachers.
But somewhere along the line he decided he could no longer believe what the Bible said. He doesn’t claim to be an atheist. He doesn’t deny that there may be a God out there somewhere. But if there is a God, he surmised he was not involved in our lives in any meaningful or practical way. After all, as he said, “What has God ever done for me?”
Part of his disillusionment stems from his experience with prayer. He had prayed and asked God to intervene in certain situations, but what he asked God to do didn’t happen. He can’t see the kindness and goodness of God in all the things God has done for him because he is focused on disappointment over what God hasn’t done for him.
It still hasn’t occurred to him that the problem might not be God’s existence or God’s goodness but his view of God. The reality is, his disappointment with God is tied to a shallow concept of God.
A God who is little more than a heavenly Santa Claus who exists to respond to our wish lists won’t make sense when you experience heartbreaking disappointments or in the face of destructive things like marriage breakdowns, violent cruelty, cancer, famine, and war.
When people ask this Celestial Santa Claus to help them or to provide something they want, and it doesn’t happen, they get angry and resentful toward God and toward Christians who believe what the Bible says about God.
How can you thank a God who doesn’t do what you think he should do? How can you be thankful if you don’t get what you want in life?
An irrelevant God?
That young man is not alone in his ingratitude. A lack of gratitude toward God is characteristic of the whole human race. It’s one of the marks of our fallen, sinful condition. C.S. Lewis defined human beings as “The Ungrateful Bipeds.”
Ingratitude is characteristic of unbelief:
“For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened…” (Romans 1:19-21).
Paul is not suggesting that all these people have become atheists. Most people in the ancient world believed there were gods out there. But God was irrelevant to them. They chose to chase after something else, to satisfy the desires in their hearts with something other than God.
That’s true of most people in our culture. Not many actually claim to be atheists. They won’t deny that God might be out there somewhere. But he’s irrelevant to daily life. If God is there at all, he means well, but he can’t protect anyone from bad things that happen.
Even in churches you hear this idea of God. I was at a funeral a few years ago of a friend who was killed in a car accident. The pastor stood up and said, “God didn’t mean for this to happen. This was not his will. But because he gave people free will, he can’t stop evil from happening.”
So you are left with a God who is not all powerful or all knowing or in complete control of his world; a God who means well but can’t protect you from bad things or do much for you. You can pray. You can ask God for whatever is on your heart. But when it really matters, you can’t count on him to come through for you.
How do you thank a God like that?
God’s goodness
How different is the Bible’s view of God:
“What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?” (I Corinthians 4:7).
Abilities, talents, opportunities – you didn’t create yourself and endow yourself with whatever level of intelligence you have, or with whatever gifts you have that allowed you to get a job. Everything good comes from God, who made you.
“The LORD looks down from heaven, he sees all the children of man; from where he sits enthroned he looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth, he who fashions the heart of them all and observes all their deeds” (Psalm 33:13-15).
We live in a broken, fallen world. We are not spared the grief and pains of suffering that are common to the human race. But the sadness of our world is not the whole story.
“The child of God who lives in the world of the Bible knows himself to be a very little person in a great and awesome universe. Yet he is given a glimpse of the eternal counsels of the love of God, wherein, before the foundation of the world, the Son took for himself the role of the Lamb to be slain for sinners; wherein the Father pre-ordained to give his chosen ones to the Son as His bride. It is against this backdrop that man, though puny in his ignorance and twisted in his sinfulness, is seen to be the object of God’s love” (John Wenham, The Goodness of God, p. 48).
Gratitude flourishes in this larger perspective of reality: God is good. Life is a gift. That you are alive today is a gift from God. That you can see, smell, hear, taste and feel; that you have enough food to eat and clothes to wear; that you have a roof over your head to protect you from the wind and rain; that you don’t live every day in fear that your family will be attacked by hostile enemies – these are all evidences of God’s goodness.
“The LORD is good to all, and his mercy is over all He has made….The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand; you satisfy the desire of every living thing” (Psalm 145:9, 15-16).
Most of all, that God would love us and provide a Savior for sinful people like us is an infinitely glorious and gracious gift. God does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquity (Psalm 103). Thanking God for his goodness should be a regular part of your prayers and fellowship with God.
Give thanks
“Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever.” (Psalm 118:28-29).
“Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth. Serve the LORD with gladness. Come into his presence with singing. Know that the LORD, he is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him; bless his name. For the LORD is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations” (Psalm 100).
“Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving…” (Colossians 4:2).
“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (I Thessalonians 5:16-18).
“Don’t be anxious about anything…but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God…” (Philippians 4:6).
“Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving” (Colossians 2:6-7).
This is what God wants for you, and this is what he commands, not because he is insecure and needs affirmation. God tells us to give thanks not for his benefit, but for ours. Being thankful produces things in our lives that are good, things like humility and joy and dependence on God. By commanding us to be thankful, God doesn’t lay a heavy burden on our shoulders by commanding something unreasonable or something that is extremely difficult to do. Because God is good, he wants what is best for us. Because he is wise, he knows what is best for us.
Unthankful people tend to be unhappy people. Unthankful people are usually not content. They are self-absorbed: “It’s all about me.” They are not usually giving or generous people. It’s like the world owes them something and hasn’t come through for them. They got the short stick in life and it’s not fair. Nothing is ever good enough. They can always point out what isn’t right in the way they’ve been treated.
By commanding us to be thankful and to express thanksgiving, God is not just giving good advice or a friendly recommendation. He is telling us what is best for us. However, there are a few things we need to understand about the commands we find in the Bible.
1. That God commands you to do something does not assume you have the innate ability to do it.
“Love the LORD with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27). God knows what is true about our hearts. He understands what sin does to us. He knows our inability to do what God commands far better than we do. But he still commands what is in our best interest.
To a certain degree, you can discipline and train yourself to do what God commands. You can teach your kids to say: “Thank You.” You watch as someone gives them a gift and you hear no response come from their mouths. So you say, “What do you say?” And they come out with a bland “thank you.” After a while, they figure it out and they will say thanks in the appropriate situations.
Does that mean they are actually thankful? Of course not. You can teach a parrot to say “thank you.” Saying “thank you” and being thankful are not exactly the same thing.
When I was a senior in High School, I received a typewriter from my parents for Christmas. I wanted a bike and I got an electric typewriter. In my mind, a bike meant fun, a typewriter meant work. What were they thinking? A typewriter was not what I wanted and I didn’t feel very thankful. Selfishness and disappointment in not getting what I wanted was more powerful than any sense of gratitude. But I said, “Thank you. It’s just what I needed.” I knew what I was supposed to say. I didn’t feel thankful, but I said the words anyway.
That typewriter got me all the way through college and seminary. I had it up until I was married and we bought our first computer and discovered the beauty of word processing programs.
The typewriter was a good gift. It just took me a while to be thankful for it. (By the way, I was talking to some of our nieces and nephews about college a few years ago and told them that I had to write all my papers with a typewriter since I didn’t have a computer. One niece got a puzzled look on her face and asked with all sincerity, “Then how did you get your emails?”) My parents, in their wisdom, gave me what they knew I needed, not what I wanted.
I suspect God is like that.
We are commanded by God to give thanks. But what you find in your heart is ingratitude or at best, indifference. Every day of your life there has been air to breathe, food to eat, and clothes to wear. So you don’t even think that all the things you enjoy every day are an undeserved gift from a kind and giving God.
So saying “thank you” is one thing. Being thankful requires a change of heart. You can’t change your heart by telling yourself you should be more thankful. You need God to change your heart. And God is at work doing just that. He has given you a new heart with a new ability to do what God commands. He has given you the Holy Spirit to change your heart’s desires. You can assume that God will work in your life to make you thankful, because God wants what is best for you.
God commands us to be thankful. And God works in us to change our hearts so we actually become more thankful. But still, growing in gratitude won’t just sort of happen to you if you just wait for a while.
There is a way to grow in this area: You can think, remember, and consider what God has done for you.
2. There are always reasons for gratitude
“Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever.” (Psalm 118:28-29). The way to develop a more grateful heart, the way to grow in expressing thanks in prayer is to think about what God has done for you.
One of my daughters has been writing a blog for a few years. This year she decided she would try to think of one thing to be thankful for on each day of the year. She’s half way through the year. It has been fun to read her list as she reflects on God’s goodness to her in so many ways and expresses thanks.
If you remember the words of this praise song, you have been around for a while: “Count your blessings, name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the LORD has done.” That’s not just good, practical advice. That is what the psalmists encourage when they call us to give thanks to God:
“Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits” (Psalm 103:2). The psalmist then begins to recount the many ways God has blessed us: “Who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s” (Psalm 103:3-5). The psalmist goes on to say God doesn’t treat me as I deserve. He has loved me with a steadfast love. He has removed my sins from me as far as east is from west.
To “forget not” all God’s benefits is not a trite comment. That’s a serious command, which will produce deep joy in your life as you give attention to doing what God commands – being thankful.
“Let them thank the LORD for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of men…” (Psalm 107:21). In Psalm 107, the psalmist recounts how God had rescued people, provided for people, delivered them in times of trouble.
There are always reasons for being thankful.
3. Gratitude needs a direction: it is relational.
For reasons I can’t quite explain, I watched the Academy Awards program on television this year. It was interesting to hear so many expressions of thanks: “I want to thank my producer, my director, my mother, my colleagues, the academy for its reasonable insight in choosing me for this award this year over all the others…” Those receiving the awards all seemed to recognize that they didn’t get to this point in life all by themselves. Friends helped them. People gave them opportunities. Family members sacrificed so they could work (I was pleased to hear so many men thank their wives).
When an atheist is in a car accident and survives, I imagine the words “thank you” cross his mind. Someone who knows he almost died suddenly feels a tremendous sense of gratitude. But who does he thank? Does he thank the car manufacturer, the guy who worked on his brakes, the highway department that put the barrier there that kept his car from going off the cliff? The answer is probably “all of the above.”
If you don’t believe God exists or if you think God is a kind of power that pervades the universe (not a person you can know and relate to), God will not figure into your expressions of thanks very often. But I assume even an atheist feels thankful at times. He just doesn’t know who to thank.
Those spontaneous feelings of gratitude – that he should be thankful – are hints that there is a God in the universe. If something feels like a gift, that’s because there is a Giver:
“Every meal, every pleasure, every possession, every bit of sun, every night’s sleep, every moment of health and safety, everything else that sustains and enriches life, is a divine gift. And how abundant those gifts are.” (J.I. Packer, Knowing God, p. 147)
You can feel thankful for the gifts you receive in life; you can honestly feel that so many things in your life are undeserved gifts from God; you can value those gifts and appreciate them very much without thinking much of the Giver of every good gift or telling him “Thank you.” Expressing thanks implies a relationship: there is someone who has given. You have received. It feels right to tell them thank you.
When I give my wife some little thing, or when I give my kids something for Christmas, I want to hear them say “thank you.” I know my motives are selfish: I want recognition for my generosity and kindness and thoughtfulness. I want to know that they recognize my goodness.
There can be a selfish motivation in wanting someone to express gratitude for what you have done for them. But giving and receiving implies a relationship. And receiving sincere thanks for a gift given kind of completes the giving – it adds joy to the giving. A gift is something that is freely given, not out of obligation or a grudging sense of duty. Giving a gift is not a business transaction (as in, “If I give you this, I expect you to give me something of equal value.”). I give gifts to people I love because it’s a way of expressing love and it’s a way of enjoying the relationship.
God doesn’t command us to give thanks because he needs our approval and affirmation and recognition. He commands us to be thankful so we will understand something about reality – that we are not self-made, independent, self-reliant people. Ultimately, God wants us to express thanks so we will grow in terms of knowing him, the giver of every good and perfect gift.
It might not sound spiritual to talk about material blessings (physical things like food, water, a roof over your head, clothes to wear, a way to get to work). But the fact is, God put us in a physical, material world. To live for another week, you need food and water. And it would be nice to have a roof over your head and clothes to wear when it’s cold outside. We live in a culture that depends on cars and trucks to get to the grocery stores and to work. Food, clothes, a house, and a car to drive are not good or evil in themselves. If you receive them with gratitude as gifts from God, they are blessings from God. Giving thanks for these simple daily things is a basic, foundational part of prayer.
All of these material things like food, water, clothes, and a house pale in comparison to the gift of grace in Jesus Christ. What you need most today is forgiveness and peace with God. If you have all the food and drink and clothes and stuff you want, but don’t have God’s grace in Jesus Christ, you are poor. All these other things are temporary. Your life in this present world will end. What you need most is the life that is found in Jesus Christ.
But knowing that God has shown you mercy and grace in Christ, and knowing that whatever else you have in life comes from God, you have a lot for which to be thankful. If thanksgiving is grounded in gifts received from a person who cares for you, that implies a personal relationship.
Experiencing God’s goodness
How have bad things that you’ve experienced kept you from seeing the goodness of God or kept you from being grateful for the good things God has given you?
“There are indeed terrible evils in the world, but if we are to see things in proportion, we dare not dwell exclusively on them. There may be times when we feel the whole earth to be a vile place, and we never want to open a newspaper or watch a news program again. Yet to think of it in these terms patently represents only a half-truth. Almost all of us have a host of memories, if we care to summon them, of exquisite and breathtaking pleasures – the joys of friendship and humor, of home and love, the joys of adventure, the joys of the natural world, the joys of mental discovery, of literature, of drama. …If we once take our sin seriously, and extract all the evils caused by sin from our view of the world, we have to admit that most of what is left looks like something worthy of a good and glorious Creator” (John Wenham, The Goodness of God, p. 48).
Being Thankful In Advance
When the Apostle Paul invites us to approach God in prayer, he says, The Lord is at hand” (Philippians 4:5b). When something is “at hand,” it is close or about to happen. Paul says God is not far away and hard to reach. He is close to us, available to us, welcoming when we approach him.
“The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Philippians 4:5b-6).
Even as you lay your requests before God, you can know that God’s goodness doesn’t depend on can you what’s on your heart. Thank him that you can call him Father, that he loves you, that he will do what is best for you, that he will not leave you or forsake you, that nothing in creation can separate you from his love.
You don’t have to pretend that everything is good. God never asks you to believe that bad things are really good things in disguise. Evil is always evil. Wrong things that happen to you are wrong. Sin is always displeasing to God. Christians aren’t asked to pretend that everything is really good. We are asked to believe that God is good. There is no evil in God. God has no dark side that delights in hurting people. He is good always in everything he does. Why he tolerates evil in his world remains a mystery that won’t be explained until the story of this world is finished. In the meantime, we are asked to trust him and believe that he is working in all circumstances, even the wrong and sinful things that he allows people to do, to accomplish the greatest possible good.
Remember, your story isn’t finished yet. You can’t see clearly what God is doing. You don’t know how things that seem bad and things that really are bad that happen to you will be used by God for good in your life when it is all done. But you can know and rest in the truth that God knows what he is doing and he is working to accomplish the greatest good in your life.
When you believe God is good, you can be thankful, no matter what circumstances you face.
“Give thanks unto the LORD, for he is good…O that men would praise the LORD for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men.” (Psalm 107:1,31).
You have experienced the goodness of God every day of your life. Can you tell God “thank you?”