Thank You

When my kids thank me for something I’ve done, I always say, “thank you for saying thank you.” I want them to find the value in the phrase, so hopefully they’ll make it a habit to say it after they have started the journey of adulthood. It’s not always a natural thing to say.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this as you try to grow in your faith… but you were a hot mess before Christ snatched you! You had a nature like mine that sometimes is bent on being negative for no reason. Someone says it’s a lovely day and you can find a cloud peaking behind the ray of sun. You find an adrenaline rush every time you hear gossip or  bad news from the friendly negative neighborhood nose.

It takes work to be positive sometimes!

The constantly breaking news, scandals, and feuds make us jaded to anything good.  And I’ve noticed when we’re called to be thankful, an entitled spirit makes us feel we deserve more than we have.

How can we be truly thankful for the smallest thing someone does?  Well, we have to humble the high horse that living-frustrated-for-what-you-don’t-have creates. A lot of us should just be thankful to be a part of the team.  God has given me eternal life. He doesn’t owe me anything after that.

But eternal life isn’t sexy anymore. In the new seeker, later is forgotten for now. But if your theology can’t be preached in a third world country where a Bentley and a Lear jet probably wont come to the guy who walked four miles to church for prayer, then your theology is wrong.

We must fight the culture and ourselves to have a thankful heart. When my kids finally do get around to saying “thank you”  (for stuff that they don’t even really need but I got it anyway because I’m just being a dad), I tell them that the gratitude they just showed has set them up to receive more from me.  An appreciative child will receive more from a father who feels appreciated. Same with God. Not that it’s a game. I don’t say thank you just so I can get.  He sees that kind of heart a mile away.  But I say thank you because there were a million things along the way that if God wanted to count me guilty for them, he had every right to.

So I’m thankful.

But again, real talk: it’s work to work through your emotions of frustration or jealousy, which I am guilty as well.  Having money problems doesn’t create the most romantic environment for you and God to have a love fest. But when the thousands of people who’ve lost jobs in this country start to remind you that a job doing anything at this moment in their life would really be appreciated, you learn how to shut up, put your big boy pants on, and realize it could be so much worse than what it is right now.

You never know what your father may be waiting to give you if he just heard the words “Thank you.”

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