What does the Bible say about gratitude?

The Bible passages below can be used in sermons, prayers, pastoral care, or worship planning focused on gratitude.

• 1 Chronicles 16:8, give thanks (make known God's deeds among the people)
• Psalm 50:23, gratitude honors God (bring thanksgiving sacrifices to honor God)
• Psalm 118:28, give thanks to God (you are my God; I will extol you)
• Psalm 136:1, give thanks to the Lord (God's steadfast love endures forever)
• John 11:41, gratitude for answered prayer (Jesus thanks God for hearing him)
• 1 Corinthians 15:57, thanks be to God (thanks to God who gave us victory through Jesus)
• 2 Corinthians 2:14, thanks be to God (Christ leads us in a triumphal procession)
• Ephesians 1:16, giving thanks in prayer (I give thanks for you as I remember you)
• Philippians 4:6-7, prayer and thanksgiving (do not worry about your life, but in everything by prayer with thanksgiving, bring your requests to God)
• Colossians 3:15-17, gratitude in your heart (give thanks to God in everything)
• 1 Thessalonians 5:18, gratitude in all circumstances (give thanks at all times and in all places)
• Hebrews 12:28, gratitude in worship (give thanks with reverence and awe)

Sermon ideas about gratitude

What is the role of gratitude? Throughout church history, gratitude has been seen as a, if not the, prevailing motive of the Christian life. Regenerated Christians keep the Ten Commandments and pray out of hearts that are full of thankfulness. This can be the theme of a sermon on gratitude.

In all circumstances

1 Thessalonians 5:18 issues a glad summons to "give thanks in all circumstances." The preposition is important — in, not for. We don't thank God for cancer, or for any evil thing, as if God caused it or wanted it. God is light; in God there is no darkness at all (1 John 1:5). Yet even in evil circumstances God may bring forth goodness — strength, patience, humility, dependence on God, closeness to God. Give thanks in all circumstances.

The grateful Christian, moving gracefully through life with genial readiness to find good in all circumstances will sometimes have to scrounge it up out of unpromising materials. In Marilynne Robinson's novel Gilead, the chief character's mother has hung her hand-washed bedsheets to dry on the clothesline. A storm comes up and soaks the heavy sheets till they break the clothesline and are lying in mud. Her response: "I know there is a blessing in this somewhere."

Gratitude is personal

Christians are grateful to God. It's deeply satisfying to have someone personal to thank. It's much harder to be grateful in general. That's a little like being married in general.

The definition above includes the notion of being indebted. Some people doubt that a grateful person is indebted: after all, isn't it a gift she is indebted for, and if it's a gift, how can she owe anything? So far, so good. She doesn't owe money, or a similar gift back. But she does owe thanks. She has a debt of gratitude. And the giver has a right to expect her thanks.

The giving of thanks is a regular upbeat in the rhythm of a healthy Christian life. The Psalms ring with thanksgiving for the whole catalog of God's goods and services. For God's rescue work, for the law that puts spine in our lives, for the tender mercies of God that settle in around us even when we have shamed ourselves — for these things, and so much more, the poets of God send up their thanks like thousands of helium balloons.

The Psalms are mostly prayers and calls to prayer. But Paul does something else. Paul proclaims the great dying and rising events of Christ, binds us to these events, and then describes the style of life that naturally follows. Since we have already died and risen with Christ in our baptism, says Paul in Colossians 3, we ought to keep the rhythm going. We ought to let our old self drown and our new self rise like some glistening swimmer whose rescued life can never again be the same.

Since you have been raised with Christ, let gloating die and let compassion arise. Let malice die and let kindness arise. Kindness is, after all, not a moral handout, not a sort of emotional welfare we angrily pay out to the undeserving. No, kindness, compassion, humility, gentleness, and patience are the family style for the people of God. They show we have the rhythm of Christ.

And so it is with thanksgiving. Sermon on gratitude can show that everything in Colossians 3 follows from its opening clause: "Since you have been raised with Christ." Since you have been raised with Christ, be thankful, sing with gratitude in your hearts, give thanks to God through Christ. Three times in a row Paul urges thanksgiving as a natural feature of our resurrected character.

Gratitude is fitting

Why? What's the point? Surely not simply to keep the goods flowing, as if we were caged rats who had discovered the food lever. What's the point of thanksgiving? Surely not to fulfill some unstated contract with God: We like goods. God likes thanks. Even Steven.

No, thanksgiving as an upbeat in the rhythm of Christian life falls instead into a category that is easier to illustrate than to define. Thanksgiving falls into the category of what is fitting for grateful people. Fittingness isn't the sort of thing you can explain very well. It's like a joke. You either get it or you don't, and if you don't, you shouldn't ask to have it explained.

Fittingness. In so many ways God is a giver. How fitting it is that we should, so to speak, return the compliment. God gives and we give back. Among the things we have to give is the kind of hearty thanks that is right and proper and fitting.

Gratitude fits people who have been raised with Christ. Gratitude is part of the family uniform of the people of God. In God's world, what's right is also what's wise. It's right to express thanks to God. It's wise to do so too. As positive psychologists have been noting since about 2000, gratitude is a powerful engine of joy, of calmness, of lower blood pressure, and of many other benefits. The grateful person is living life the way God intended.

Excerpts about gratitude

Following are sample excerpts from Zeteosearch.org sermon resources about gratitude:

• "That's the way it goes with God. We are right, along with the psalmist, to feel overwhelming gratitude. But we are also right it will never suffice. And yet . . . there is every indication in the Bible that by the same grace that saves us, God does regard it as enough. Consider this the gift that comes on top of the gift. God is pleased with our feeble attempts to say Thanks." Sermon Illustration, Sermon Preparation by Scott Hoezee from Center for Excellence in Preaching
• "As a faith practice, gratitude is our response of thankfulness for God's goodness, love, provision, and grace. It is the undercurrent of all other faith practices—the well out of which they flow." Discussion Questions, Song Suggestions from Faith Practices Project, a resource of the CRCNA