- May 5, 2000
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The Christian’s “Magic Wand”
Commentary From Dr. D. James Kennedy
Years ago, when my wife Anne and I came to Fort Lauderdale, we built our first home. It was a very “palatial mansion.” It cost $19,300 to be exact. It was our first home and it was absolutely perfect—until the day I was sitting on the patio and saw a crack running across the entire overhang.
My perfect house had just become imperfect! I had the crack patched and painted. Then it cracked again and the four-inch paint stripe turned yellow. Now I had a crack with a yellow stripe around it. My world was growing increasingly less perfect.
Finally, it dawned on me that my home had turned into one gigantic crack with a yellow stripe around it. All I could see was the crack, and I had become completely ungrateful.
Finally, I was awakened to my condition, confessed it, and thanked the Lord for the entire house, including the crack. I had learned a very important lesson: We need to be grateful, even in an imperfect world.
King Lear said, “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!” Our Heavenly Father, to a far greater extent, must be grieved by our lack of thankfulness.
We have, after all, so much to be thankful for—the gift of life, the ability to hear, see, smell, think, and speak. We live in a nation of enormous material wealth. We have the freedom to worship God freely and to participate in our nation’s political life.
Some may pass off ingratitude as just poor etiquette, a social blunder, faux pas, or minor sin. The Bible does not see it that way.
Ingratitude is a gateway to sin which leads downward into every kind of perversion and malicious sin. Paul puts it this way in Romans 1: “Although they [mankind] knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened” (v. 21 nkjv). The descending path begins with an unwillingness to glorify and be thankful to God, then continues step by step, until, as Paul writes, “God gave them up to vile passions.”
Unbelief, blasphemy, rebellion of heart, pride—these and many other sins find their roots in our unwillingness to acknowledge and be grateful to God. But if ingratitude is the gateway down, thankfulness is the first step up on our way to growth in grace and holiness.
The Christian life begins with gratitude to God for giving Jesus Christ to die in our place upon the Cross and for granting us the free gift of everlasting life. Having begun in gratitude, we
must continue and cultivate an active recognition of the gracious provision of a loving Father.
Thankfulness is an attitude of the heart, not a matter of circumstances. Goethe said that happiness isn’t so much an ideal of the mind as it is of the imagination. It takes thoughtfulness to be thankful.
“Thoughtful” and “thankful,” in fact, come from the same root word. In order to be thoughtful, we must be “thinkful”—we must take the time to recognize God’s many blessings in our lives.
An attitude of gratitude will permeate and transform everything about our relationship to God and to people. It is, in fact, a “magic wand” which can change our circumstances as remarkably as Cinderella’s were changed from scrubbing floors
to dancing at the great banquet hall.
All that we have comes from the hand of God. May I urge you to reflect and radiate during this season of thanksgiving and throughout the year, true gratitude in your thoughts, your prayers, and your conversation.
Commentary From Dr. D. James Kennedy
Years ago, when my wife Anne and I came to Fort Lauderdale, we built our first home. It was a very “palatial mansion.” It cost $19,300 to be exact. It was our first home and it was absolutely perfect—until the day I was sitting on the patio and saw a crack running across the entire overhang.
My perfect house had just become imperfect! I had the crack patched and painted. Then it cracked again and the four-inch paint stripe turned yellow. Now I had a crack with a yellow stripe around it. My world was growing increasingly less perfect.
Finally, it dawned on me that my home had turned into one gigantic crack with a yellow stripe around it. All I could see was the crack, and I had become completely ungrateful.
Finally, I was awakened to my condition, confessed it, and thanked the Lord for the entire house, including the crack. I had learned a very important lesson: We need to be grateful, even in an imperfect world.
King Lear said, “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!” Our Heavenly Father, to a far greater extent, must be grieved by our lack of thankfulness.
We have, after all, so much to be thankful for—the gift of life, the ability to hear, see, smell, think, and speak. We live in a nation of enormous material wealth. We have the freedom to worship God freely and to participate in our nation’s political life.
Some may pass off ingratitude as just poor etiquette, a social blunder, faux pas, or minor sin. The Bible does not see it that way.
Ingratitude is a gateway to sin which leads downward into every kind of perversion and malicious sin. Paul puts it this way in Romans 1: “Although they [mankind] knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened” (v. 21 nkjv). The descending path begins with an unwillingness to glorify and be thankful to God, then continues step by step, until, as Paul writes, “God gave them up to vile passions.”
Unbelief, blasphemy, rebellion of heart, pride—these and many other sins find their roots in our unwillingness to acknowledge and be grateful to God. But if ingratitude is the gateway down, thankfulness is the first step up on our way to growth in grace and holiness.
The Christian life begins with gratitude to God for giving Jesus Christ to die in our place upon the Cross and for granting us the free gift of everlasting life. Having begun in gratitude, we
must continue and cultivate an active recognition of the gracious provision of a loving Father.
Thankfulness is an attitude of the heart, not a matter of circumstances. Goethe said that happiness isn’t so much an ideal of the mind as it is of the imagination. It takes thoughtfulness to be thankful.
“Thoughtful” and “thankful,” in fact, come from the same root word. In order to be thoughtful, we must be “thinkful”—we must take the time to recognize God’s many blessings in our lives.
An attitude of gratitude will permeate and transform everything about our relationship to God and to people. It is, in fact, a “magic wand” which can change our circumstances as remarkably as Cinderella’s were changed from scrubbing floors
to dancing at the great banquet hall.
All that we have comes from the hand of God. May I urge you to reflect and radiate during this season of thanksgiving and throughout the year, true gratitude in your thoughts, your prayers, and your conversation.
