Summary: In this conversation, Jennifer explores the profound concept of gratitude, emphasizing its importance as a lifestyle rather than a momentary practice. She reflects on the cultural emphasis on thankfulness during the Thanksgiving holiday and challenges listeners to cultivate a grateful heart year-round. Drawing from biblical insights, she highlights the significance of expressing gratitude to God and the benefits of maintaining a thankful mindset. Ultimately, she encourages listeners to make gratitude a consistent part of their lives, enhancing their overall well-being and relationship with God.
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Keywords: gratitude, thankfulness, lifestyle of gratitude, Thanksgiving, biblical insights, grateful heart, daily practice, positivity, mindset, appreciation
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Jen Cudmore (00:00)
So what if gratitude, what if giving thanks and having a grateful heart was never meant to be just a moment in time? What if it was meant to be a way of life, an outlook or a perspective, a sort of motto that we live by?
I think many of us have gotten to the place where we devalue the concept of giving thanks. And so as I’ve been reflecting on the concept of gratitude over the past few days, I thought I would just share some of those reflections with you. stick around for this episode and we’ll talk more about how to cultivate a thankful heart.
Welcome to Into the Depths podcast. I’m Jennifer. This is where we go below the surface. We dive into who we are and we break free of who we’ve been. And the topic that’s been on my mind for the past two days is not gonna surprise you, but it’s the idea of thankfulness, right? Because in just a couple of days, are here in the United States, we’re gonna celebrate Thanksgiving. And so it’s a time where people get together and they share things that they’re thankful for.
it’s really easy to lose focus around why gratitude is important, why it’s so valuable, and why we need to make it a regular part of our lives.
every November, at least in the States, there tends to be such an emphasis just in culture around the idea of gratitude. And it’s like, we get this reminder, yeah, I’m supposed to be grateful. Let me take a few minutes to ponder what I’m grateful for. And we gather around the table and we each go down, we’d go down the row and we throw out a list of A, B, C, here are some things I’m grateful for. And, ⁓ ooh, the food looks good, let’s dive in and eat.
And some people take it a little more seriously than others and it really depends on your lifestyle, your family and your friends. You know, there’s different things and I’m not saying there’s a right or a wrong way to do it. It’s just something I’ve been kind of wondering about is what would life be like if we thought about being grateful more than once a year?
Just the other day I was reading in numbers and well, I’ve been starting to read the Bible through so Genesis Exodus Leviticus numbers there are several places towards the beginning of the Bible where You know God has brought in the children of Israel out of Egypt and they’re ⁓ traveling and they’re gonna be getting their own Homeland soon the promised land that God has set aside for them, but there’s so much going on where they are constantly
grumbling and complaining and murmuring and muttering depending on which version you read ⁓ and so I have such a hard time reading more than like one or two chapters in a row because I just I find it so annoying how much they complained and it’s easy for me to look at that and say my gosh God has taken such good care of you look at all these good things in your life how can you have such a negative outlook on life when God is clearly so good
it’s easy to read the Bible and look at things like that and you know, not really think about or not apply it to our lives or reflect on what that means for us or what lessons we can learn from it. in general, just the typical human response is to brush it off and say, that’s not me. I don’t do that. But if we would pause and say, wait, is this me?
I think that we could learn a lot more and grow a lot more. And so that’s what I was doing as I was reading through there. Okay, let me like not focus on being annoyed at their lack of gratitude and their ungrateful hearts. But let me just pause and learn from this and say, where am I doing that in my life? Where could I be a little bit more grateful?
So I did some research because I was just curious, how many times does God mention in the Bible the concept of giving thanks or having a grateful heart? And depending on the translation, it looks like that it’s mentioned more than 100 times. And so to me, I would look at that and go, okay, if he talks about it that much, then the idea of giving thanks and being grateful is actually really important to God. That’s the way I would look at it. And so what, if he wants me to,
have a grateful heart, then I want to do that for him because he’s asking me of that. But not only because he wants me to, but also because I know there’s benefits behind it. And I have mentioned this in another episode. There’s a lot of scientific studies out there that show the benefits of having a daily practice of gratitude or a regular practice of gratitude and writing down the things that you’re thankful for and that you appreciate in your life. So definitely some health benefits. helps me
keep you in a better mood, it helps you have a happier life I didn’t want to dive into that super deep right now because I wanted to focus on ⁓ just the idea of how often are we supposed to give thanks. There’s a Bible verse in 1 Thessalonians 5.18 where God says, thanks in all circumstances for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. So I look at that and go, okay, give thanks in all things.
mean? Well, think that’s pretty clear. All things means…
all the things, right? So that sounds like God wants us to be grateful pretty often. He wants us to do it a lot. And so He doesn’t actually give us an exact number of how often we should say thank you, but it’s something that we need to keep to the forefront of our mind because if it’s important to Him, we need to make it important in how we live our lives, right? keeping in mind that there are definitely seasons of ⁓ mourning and sorrow and so
Sometimes it’s a little harder to focus on things that we’re grateful for and God does give us allowances. We don’t have to be thankful that bad things happen to us. But in that uncomfortable, difficult circumstance, where can we find the goodness? Where can we thank God and appreciate some of the little things or the little blessings that are coming about? I believe there’s always something to be thankful for. we just sometimes it’s harder to find it than in other times. So why am I talking about all?
this. I think that it’s so easy to focus on the negative things in our life or to even get complacent and forget to tell God, thank you Lord I know that you are doing these things for me.
And I would even say a lot of times we actually say thank you to humans more than we do to God. sometimes we forget to mention to him or to take notice of the things that he does for us. And we do need to make sure we’re sharing appreciation to other humans, ⁓ making sure that we’re paying attention, noticing, commenting, sharing our appreciation, saying thank you when they do nice things for us.
But
what about the God of the universe that’s taking care of us, that’s giving us blessing Sometimes it’s easy to overlook that he had a hand in things or even we can just do a quick, thanks God, I appreciate that and move on. what if we put more effort into that, put more time into that and really…
honed in on how grateful we are and really pressed into that, Lord, you are so amazing. I am so thankful that you did this for me or that you provided that for me, that you came through for me over here.
our thank yous can be a little flippant or a little obligatory. And so just being aware that sometimes we can fall into that, I think everybody does. We’re all human, right? We’re just going about life. But it’s important to pause and really ⁓ lean into that and don’t just quickly throw it over our shoulder. But make sure he really hears us and knows how much we’re grateful for the things that he’s done for us.
So I was also asking myself, how do you cultivate a grateful heart? What does that look like in day-to-day life? How do you develop a lifestyle of thankfulness? And I had a couple thoughts. I’m just going to throw these out, so hopefully you’ll find these helpful. I think definitely ⁓ putting some intentionality behind it. So setting aside time. I used to be really good at when I went to bed, I would jot notes in a gratitude journal.
done as well lately, but I definitely notice that when I make that a regular habit, even if it’s just one thing every day, usually I’m listing like three, I just go to bed with such peace in my heart and such… ⁓
such joy and such gratitude. As I fall asleep, really kind of sets the tone for ⁓ relaxing as I am drifting off to sleep. And then I’ve noticed that in the next morning, it also tend to wake up in a little bit better mood. So being intentional about what I focus on as I’m heading to bed and falling asleep, gratitude has made a huge difference in my quality of life for sure. So it doesn’t have to be at bedtime. It can be in the morning sometimes.
when I forget to do it at night, I’ll just jot some notes in my journal. That’s what works for me. I also definitely during the day I try to tell the Lord thank you for different things that I notice and I this ebbs and flows I ⁓
I’m human like everyone, some days I’m really good about noticing and saying thank you and some days I’m not. So I just want to bring awareness around the concept that I would say that it’s normal for humans to not think about.
gratitude to not consider things that we’re thankful for. I believe it’s something that we have to train ourselves to do and so I would just suggest that you consider how important this is to the Lord and begin to train yourself to do it more often. I just wanted to bring that up because God doesn’t actually give us a number. How often should we say thank you? Well, ⁓ I would think just like any human we all like to be thanked for the when we help somebody else or do something nice for them. It’s nice to get a thank you every now and then so God’s
same way when he does things for us I’m sure well I know he appreciates getting a thank you every now and then so yeah
being intentional to focus on the good, to take the time to write it down, to set aside time to reflect on what you’re grateful for, even if it’s just like one or two moments a day, that can be enough. But then also, I think comes the challenge of refraining from complaint, because that’s the opposite, being grateful versus complaining, because you didn’t like something. And I know that I’ve talked about this before, complaining ⁓ is a negative mindset, it’s a negative attitude, and we have to really work on it.
that kind of tends to come naturally where we just want to be upset about the things in our life that we don’t like or didn’t go well, right? So I was reminded the other day of Philippians 2 verse 14 that says do everything without grumbling or arguing and depending on the version, you know, do all things without complaining or murmuring and I think that sometimes it’s easy to forget that God doesn’t like it when
we complain. In fact, he has a Bible verse that says, don’t do it. So it’s so easy to fall into that when we don’t like something to really grumble about it. And sometimes we just go to like one person or sometimes we want to tell the world that we blasted out on social media. so, you know, one thing that that would be really good for us to do is just
take a moment to pause and check ourselves. Is God going to like it if I say this, if I talk about this, if I word it that way, would God be happy? Would he be honored by it or should I maybe pull back and find something to be grateful for instead? So these were just a few things that have been on my mind lately. I definitely want to be a person who is grateful often. that takes effort. That takes being proactive. And so I thought,
as I was reflecting on the concept of the Thanksgiving holiday for the US and how it’s so easy just to do it that one time a year. And how much would our life be better if we were cultivating that within our lives?
you know, every day. And how would that make God feel if we were to thank him more often? I certainly love to put a smile on God’s face and I’m sure that you do too. So one way to do that is to be, is to tell him, Hey Lord, thank you. God, I really appreciate that you did that for me. So as you go about your week, explore the depths of this final thought. Where can you be a bit more grateful?
How can you give thanks more often? What would that look like for you? But then how can you, instead of having gratitude just be a moment in time a couple times a year, how could you cultivate that into a lifestyle where you’re giving thanks more often? Bless you, friend. I hope you have a lovely Thanksgiving holiday.