A Thanksgiving message from Pastor John Piper:
Gratitude is a humble, happy response to the good will of someone who has done or tried to do you a favor. This humility and happiness cannot coexist in the heart with coarse, ugly, mean attitudes. Therefore the cultivation of a thankful heart leaves little room for such sins.
There is a sense in which gratitude and faith are interwoven joys that strengthen each other. As gratitude joyfully revels in the benefits of past grace, so faith joyfully relies on the benefits of future grace. Therefore when gratitude for God’s past grace is strong, the message is sent that God is supremely trustworthy in the future because of what he has done in the
past. In this way faith is strengthened by a lively gratitude for God’s past
trustworthiness.On the other hand, when faith in God’s future grace is strong, the message is sent that this kind of God makes no mistakes, so that everything he has done in the past is part of a good plan and can be remembered with gratitude. In this way gratitude is strengthened by a lively faith in God’s future grace.
Surely it is only the heart of faith in future grace that can follow the apostle Paul in “giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 5:20). Only if we trust God to turn past calamities into future comfort can we look back with gratitude for all things.
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