GRATEFULLY OBEDIENT

 Thanksgiving came… what a wonderful time of year to be grateful! Last Thursday, many people thanked God for various things. Food, shelter, clothes, and family often top our lists. God’s grace is listed hopefully first.

  

“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (James 1:17). 

  

Being grateful is good but being grateful can have nothing to do with God at all, Marshall Segal of desiringGod.org says. 

  

“Even when it [gratitude] is offered to him — often in some trite, ambiguous, once-a-year way — it has little, if any, regard for him beyond his gifts. No affection, and no allegiance,” says Segal. 

  

God does not bless us simply so we will be thankful and give him recognition. He blesses us so we will be filled with faith and joy in him, Segal says.

  

Pastor John Piper says, “The Bible rarely, if ever, motivates Christian living with gratitude. Yet this is almost universally presented in the church as the ‘driving force in authentic Christian living.’ I agree that gratitude is a beautiful and utterly indispensable Christian affection. No one is saved who doesn’t have it. But you will search the Bible in vain for explicit connections between gratitude and obedience.”

  

Can we be grateful yet not motivated to obey God? 

  

“Gratitude does look back, but it’s only a matter of time before it has the Christian looking forward,” Segal says. 

  

Jesus said, “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father” (John 14:21).

   

Gratitude can be dangerous.

  

“One great danger in gratitude is our temptation to thank God and then attempt to pay him back,” Segal says.

  

“Nothing you will do next year will make you any more saved. You cannot meet any of God’s needs, because he has none,” Piper says.

  

“God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things” (Acts 17:24-25).

  

“Our gratitude should inspire us to move forward in throwing ourselves more fully on his grace, rather than to try and rebuild or repay on our own what he’s already freely given us… Lift your eyes in faith above every gift to your all-satisfying, never-failing Father in heaven,” Piper says.

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