Thank You

THANK YOU

With Thanksgiving just days away, this is the time of year when we focus on the reasons we are thankful. That might be harder to do this year with COVID but we still need to be in a mode of giving thanks. We should be in thank you mode the entire year; yes, even this year. There are still reasons to say thank you to God and each other. Maybe enduring through 2020 has caused you to put even more heart behind your thank yous. Two little words but they mean so much, don't they? When we receive a heartfelt thank you it warms our hearts. And when it doesn't get said it can make us angry or sad. Thank you-two powerful words.

1) Thankless.

Why is thank you so hard for some people to say? One reason is a feeling of entitlement. I don't need to say thank you since I deserved it in the first place. For some they might be socially inept. Since they weren't brought up to say please and thank you, they aren't in the habit of saying it when they ask for something or receive something. Not that it's an excuse, you're never too old to learn the importance of being polite.

It could be the other way around. Maybe you were forced to say please and thank you when you were growing up. Kind of like when you were forced to say, "I'm sorry" after you were fighting with your sibling. So you made up your mind that when you were older you would only say it if you meant it.

You shouldn't have to force yourself to say these things, but the question is, why don't you feel compelled to say it more often than you do? Why is there not a sense of humility to say 'please'? Why is there not an attitude of gratitude that moves you to say, 'thank you'?

Pride is another reason. I'm embarrassed that I needed whatever it is you're giving me; whether it's help doing something, money, food or whatever.

What about when it comes to saying thank you to God? Some people are thankless for what God has done for them. In Rom. 1 starting in vs. 18, you see Paul talking about God's wrath toward mankind for its sin. There's something interesting in vs. 21.

Rom. 1:20-21, "For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened."

When you read on you'll see that because of this reality and the fact that they exchanged the real God for man-made gods, God gave them over to their sinful ways. Paul lists those sins throughout the rest of the chapter. It's not a pretty picture of mankind.

In Paul talking about the depravity of mankind we see that it all started with people's refusal to glorify God or give thanks to him. We see that ingratitude is linked to futile [fruitless, ineffective, wasted] thinking and having a foolish and darkened heart. A thankless person's heart and mind are in bad shape.

"For although they knew God." They knew the truth about God and they knew what God wanted from them but vs. 18 says they suppressed the truth by their wickedness. They chose to silence the voice of God and instead listen to the voice of Satan. God made the truth plain to them but they smothered it; they blocked it out. So, God let them have what they wanted.

If they had worshiped God they would've been joyous and thankful but since they didn't they were full of envy, murder, strife and malice. Being thankless is a miserable existence. I could be experiencing joy and fulfillment but instead I live in misery and bitterness. Having a heart that doesn't glorify God and give thanks to him paves the way for all kinds of immorality. A thankless person will be a sinful person.

2nd Tim. 3:1-5, "But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them."

As I read through this list of sins did you catch that one near the middle: ungrateful? You might think being ungrateful shouldn't be included in the same list as brutal, abusive and slanderous, but there it is. There's a direct connection between thanklessness and unrighteousness.