Cultivating a Grateful Attitude

Written by Karen @ To Work With My Hands, Contributing Writer

With Thanksgiving coming up soon, people usually begin thinking more about having a grateful attitude. While that’s a good thing, it shouldn’t be reserved for a single weekend each year.

Although we may not want to admit it, our typical attitude tends toward ingratitude. Perhaps we wouldn’t label it that way, but when we find ourselves complaining, always striving for more, or being generally dissatisfied with what we have, we have ungrateful attitudes. Ouch!

Over the past few years, I’ve been working on this idea of cultivating a grateful attitude. I have to admit that I was surprised when I began having my eyes opened to my expressions of ingratitude. It wasn’t particularly easy to realize that I had been in the habit of being ungrateful.

How easy it is to wonder how in the world the children of Israel could have grumbled over anything at all after living firsthand God’s goodness toward them after they left Egypt. Yet, all the while, we walk about expressing dissatisfaction over the weather or how we can never seem to get ahead or whatever the latest less-than-perfect situation is that we may find ourselves in. I’ve been there. Sometimes I’m wallowing in it again.

Cultivating a grateful attitude is a Spirit-led, work-in-progress, and I’m grateful for what I’ve been able to learn and cultivate about, well…being grateful!

When I realized that I needed to work on cultivating gratitude in my heart, I was already familiar with many Biblical passages that address thankfulness. However, I had not given them the deeper consideration that I should have. Being grateful seemed so straightforward and as simple as saying “Thank You”.

But, as I began considering it more deeply, I realized that it is far more than just uttering a couple of automatic words. Cultivating a grateful attitude begins in the heart.

One of the most encouraging and helpful resources that I found was this book: One Thousand Gifts. You’ve probably certainly heard of it since it’s 2011 release. When I first heard about it, I was intrigued by the notion of keeping a journal to record things I’m grateful for, and wondered if it could really be that simple.

What I was thrilled to learn was, yes, it is that simple. However, through the simple act of recording a few things each day that I’m grateful for, my heart began to change shape.

Bit by bit, entry by entry, my focus began to change. And, as with many of the new habits I’ve worked on cultivating in my life, it really just opened up a door to a broader place.

One of my favorite verses about gratitude is 1 Thessalonians 5:18:

“give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

Through this verse, and others like it, I’ve been challenged during difficult days and circumstances to give thanks, regardless of how things seem or how I feel. It’s been a learning process, and as I’m learning to have gratitude for the hard and even ugly, as well as the easy and beautiful, I’ve realized in a fresh way that cultivating a grateful attitude is a God-honoring process and that being ungrateful is not.

I’ve also learned that when I choose to be grateful in all circumstances, my heart is changed, bit by bit, into more of the character of Christ.

I encourage you to consider a grateful attitude with me and how we can grow more toward being people who are always grateful – not just at Thanksgiving.