On Gratitude

I’m so thankful beyond Thanksgiving. Having one day does not do the concept of gratitude towards God any justice. Allow me to introduce a blessing of a habit that has started to become a daily, habitual practice in my life that I try and do every day. It’s called daily gratitude. It’s pretty simple, you just start saying things, often, the first things that come to your mind that you’re thankful about. It doesn’t have to be super grandiose, it doesn’t have to be super eloquent and you surely don’t have to do it to put a check in the box going full legalistic mode. You just have to authentically give gratitude to God for the first things that come to your mind. Sometimes it’s like “I’m thankful for coffee,” “I’m thankful for breath in my lungs, I’m thankful for good health, family, friends....” and then you start to get on a gratitude spiral and there have been moments where I cannot stop being thankful and I cannot stop listing things that I’m thankful for because gratitude can be a thought spiral, too, that keeps spinning. Yet, then there are moments where I can’t think of anything and it’s hard to quickly utter things I’m seriously thankful about but I still push through and find a few things to enter the gates with thanksgiving.

If I’m real honest this year, I’ve really wrestled with the idea of gratitude at greater lengths than other times. There’s been so many seasons where I’ve been restless in terms of personal qualms I wrestle with that gratitude has really been the key to cut through that which is a hole I have a hard time running over.

Gratitude, for me, this year has been a whole nother ball game in terms of just being thankful for breath, life, friends, family, relationships, connection, a job, knowing God in a deeper way and becoming more thankful over His track record of leading, guiding, pruning, etc.

When I’m thankful for what God has done it allows me to cut through the mindset of scarcity over what isn’t, when I look at WHAT is.

Because when I’m looking to God over what I DO have and what He has done in my life and in so many others it helps me cut through the visionary gap of what isn’t.

Gratitude, for me personally, has really been a key of cutting through that which has been deemed not.

People!! We live in a consumption based society that says we have to be busy, we have to do more, earn more, be more, say more, see more, experience more, travel more, more more more more, etc that it gets exhausting when you find out you missed expressing gratitude over the very thing that was already yours.

I think immediately a healthy response to renew the mind to and experience personal inner transformation is by going full Romans 12:2 on this situation and quoting first “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

In this context, when one hits the scarcity mindset it is to flip the switch to a gratitude mindset and start listing quickly what you do have instead of what you want to have or don’t have or where you aren’t to then renew the mind here.

Psalm 100:4… what really erupts when you flip out of the scarcity mindset is an abundance mindset that says God “you supply ALL my needs.”

Psalm 100:4

His Steadfast Love Endures Forever 1 Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! 2 Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into his presence with singing!

3 Know that the Lord, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his;[a] we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name!

5 For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.

Oh, enter the gates with thanksgiving...

Oh, you best believe your boy is WAKING up every day expressing gratitude ...

See, when I start to change the way I look at a situation, the way things look change. When I shift the way I see scarcity and flip it with gratitude, my situations and perspectives change. It’s no longer a pity party or a woe to me, but a praise party over who God is and what He has done.

Flip. Your. Switch.

Change. The. Mindset.

The Israelites were upset they didn’t have some nice filet mignon, or steak, or whatever they wanted when they were in the wilderness after eating manna for days in Exodus 16. God only knows how long it had been. But if they just flipped it around and flipped the switch they could’ve flipped to a place of gratitude to God for providing the same thing day after day regardless if it was the same thing called manna. By flipping it, they could’ve then started listing out all they could with the manna they had...

And this is the part where we start listing out all the different things one can do with manna going full Forrest Gump style where Bubba listed all one could do with shrimp: “manna nut bread, manna nut pancakes, manna ball soup, manna bread, manna cookies... fried manna, manna roasted in fire with some oils.” The list goes on and on.

See when I have a picture in front of me and that’s the ONLY angle I’m currently looking at it from, I have to learn how to #FLIP it. I gotta learn how to either move myself around and get in a position to look at it different or I must physically move the picture around and flip it as is to see it from a different angle. Either way, I know that gratitude when the world and all of us only see scarcity in a picture’s moment can be experienced when we flip our perspective around to see that abundance was there all along.

Because the abundance of manna was there all along whether or not the Israelites saw it when they wanted steak/lobster or a Chick fil A sandwich at a moment’s notice in Exodus 16.

This is also about understanding the concept of perspective and knowing that it is sometimes 100% necessary to flip perspective around. Scarcity is something we must flip, because I am willing to bet in all cases of scarcity, we can still locate abundance even when we’ve been fixated on scarcity.

Perspective is at a moment in time. It’s like a company’s balance sheet that details the financial picture of a company’s finances.

Perspective really operates from the vantage point you are at. So, if you’re at a ground level looking at a problem or the context of a situation, it’s almost as if you have to get to higher ground and look at it from a fresh lens. In contrast to a ground’s eye view, there is also a bird’s eye view that can provide a different vantage point to allow you to see higher than what you saw from the ground view. So, gratitude allows me to see from a different perspective – call it the higher ground if you may. As a result, it’s as if gratitude is the KEY to unlocking what was already in you and around you while scarcity was the one trying to get you to think elsewhere whilst gratitude was the one trying to get you thinking the very things internal and external around you. Thus, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta flip it.

Last thoughts on gratitude: it’ll keep you from becoming spoiled or entitled and it’ll surely keep you humble. Gratitude keeps you humble, because it almost points to thanking someone or something that is beyond me that I can’t take 100% credit for. It’ll keep you from becoming spoiled because you’ll look to nurture what you already have instead of purchase more fruit elsewhere only to see that what was already in your fruit basket has become spoiled. It’ll hold you back from entitlement because you know that you don’t have a right to everything but that everything is almost a gift that can be taken away, but that you treasure that because you know that.

Flip. Your. Switch.

Change. The. Mindset.

May this post flip your perspective and get in you in the mindset that Thanksgiving is EVERY day and that we must enter in the gates with thanksgiving always.