What does it take to have a heart of thanksgiving? Can you just start looking around and thanking God for the blessings he has bestowed upon you? That’s an excellent place to start, but there needs to be something growing in our heart to indeed produce an attitude of thankfulness. It has to be the work of the Gospel that produces true thanksgiving. We have to understand what we are thankful at the core. Pure gratitude flows out of because we realize what state we were in before Christ saved us.
Isaiah 51:3
For the Lord comforts Zion; he comforts all her waste places and makes her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song.
Attitude Check
We are continuing in our Thanksgiving series as we get ready to celebrate our Thanksgiving holiday here in the United States. Isaiah shows us why there should be found in us an attitude of Thanksgiving. He describes what is going to happen Israel. The land will be laid waste by the Babylonians. Then God will return to his people, and he will revive their hearts and their land. Joy, thanksgiving, and a song will be found in them.
Barriers to Thankfulness
Thankfulness is a vital lesson for us to learn. Israel had centuries of disobedience to the Lord. Sure they went through the motions, but their hearts were far from him. Finally, his patience ran out, and he led them into captivity. After seventy years he brought them out and returned them to their land. We too can walk a path of disobedience and find ourselves in a mess we can’t get ourselves out of. The great news is that if we turn our hearts back to God, he will restore us. He will take our dry bones and bring life to them again. He will put us on a path of righteousness and give us his Holy Spirit to guide us. This will produce in us a heart of thanksgiving and put a song in our heart.
If you are on the path of resistance, turn back to Jesus today. Ask him to forgive your sins and restore you. Let him create in you a heart of thanksgiving.