Gratitude … It’s All About Attitude!

Gratitude … It’s All About Attitude!
John R. Petrilli

It was the spring of 1620. Six months earlier 101 religious refugees fleeing English persecution landed on the Massachusetts coastline. In the ensuing months one-half of the passengers on the Mayflower died, and most of the remaining travelers became sick with pneumonia, tuberculosis, and scurvy. Numbered among the dead was Dorothy May Bradford, wife of governor William Bradford, who tragically drowned in the Cape Cod Bay. Despite a three-month drought that withered the corn and cracked the ground, these hearty souls endured major losses, built houses, and succeeded in planting the first colony in the New World.

What’s even more amazing, they gathered together on November 29, 1620 to hold a colony-wide celebration of thanksgiving to God! How could they do that? They had learned the secret of cultivating an attitude of gratitude. The pilgrims knew their Bibles, and they believed it’s teaching that God desired them to “give thanks in all circumstances”. As Thanksgiving 2005 approaches, we have every reason to possess a grateful heart. To help us experience that blessing, Psalm 103 provides three tips that will help us to cultivate an attitude of gratitude.

WE CULTIVATE AN ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE BY ENGAGING IN SPIRITUAL MATHEMATICS. Psalm 103:3-5

The author of this Psalm, David, experienced a lifetime of God’s deliverance, blessing, protection, provision, and prosperity. David begins his poem with a self-exhortation to combat his tendency toward spiritual dementia. As if looking into a mirror, David tells himself not to forget all of God’s blessings on his life. If you’re not feeling all that thankful this season, you may want to check your “forgetfulness” file to find the reason why. Blessings continue to fall all around us, but forgetfulness can easily rob us of the joy of gratitude. While our media-driven culture sows its seeds of greed, materialism, and discontent, we can sit back and take stock of all that we DO have. That’s what is meant by the phrase “spiritual mathematics”. It’s the discipline of counting and savoring each and every blessing in our lives.

The First Calculation in Spiritual Math Involves Spiritual Blessings. As the song “Count Your Many Blessings” encourages, we engage in spiritual mathematics by itemizing one by one the ways God has blessed us. The first blessing David included on his “Thank you” list was forgiveness of sins. While David was indeed a man after God’s own heart, he was also a man with feet of clay just like us. He knew all too well the agonies of spiritual defeat, and the crushing weight of unconfessed sin. But David also knew what it meant to be forgiven by God. He knew what it was to fall, but he also knew what it was to be restored to a place of fellowship and usefulness. In Psalm 32 David describes the total recovery he experienced as he cast himself totally upon the mercy of God. So in writing Psalm 103 he places forgiveness and restoration at the top of his “thanksgiving list”. But there’s more. Also included on his list is deliverance from an eternity of spiritual loss. In verse 4 David cites God’s act of delivering his life from eternal ruin and destruction. The death-wage of sin is comprehensive, including both physical as well as spiritual death. David’s awareness of the awful and endless consequences of sin made him all the more grateful for God’s deliverance. Have you experienced forgiveness of sins and deliverance from a Christless eternity? If not, this could be your first REAL Thanksgiving! For those of us who have, not a single day should go by without pausing to thank God for the saving sacrifice of His dear Son on the Cross. Despite a life of constant trial and intense suffering, the apostle Paul remembered what he was delivered from with these words: “God rescued us from certain doom.” (2 Cor.1:10, Message). David celebrated his salvation, and so did Paul, so the question remains, “Are we celebrating OUR salvation?”

The Second Calculation in Spiritual Math Involves Temporal Blessings. “If you have your health, you have everything!” I think David would have subscribed to that maxim, for we see him thanking the Lord for his health. As David begins to ponder his earthly blessings he realizes that while many around him are sick, he enjoys good health. He also attributes the health we enjoy as a direct or indirect blessing from the Hand of God. Whether it’s through the prayer of faith, or the wisdom of a physician, God alone gets all the glory for restoring and maintaining our bodily health. It is He who “heals all our diseases”. David fell victim to sickness and disease just as we do. Sometimes he just fell ill, while other times he was under divine disciplinary action. In Psalm 32 David gave a detailed description of the latter, as God used orthopedic pain and dehydration to bring him to his spiritual senses. God’s purposes were eventually accomplished as David confessed his sins and was mercifully healed and restored by God. Whether our sickness is incidental or disciplinary, God has included healing in the benefits package we can so heartily thank Him for. But David doesn’t end there, he goes on to add material prosperity to his thank you list. In verses 4 and 5 he paints a picture of a coronation ceremony where God is placing a crown of blessing upon his head. Back in David’s day, blessing was measured in terms of agricultural yield and livestock. Psalm 65:11-13 depicts God crowning the year with goodness in the form of huge flocks and overflowing fields of grain. Proceeds from the sale of these agricultural products provided a significant source of monetary income. According to the apostle Paul, our possession of food, clothing, and a roof over our head is cause enough for thanksgiving! (1 Timothy 6:8). When was the last time you thanked God for the precious gift of your salvation? When was the last time you thanked Him for something so valuable as your health, or something so necessary as your daily provisions?

WE CULTIVATE AN ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE BY ACKNOWLEDGING THE MANIFOLD MERCIES OF GOD. 8, 11, 12, 17

Next time you find yourself singing the song, “I Will Sing Of The Mercies of the Lord Forever”, look up to Heaven because David may be singing right along with you. David gives us a mini-seminar on mercy in this Psalm.

First He Tells Us that God’s Mercies are LIMITLESS! In verse eight David says that the mercies of God abound. When the world dispenses benefits, it measures them out in an exacting, stingy manner. Not so with God. When He extends His mercies to us, they are poured-out in an abundant and overflowing manner, as each new day brings fresh, new mercies.

Second, David Declares God’s Mercies to be FATHOMLESS! In verse 11 we discover that the volume of God’s mercies are as great as the distance
between heaven and earth. In ancient times they didn’t have the benefit of modern scientific instruments. To them the distance between the starry heavens and the earth was incalculable, and thus quite unfathomable. Today we know from radio telescope measurements that the distance from earth to the nearest star is around 25 trillion miles. But even though we know the distance between the earth and the heavens, for all practical purposes, that distance is still unfathomable. That’s how it is with God’s mercies! They are far too vast to comprehend. Remember that the next time you come to God for forgiveness of a repeated failure.

Third, We See That God’s Mercies Are MEASURELESS! “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.” In verse 11 we saw David draws an illustration from the field of astronomy, and here in verse 12 he uses an illustration from the field of geography. In the world of geography the terms “east” and “west” are really imaginary designations. There is no actual beginning nor end to either direction. So the distance between them is technically immeasurable. In His mercy, God moves our sins so far away from us that they’ll never have any influence on our standing with or acceptance by God.

The Fourth Quality about God’s Mercies is that They’re TIMELESS! In verse 17 David rejoices over the fact that God’s mercies last “from everlasting to everlasting”. In life we catch a “break” every once in a while. But God’s mercies just don’t stop coming, and unbelievably, they never will. David uses a clever play on words here. Having commented on the brevity of human life, he holds up the chronological length of God’s mercy, and that span works-out to FOREVER. “Everlasting” has no beginning and no end. God’s mercies have been bestowed on us in the past, are being bestowed on us in the present, and will continue being bestowed on us on into eternity! When was the last time you expressed your appreciation to God for the countless tender mercies He has favored you with?

WE CULTIVATE AN ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE BY DEVELOPING THE FINE ART OF PRAISE. 20-22

As David wraps up this Psalm, he closes with a crescendo of praise. He does so by describing the three languages of praise. First, in verses 20-21 he identifies praise as the language of heaven as he exhorts the courts of glory to render their praise to God. Included in this charge are angels as well as the entire heavenly host. Isn’t it interesting how whenever Scripture provides a glimpse of Heaven, we’re often ushered into a scene of thunderous praise? If you don’t enjoy praising God, perhaps you should consider canceling your reservations for Heaven?

In verse 22a we learn that praise is also meant to be the language of the entire universe! David proceeds to “cheer-on” the rest of the created universe to engage in praise. One may wonder just how inanimate objects like stars can actually engage in praise, yet in Psalm 148 we see the sun, moon, stars, fire, hail, snow, wind, mountains, hills, trees, animals, fish, birds, and even insects praising their great Creator. God created everything in the universe for His pleasure, and that pleasure is fully realized as each part honors Him with its praise.

Finally, in verse 22b we find that praise is to be the language of the human heart. “Bless the Lord, O My Soul!” shouts David. And with good cause, for we’ve been redeemed at great cost, and Ephesians 1 reveals that the end result of our salvation is to bring praise to God for His glorious grace! For practical purposes, I’d like to end this article with what I call “Four Pictures of Praise”.

In Psalm 116:12-14 David uses the picture of an offering as he takes up the cup of salvation as a tangible way of saying “thank you” to God. The point here is that our sacrifice of praise should be offered up WILLINGLY. In Hebrews 13:15 the apostle Paul uses the imagery of a harvest offering to parallel the act of giving verbal praise to God. Here we see that our sacrifice of praise is to be offered up on a continual basis. In 1 Peter 2:9 the apostle Peter chooses the sacrificial duties of the Levitical priesthood to provide a parallel to the believer’s calling to offer up the spiritual sacrifice of praise. Now there’s one duty we won’t want to be found derelict in! The concept here is that our sacrifice of praise is to be offered up publicly. And then there’s the exhortation in Psalm 103:1 bless the Lord with everything that’s within us. This implies that we’re to offer our praises wholeheartedly. Here David reached the pinnacle of praise where his entire personality was involved in the act. Wholehearted praise engages every fiber of our being. God didn’t withhold any benefits from David, so David, in turn, doesn’t withhold any part of himself from God.

The Lord pulled-out all the stops with blessings, and David pulled-out all the stops in his response of praise! I can think of no better time than Thanksgiving to pull-out the stops praise the Lord!