Scripture teaches that we are “in everything to give thanks.” This is a command and not an option.
Now, we must admit that there are times when Thanksgiving arises only out of a proper sense of duty. Someone has done a kindness to or for us and we know the proper thing to do is to say “Thank You.” Similarly, God in Christ heaps good upon us and we know that it is sin not to be grateful and so we offer up Thanks.
And sometimes, obedience out of a sense of duty is all we can find within us. Sometimes, we say “Thank You,” or pray “Thank You” and we wish that we were feeling it more than we do, and yet there is obedience in “doing all that is our duty (Lk. 17:10).”
So you see, there is a need for us to go beyond the duty aspect of Thanksgiving and to pray that God would give us a Thanksgiving that is spontaneous and genuine and not merely offered up because that is “the proper thing to do.”
Jesus warns against “vain” worship. “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me” (Matthew 15:8–9) and we might be cautious also about “vain” thanksgiving where we thank God w/ our lips, but we find our hearts don’t correspond to our lips as they ought.
We can not will ourselves to be lost in the wonder that automatically prompts Thanksgiving but we can ask God to soften our hearts so that we are more ready to see the grandness of all that God does for us and all that others do for us, so that the natural, unavoidable, and yet unbidden response is heartfelt Thanksgiving.
Unalloyed Thankfulness that isn’t merely perfunctory politeness is the overflowing of awareness of how blessed we are by the Lord Christ and by others. There may be times when thankfulness needs to be willed because it is what is required but we should pray that more often than not it is not the barren will that is driving us to give thanks but rather it is the explosive response, that quite unbidden rises to the surface, because it can’t but help do so.
This explosive and unbidden by the will emotive response is the kind of thing that happens to a woman when her suitor finally asks if she will marry him, or it happens when you see the Rocky Mountains at dusk for the first time, or it happens when you see your first born child for the first time. In such times nobody says to themselves… “Wow, I guess it is my duty to say something to communicate how impressed I am.” In the same way we should pray that more often the Thankfulness that arises from us comes unbidden because it can’t be helped.
To be genuinely thankful in this manner is the completion and compliment of the good that has been done to us so that we are thankful.
“As grace extends to more and more people it increases thanksgiving, to the glory of God.”
Thankfulness up because we can’t help it.
