How to Cultivate a Grateful Heart (episode 41)

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Right now, as you listen to When You Love a Prodigal, you will discover how to give thanks,

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no matter what happens. If you love a prodigal, you can find help and hope for your wilderness

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journey right here at When You Love a Prodigal, but also hope and help for your own life journey.

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Today, as we talk about growing a grateful heart, choose one of the helpful practices

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that I'm going to share with you to do today or tonight. Write me and tell me about your choice

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and how it's gone as you start trying to apply it. Once long ago, when I was young and single,

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living far from my family, it was Thanksgiving, and all my friends had gone to visit their own

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family for Thanksgiving. No one that I knew had invited me over, and I didn't have the courage to

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just invite myself. So as I was kind of working up a big pity party, I remembered that I had a major

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creative project due after the holiday, one I had not made much progress on. So instead of whining

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about what I couldn't do, I thanked God for the time to write and asked Him to give me an idea,

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an approach, and all the words to put it together. So that's what I did over the whole holiday

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weekend, and I think it might have been one of the best things I'd ever written. And maybe that was a

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real starting point on my long, slow journey to grow a grateful heart. Marriage and parenting

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added growth with happy times to be thankful and plenty of challenging opportunities.

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And then our son that got sent to us put that journey in overdrive. In the long 15 years of

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wilderness with him, there were so many hard times. Days and nights, scary choices, dangerous

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activities that I had many opportunities to practice giving thanks to our God. And so I can

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really credit our son, who was the hardest thing in my life, probably has one of the most significant

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contributions because his choices cause me to learn to give thanks all the time. And here we are,

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approaching Thanksgiving Day here in the U.S. Canada just had one, others have them. It's a time

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that people around the world want to say thank you. Most of us will gather with family and friends,

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eat way too much, and give a nod to giving thanks. Is it possible though to be truly grateful on this

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day set aside to give thanks? And what about the rest of the year? Can we walk through life

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with a grateful heart? I have found that practice makes a difference. I need to be intentional. I

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need to work at learning to give thanks. So consider these actions I'm going to share with you

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that can help grow a heart that gives thanks. And remember, choose which one you're going to apply

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first. I want to know about it. First, write. That is, write the names of people or places or

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blessings in your life right now that you can say thank you, Lord, for. Just writing it down. You

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have a journal, write it in a journal. Today, I am especially grateful for my daughters, Debbie and

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Michelle. They left their homes, husbands, and children and came to Florida to help restore some

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order to our home. 20 months of living and working in our home and rarely going anywhere

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had created quite a mess. In fact, my husband had taken over our entire Florida room where we would

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normally have guests, which I would like to do again. And so they came and they wrote a letter

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and so they came and they worked almost nonstop sorting, throwing, organizing, arranging,

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and ended up with three rooms in beautiful order, including an awesome home office for their dad,

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for my sweet husband, so that he's no longer taking up our Florida room. And I hope he's happy.

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But I'm very thankful. That's quite a sacrifice that my daughters, it was their idea to come and

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do it and they work so hard and I'm so grateful. And here I am, I wrote it down so I could tell you

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that story. Writing down the things I'm grateful for helps me make them more concrete and helps me

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remember them. So write it down. Remember. So you write it, then you remember how God has rescued

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or changed you. Think back on the hard situations that have made you stronger. Think of things that

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you rejoiced about and the gratitude flowed, but then there are the times that you cried.

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And yet there is evidence that God has been with you every step of the way. Since stories are such

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an essential part of writing and speaking and now podcasting, all of which I do, I practice this all

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the time. Stories are my currency, so to speak. So I remember the fun ones, the special ones,

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the special ones, and the hard ones. And I love to just let them run in my mind and remember what

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God has done. Like the time that my prodigal and his friend somehow went off the road in a neighborhood

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nearby and landed on top of an electrical box which started a fire in the car. Both boys were

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knocked out, but I am so grateful that our son came to, tumbled out of the car, stumbled around

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the driver's seat, and pulled his friend out. I saw the car later. It was like cinder. It was

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entirely burned up. We can write and remember the things that God has done, and they help us

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remember to be grateful and express that gratitude to God, to a person who's done something.

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I sent a thank you note to my daughter's husbands, thanking them for taking care of the kids and

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everything at home for the three days that their wives were gone, because they played a part in

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what they were able to do. Giving thanks to the people that should be thanked and always to God.

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Write it down. Remember. Read. Hear something. There are books that can help you grow a grateful

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heart. There are a lot of how-to books, and some of them are about learning to be thankful.

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Scripture, the Word of God, is full of examples of people thanking God, reminders to be thankful,

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even commands to give thanks in everything. Both the Old Testament and the New Testament emphasize

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the importance of thanking God. Once I did a study on giving thanks in Scripture,

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beginning with 1 Thessalonians 5 18, which says, in all things, give thanks.

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You could do that. You could look up thanks in the Bible and search why people were giving thanks.

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Or check out Psalm 145-9. You could write that down, too. And that will give you some reasons

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to give thanks to God. Then, after read, is reflect. Reflect on the fact that God is God,

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and God is good. Does that help you say thank you, Lord, in even the most painful situations?

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He's God. He's in control. Things have not caught him by surprise. But he's not just in control.

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He's also good, and he's doing good for us. The busyness of life, the bombardment of messages

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from our culture, the challenges of the choices of one we love, all distract us from the awareness

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of our God, who is active in every detail of our lives. As it says in the song Waymaker,

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I love this phrase, even when I don't see it, you're working. Even when I don't feel it,

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you're working. You never stop. You never stop working. You never stop. You never stop working.

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No matter what's going on in your life or my life, God is there, and he is working. He

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is bringing about his good, his care for us. He is making things that are going to need to happen for

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the future ready. He's working always, even if we can't see it, even if we feel lost, even if the

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pain is unbearable. God's there. He loves us, and he's working to do good to us. And that

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gives me a grateful heart. A heart of gratefulness stays aware of God in the beautiful events and

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joys and in the difficult circumstances and experiences. This kind of gratitude pays

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attention to what he is doing, what he is saying, how he is working. So growing a grateful heart,

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we can write things, we can remember, we can read, we can reflect, and then we repeat.

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It's kind of like, you know, wash and rinse and repeat. Read and write it down and remember

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and keep doing it. The most important way to cultivate a grateful heart is to practice

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being grateful, expressing gratitude over and over. In every situation, we express it.

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In our family, we have been intentional about learning to say thank you for the good and for

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what doesn't seem good to us. Here are some examples from my family. My husband, Steve,

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not long ago, he was faced with a number of significant challenges in our ministry, any of

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which could cause significant problems for the organization. If all of them took a wrong turn

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at the same time, the consequences could be severe. His response, thank you, Lord, that you are in

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control and I can trust you with this. So here's a little one. A couple of days ago, someone,

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I won't say who, left water running in our bathroom sink where a lot of my stuff was on the counter

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because we'd been reorganizing things. But there was some semblance of order. The water spread all

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across the counter and cleaning it up left my things in total disarray. My first response was

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rather negative, but soon I was able to practice a grateful attitude and say thank you, Lord.

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Our daughter, Debbie, several years ago, her husband, Nick, was diagnosed with a serious

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liver condition. It almost killed him and remains an unknown threat, though he has been fine since

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then. There's a little miracle involved there. We learned to be grateful to God. Both Debbie and Nick

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have said the situation changed our hearts, softened us, and made us aware of our complete

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dependence on God. It is a daily reminder to us to say thank you. Our daughter, Michelle,

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has never been a fan of running. She hasn't really liked athletic things and really active stuff.

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So she wasn't thrilled when her husband, Brad, took up serious running. But she joined him

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just to be with him and engage in what was important to him. And now, she says, it has

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become something I am thankful for to benefit me personally as well as the whole family. And then

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Josh, in his younger life, our son was not a grateful person, but God has done some beautiful

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work in him. For a number of years, he worked landscaping. Once, while he was trimming a large

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hedge, his chainsaw hit the metal fence behind the hedge, and it kicked back and hit Josh on the

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head, forehead mainly, but... And pretty much knocked him down. The first thing he did was pull

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out his phone and call 911. And then he said, I said, thank you, God. He recovered, no damage,

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except he has a Harry Potter-like scar on his forehead. And now it's your turn. How can you

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practice growing a grateful heart? Write it down, something that you're grateful for. Remember

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things from the past, good ones that you loved that you can be grateful for, and maybe some hard

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ones that you've seen good come from it, and you can be grateful. Read God's word. Let God remind

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you of his goodness, that he's God, and he's good, and he loves you. And you can reflect then on all

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that he's done for you, because you're where you are, because of all that God has done for you.

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And then do it again. Repeat. Make it a habit, a practice, so that your heart grows. You think,

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well, that's just mechanical. Well, to get started, it is a little bit, but it's our repeatedly giving

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thanks in every situation that causes our heart to begin to really believe that God is God, he's in

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control, and that he loves us, and he's doing good for us, even when we can't see it, to know that he

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is always working. And that is why we have a grateful heart, as it grows and grows in its

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ability to stop and say, thank you, Lord. Little things, bigger things, terribly hard things.

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Thank you, Lord, to the words I speak all the time. And again, I would love to hear from you.

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There's a little thing in the show notes that says, write to Judy. So I'd love it if you'd write and

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tell me, what did you choose? What is something that you're going to do to let your heart become

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more grateful? God bless you.