Recently, a member of the Uncommon Pursuit community wrote to me. He said, “I want to do what I want all the time. I need to stop that and do what God is telling me to do. Any suggestions on how I can do that?”

His question reminded me of one of my last conversations with my grandfather. He had lived a long and successful life. I asked him, “Granddaddy, what’s the most important lesson you’ve learned?” He paused momentarily and then soberly told me, “Carson, people are selfish.”

As a full-time ministry leader, I’d like to posture and reassure you that I’ve overcome this existential challenge. But if we can give each other permission to be honest, we can all relate to this tension. We want to serve God, but maybe we really want God to serve us. 

So, how do we handle giving thanks to God? 

The most common approach is to turn it on and off from time to time, but not allow gratitude to seep into the deepest parts of our hearts. We can pray before meals or mention what we’re thankful for at Thanksgiving.

But in our heart of hearts?

We’re self-made, independent, and in control. We know gratitude is good for us, but hold it at arm's length. We're suspicious of gratitude because we recognize that letting it in our inner castle would dismantle the walls of pride we’ve built to protect ourselves.

In Deuteronomy 8, Moses gives a prophetic word to the people of Israel. He warns them,

Be careful that you don’t forget the LORD your God by failing to keep his commands, ordinances, and statutes that I am giving you today.

When you eat and are full, and build beautiful houses to live in, and your herds and flocks grow large, and your silver and gold multiply, and everything else you have increases, be careful that your heart doesn’t become proud and you forget the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the place of slavery.

He led you through the great and terrible wilderness with its poisonous snakes and scorpions, a thirsty land where there was no water. He brought water out of the flint rock for you, He fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your ancestors had not known, in order to humble and test you, so that in the end he might cause you to prosper. 

You may say to yourself, ‘My power and my own ability have gained this wealth for me,’ but remember that the LORD your God gives you the power to gain wealth, in order to confirm his covenant he swore to your ancestors, as it is today.

If you ever forget the LORD your God and follow other gods to serve them and bow in worship to them, I testify against you today that you will certainly perish. Like the nations the LORD is about to destroy before you, you will perish if you do not obey the LORD your God (Deuteronomy 8:11-20, CSB).

The scholar Christopher Wright points out two dimensions of forgetting God. The first is to forget who God is and what God has done. Second, we forget God so we can ‘forget’ to do what God says. But Moses warns us that God does not forget!

To put it plainly, we avoid wholehearted gratitude to God because we’d rather forget him so we can stay in control.

For instance, if we don’t just say but sincerely mean the prayer, “God, thank you for creating me,” what follows?

If we confess not just with our lips but in our hearts, “Jesus, thank you for dying on the cross to pay the price for my sins,” what’s the implication? 

If we give thanks not just for our conversion but for the daily grace of keeping in step with the Holy Spirit, how does that reorient our lives?

Each question exposes how gratitude strips away our illusions of independence: If God created us, we're not self-made. If Jesus had to die for our sins, we're morally twisted. If we need daily grace, we're not self-sufficient.

Instead of being in control, we're in a relationship of total dependence.

But here's the paradox: what we think protects us is imprisoning us. Our strategies of self-protection - pride, control, independence - are cutting us off from the very source of life.

That’s why I talk about the gift of gratitude. It’s the gift of being thankful to God for everything. By God’s grace, it is a gift to experience gratitude because we know God, appreciate what God has done, and see how he continues to work in, among, through, and around us. 

This is the choice we face every day: 

Will we maintain control, or will we remember God?

Will we live in the fiction of self-sufficiency or depend on God?

Will we protect our pride, or will we practice gratitude?

Go Deep with God

Prayerfully read Deuteronomy 8:11-20.

Ask God to show you where you’ve forgotten him and where you need to reclaim gratitude.

Go Deep with Others

Where do you feel the tension between wanting to serve God and wanting God to serve you?

How have you experienced the connection between pride and ingratitude?

What makes it hard for you to accept complete dependence on God?

Go Deep in Service

Where have you been maintaining the illusion of control?

What would it look like to thank God for the opportunity to love your neighbor?

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Photo by Joeyy Lee on Unsplash