Welcome! We’ve just passed Thanksgiving. I hope you joined me in writing a thank you note to God. It is amazing how many things God has done for me this year. Remember how He spared me from injury this July when my lawn mower rolled into the ditch? I could’ve been badly hurt, but He protected me.
I’ve written about showing gratitude to people in previous columns, but today I want to think about showing gratitude to God.
How do we do this? Two ways come to mind.
Prayers of thanksgiving are the best place to start. God wants to hear from us regularly. He wants us to spend time with him, thanking him for all He does for us. He wants to know we appreciate Him.
You can also thank God by sharing your money. Uh-oh. Hot button issue here. But the Bible says we need to give ten percent of our income to God. That’s ten percent of your gross income, folks. Boy was I shocked when I realized this little nugget. I thought my husband and I were doing okay when he threw a check for $25 into the offering plate on Sundays. But when I realized that tithing was important to growing in my faith and that it was really important in God’s eyes, we started giving ten percent of our net income. Then I heard Dr. David Jeremiah preaching on Moody Radio about tithing. I sat back and smiled. I felt safe – we tithed every week, after all. Then he said we had to tithe our gross, not net, income. I was infuriated. Seriously?! How could we give that much?
But guess what: God provided for us. We always had enough to pay our bills. We even had enough to go out to Cracker Barrel and Hank’s once in a while. We realized God really does take care of our needs when we obey his command to tithe. I’m learning that showing trust in God’s ability to provide for our needs by tithing is critical to one’s faith walk.
Showing gratitude to God makes me think of the leper who came back to thank Jesus after he was healed. Remember the story? Ten lepers shouted to Jesus from a distance, asking to be healed. He told them to go show themselves to the priests. They were healed along the way. (Luke 17:11-19)
But only one man came back to thank Jesus. One out of ten. So Jesus got a tithe of gratitude. Doesn’t seem quite right, does it, for the other nine to go merrily along without thanking Jesus?
Let’s be different than those nine healed lepers. Let’s be the grateful one and spend time thanking God for his goodness today.
Have a wonderful week. Blessings!