How Gratitude Maximizes Our Joy

The Bible says, In everything give thanks. Really, in everything, in bad things, in hard things, were to give thanks?

Sam Crabtree says yes, and he says there's a reason why. I've tested this with many people who would say that if they look back over their life and they identify the hardest experiences they ever went through, stuff they don't ever want to have happen again, stuff that they pray will never happen to the people that they love. Nevertheless, God was up to such profound good that now they're thankful, and they wouldn't have God remove that from their life. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Anne Wilson.

I'm Bob Lapine. You can find us online at FamilyLifeToday.com. We read in the Bible that God is working everything in our lives for good, for those who love him, for those who are called according to his purposes. Sam Crabtree joins us today to help us understand how, as a result of that, we can give thanks in all things. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. When I was in, I think it was seventh grade, our family took a family spring break trip from St. Louis to Panama City Beach a week in Florida as a family. And my parents told me that I could invite a friend to go along. And so I asked my new best friend, Tom Dar, who we'd just met, do you want to go to spring break with us?

And he said, yeah. So we were having a great time. Well, Tom, I don't know if his mom and dad taught him this or if this was just his temperament or personality, but throughout the trip, anything we would do, like at the end of any lunch or dinner or walk down to the beach or whatever, Tom was like, thank you very much. Thank you very much. I mean, it was just to the point that my mom started laughing at how often Tom said, thank you very much.

And it kind of became a family joke. After vacation was over, we were, thank you very much. No, thank you very much.

We were going back and forth. This is a good kid to take on vacation. He is good, but I have to tell you, Bob, you sound like Elvis when you say that. Thank you very much. We're talking about how important practicing gratitude is this week. And we've got Sam Crabtree joining us again on Family Life Today. Sam, welcome back.

Thanks. It's nice to know Bob Lapine ain't nothing but a hound dog. Crying all the time. Well, every mother is hearing this thinking, how do I get my child to be grateful? And that's part of what we want to talk about today. Sam has written a book called Practicing Thankfulness, which, as the title implies, and we've already talked about, this may be an innate personality type for some people, but this is something that takes practice, that takes work.

You don't get better at it, just like football or any other sport, you don't get better unless you're practicing. Especially when our circumstances aren't great. Yeah. Let's start where Ann was taking us here. How can we, as parents, cultivate and train and instruct our kids? Is it just teaching them to be polite, or does it go beyond that? Yeah, one of the observations I would want to make from the get-go is that I don't think the practice of thankfulness is mainly just good manners. You know, you teach your children to say thank you as the obligatory social sign-off of a transaction of some kind. I mean, that's not bad to teach your children good manners, including to say thank you. That's good. But what we want to grow is the earnestness from the child's heart so that they have lips that say thank you, but the hearts are not far from the thank you.

Right. And that there's an actual valuing that grows in the heart of the child. So how do you get children to do it is Ann's very good and practical question, and we're all somebody's children, so the first answer to it is model it. If you want your children to be grateful, do they see Mom and Dad grousing about this and that, complaining and whining and bar-ar this and wah-wah that and I hate this?

There's really a plague of outrage in Western culture these days where we so quickly get uppity about this, that, or the other thing. So that's one, model it. Number two, seek, in order to model it, a heart of humility that recognizes we don't get to have everything the way we want it. There's an infinitely wise God who's orchestrated a lot of things to go the way I wouldn't do it if I were God, and it's a good thing for the universe I'm not God, because I would have blown it all by now, but to seek the right kind of heart that really is a grateful heart. This is a heart thing, not just a social practice thing, like where do you set the spoons and where do you set the forks.

This is how do you tune your heart. And the eyes of faith that see what God is doing have to be awakened in the individual. So you can teach an unbelieving child who grows up to be an unbeliever to do the polite thing and send thank you notes after they get wedding gifts and all that sort of thing. But the heart transformation that's required is a divine work.

It's a God work. So to get your children to be thankful, we have to pray that God would do that. Romans 10, Paul said it was his earnest desire that his brothers would be saved, that his people would be saved. And so we want to pray for our children that they would become grateful. Fourth, reminders don't hurt. Are you glad you got that thing from grandma and grandpa? Well, what would you like to say to grandma and grandpa about that? What kind of a note would you like to write to them, right? A thank you note, yeah. Yeah, so there are steps that can be taken. In the book, I included, I think, a list of a hundred.

Is that what it is? A list of a hundred practical things that a person can do. And not all of them would apply to children, but a person could look through that list and do a little shopping for which things we'd like to try in our home. And so there's some suggestions on how to get children moved farther down the path towards living a pattern of gratefulness. But I think you're right.

That modeling piece is really important. I know that Dave and I made a mistake. Our only mistake, maybe? That was the one. And maybe some of you have done this.

Where? We would go to church, and mind you, we helped start the church, and so we found ourselves, we would sit at the table after church, and we would critique the service. No, they would critique the pastor.

That's what they would do. I was not part of this. I was the one being the critique.

No, Anna's right. We would critique this music, critique every part, because we had a lot of design and everything that's going to happen that day. We had a say in it. I think we modeled for our kids.

That's what you do at church. You go and you rate it. Hey, a scale of one to ten, how'd it go today? How'd you like the movie? How'd you like the drama?

It's almost producing consumer believers. So we didn't model being thankful for even an average service. Wasn't it great to be together? Wasn't it good just to worship together?

And then to even ask the question, how did God speak to you today? And I feel bad because what we found is then teenagers, our teenagers would come home, and what were they doing? Modeling exactly what we had done for years.

Lord have mercy. Well, I think it's even broader than that. That creative people, you're all creative people here.

You're creating a ministry and programs, church. Creative people see how something could be better. And then they have a tendency then to focus on what's lacking that could be better. And they start to concentrate on that flaw, that weakness, that shortcoming in whatever it is, the football team or the church or the radio program or the guest speaker or whatever. And if the focus lingers there on what's missing, what's absent, what are the shortcomings and the flaws and the failures, then we become critical. We become complainers.

It's a pitfall that goes with being creative. So to counterbalance that, we need to consciously practice thankfulness. Make it a practice.

You can get up in the morning and say, I'm going to do this. We had here in Minneapolis a few years ago the captain of the University of Minnesota women's basketball team, Brittany McCoy, went to our church. And she made a practice of every day with her cell phone taking a picture of something for which she was thankful that she'd never taken a picture of before. She was practicing.

She was practicing. And putting that habit and that pattern into one's life helps counterbalance. I mean, it was a very creative thing for her to do, to see what pictures are missing in my collection.

You take a negative approach to it. But she was adding, piling up things for which she was grateful. I just think, what a great creative idea to counterbalance taking things for granted. Yeah, and you say in your book, you know, and you've said it already today, it's seen. Because we can be blind to it.

There's all these things around us, the very breath we're breathing right now, we could be thankful for if we just thought for a second, used our brain and go, wow. I remember one year, years ago, the Detroit Lions were playing the Packers at Lambeau away game, end of the season. In fact, every year, as soon as the season came out, that was the first thing we did. Are we going to play in Green Bay in December at night, you know, because it's going to be cold. It was.

It was like December 23rd. We're out of the playoffs. It's a meaningless game. We have to go there. And the whole time I'm mad, grumbling, getting on the plane, going there, leaving my family right around Christmas. I just had a bad attitude. Like, I just don't want to be on this trip. I don't think anybody does.

You know, it doesn't mean anything. And I'll never forget the first half of that game, we're getting beat. I'm standing there and the whole time I'm like, I could be home. I could be warm by the fireplace. You know, all the things I could be doing. I had this bad attitude going at halftime and I had a shift. I'm looking at the locker room at halftime like, I'm at Lambeau in December with an NFL team on the sideline.

How many people would pay to do this? And so I'll never forget. I walk down the tunnel. I'm standing just by the door as players are running on. And one of the guys comes out that I know really well and he complains.

Look at this. We're going to get beat again at Lambeau. And as I jog with him to our sideline, I go, dude, look at where we are. We're in Lambeau playing football on Sunday night. Is it getting better than this? Let's have a flash.

He looks at me like, are you crazy? And it changed his attitude. It was just like you said, it was scene practicing that we still get beat.

It was a long flight home. But it was just one of those moments where, again, it's like you can choose to practice this. You can choose to miss it.

But if you don't stop every once in a while and see it, you'll miss it. Well, and even getting beat. I mean, it's good for our humility.

And do you want to be cocky or do you want to be a humble person? So you take a few defeats along the line because God has ordained that that's the way we get off of our high horse, as it were. You were awake to some details around you. I've tried to make a practice in the strength that God supplies to thank him for something I've never thanked him before. Thanked him for before regularly. The other day, I remember one was like, well, I've thanked God for clouds before, but I've never thanked God for that particular cloud before. That particular cloud was never here before for me to give thanks for. But in a table grace, for example, said, you know, thank you, Lord, for these blessings, for all this food. Amen. But to think thank you for these potatoes, these potatoes and the soil in which they grew and the sunlight that came from 93 million miles away to make them grow and absorb nutrients and water from the soil and the leaves did their photosynthesis miracle. And thank you for butter, butter. What an amazing thing, butter.

Amen. That, you know, the sun comes 93 million miles. It makes some grass. A cow eats that grass. It goes through four stomachs, finally gets to that udder.

It's taken to the the creamery and they make butter. And your kids are like, Dad, can we eat now? Sometimes, sometimes. That's beautiful, though, really, to stop and look and appreciate. Let me ask you this. Do you think God is pleased when his children thank him? Oh, my, yes.

We exalt his name when we notice the details of what he's done. I mean, I held an apple the other day and I thought, I mean, we think apples are red. But you look carefully, there's these little stripes and little dots and subtle colorations in it. And that whole apple, that whole thing there, that tennis ball size or grapefruit size thing, all of that material got there through that little skinny stem. That's just amazing.

And have I stopped to be amazed and to thank God that he designed that to work that way? Even the coal. When you were called at Lambeau Field, I bet the mosquitoes weren't bad.

You're right, there were no mosquitoes. I have a best friend. When their kids were younger, they were really struggling. She was struggling because her husband was traveling all the time. And she had three young daughters and she was noticing that they were saying sarcastic things about their dad being gone a lot, which she realized was actually coming from her. They were picking up her attitude, her disappointment.

And she said, I was creating an environment in my home that was almost toxic. And she said, so she had been praying and we had been talking and praying about this whole situation of trying to see the good. And so she started a journal. It was a grateful journal. And whereas before, her husband would be rushing from a meeting to try to get to the soccer game, instead of saying before, why are you always late to these games? She would get out her journal and she would write in it and she would date it and she said to her husband, thank you for making it to our daughter's soccer game. It must have been hard getting through traffic, leaving work early, but you still made the effort.

What a different mindset. Thank you. Another one would be, thank you for going out in the cold and putting up the Christmas lights on the trees. And she said before, I would have said, why are you doing it this way?

You should do it on this tree. But she started seeing the greatness and the thankfulness that she had for what he was doing. So then every year on his birthday, she gives him this journal. And it's every time it's dated, she tries to do it maybe two or three times a month where she would just log in a little gratefulness passage of what he had done. And he sits down on his birthday and he cries the entire way through this journal. And it has changed him, hasn't it? Oh yeah.

And every husband's saying, I wish my wife would write a journal. But it really is a beautiful thing. You know, thinking about the heart of God, I remember one time, years ago, we took our kids to an amusement park in Ohio at Cedar Point. You guys heard of Cedar Point?

It's one of the top five in the country. And we would do it every year and we took them out of school. By the way, I'm not saying you should do this, parents, but Ohio is still in school.

We took them out because we'd be no lines. And I remember, you know, as a dad with young kids, it's chaos. You're spending way more money than you want to. You're exhausted. You've done the whole thing. We get home and I'm complaining all the way home. Like, they don't even appreciate this.

You know, we did all this stuff. And I mean, they're what, eight, nine, ten, maybe our oldest was 11 years old. They're asleep by the time we get them home because they fell asleep on the drive home three hours from where we are, put them to bed. And I go into the bathroom to get ready for bed. And my oldest, CJ, comes in the bathroom and just opens the door and he goes, Hey, Dad, thanks.

And he walks out. And it was like, no problem. That was awesome. Greatest day ever. I mean, that one word from an 11-year-old kid that he actually stopped for a second and said, Hey, thanks. It was really a great day. All he said was thanks. It was like my heart just jumped. I thought if that's how God feels when his son or his daughter says thanks, you know. It's like the letter. It is a moment to say I'm grateful.

Thank you. Well, the recipient of the thanks, in this case mainly God, but also horizontally other people, it's energizing for them. But I also argue that it enlarges the heart of the person who's expressing the thankfulness and it ramps up or completes, if I could use that word, the pleasure in the thing for which you're giving thanks. You enjoy it more when you express that you were enjoying it, that you are grateful for it, that you didn't deserve it and here it came. And that makes you have an expanded capability of being, as Ann has talked about, you can look on the positive side of things, you can look on the negative side of things.

You just become more of a delight to live with yourself, to live with yourself, much less for other people to live around you. Now, have you had an experience or more in your life where you're going through something hard, a real trial and you're still able to be thankful? Yes, but not always in the moment. Yep, I'm a sinner and I have sinful inertia in my life and so I'm not going to claim to have mastered this.

You know, it's an interesting phenomenon. Many people who write books or preach sermons preach to themselves, like I need to hear this. This is why I'm drilling into this particular topic. But in the long run, and I've tested this with many people who would say that if they look back over their life and they identify the hardest experiences they ever went through, stuff they don't ever want to have happen again, stuff that they pray will never happen to the people that they love. Nevertheless, it's true in my life and in theirs, God was up to such profound good that now they're thankful and they wouldn't have God remove that from their life. You know, I ask our former counseling pastor who's now deceased and with the Lord, I don't want to be a mumbler, we're not supposed to mumble, do everything without murmuring and griping, I don't want to be a complainer, but isn't there terrible, no good, horrible, bad stuff in this world? Aren't we supposed to be objective and just say, this is lousy, this is terrible.

What do we do about that? Without hesitation, he took me to Romans 8 and he said, We groan with all creation the pains of childbirth until now. So there's a groaning that's not complaining. So there's a woman in the middle of giving birth to a baby and you say, how's it feeling? She's not going to say, no problem, it's ow, please let's get this over with kind of thing. But when the child is once born and you lay that on her breast and she cuddles that child and you ask her, would you trade this baby, give the baby back, you don't get to have the baby and then you won't have any of the delivery pain. The woman has a man child, the Bible says, and she wants that child and the pain is worth it. So have I ever had hard experiences?

Yes. So hard, I don't talk about them much, but they were so good for me. God was so refining in that chapter, in those experiences to this day. And if that's the way he's going to go about refining me, he's infinitely wise, I just trust him with that.

That was the way he needed to awaken me and develop in me aspects of Christ's likeness that I don't think I would have developed any other way. As you say that, I even think of the darkest moment in our marriage when Ann said, I've lost my feelings for you, I'm now thankful for. Obviously it was a wake up call for you among other things.

Wasn't in the moment I was like, hey, this is awesome, I'm so thankful this is happening right now. But looking back and most of it was my fault and those feelings were lost by the way I was living. But now I look back and thank God to allow us to experience the darkness in that moment, to find the light that we are in now.

I remember talking to my sister. We had both gone through abuse and years later we sat and talked about the multitude of women that we had a chance to care for their souls and lead them to Christ and encourage them in that Jesus could heal that pain that they had gone through. Because we had experienced the freedom that God brings through our surrendering of our lives, through our pain, through the wounds that we had. And I remember both of us saying, I would go through it again in order to save those people from what they feel right now. Now in the moment I couldn't have said that, but years later, I know that some people think that's unbelievable, but yeah, God refines us in it. Well, and I want to commend you too and recommend what you did to a number of women who feel like, well, 1 Peter 3, I'm just supposed to quietly suffer here and not say anything to my husband.

And you came out and said, I've lost my feeling for you. And he was able by God's grace to say, I've caused this in my wife. And I think there are some wives who just need to speak up and say, the status quo isn't working. I'm pretty sure as well that there are some wives and husbands who need to start practicing thankfulness.

They need to start intentionally, purposefully saying, thank you. Yeah. And looking for the things to be grateful for, writing the journals like you talked about, Ann, and begin the day by saying, I'm going to look for the things to be grateful for today. Open my eyes, Jesus. And I'm going to rejoice in those things, not just like, okay, I got my three. Now I can be done with this.

Now you go back to grousing. I remember a conversation years ago with Elizabeth Elliott. She used this illustration.

I've never forgotten it. She said, you know how sometimes somebody will put an ink pen in their shirt pocket and you get a little spot, right? The ink leaks and all of a sudden at the corner of the pocket, there's a little purple spot. She said, the shirt is 99.76% white, but where are your eyes drawn to that little purple spot? And what do you focus on and obsess on? And you go, this ruins everything.

Now, nobody likes to have an ink spot on their shirt and it is awkward. But she said, how many of us are so hyper-focused on the one little thing that we're missing the beauty around us and being grateful for the beauty around us? And before I say your book reminds us of this, your life reminds us of this because this is true of you. And we're grateful that you've let a little of you rub off on us. May God be pleased.

Yeah. Thanks for being here. We do have copies of Sam's book in our Family Life Today Resource Center. The book is called Practicing Thankfulness, Cultivating a Grateful Heart in All Circumstances. You can order your copy of the book when you go to familylifetoday.com or call 1-800-FL-TODAY to get a copy. Again, the title of the book is Practicing Thankfulness. Order online at familylifetoday.com or call 1-800-FL-TODAY to get your copy.

That's 1-800-358-6329, 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. Now, we want to say a quick word of thanks to those of you who have made today's program possible. You make the ministry of family life possible. Anytime you make a donation, we are dependent as a ministry on your financial support for everything we do. In fact, in this season, we are more dependent on your donations than we have ever been before. And so we are grateful when we hear from listeners who say we want to see the ministry of family life not just sustain. We want to see it expand.

We want to see it advanced. Thank you for your donations. Those of you who are monthly legacy partners, thank you for being the financial backbone of this ministry. We're so grateful for you. If you're able to help with the donation today, we'd love to say thank you by sending you a copy of Gary Thomas's book. We talked with Gary earlier this week about his book, When to Walk Away, how to deal with what he refers to as toxic relationships.

And some of us know about those. The book is our way of saying thank you to you when you are able to help with a gift today. So go online and donate at familylifetoday.com or call 1-800-FL-TODAY and be sure to ask for your copy of the book When to Walk Away by Gary Thomas when you get in touch with us. And we're happy to send it to you. Thanks again for your support of this ministry. We are, as we talked about today, we are grateful for that support. And we hope you have a great weekend. Hope you and your family are able to worship together with your local church this weekend. And I hope you can join us back on Monday when we're going to talk about being single, about dating, about getting engaged, about how to know when to ask the question or when to say yes, what's the right time and how do you deal with the single years. Marshall Siegel is going to be here to walk us through that and I hope you can be with us as well. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch. We got some help this week from Bruce Goff and our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas, a crew ministry. Help for today, hope for tomorrow.