Gratitude is much more

Happy Thanksgiving.  

We have so much to be thankful for.  I know we can make the lists, count our blessings, and write them down but on this Thanksgiving I was wondering really what more do we need to be thankful for than the One who gives us everything. So we can thank Him for all the gifts in our life...our homes, families, health...but there is even more to be thankful for.  Gratitude must be much more.

Here was my devotional verse for today.  
 .2 Corinthians 4:15

It is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.

So thanksgiving is related to grace.  How can we really be truly thankful until we truly realize we are undeserving of any of it?  That calls us to truly fall on our knees and be thankful doesn't it.  That we do not really mean "thank you" until we see the grace that is extended to us.  

 Grace begins when one person is full and another is empty. One person is a have and the other a have-not. One is rich; the other is poor. Then grace comes into action as the emptiness of one is filled up by the fullness of the other. What we do not have is supplied by what he has. Our poverty is replaced by his wealth. And all that not because we deserve it, but because Jesus is gracious. His riches are free. Therefore, gratitude wells up in the hearts of those who "receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness" (Romans 5:17). This gratitude to Christ, which marks all true believers (Romans 1:21), is more than saying, "Thank you," or trying to return some service; it is more than being glad you are free from condemnation; it is being glad toward Jesus for the riches of salvation and the way he made it ours. When the grace of Jesus penetrates the human heart, it rebounds back to God as gratitude. Christian gratitude is grace reflected back to God in the happiness we feel toward Jesus.  JOHN PIPER


So this is the type of gratitude that Christ is owed...the kind that should "well" up inside of us and explode out of us.  It is more than just saying "thanks."  It should show in every action and word and our thanks only for the glory of God.  

This thanksgiving, I am truly overwhelmed with how gracious God is to us.  So many times undeserved and many times goes without acknowledgement.  

All praise and thanks to God
The Father now be given,
The son, and him who reigns,
With them in highest heaven,
The one eternal God,
Whom earth and heaven adore;
For thus it was, is now,
And shall be evermore.


Happy Thanksgiving.