The Foundation of Thanks

There is a danger here. The Godless are marked by their thanklessness. In turn, the Christian is marked by their thankfulness. But here is the danger: Most Christians lay a foundation of thanksgiving with the wrong things. We are commanded by God to give thanks in all circumstances. (1 Thess. 5:18) That kind of thankful lifestyle will not survive on an occasional awareness of thanks. There must be a continual foundation of thanksgiving on which the Christian's life is built. But what is that foundation? I have stated that most Christians build their foundation of thanks on the wrong things. We are thankful for our family, our health, our ability to provide, for food on the table. All are wonderful and we should be thankful for, but they should not be our foundation of thanksgiving. A life that is built on the foundation of those kinds of thanks will soon find itself doubting, concerned and ultimately not thankful. The reason is because all of those things will eventually be washed away. And as they begin to deteriorate, we will begin to find holes punched in our thankful heart, because our heart was on the wrong foundation.

In their place, the Christians thankful lifestyle must be placed on the foundation of the Providence of God. In short, that God has an intimate, moment by moment, unstoppable purpose for his creation, and that His purposes and ways can never fail. The Christian is not woken in the morning to embrace a day with luck or fortune. They welcome God's providence on that day. When a lifestyle of thankfulness is laid with the foundation of providence of God, then we allow these other thankful things in our life, our family, our health, to rest on that foundation. That way, when we lose a family member or our health is taken from us, we have not lost our thankful life. The foundation is still there, the Providence of God.

If you have built your foundation of thanks on things you can see and touch, you are destined to end up doubting the goodness and loving nature of God. We serve God not because of what He does, but because of who He is.