When our Abba Father talks about our hearts, he talks about our GCS. Our spirit heart controls every desire, thought, and action, and we alone are responsible for our GCS. Mathew 15:19, “For out of the heart come forth evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, railings.” Mathew 9:4, “And Jesus knowing their thoughts said, Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts?”
What does Jesus focus on when we receive him? He focuses on transforming our spirit heart! That means transforming our GCS to change our desires, thoughts, and actions. Our born-again life is about total transformation, not just belief, playing around the edges, or heaven someday.
Prov 4:20-23, “My son, attend to my words; Incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine eyes; Keep them in the midst of thy heart. For they are life unto those that find them, And health to all their flesh. Keep thy heart with all diligence; For out of it are the issues of life.”
Human hearts reflect the full spectrum of temperaments. 1 Thessalonians 5:14 NKJV references three hearts Paul recognized as needing help, “warn those who are unruly, comfort the fainthearted, uphold the weak, be patient with all.” In other words, the rebels, the timid, and the weak need help transforming their heart, and everyone else needs patience. Please notice Paul calls for our patience. Examine our GCS for a nature that inhibits our transformation. Are we rebelling against our Abba Father? Are we timid about serving him? Are we too weak to serve him?
An “attitude of gratitude” transforms our spirit heart the most. That means filling our hearts, our GCS, with gratitude toward our Abba Father. Gratitude is a way of seeing things, a worldview. We cannot just “will it.” To be grateful, we need to receive a gift that is good to receive and be grateful for.
Receiving a gift means there is a giver or a benefactor. In Latin, bene means good, so a benefactor is a factory that makes “good.” And we must believe that our Abba Father benefactor has good intentions for us, and in our call to be benefactors to others in his service, our intentions must always be good.
There is a third element that contributes to gratitude. There must be a beneficiary: one who receives the good gift. We are the beneficiary of the benefits of our Abba Father, who has our best interests at heart. For there to be gratitude, beneficiaries must believe they are receiving something they did not earn, merit, or deserve. That certainly describes all believers.
James 1:17, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom can be no variation, neither shadow that is cast by turning.” (Please note that James is talking about the desires of a transformed heart. Psalm 103 1-4 says, “Bless Yahweh, O my soul; And all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless Yahweh O my soul, And forget not all his benefits: Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; Who healeth all thy diseases; Who redeemeth thy life from destruction; Who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies.” (Every good thing we have is from God.)
If we are redeemed, we have escaped eternal punishment and gained eternal life. That was not a gift that our Abba Father spoke into existence for us; it was a purchase for us at great cost with the blood of his Son, Jesus. If we cannot be forever thankful for that, why would our Abba Father bestow any additional blessings on us? If we cannot receive his blessings, how can we be a blessing to others? Our whole life with our Abba Father starts here and breaks down when we center our hearts on ourselves.
What is it that controls our life, if not our Abba Father? Our circumstances and our godless desires in ELB. There is plenty of Scripture that says don’t do that, such as Philippians 2:14-15, “Do all things without murmurings and questionings: that ye may become blameless and harmless, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom ye are seen as lights in the world.”
But sometimes, the big picture is more compelling than a verse. Our Abba Father spent 800 years showing us the nature of man from the Exodus out of Egypt to the scattering of Israel. If there is one theme to be seen in the history of Israel, it is the grumbling. The population reached its pinnacle with the demand for an earthly king. Please note that grumbling is the Scripture word for ingratitude. And what did they grumble about? Their circumstances.
And what did God do? He scattered them to other countries. Do not be surprised that if we spend our life asking our Abba Father to fix our circumstances, we will miss out on the blessings he has for us. We are in our way when our GCS does not have the attitude of gratitude toward our Abba Father.
God gave a fifty-five-verse warning to the entrance generation in Deuteronomy 28 that should have sent chills down Israel’s spine. Let’s read four verses 28:25-29, “Yahweh will cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies; thou shalt go out one way against them, and shalt flee seven ways before them: and thou shalt be tossed to and from among all the kingdoms of the earth. And thy dead body shall be food unto all birds of the heavens, and unto the beasts of the earth; and there shall be none to frighten them away. Yahweh will smite thee with the boil of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scurvy, and with the itch, whereof thou canst not be healed. Yahweh will smite thee with madness, and with blindness, and with astonishment of heart; and thou shalt grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth in darkness, and thou shalt not prosper in thy ways: and thou shalt be only oppressed and robbed alway, and there shall be none to save thee.“
Here is the struggle for me as a pastor. Scripture tells us all we need to know about life with our Abba Father. The people in the Old Testament were told and told and told and told. And yet, they did not listen. Two thousand years after Jesus, are we listening now? Not really. That pains me, and I want to fix it.
And I can’t because our Abba Father is in control and the Holy Spirit does the heavy lifting. All I can do is sow the seeds, bring us thoughts we can get started with, and then pray that the Holy Spirit will work in us. Our Abba Father and we then have to work out our relationship with each other. Pastors are the coach, and we have to suit up for every game.
So, what do we do? Do what the coach says about what our Abba Father says; we keep practicing. But how do we practice? We practice by giving thanks. Thanks is an expression of gratitude. The word “thanks” appears in the Bible 110 times. And we say thanks to our Abba Father reasonably often as a believer. But saying thanks is just action at the moment. What our Abba Father is looking for is an attitude of thanks. A GCS that looks for things to thank our Abba Father for. An attitude of gratitude, a heart of gratitude.
Now let’s further clarify what our Abba Father wants. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, “Rejoice always; pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus to you-ward.” Giving thanks for everything confuses a lot of people. Yesterday I stepped in dog poop; do I thank our Abba Father for that? My car just broke down; do I thank him for that? We are not thankful FOR those things; we remain thankful to our Abba Father in the middle of those things. We never let circumstances stop us from drawing closer to our Abba Father. The attitude of gratitude means we never turn our back on our Abba Father. And if we need another reason, when the enemy comes at us, an attitude of gratitude will fuel our strength. When we have an attitude of gratitude, our world will completely turn right side up. “Only God can turn a mess into a message, a test into a testimony, a trial into a triumph, a victim into a victor.”[i]
When our heart has an attitude of gratitude, something else happens. Our heart changes from obedient to willing. Willing to do God’s will and positively affect those around us. 2 Corinthians 2:14, “But thanks be unto God, who always leadeth us in triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest through us the savor of his knowledge in every place.”
Our Abba Father is a God that causes us to triumph. If the enemy throws a mess at us, give thanks to our Abba Father because he is pulling us through. If the world stands in our way, give thanks because he makes a way where there is no way. Whatever the circumstance, be thankful because our Abba Father will not let us down.
When we give thanks to our Abba Father, it makes others feel good. When we don’t let our circumstances get us down, it makes people around us hopeful. When we look past our problems, people around us look up.
2 Corinthians 10:14 NKJV, “Christ diffuses the fragrance of his knowledge in every place.” That means that if we give thanks always in every place, our Abba Father’s knowledge is known wherever we go. The attitude of gratitude is a powerful tool for evangelism. The attitude of gratitude helps us emit the fragrance of Christ. We can lead people to our Abba Father by simply having an attitude of gratitude.
What is the primary sin that blocks gratitude in our relationship with our Abba Father? Entitlement. We believe we are entitled to what we want for ourselves. Our Abba Father tells us in Romans 1:22 NKJV, “although they (Israel) knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” And what did God do? Romans 1:24-25 NKJV tells us, “Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.“
It is clear that we do not earn redemption with our works, but our blessings from our Abba Father come from our works, the works we put into transforming our heart because the transformed heart, our GCS, becomes set on auto-pilot to serve our Abba Father. We just cracked the code! 1 John 1:9 NKJV, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” God says that you can start all over right now with a clean slate. We can change an attitude of bitterness, disrespect, anger, and defeat and turn it into an attitude of gratitude. Can we find gratitude for that?
[i] Fern Bernstein, Mah Jongg Mondays: a memoir about friendship, love, and faith
