The Practice of Gratitude

The Practice of Gratitude
By M.T. Clark — P-2119 | 11/12/2026 – Today’s Audio Podcast
Today’s Message on YouTube:

Today’s photo of Don Eddy’s 1970 acrylic painting “Untitled,” with a woman in a sunhat walking a sunlit concrete pathway between a large red barn and a stand of bare winter trees under a pale open sky, comes to us from yours truly, as I captured this work of art at the Michele & Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts in Springfield, MA, on December 9, 2023.

Well, it’s Thursday, and I share this pathway photo as a reminder and an encouragement to get on, or to stay on, the path of Christian discipleship.

When you decide to follow Jesus in the way you live your life, when you decide to walk in the Spirit every day, amazing things will happen to you and near you.  As much as I am empowered and encouraged by the Lord when I step out in faith to lead a small group, I get to see the wonders of God’s love being played out in front of me in the lives of the people that I seek to encourage. The Freedom in Christ Course cohort that I led this fall had its last session the other night, and it was absolutely wonderful to hear how the course had blessed the men who had faithfully shown up and cooperated with the Lord for 11 weeks.  Half the group was so impacted by the teaching, fellowship, and transformation they experienced during the Freedom in Christ course that they have decided to continue their journey of faith with me by joining the Grace Course that I will be beginning next week. These men want more of the Christian fellowship and instruction they experienced, and I can’t wait to see how the Lord will bless us throughout the holidays and into the new year as we seek to see their understanding of God’s grace go from their heads to their hearts.

One of these men was not only blessed and drawn deeper into his own freedom in Christ but shared what he learned with his family with dramatic results. He was the father of a prodigal child who was wrapped up in the throes of addiction to alcohol. A recent visit to his home ended badly as this prodigal was asked to leave because of their drunkenness. When it seemed like this episode would draw a further wedge in their relationship, this man took a chance and wrote a 5-page letter expressing his love and concern with his wayward child, sharing many of the truths that he had learned from the Freedom in Christ course. This, of course, was a big risk. His letter could have made a bad situation worse, but the Holy Spirit anointed that letter, and shortly after receiving it, the prodigal had a change of heart and decided to go into recovery from their alcoholism. This week, this recently transformed father got to share the good news that their child just celebrated a month being clean and sober and expressed his thanks to Nick Martin and me for leading the Freedom in Christ course, and to the Lord for opening his mind and heart to the truth of His love.  He reported that since he has learned who he is in Christ, he has made a regular practice of declaring his identity in Christ and thanking God in prayer every day. He knows that he has learned a lot in a short time and understands that he will need to continue renewing his mind to stay on the path that the Lord put him on.

Speaking of the simple practices that keep us on the path of Christian discipleship…

Our series, “Gratitude & Grace,” continues today with a short psalm made almost entirely of verbs, and what it teaches us about thanksgiving.

The Practice of Gratitude

Psalm 100 is five verses long, and I’d guess that some of us may have heard it read at a Thanksgiving dinner table at some point in our lives, but I want us to notice that it isn’t a psalm about feeling grateful. It’s a psalm full of things to do.

Psalm 100 (NKJV) tells us: “Make a joyful shout to the Lord, all you lands! Serve the Lord with gladness; come before His presence with singing. Know that the Lord, He is God; it is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; we are His people and the sheep of His pasture. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise. Be thankful to Him, and bless His name. For the Lord is good; His mercy is everlasting, and His truth endures to all generations.”

If we count the commands in there, we’ll find seven of them, one after another, and every single one of them calls us to put our faith into action. Make a shout. Serve. Come. Know. Enter. Be thankful. Bless His name. None of these commands asks us to wait until we feel a certain way before we do them.

That’s the whole reason I wanted us to look at this psalm. We tend to treat gratitude as a mood, but this psalm treats gratitude as a practice, which means it’s something we can do whether the feeling has shown up yet or not. That isn’t insincerity. It’s the way most good things in a Christian life get started – by faith.  God is worthy of our praise and thanks. So, make a shout, serve Him with gladness, and thank and praise Him, enthusiastically with song.

Think about how this works everywhere else. A man doesn’t wait until he feels like a runner to go for a run. He runs, and after a while he becomes one. We don’t wait until we feel like praying before we pray, or we’d hardly ever pray at all. The doing has to come first sometimes, and we will have to trust that the heart will follow the feet. The appropriate emotions will follow our faithful actions. The psalmist knows this, so he hands us verbs instead of feelings.

Now let’s look at the hinge in the middle of the psalm, because everything turns on it. In verse three, the writer stops commanding and starts explaining. He says, “Know that the Lord, He is God; it is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; we are His people and the sheep of His pasture.”

That is the foundation that our practice stands on – the truth of who God is and who we are in Christ. Our thanksgiving doesn’t rest on how the week went. It rests on these truths: The Lord is God. He made us, and we didn’t make ourselves. We belong to Him as His own people. And He shepherds us like a shepherd with his sheep.

I love that Hebrew phrase, “and not we ourselves.” Everything we have that’s worth anything comes from somewhere other than us. We didn’t build our own souls. We didn’t rescue ourselves from what we were drowning in. When we came to Christ, we brought nothing to the table except our need. That’s not a discouraging thought; it’s a liberating one, because if we didn’t make ourselves (sorry, “self-made” men), then we’re not responsible for holding ourselves together either.

Look at where the psalmist sends us. He says to enter into His gates with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise. That’s temple language, and it describes our movement toward God, not away from Him. Thanksgiving is how a person walks into God’s presence. It’s the front door to deep fellowship with God.

This understanding is worth getting a hold of, because so many of us have it backwards. When we’re feeling low or ashamed, we tend to hold back until we feel more presentable. The psalmist tells us to do the opposite. Thanksgiving is the way in, and the reason we can walk through the gate at all is stated at the end of the psalm rather than the beginning. The Lord is good. His mercy is everlasting. His truth endures to all generations. We don’t enter into His gates on our own merits. We enter on His.

So, let’s make this a real practice. Here’s what we can do with Psalm 100 this week, and none of it requires a particular mood or feeling.

• Say it out loud. The psalm calls for a shout and for singing, not for a silent nod. There’s something about hearing our own voice give thanks to the Lord that our hearts pay attention to.
• Name specific things. General gratitude stays vague and thin. Thank God for specific mercies you can point at, including the small and ordinary ones.
• Start with who He is, not with what you got. Verse three comes before the gates. If your week has been hard and you can’t find much to be thankful for, begin where the psalmist begins, with the fact that the Lord is God and you’re His.
• Do it on schedule, not on feeling. Pick a time out of your day and put thanksgiving in it. Who we become will be the product of our faithful habits. So, make a habit of practicing gratitude and praising the Lord.

That last one is the one I’d stress. Any of us can be thankful on a good day. A practice is what carries us through the days that aren’t good, and those are the days when we need it the most.

And here’s the encouragement I’d give to anybody who feels like they’re starting from nothing. You don’t have to feel grateful to begin practicing gratitude. Just do it, and trust that God will meet you there. Every step we take toward the Lord is a step in the right direction, and this is one of the best steps we can take to empower our walk with God.

Remember, the Lord is good, His mercy is everlasting, and His truth endures to all generations. None of that depends on the kind of day you are having.

So, keep on walking and talking with God.

— M.T.

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Encouragement for the Path of Christian Discipleship

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