Gratitude in Everything

John 13:6-9

Talk to anyone who has experienced an extended stay in a hospital or rehab center, and they may tell you the thing they dread most is enduring a bed bath. All of us feel a profound aversion to being bathed by someone else. It’s way too personal, too private. Taking a bath is a routine we would rather do ourselves — if we were at all able to do so. But listen to what David prayed:

Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.¹

There was a time in David’s life when he felt so soiled, so thoroughly dirtied by sin, that he cried out for a cleansing only God could give him. Jesus said,

Unless I wash you, you have no part with Me.²

You and I are in need of constant cleansing, and it’s foolish to deny it. Come to God today and ask Him to make your heart clean.

Father, thank You for the most precious substance in the universe — the blood of Your Son, Jesus, poured out for my sins. Nothing else can make me clean. Nothing else can heal my wounded conscience. Nothing else can open the doors of Heaven for me. I owe everything I am to Jesus.

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1 Thessalonians 5:18

1. K. Chesterton once wrote, “When it comes to life, the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.”³ It’s a great quotation, but the Bible was first to come up with the idea. God’s Word tells us to “give thanks in all circumstances” and urges us to be

always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.⁴

That doesn’t leave much wiggle room, does it? In which circumstances? All of them. How often? Always. For what things? For everything. “But wait,” you might say. “That would mean we’re virtually giving thanks and praising God all day long for everything that happens.” Yes, that’s just what the Bible is saying. It doesn’t have to be out loud or obnoxious, but from dawn to dusk, there ought to be an unceasing undercurrent of gratitude in all we do and say.

Lord, as in everything else, You will have to supply the want to as I consider these things. Sometimes there are painful, sorrowful circumstances that make no sense at all to me. If I am to live with an attitude of gratitude in “everything,” it will have to come from a deeper source than me!

1. Psalm 51:7.
2. John 13:8.
3. G. K. Chesterton, Irish Impressions (London: Collins, 1919), 24.
4. 1 Thessalonians 5:18; Ephesians 5:20, emphasis mine.

Excerpted with permission from A Spectacle of Glory by Joni Eareckson Tada, copyright Joni Eareckson Tada.

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Your Turn

Giving thanks and glory to God in easy circumstances when the wind is at your back is generally pretty effortless and natural for followers of Jesus. But, expressing thanksgiving to God when we’re in the uncomfortable place of being aware of how in need we are to be cleaned up by the Lord or when we’re in pain and difficulty is much more of an intense spiritual discipline. What are you thanking God for today? Come share with us on our blog. We would love to hear from you about being grateful for everything! ~ Devotionals Daily