It Is Not Happiness That Makes Us Grateful, It Is Gratitude That Makes Us Happy

Sermon outline

Thankfulness is how we show we truly love God: it is gratitude that makes us happy, not happiness that makes us grateful, while ingratitude destroys our future, turns blessings into curses and blocks what was coming.

1. Every income holds seed and bread

   Pastor Thamie teaches that God supplies seed to the sower and bread for food. Bread sustains today; seed is sown so that tomorrow has bread. The mistake is eating both, living for today because our parents suffered, and starving tomorrow. Decide to become a sower, because God supplies seed only to sowers, and everyone has seed, if not money then time. In the spending season, be frugal: it is easy to tap a card for R5,000 and feel nothing.

   “Bread is for you to sustain your today needs. Seed is for you to sow into the future, so that your tomorrow will always have bread.”

   • 2 Corinthians 9:10-11
   • 1 Timothy 6:17

2. Love God with grateful recognition

   Pastor Colin's foundational verse, from the Amplified, is that whoever truly loves God with affectionate reverence, prompt obedience and grateful recognition of His blessings is known by God. Loving God is not just coming to church weekly but never taking His blessings for granted. He wants a relationship with us and does not want complainers and murmurers, and His grace covers us beyond our failures.

   “Never take the things that God does for you lightly, and never take it for granted.”

   • 1 Corinthians 8:3
   • Psalm 106:1

3. Give thanks in all circumstances

   Even unbelievers give thanks when things go their way; believers must learn to be thankful when they do not, because we have hope that there is nothing God cannot fix. Start the day by thanking God for another breath instead of complaining. The more we complain, the worse things become; look for ten things to be thankful for each day.

   Illustration: At a supplier's counter a customer said things were bad, and the salesman answered, "But you're alive. You're here today." Some think their alarm clock wakes them up: "Take an alarm clock and place it next to a dead person and see what happens."

   “There's nothing that God can't fix.”

   • 1 Thessalonians 5:18
   • Psalm 95:2

4. A different perspective of the same events

   He reads a piece he has written down. A writer lists his year: gallstone surgery, turning sixty and being retired after thirty-five years, his mother's death, his son failing his final medical exam after a car accident, and the repair bill: "What a bad year." His wife writes the same year as healing, a healthy retirement after years of provision, a mother who went home in peace, and a son who survived. Nothing had changed but the perspective, and he wept with gratitude.

   Illustration: We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.

   “It is not just happiness or joy that makes us grateful, but it is gratitude that makes us happy and joyful.”

5. What ingratitude does

   First, it destroys your future: those who do not regard the works of God are torn down, and Israel's eleven-day journey to the promised land became forty years round the mountain. Second, it turns your blessing into a curse when you do not resolve to honour His name. Third, it diminishes what you already have and blocks the blessings still to come.

   “When we are not thankful and grateful, the very thing meant to be a blessing can turn into a curse.”

   • Psalm 28:5
   • Malachi 2:2

6. Four ways to say thank you

   Obey His word, because blessings are on the other side of obedience. Give, because thankful giving is thanksgiving. Thank Him aloud in prayer. And thank the people He has used in your life. He will satisfy you in a sun-scorched land: there is life on this earth from the driest to the coldest places, and when there is no water or no power, God still gets you through.

   “Blessings are on the other side of obedience.”

   • Isaiah 58:11

7. Thankfulness is a ministry

   Closing, Pastor Thamie urges the church to thank the person filling their fuel and the person serving them, because that alone is a ministry. During 2020, when nobody could go out to minister, the Lord told him not to cut off telesales callers but to listen and tell them about His grace. He began asking them whether he could pray for them; almost all said yes, and some said they would go back to church.

   “Say thank you. I appreciate you. And that alone, brothers and sisters, will be a ministry on its own.”

In this message