The Greater Good Institute did a study in 2017. It involved three hundred people who were having mental health challenges. The participants expressed that they wanted counseling. Many were depressed or anxious, and all were expressing low levels of happiness.
They divided the 300 people into three groups.
The first group was asked to write one letter of gratitude to someone each week for three weeks. All they had to do was write the letter. They didn’t have to send or deliver it to the person they were grateful for.
The second group was asked to write once a week for three weeks about their negative feelings and thoughts, how they were affecting them, and what they hoped to gain from the counseling.
The third group wasn’t assigned any writing assignments.
All three hundred people went through four weeks of similar mental health sessions. At the end of the four weeks, the group that wrote the letter of gratitude reported significantly better mental health than either of the other groups. All participants were interviewed again twelve weeks later, and those who wrote the gratitude letter still showed significantly better mental health than the others. Not only did expressing gratitude improve their short-term happiness, the effects were noticeable even 12 weeks later.
Many similar studies have found similar results. Practicing gratitude increases your happiness.
The Bible talks a lot about thankfulness. It is one of the key doctrines of the Bible. I Thessalonians 5:18 says, “In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” (KJV)
The book of Psalms is filled with verses about giving thanks. “Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.” (Psalms 100:4 KJV)
It is easy to be thankful when things are going well. It is easy to give thanks when we receive something. When someone gives us a gift, it is common for us to say thank you. Especially if it is something unexpected. With our carnal mind, it is easy to be thankful if we receive something unexpected, especially if that thing that is unexpected is large. If someone came up to me and said, “Here, I want to give you $10,000.” I would probably say, “Wow! Thank you very much!” I would probably be very excited. If someone came up to me and gave me $1, I am sure that I would say thank you, but I probably wouldn’t be as excited.
However, the Bible doesn’t say, “Give thanks when you receive something really good. Give thanks when you receive a blessing.” No, the Bible says, “In everything, give thanks.”
God notices our gratitude. God wants our gratitude. The story of the ten lepers is found in Luke 17:11-19. As Jesus approached a city, a group of ten lepers called out to him from a distance, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” Jesus told them to show themselves to the priests. When they did, they found that they were healed of leprosy. However, only one of the ten came back to thank Jesus. Jesus noticed that only one came back and said, “Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine?” (Luke 17:17 KJV)
It should have been easy for the lepers to be thankful. Leprosy means a slow, painful death. The body rots away, and eventually, the person dies. You would have thought that every leper would be highly thankful. But only one expressed gratitude. The rest must have been happy that they were no longer lepers, but they didn’t make the effort to be thankful.
It reminds me of the joke about the guy who had an urgent appointment and couldn’t find a parking spot. He got so desperate that he prayed to God, “Dear Lord, please! You know how important this appointment is to me. If you give me a parking spot, I will never miss another church service in my life!” As soon as he finished speaking, the clouds parted, and a beam of sunlight shone on an empty parking spot. The driver gasped, drove toward the spot, and said, “Never mind, Lord! I found one!” What an example of ungratefulness!
Some say, “I will be thankful when I have something to be thankful for.” But we all have things to be thankful for. It is not how much we have compared to someone else. It is not how much we have compared to what we want. It is being thankful for what we do have. We have life, we have breath, we have salvation, we have something to be thankful for.
We need to always remain grateful. To have a grateful heart. This is sometimes hard to do. It is easy for us to forget to be thankful. Being grateful requires conscious action.
Most of the scriptures in the Bible talk about directing our thankfulness to God. This is undoubtedly a requirement and a crucial part of being a Christian. However, being thankful and expressing gratitude towards others also positively affects our emotions.
A study at USC in 2015 showed that, while undergoing an MRI brain scan, when the participants thought about acts of gratitude, the areas of the brain associated with positive emotion were more active. Expressing gratitude makes us feel better.
Being unthankful is damaging to our spiritual health. Being unthankful makes us unhappy.
2 Timothy 3:1 says, “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,” (KJV)
How can we develop our attitude of gratitude? Of course, ensuring that we include a period of gratitude during our daily prayer time is an excellent way to keep being thankful in the forefront of our minds. However, there are other ways to develop our gratitude.
Commit to expressing gratitude to others. This can be as simple as smiling, saying thank you, or letting people know you are thankful for them.
Keep a gratitude journal. Every day, write down things that you are grateful for.
Hugh Van Cuylenburg, author of “The Resilience Project: Finding Happiness through Gratitude, Empathy, and Mindfulness” has an excellent practice for developing gratitude. Instead of asking your spouse, friend, or child, “How is it going? How was your day?” ask, “What are three things that went well today?” These don’t have to be huge events. They can be simple things like, “In the school cafeteria today, they had my favorite pie, traffic was pretty good today, and I heard from an old friend today that I haven’t heard from for a while.”
The benefit of the “three things that went well today” is that often, when we commit to making a daily list of things that we are grateful for is that often it goes something like this:
Day 1: “I am thankful for my family, my health, and my car.”
Day 2: “I am thankful for my church, my house, and clothes to wear.”
Day 3: “I am thankful for my health…. Oh wait, I did that two days ago. Umm, what else am I thankful for?” We can sometimes get stuck and return to the same list of things.
Thinking about three little things, or big things, that went well on a particular day puts us into the habit of looking for things we are grateful for, develops our grateful attitude, and improves our happiness.
Make a conscious effort to be thankful. God commands us to be thankful. The people that we express thanks to will appreciate our gratitude. And finally, science has shown that expressing gratitude will give us greater happiness.
