BUT I am not feeling thankful?

This AM a friend on FB posted up a statement about not feeling thankful yet today.  This got me thinking about how many times I do not FEEL thankful.   So many of us use this month to post 30 days of Thankfulness and the reality is that on some days we might not feel all that thankful.    I suspected that Biblical thankfulness was an action and an attitude not a feeling.   So I looked it up.  There are `133 instances of the word (and its variations) THANK in the NIV version of the Bible.  I looked at all of them (TY BibleGateway) and did NOT find even one instance of the need to feel thankful. 

What I did find was:

That thankfulness is primarily an action word. 

An act of conscious will .. thank offerings sacrificed to God.

They gave thanks and we are told to give thanks .. over and over and over. 

They were also to stand every morning to thank God. 

Many times it included singing and praise songs … songs of thanksgiving (I like that).  The idea was that the action of thanking brought the joyful heart not necessarily the reverse. 

LOTS of times (esp New Testament)  it involved food .. the breaking of bread was a time for thankfulness (the Bible tells us that Jesus did that a lot).

It was not an implicit suggestion it was a  command … BE thankful

Its purpose is to glorify God and to edify the hearer (that last bit from Paul in 1 Corinthians 14).   AND again stated here in

 

2 Corinthians 4:15

New International Version (NIV)

¹⁵ All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God.

This also from Paul .. ‘Then many will give thanks on our behalf” .. I found that quite interesting … we give thanks on other’s behalf??

That it is proper for God’s people AND we “season” our petitions to God with the attitude of thankfulness (by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.)

It is not just here on earth that thankfulness happens … in Revelation the angels, the elders and the 4 living creatures cry out their thanksgiving at the throne of God. 

NOW this is the hard one (and you knew it was coming) it is extraneous of circumstance ..

 

1 Thessalonians 5:18

New International Version (NIV)

¹⁸ give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

Please be sure this is not to slam my friend who posted (he is a strong man of God and I respect him and the situation he may find himself in and he has a beautiful family so I imagine he will find his reason to thank without much effort).  It is to acknowledge my own lack of feeling thankfulness and to be thankful that I don’t need fuzzy feelings to be thankful.  (To be sure they are nice when they come tho).  AND maybe to help you when you share my malady. 

For you 30 days of thankfulness posters .. you will be glad to know that it is indeed a very public declaration in most Biblical instances.  So post away my friends .. I will join you!! J

Psalm 69:30

New International Version (NIV)

³⁰ I will praise God’s name in song

    and glorify him with thanksgiving.