Every day we wake up to a world that presents us with a choice—the choice of how we will respond in our thoughts and emotions to whatever comes our way. This attitude we choose depends on our perspective.

We could take one of two perspectives on the world, and whatever perspective we adopt will affect our attitude. What are the two perspectives offered to us?

Two Perspectives

The world in which we live is both very good and very bad at the same time. We can see the world as an awful or an awesome place. Whichever of these positions we take will affect our disposition.

Daily life includes a host of joys and sorrows, delights and discouragements, wonders, and frustrations. Great beauty surrounds us. Great evil abounds. From bedrooms to ball games, every corner of the earth can be a haven of iniquity or a preview of heaven. So we must ask, “Why is the world like this?”

We Live in a Good World

The Bible explains this complex state of things very simply. A good and beautiful, all-wise and all-powerful Redeemer God created a good and beautiful world (Genesis 1). His work expresses his character (Romans 1:20). So, we have brilliant colors in creation, warm things on cold days, cold drinks on hot days, good food, friendship, the ability to fall in love, and, well, think of any pleasant thing in the world. Without God, it would not exist (John 1:3). God, our Creator, is good (Psalm 100:5; Psalm 145:9). He made a good world and filled it with goodness. God is glorious and awesome, so the things he has made reflect all the wonders of his heart.

We Live in a Bad World

Yet, evil also abounds in this good world. People rebelled against God’s good authority, and as a result, God cursed our world (Genesis 3). Now all creation groans under the weight of our sin until the day when God will set it free from its bondage to corruption (Romans 8:21). Because our world is broken, sinful, and cursed, we have nasty smells, devastating storms, spider bites, burnt toast, murder, bombs, aggression, sex trafficking, and all things that exist on the spectrum between frustrating and evil.

Every person to ever live exists under these two realities—good and evil.

I haven’t forgotten about the topic of thankfulness. That’s coming. For now, let’s retrace where we have been. Your attitude depends on your perspective. The world we live in thrusts us into two knotted realities—pain and pleasure, good and evil. Thus, there are two appropriate perspectives we can hold about the world and about life in general. We can believe the world to be great or we can believe the world to be terrible. Your attitude will reflect whichever of these perspectives you take. So your attitude begins with which part of life—the good or the bad—you prefer to acknowledge.

However, we don’t just appraise the world as good or bad, we dwell in this place! We don’t merely look on the good and the bad, we live within it. We experience good and bad, and our experience affects us constantly. Your attitude is not merely the overflow of your perspective, but also a reflex to life.

Good and Bad Come to Us All

We are creatures, created by our Creator, who governs his creation. Because we aren’t sovereign, meaning in control of our own lives (much as we wish we were), the events of our lives, from our first moments of peace in the morning to the stubbing of our toe in the afternoon, from the greatest day of our lives to our heaviest trials, are received.

Sure, we make decisions, but none of us can decide anything without the variables of our every decision being presented to us (1 Corinthians 4:7; Job 2:10; Ecclesiastes 9:11). Those variables—like the weather, our birthplace, our family history, our genetic makeup—are out of our control.

Here’s the point: Life is received. At all times, we are receiving both good and ill, bumping into beauty and curse at every moment of our day. Life is a walk amongst rosebushes—thorny and breathtakingly beautiful at the same time.

In many places, the Bible focusses our attention on the good we daily receive, reminding us that God “sends rain on the just and on the unjust…” (Matthew 5:45 ESV). Though we all suffer, and at times profoundly, we also all live under a constant stream of gifts from above (James 1:17).

The Bible says that God showers down unnoticed, unsolicited, unacknowledged gifts on all of us all the time. If the curse has so chilled your heart and life is so intensely dark that you feel you cannot believe that statement, try to write down a short list of ten things that are good in your life right now. Include the little things like water, a warm blanket, or the smile of a friendly face today. Each one is somehow, albeit indirectly, from God.

So although we live in a mingled mess of blessing and curse, the Bible reminds us of how manifold are even the minutest blessings we daily receive.

Why We Aren’t Thankful

It seems then, with all the gifts we daily receive, that it should not be that difficult to look on the bright side and choose a positive attitude. Doesn’t everyone want to be happy after all? So, if there’s plenty in the world to be happy about, just as there is plenty in the world to be sad about, why don’t we regularly make the choice to rejoice in the good? Why isn’t gratitude natural to us, if we truly are receiving a steady stream of gifts from heaven? Seems rather odd that we would be so plagued by grumpiness in a world that, though broken, contains such glory.

Well, the problem lies in that we all have a problem. That curse that lies over our world has gotten into our hearts. The world alone didn’t grow thorns; our souls did also. From the time the lie entered the human psyche that God may not be good (Genesis 3:1-5), it has reigned in every human heart.

By default, we are enemies of God (Ephesians 2:1-8; Romans 5:8-10). No one thanks their enemy, no matter how many gifts they give. So we don’t give thanks to God for his gifts (Romans 1:21). In fact, we pretend he doesn’t exist. Or if he exists, we blame him for all that’s wrong in the world, while acknowledging none of his goodness (Proverbs 19:3).

Humans aren’t thankful by nature, and here’s why. Thankfulness is a relational emotion. You thank someone. You thank people who do things for you or give things to you. Ultimately, we understand gifts as an expression and extension of a relationship. Giving thanks implies a Giver. We aren’t naturally thankful people because we don’t know or have rejected the ultimate Giver.

All people could be thankful; meaning, there is much to be thankful for, and Someone to thank. But no one wants to be thankful because if we’re honest, we have no relationship with the Giver.

The Good News

I don’t want to dwell long on ingratitude but instead, to present the wonderful opportunity to give thanks. The tide of our hearts turns from thankless to thankful when we hear and respond to the good news of the Bible.

The Necessary Bad News

The good news starts with some bad news. We and the world together are far worse off than we perceive. Life will present us all with ordinary sorrows and perhaps profound suffering too. Yet, that ugly condition of our souls—our enmity with and estrangement from God—will not only sow more sorrows into our lives than the bare curse ever could but will inevitably end in the greatest suffering the human soul can fathom.

Our good God has showered his goodness on our rebel selves. But he will one day bring us to justice. If we have not become his friends by that day, we shall remain his enemies for eternity, and endure the eternal, just wrath of God for all our sins and treason against him (Luke 13:25-29; Matthew 27:21-23; Revelation 20:11-15). He will not punish us out of spite, but out of perfect justice.

Life may seem bleak at best for those who know genuine pain—but the prospect of eternity is hopeless if our relationship with the Creator has not been mended.

Yet before we could realize we were God’s enemies, he moved toward us in love (Romans 5:8). God, in his love and mercy, does not wish for anyone to perish (2 Peter 3:9). Equal to his justice, mercy is a reflex of the heart of God (Isaiah 55:7-9).

The Really Good News

God had a rescue plan in place from before time began—before we rebelled against him (Ephesians 1:3-10). God would come to us in the person of his Son, Jesus. He would become one of us. He would receive in himself the wrath of God, that he might spare us from it (1 Peter 3:18). “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16 ESV).

God is not our enemy, but we are his (Romans 5:10). After our rebellion, he did not annihilate us; he kept his gifts coming, mercifully wooing us back to himself (Romans 2:4). He chose to win us with kindness. And he gave us the greatest gift of all—himself! Jesus, the Son of God, died on a cross, and endured the full weight of God’s wrath so that all who trust in him might be spared the penalty due their sin (John 3:16). Jesus didn’t stay dead (1 Corinthians 15:7). He rose from the dead, which broke the power of the curse over our souls, and lives to love, bless, and keep everyone who trusts in him.

I could go on and on about what God has done for us through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. If you would like to understand all that God has done for you in Jesus Christ, pick up the Bible and start reading the book of Romans! For now, let’s consider briefly what God has given us in Christ.

The Greatest Gift

If you trust in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins, and you crown him Lord and Savior of your life, this is what God has done for you. God has come to this world in the person of Jesus to empathize with your sorrows (Hebrews 2:17; Isaiah 53:3). Jesus personally suffered to deliver you from the penalty of your sins (Romans 8:1; Colossians 2:14). His resurrection freed you from the power of your sin so that you are no longer enslaved to anything contrary to his will (Romans 8:1-11). He has promised to rid you of the presence of your sin once and for all. God has given you his own Spirit so that you are never alone, but always have his real immediate presence with you to strengthen, help, guide, and transform you—not to mention testify to you of God’s love for you (Ephesians 3:14-21).

The foremost thing we as believers in Jesus have to be grateful for is God himself. All these spiritual blessings are byproducts of relational intimacy with God himself. The removal of all our sins and the graces we receive are his loving efforts to bring us near to him (Ephesians 2:13; 1 Peter 3:18). Behind all the eternal spiritual blessings given to us by God stands our Heavenly Friend, no longer an enemy, but our Dearest most treasured Person.

Any gift you receive from someone you are inclined to thank, endears you to them. From a general appreciation to the most intense romantic love, gratitude draws our heart to the Giver. The gift is often a shadow of the true gift that is the dear person giving the gift. So it is with God. All God’s gifts to us in Christ are just the expression of the greatest gift he has given us: Himself.

Christians—those who have turned from their sin and trusted Jesus for forgiveness—have received the greatest gifts from God, because they are friends of God. We haven’t just received the good and bad things in life according to God’s sovereign wisdom, we have received eternal life according to the loving relationship God has extended to us in Jesus. And eternal life, as defined by the Bible, is to have him, both now and into eternity (John 17:3).  

Why Christians Are the Most Thankful People

Sunshine, marriage, babies, corn on the cob, job opportunities, music—we all enjoy these gifts. But there is more to life than simple or even profound pleasures. God has offered us eternal life, and it’s what we gain when our life is united to the Creator, to Jesus, by faith. God has greater gifts for us than sun and rain—gifts of the soul, gifts that are more powerful than the curse. Gifts that deliver us from the curse. These gifts are all an extension of God’s love for us. They are tokens of the greatest blessing—belonging to God.

For those who know Jesus, the good in life doesn’t find its value in being weighed against the bad. No, we recognize any good in life as a symbol of our Father’s love and care for us. So even in the worst of times, what little good we may acknowledge, we recognize as an emblem of love, a reminder of our belonging to the Author of all goodness.

We have a broader perspective as Christians than we had naturally. There is not just good and bad coming at us. Eternity awaits us, and Christ is ours right now (John 17:3). This perspective—cherishing all the blessings that flow from fellowship with God—governs the attitude of our hearts.

Most people decide whether to let the good or bad govern their attitude. We get to choose between the good, the bad, or the Giver.

Let God fill your vision, and thankfulness will come naturally.