¹⁶Rejoice always; ¹⁷pray without ceasing; ¹⁸in everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

Are we to give thanks for everything that happens to us, good or bad? Actually, that is not what verse 18 says at all. The text says, “in everything give thanks” (emphasis added). It does not say, “for everything give thanks.” There is an enormous difference. God does not call us to become masochists that learn to rejoice in pain for the experience of it. We may be thankful for what our difficulties of life teach us and those things mature us in our faith. But when the apostle Peter writes about the testing by fire, it is our faith that is “precious” not the trials themselves (1 Peter 1:6–7).

So we come back to what it means to be thankful in everything. This flows from the ideas of rejoicing always and praying without ceasing. We are to develop a lifestyle and a continual awareness of the goodness of God in all that He does. No matter the difficulty I am in, I can rejoice because of the greater unseen realities. I can grow in my constant, conscious awareness that His unseen presence mitigates the circumstances around me that are beyond my control. It logically follows, therefore, that I have a reason for being thankful regardless of how bad my situation looks and feels.

How does this work? We need to develop a heart of thanksgiving so that spontaneous conversations with the Lord frequently arise where we acknowledge that He is at work in our lives. It also means that we set aside any attitude of entitlement that might be harbored in the recesses of our minds or hearts. We develop a lifestyle where we take less for granted and see more of what we have as the gift from God.

When we give thanks at meal times, it is true that we worked hard for the money to buy the food, we prepared the meal, and we developed the skill to create appetizing dishes—or even that we had the wherewithal to go to a restaurant for a meal. So why give thanks? Because the Lord gave us the ability and talents to do the jobs that we have to create the income, to buy the food. He provides the health to be on our feet to make the meals.

So in the same way, we need to view all of our life. When we arrive home from work or a trip, we can thank God for keeping the other cars on their side of the road. We can praise God for our being born in the country we live in and for the family we have. The list goes on and on when we begin to think about all the things that must line up for us to even be alive and breathing. Behind it all is God! And therefore we need to develop lives of constant gratitude.

Lord, thank You for all You do for me. I can’t come close to counting the ways.