Attitude For Gratitude by Apostle Johnson Suleman: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

A day set apart to thank God is not about the size of what has been done for someone, it is about the heart to hallow the day and thank him simply for the gift of life. In earlier generations, the death of an old person prompted people to ask how old they had lived to be; these days that question is often not asked at all, because children die too. Being alive at all, in a world where death no longer respects age, is itself something to be grateful for.

A Testimony of Preservation

There was a season of ministry travel where, after the first day of a program, an unusual discomfort set in, out of step with how such trips normally went. Unknown at the time, a vehicle carrying family members had been watched and tracked for a full month by people planning an ambush along a particular route to a women's program. Acting on that inward discomfort, a decision was made to cancel the remaining sessions and travel home personally rather than send the family ahead. On the way, an inward prompt came to take the car keys personally and drive.

As the convoy approached a checkpoint, gunmen opened fire directly on the vehicle. Reports later described it as an armored car, but the underside and bonnet of that kind of vehicle are not armored, and the attackers, professionals, knew exactly where to aim: first the tires to immobilize it, then the engine. The car did not stop moving until it was safely parked at home, at which point the engine finally gave out. In the middle of the attack, the only thought was of the widows and orphans already connected to that ministry, and whether they would be cared for if the whole family did not survive.

In the aftermath, all kinds of theories circulated about what had happened and why, but the point of telling the story is simpler than any of them: it is not security that keeps a person, it is God. Something settled permanently after that day, a quiet assurance that when a person is genuinely in love with God and committed to the welfare of others, God will keep them.

Gratitude Is Not an Event, It Is a Debt

1 Thessalonians 5:18 says, "In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you." That will applies whether or not personal expectations have been met. There is a common misunderstanding of 2 Corinthians 1:20, which says the promises of God are yes and amen "in him," not simply in a person's own circumstances. Whatever a person is hoping for has to be found in Christ, not assumed automatically as an entitlement outside of him.

In the middle of a trial, a person naturally wants a testimony and a visible resolution at the end. God, in the same trial, wants something else: maturity. As long as anxiety and impatience remain, that maturity has not yet been reached, and the trial has not finished its work. James 1:2-4 puts it this way: count it all joy when you fall into various trials, because the trying of faith produces patience, and patience, allowed to finish its work, leaves a person complete, lacking nothing.

Abraham and Sarah are a picture of this. Long years of striving to help God's promise along, including the birth of Ishmael through Hagar, eventually gave way to something else in Sarah: by the time the angel announced she would have a child, her laughter was not doubt but the ease of someone who had made peace with her situation either way. She was no longer bothered by what she could not control. That, and not the moment the baby arrived, was when the promise was truly ready to be fulfilled. Even Jesus prayed this way, thanking the Father in advance, "because I know that thou hearest me always," as recorded in John 11:41-42, before Lazarus was raised.

Praying According to the Will of God

The Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6:9-10 moves from "hallowed be thy name" toward "thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," but bringing God's will to earth first requires knowing what that will already is in heaven, which is exactly what the Holy Spirit helps with. Romans 8:26-27 says the Spirit helps human weakness, because people do not always know what they ought to pray for, and intercedes with groanings that cannot be uttered in words. This is why praying in tongues matters: it is not a person's own understanding directing the prayer, but the Spirit praying according to the will of God on a level words cannot always reach.

This also answers a real question: if God only heard spoken words, how would someone who cannot speak ever pray? Scripture is clear that God hears intention, not merely vocabulary, which is also why closing the eyes to pray, though never explicitly commanded in Scripture, helps concentration, since the real work of prayer begins in the mind before it ever reaches the mouth. This is different from the vain, mechanical repetition Jesus warned against in Matthew 6:7, praying words without engaging the mind behind them at all.

Gratitude Makes a Person Whole

Luke 17:12-19 tells of ten lepers healed, but only one returned to give thanks, and Jesus told that one, "thy faith hath made thee whole." All ten were healed; only the grateful one was made whole. Healing and wholeness are not automatically the same thing. Heaven takes note of every testimony, but it keeps a permanent record of gratitude specifically; the question "where are the nine?" was never really about the nine who were cured, but about how few remembered to give thanks.

Familiarity with God can quietly erode gratitude, when protection and provision start to feel owed rather than received. Life is fragile in ways that are easy to forget until something like a convoy under fire brings the point home directly. Gratitude, understood rightly, is not a decision made when circumstances are favorable; it is a debt owed to God regardless of circumstance.

Gratitude also places a demand on God, because he does not take thanks he has not earned. John 11:41-42 again shows the pattern: giving thanks in advance for something not yet visibly resolved is itself an act of faith. Thanking God for a child's education, for a spouse's health, for a business, draws God further into that situation, because whatever a person genuinely thanks him for, he becomes further committed to. Thanking God for yesterday builds today; thanking him for today builds tomorrow. A life of continuous gratitude produces a corresponding altitude, an uncommon elevation that comes from nowhere else.

Thanksgiving, in fact, summarizes prayer itself. The Lord's Prayer opens with "hallowed be thy name" and closes with "for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory," both expressions of thanks. A person who does not know what else to pray can simply say, "Father, thank you," and it carries the weight of everything else that might have been said.