Gratitude is you looking backwards to the things God has done while faith is looking forward to the things God has in stock for you.
Springs refer to a source from where water flows from. Our mind is where gratitude flows from. If you’re going to be grateful for anything it will come from your mind.
Isaiah 17:10
The word ‘mindful’ in Hebrew is ‘Zakar’ which means to mark, to recognize, to recall, to call to mind, to think on, to mention, to remember. Without the mind there is no gratitude.
There are two major actions involved in gratitude:
- Your mind
- Thanksgiving
There won’t be gratitude If there’s nothing received. There’s always a reason for us to be grateful.
Even Jesus was expecting all the lepers to return to say thank you. Grace will not remove the place of thanksgiving. The mind is the inward action that deals with processing the thoughts of the goodness you have received while thanksgiving is the outward action.
Your mind is actually who you are, who you are right now is a function of your thought process.
Romans 7:23,25
That scripture tells us that we serve the law of God with our mind. So that means our service in church (coming to church or functioning in a unit) is something that came from our mind and the reason why some don’t pay attention to some of these things is still a decision that came from the mind.
There is no action that does not go through the mind. The person who decides not to go to church and the person that is always in church, made the decision from the mind.
Nobody takes an action without first thinking about it. A lot of things go through the mind. That is how good and dangerous the mind is.
The Devil makes things difficult for believers through the mind. The devil will first deal with the mind before getting access to a believer. The devil brings a situation on your way and one way or the other, you become engrossed in the same situation you can no longer think straight and one thing that does is that it makes you forget all that God has done for you and you begin to pay attention to small things.
After what God has done for the children of Israel, after singing songs for almost a chapter, and before that chapter could end, they were already complaining.
2 Corinthians 3:14, 2 Corinthians 4:4, 2 Corinthians 11:3, Ephesians 2:3, Romans 12:2, Ephesians 4:23.
These scriptures show how the mind of the children of Israel were blinded. We don’t have to be particular about what you see or are seeing, it is about what is going on in your mind.
Romans 12:2 explains that transformation takes place inside the mind first and people will see the transformation on the outside. Renewal takes place in the mind and nobody can see that.
Proverbs 4:20-23 tells us that to guide our heart. You determine what comes into your heart. You don’t need to think about some certain areas in your life that are not working even after praying because the more you think, the more you lose sight of God and the things he has done for you.
The more you stay thinking about that thing that is not working in your life, the more you are not seeing the things that God has done. And it comes to a time that you cannot even see the goodness of God at all even though they are all around you.
That is how dangerous it is to allow our mind to stay on the things that are not working in our life
Philippians 4:6-9 reveals that whatsoever God has done for us, we should think of them.
We should keep our mind on the things that God has done for you. The things you do are things that come out of your mind. They do not just stem from nowhere.
When all you think about is the things that are not working, overtime you will begin to lose sight of the things that are working.
Your gratitude can only come from the mind. The mind is everything about you.
Luke 17:11 reveals that after Jesus prayed for Lepers he asked them to show themselves to the priest. This is because there is a law that before lepers show themselves to others that they are healed, they must be certified as fit by the priests. After which the Lepers that presented themselves as cleansed will be isolated from the others. When the priest has completely confirmed the leper fit, sacrifice will be conducted. This is done to prevent the spread of the illness. Jesus instructed the lepers to follow the law.
They were all going to the priest but one stopped to return to Jesus to show that he was healed. He made up his mind to go back to thank Jesus. His thanksgiving came from his mind to his mouth. Jesus then asked him to go his way instead of sending him to the priest. This man was full of gratitude that Jesus perfected his healing.
We are expected to return with gratitude with the same attitude and intensity we came with when we asked. The decision to come back to thank Jesus is from a standpoint of mindfulness to show gratitude.
While we think we don’t have enough and have nothing to thank God for, there are many desiring to have them.
A grateful person will always have his blessing perfected like the leper.
When we begin to think about what we don’t have, we tend to lose sight of what God has done and it diminishes our faith in God. It will result in not looking forward to what God can do.
We were instructed in scriptures to think of God’s goodness. Faith will be born in our hearts if we think of the goodness of God.
Guarding our hearts is our sole responsibility. It takes a conscious effort to think of God’s goodness. When you can’t think of what to thank God for it means your focus has never been on his goodness.
We shouldn’t get to the point where our gaze is shifted from God. It is not primarily about God, it is about the condition of your heart. Our father cares about us. He wants us to thank him for the smallest details we tend to overlook.