How to Become Grateful, No Matter What

Whatever happens, always be thankful. This is how God wants you to live in Christ Jesus.

1 Thessalonians 5:18 ERV

The first five words of this verse can seem impossible to those who like me are gratitude-challenged. Whatever happens?!? Always be thankful?!? Yes, this is how Jesus lived and how God wants us to live. 

Not only does God want me to live this way, but the Mayo Clinic also tells me that gratitude is helpful for depression, anxiety, heart health, and sleep, and has a host of other health benefits. However, I can still find myself grouchy, moody, and full of complaints, looking at life through a lens of negativity.  

I have seen gratitude more as an emotion in response to good things that have happened in my life (circumstances), or to people I am happy to be around. But God’s Word describes gratitude as a conviction and a belief on which to live life. All of life’s seasons hold opportunities for us to be grateful because God works through every part of our lives to fulfill a beautiful purpose (Romans 8:28 Voice). With this kind of faith, our times of disappointment and difficulty can become the times for which we are most grateful. 

Paradoxically, my bitter experience was pushing me toward wholeness. For You, God, have put behind all my shortcomings and wrongdoings. You have rescued me from death. You pulled me from a black hole of nothingness and held me close to You. And so I join the living in giving thanks to You …

Isaiah 38:17-18 Voice

In this passage, a man named King Hezekiah is reflecting on how God used his most bitter time to be his most transformative time. Experiencing God’s rescue made Hezekiah live gratefully and helped him believe that God still had a plan for his life. So, whatever happened, he was grateful. 

Let’s start our Bible study to learn how to become grateful no matter what happens, like King Hezekiah. Here is what I am learning about four ways to become grateful. 

1. Change our lens

As life happens and disappointments accrue, our perspective can become negative and unbelieving. Once our view is darkened, our whole life can become dark. 

Conversely, if we keep our perspective healthy and faithful, believing that God is always working for the good, our lives become a light.

Listen, your eye, your outlook, the way you see is your lamp. If your way of seeing is functioning well, then your whole life will be enlightened. But if your way of seeing is darkened, then your life will be a dark, dark place.

Luke 11:34 Voice

I have gone through many difficult times when I have lost my faith. In these moments, I start to see life through a lens of discouragement and unbelief. I become cynical and pessimistic, expecting bad things to happen. I become distrustful of God and people, wondering if God cares and questioning his goodness and love. I am far from grateful, and I need to change my lens.   

All these things are for your benefit. As grace increases to benefit more and more people, it will cause gratitude to increase, which results in God’s glory. So we aren’t depressed. But even if our bodies are breaking down on the outside, the person that we are on the inside is being renewed every day. Our temporary minor problems are producing an eternal stockpile of glory for us that is beyond all comparison. We don’t focus on the things that can be seen but on the things that can’t be seen. The things that can be seen don’t last, but the things that can’t be seen are eternal.

2 Corinthians 4:15-18 CEB

This passage teaches that God uses everything in our lives for our benefit—the good, the bad, and the ugly. He works through life’s “problems” to produce unseen things in our character and spiritual lives that will benefit us for eternity. Changing my lens means that I stop focusing on the problems that I can see, and I start thinking about what God is developing in me. This brings renewal and internal strength. 

We also learn from this passage that our gratitude will increase when we see all the ways God is working. Rather than being stuck looking at my problems, shortcomings, and limitations, I can change my lens and start seeing God at work in my life. Where there is sin, he can forgive. Where there is weakness, he can show his strength. Where there is heartbreak, he can heal.   

2. Let God snap our chains of regret  

It’s difficult to be grateful for what God is doing in my life now when I am consumed with regret from the past. Luckily, God is bigger than our regrets, sins, and disappointments from the past, and he can help us break free from them. 

Some of us once sat in darkness, living in the dark shadows of death. We were prisoners to our pain, chained to our regrets. 
[14]His light broke through the darkness and he led us out in freedom from death’s dark shadow and snapped every one of our chains.

Psalm 107:10, 14 TPT

Pain imprisons us when we haven’t processed it through prayer. Unprocessed pain can lead to bitterness, resentment, and being chained by regret. 

My refusal to pray through painful things at different times in my life has left me in negativity. I don’t like always digging deep in prayer and talking to God about the pain of guilt from my sin, of marriage distance and disunity, or bad decisions I regret making. I can’t free myself from these chains. Many people remain stuck in the chains of regret for decades because they don’t know how to break free. But as verse 14 states, God can snap every one of our chains. 

The book of Luke tells us the story of a woman who could have been chained to her regrets but instead was filled with gratitude. This woman was known to be sinful, but she was so grateful for God’s forgiveness that she washed Jesus’s feet with her tears. She is a poignant example of someone who had God snap their chains and break them free. 

She was forgiven many, many sins, and so she is very, very grateful. If the forgiveness is minimal, the gratitude is minimal.

Luke 7:47 MSG    

Rather than being stuck in pride and regret, we can have God snap our chains through Jesus forgiving the pain of our past. When we see and face the depth of our sinfulness but turn to God for mercy, he forgives! Those who refuse to see their sin never get this experience of forgiveness so their “gratitude is minimal.” Our gratitude grows and is maximized when we are willing to see, pray through, and turn to God for mercy and forgiveness. Rather than being stuck in the past, we can move forward with faith for the future.

3. Develop the neglected parts of our lives

To be grateful amid tests, hardships, and difficulties, it is essential to believe that God has a great plan he is equipping us to fulfill. He is not finished with us; rather, he is preparing us for all that is ahead and that he has in mind for our lives.  

Don’t run from tests and hardships, brothers and sisters. As difficult as they are, you will ultimately find joy in them; if you embrace them, your faith will blossom under pressure and teach you true patience as you endure. And true patience brought on by endurance will equip you to complete the long journey and cross the finish line-mature, complete, and wanting nothing. If you don’t have all the wisdom needed for this journey, then all you have to do is ask God for it; and God will grant all that you need. He gives lavishly and never scolds you for asking.

James 1:2-5 Voice

Many parts of my character and personality are underdeveloped for my age. Sins like selfish ambition, deceit, bitterness, and pride have made me focus more on external talents and accomplishments than the internal qualities that come from God. James tells us to welcome the difficult seasons of life’s journey because they develop parts of us that cannot be developed any other way. Things like humility, vulnerability, compassion, and resilience can only be forged in the crucible of struggle. 

I am learning to be most grateful for times of hardship because they reveal the parts of my life that have been neglected so that God can develop them. None of us is equipped to make it to the finish line or to get our friends and family to the finish line without God reaching in and molding these often-untouched parts of our hearts. 

David Brooks captures this idea in his book, The Second Mountain:   

The valley is where we shed the old self so the new self can emerge. There are no shortcuts.

David Brooks, The Second Mountain 

4. Believe in God’s plan

In Him also we have received an inheritance [a destiny—we were claimed by God as His own], having been predestined (chosen, appointed beforehand) according to the purpose of Him who works everything in agreement with the counsel and design of His will,

Ephesians 1:11 AMP

God has a destiny for each of our lives. He works every day in every way to fulfill that plan. He uses everything in our lives to move us toward that destiny—every talent, every opportunity, every good thing, and every sin and mistake.

We have to be deeply rooted in God and the Bible every day to believe that God is working us toward a destiny, no matter what happens. 

Let your roots grow down deeply in Him, and let Him build you up on a firm foundation. Be strong in the faith, just as you were taught, and always spill over with thankfulness.

Colossians 2:7 Voice

We all need to ask ourselves where our roots are growing. Too often we draw strength from external success, popularity, attention, or financial security. None of these will give us the faith to believe in God’s plan for us. 

When we root ourselves deeply in God and believe in his plans for our lives, we will spill over with thankfulness. 

Gratitude is an essential part of moving us forward toward that destiny. Living our lives with gratitude helps us see what God has in mind for us to do. Gratitude makes us actively look for the opportunities God is bringing into our lives. When we are ungrateful or discontent, our minds become so full of things that are going wrong (or might go wrong) that we can miss the doors that God is opening. 

Final thoughts

Life is full of many challenges that can weigh us down with negativity. God gives us the antidote: gratitude. Learning to become grateful by changing our lens, breaking free from disappointment and regret, developing the neglected areas of our lives, and believing in God’s plan is how we break free and live the life God wants.