The Power of Thanksgiving Podcast Episode

How do I position myself to have a thankful spirit? Yeah. And to me the key is what’s your level of humility? Psalm 100 says, it is he that has made us and not we ourselves. Welcome to Breaking Bread, the podcast brought to you by Apostolic Christian Counseling and Family Services. 

Excellent as always, to have you along. Thanksgiving week, a holiday that I would like to point out, is held in high regard by virtually everyone. I can’t imagine anybody saying that they disagree with or don’t esteem thanksgiving, certainly in others, and want more of it in ourselves. Today I’m joined by Arlan Miller to discuss Thanksgiving. 

To peer beneath the hood of giving thanks to discover why this character quality of giving thanks is so healthy. Arlan, welcome. And would you say that there’s something special about Thanksgiving? Yeah, I mean, it’s pureness in the sense, of course, we need to be thankful. We need to step into that and what a better way to do it than whatever that looks like. Celebrating together, gathering around, sharing a remembrance of good things throughout the past year, and just enjoying food, fellowship, and conversation. It just gives me warm feelings as I think about it as well. There’s been research done, right? To show that being grateful, being thankful, just does a body good. 

Yeah. Does a brain good? Literally. Yeah. It builds up your physical, your emotional, your mental health. It’s a positive boost to your immune system. Right? It just is a way that helps put you into a good state and frame of mind. I love to just pop the hood on that a little bit more here in this conversation. To get down beneath it and I think there’s a really good reason why Thanksgiving is such a healthy human endeavor and posture and does us so much. Good. So where does your mind go when I say that? Yeah. And let’s just peel back some of the layers there. 

Sure. What is the posture I need in order to be thankful? Somewhere along the line, you told me something that stuck with me. You said Thanksgiving needs to be the engine, and often we treat it as the caboose, meaning that it needs to come first and it needs to be born out of our posture, our frame of mind. 

How do we think about ourselves, the world, God, and where do we position ourselves. And that’s just resonated with me because it pushes me into a place of asking how do I position myself to have a thankful spirit? Yeah. And to me the key is, what’s your level of humility? 

Psalm 100, I think it is, says, it is he that has made us and not we ourselves. Right. And then it goes on to talk about thanksgiving and being thankful, but just that posture. You know, we start by thinking, okay, God has made me. It wasn’t me. I’m not a self-made person. You know, all these things that maybe we have or whatever, are not because of me. It’s because of that fundamental positioning of myself under the hand of a loving and good Creator.  

I really like that. And I think now you’re getting to a posture that gives rise to Thanksgiving. And a grateful spirit. I really like that humility. I think that’s really interesting to think about. Let’s just muse on that a little bit. The Scripture says grace is given to the humble, but the proud are resisted. Right. It’s so true. But it’s not hard to get there. We all do this. 

We love humble people, and we bristle against proud people. Right. And it’s still a wonder that the human race has got such a problem with pride, like all of us do, when we love humility in everybody else. But there again, maybe we’re getting a little bit to some of the foundations on why Thanksgiving is so beloved across all shades and stripes. 

Because it has that same appeal, appreciation, and attraction that a humble being has. And that’s one of reception and one of appreciation. Right? And sometimes a contrast is helpful. So, let’s contrast that. What’s the opposite of that? You could use whatever word, let’s use entitlement. This feeling that we deserve something or this is because of what we’ve done or earned as to why we are where we’re at and that just pushes away versus a humble, thankful spirit draws in and says, okay, I am just thankful. Because of all these things that are beyond me.  

That’s interesting. If I were to see my pride through the lens of entitlement, it’s much more repulsive. Yeah. I mean, it just pushes away. Yeah. Entitlement. I think it’s a really good opposite word to gratefulness. And humility, because entitlement sees everything owed. Thank you for that. You were supposed to do that for me. Yeah. That’s the mindset of an entitled person and my goodness, it’s invasive. Yeah. And to your point, it pushes people away. That’s not the kind of person you want to be sitting beside at the dinner table and like having a conversation with versus the one where it’s not about them. Everything is about the other.  

Because of just that humble, grateful posture that pushes me to a place where everything is a gift. Well, you take a look at both of those mindsets, entitlement right next to grateful, and you think about how those two individuals go through maybe even the same unfavorable circumstances. 

You can see where we see this bear itself out in mental health because as an entitled individual, I just get sideways in a lot of places. Yeah, you can get sideways. You can get bitter. You can start to spin, you can start to go down nasty ways of thinking, just not healthy ways of thinking versus if we can start at a humble posture. 

So, there’s a redirection that takes place or there’s a difficulty that takes place or unfavorable circumstance that takes place. If we’re grounded in this understanding that God is good, he is our loving Creator and he does good, that allows us to move into a place of receiving grace, even in the difficult and saying, okay, Lord, this is a redirection, or this is not maybe what I would choose. 

And yet, look at how good it is still. And I know that it will be good. Tease out the difference between gratefulness and thanksgiving. I view thanksgiving as more of the action, the fruit that’s born out from that feeling of gratefulness. That means that gratefulness has direction to it. 

And when it turns into thanksgiving, it needs to land someplace. You know what I mean? It’s not just kept to us, but it finds thanks in person. It finds thanks towards somebody. Yeah. And it can be to another person, right? It goes into that. 

It can be. It can be internal in the sense that maybe it turns towards worship or maybe it turns towards an emotional experience of, oh God, how good you are. It’s meant to be shared. And that’s where you see the manifestations of thankfulness. Okay. So now I’m curious and a little bit geeky here. 

That’s going to be fun. If Thanksgiving lands with a being or person, you think that’s true? I’m just wondering if Thanksgiving can land, if it doesn’t have a person or God himself on the other side of it. I don’t know. 

And yeah, I mean, I could get behind that either it is another person, or it is our Creator God that we are being thankful to and showing the fruit of our gratefulness through our actions of Thanksgiving. What I love about that is that there’s something really profound there, right? 

Very deeply spiritual, very much how God has perhaps created us and given us this avenue of Thanksgiving, which will bless and love people and bless and love him. Right? Love God and love people. Thanksgiving apart from God and apart from other people. I’m not sure what that is at all. 

And so, then we’re like, maybe this is what God is up to with not only his command for Thanksgiving, but his creation of us. To be thankful. Yeah. Well, a couple of thoughts there. So, number one, it’s a great heart check. You know, you take a kid or take yourself, and say, okay, if you have a hard time being thankful to someone, or sharing thankfulness to someone, turn the microscope on yourself. 

What’s that saying about where your heart posture is at, where your attitude is at? You know, it’s a good diagnostic in some ways. Are you down there underneath the hood? You know, are you living a life of humble thankfulness or humble gratefulness or are you living a life with a sense of prideful entitlement or thinking I’m deserving or whatnot. 

And then the second thought, I’ve totally forgotten. Well, while you come up with a second thought, let me make a comment about that. It has a ton to do with relationships, doesn’t it? Yeah. If I am not a thankful person, it might be as much of an indicator of my relationship with others and my relationship with God. 

Yes. How I view those relationships, which I think is really insightful to myself.  Yeah. And so, I remembered my thought. It goes in full circle a little bit, because sometimes I think you look in the Scriptures, thankfulness is often associated with an action, like you said. 

It’s the offering of Thanksgiving or praise or whatever it is. That then has an impact upon our being. Go back to what we said at the beginning. It has an impact on our physical health. So, the action works backwards and bears fruit within our own feelings, right? 

When Christ told them he would wash their feet, you know, he washes his disciples’ feet. He says, if you know these things, happy are you, if you do them. The action then leads towards feelings. So, there was a period of our life when Katie and I walked through a really major disappointment in life, just an unmet expectation that just did not go the way we had thought it was going to. 

And the next Father’s Day, she gave me a gratefulness journal. Right. Well, she gave me a journal, and I turned it into a gratefulness journal. You know, just a place to capture my thoughts. And so, every day I would purpose myself to find one specific thing that I was thankful for. 

And I did that until the journal ran out, you know, a couple years. Right? And it pushes you to a place where your mindset shifts. There’s discipline there and there’s action there. Sometimes you had to force yourself to do it, but it pushes you to a place to say, count your blessings, name them one by one. Right. See what the Lord has done. It’s a manifestation of doing that. And I just did it the other day. Sometimes I’ll pull that thing out and I’ll look and find, oh yeah, not to leave thankfulness just bottled up or gratefulness just bottled up. 

Ah, no. We need to express it. We need to do something with it. Well, I love that example, Arlan. I think really what it illustrates again is that gratefulness aligns us in a super healthy posture with others and God, as you did that everyday gratefulness. What it did is it aligned you with God and with respect to him and with respect to other people in a way that promoted humility. 

That generated gratitude, and then that gratitude comes forward in Thanksgiving. Yeah. Right? And that’s what we celebrate. Yes, that’s the opportunity before us. And no wonder it’s so well received by so many because it’s so good for the soul. Yeah. I think celebrating it together in community is so powerful. 

Again, I think the Scripture calls us into that type of setting. And so, whatever that looks like, praying that everyone who listens has the blessing of community around them. Or it’s a way to bring people into community or just be mindful of that, but then just sit around and do something as simple as saying, tell me one thing you’re thankful for. Going around the table or something like that. Or tell me one thing about God that you are thankful for. Such powerful encouragement and such a positive step towards a humble, thankful, grateful spirit. Well, what I really liked too was what you said there about doing it with people. 

I think it’s a great way to be there when we’re not. Yeah. Because so much of Thanksgiving and gratefulness does fall on feelings and emotions and those are tricky. Yeah. And not to be in that place or in that space or not feeling it at the moment is likely going to happen. And I think when we step into the congregation which is thankful and we offer up thanks with others, I think it’s completely genuine and when we join the congregation in their Thanksgiving, we then give thanks regardless of the feeling.  

Yeah. Right. And that then begins to move us to the place where God wants us. Yeah. We are pulled along with others. Thanks, Arlan, and thanks each one for listening. 

Enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday with feasting, joy, and rejoicing. What a beautiful thing to celebrate. Yes. Let’s celebrate God’s grace.