The Gratitude Challenge
The Gratitude Challenge
Well, Hello Twig friends!
I’m so grateful to live in a place with all four seasons. With each change, there’s a new reminder. As we wake up to our first snow—pond frozen, earth resting—we’re given this quiet invitation to pause… and to give thanks.
We have so much to be grateful for.
Today we begin a three-week conversation on gratitude—not just learning about it, not just hoping it shows up, but actually becoming grateful people. People who live from a posture of gratitude, not just the occasional feeling of it.
Because what we discovered while preparing for this series is this:
Gratitude is not an emotion you wait for. Gratitude is a practice that forms you.
Psychologists, poets, theologians—people like Neil Platinga, John Ortberg, Mary Oliver, and Robert Emmons—have helped us understand both the anatomy and the theology of gratitude.
And the big idea for today is this:
Gratitude grows when we see life as a gift, not something we’re owed.
Life as Gift, Not Entitlement
Think of a movie you didn’t want to end.
For me, The Greatest Showman was like that. I was swept up in it, inspired by it… and then the credits rolled.
But what comes right after the magic?
A long list of names—camera operators, editors, writers, designers—everyone who made the moment possible.
And yet, how quickly do we shift from delight to critique?
“That scene was too long.”
“They should’ve cut that part.”
We forget so easily:
If you’ve been blessed, someone did the blessing.
If you’ve received something, someone gave it.
If you benefited, someone paid a cost.
Critique is often the surface symptom of something deeper: entitlement.
“I paid for this movie. You owe me entertainment. And if you don’t deliver, I resent you.”
Entitlement leads to resentment.
Gratitude leads to joy.
And while gratitude is good for us—emotionally, relationally, spiritually—it doesn’t grow on its own.
Entitlement is easy.
Gratitude requires practice.
Why Gratitude Must Be Practiced
Our brains come preloaded with something psychologists call the negativity bias. We’re wired to look for what’s wrong, missing, disappointing, or threatening.
So gratitude isn’t natural.
It must be trained like a muscle…
or tuned like an instrument.
I love the hymn lyric:
“Tune our hearts to sing Your praise.”
Because without tuning, our hearts drift—toward entitlement, complaint, comparison, and resentment.
Gratitude is the evidence that God’s Spirit is at work within us, forming us into people who recognize gift everywhere.
The Story of the Ten Lepers
In Luke 17, Jesus is traveling toward Jerusalem when ten people with leprosy cry out to Him.
He sends them to the priests, and on the way, they’re healed.
Ten are healed.
Only one returns to say thank you.
All receive the gift.
Only one returns to the Giver.
And Jesus says to him,
“Rise and go; your faith has made you well.”
Not healed.
Well.
It seems there is a difference.
Healing touches the body.
Gratitude touches the soul.
Gratitude completes the healing by making us whole.
When the Gift Is Taken Away
After our season of planting a church in Denver, we carried a lot of pain. I remember sitting in Puerto Rico during a rainstorm, pouring my heart out to a mentor.
She told me a story about a family given the temporary use of a washer and dryer. When the time came to return it, the teenage son was furious.
And the mother said something deeply wise:
“The only appropriate response to a gift—even when the gift is taken away—is thank you.”
That landed so deeply.
Pain has a way of revealing our posture:
Am I entitled?
Or am I grateful?
If I believe my health, energy, family, possessions—even my life—are gifts, then even in loss, I can still say “thank You.”
But if I believe I earned them, deserved them, was owed them…
then I will always feel cheated.
Gratitude says, “All is gift.”
Entitlement says, “You owe me.”
Rethinking Our Strategy for Living
To move from entitlement to gratitude, we need to repent—not in a shame-filled way, but in the way Dallas Willard described it:
Repentance is rethinking your strategy for living in light of God’s grace.
If all of life is a gift from a good God, then no matter the season, we have much to be grateful for—if only we can see it.
So over these three weeks, we’re rethinking our strategy.
We’re practicing gratitude instead of entitlement.
The Practice: Start a Gratitude List
This week’s invitation is simple:
Get a notebook. Write “Gratitude List” at the top. Start listing gifts.
Try aiming for 1,000.
One by one.
Name them.
Because gratitude grows where attention goes.
And may we all be like the one who returned—
may we see the gift,
remember the Giver,
and say thank You.
