Grateful
Grateful: 30 Days of Growing in Thankfulness
By: Allison Brost
“More than an emotion, gratitude is an invitation. It’s an opportunity to place our trust and hope in God over anything else we may be experiencing in the moment.”
You know when you keep hearing something from all kinds of different sources and you start to realize— this must be something God is bringing to my attention? Well that’s gratitude for me.
I know it in my head that gratitude is a key component to joy and contentment and worship and love and all the things. But somehow it still feels so hard to practice.
So when I saw this devotional, I figured it would be a good way to make a practice and a study of gratitude. I wish I could say it magically changed my life and I’m the most grateful person on the planet now, but that’s not how these things work.
Allison Brost wraps this idea of gratitude around is the theme of growth. In fact the devotionals are divided into five different parts: Tending the Soil, Planting the Seeds, Putting Down the Roots, Beginning to Bud, and Bringing in the Harvest.
I found this a powerful way to look at how to increase in gratitude.
She says this:
“It takes intentionality to grow gratefully. We won’t simply fall into gratefulness or accidentally find ourselves increasing in joy. Growing gratefully requires an intentional decision to stay connected to Christ… this is the source for any fruitfulness and every bit of growth: abiding. It’s entirely impossible for us to grow anything spiritually good in our lives by ourselves… As believers, our job isn’t growing— it’s abiding.”
Being a grateful person is an ‘ongrowing’ process. When John talks about abiding in his 15th chapter, he uses the illustration of a vine. We have to abide in him, staying connected to the Vine, in order to have the source of life that produces the fruit of the Spirit of which gratitude is one(even if the author of Galatians left it out of their famous list).
So no, this book won’t magically make you more grateful, but it will motivate you to commit to the process.
Allison reminds us that we need to pull the weeds and thorns of unbelief; we need to embrace the hard seasons of waiting that are growing our roots deeper to withstand the winds of pain or grief; we need to allow God to prune off the things that are hindering our growth, however precious they may seem to us.
Isn’t God gracious in how he has provided a tangible reality— the growing of plants— for us to understand him and our relationship with him better? Throughout all of Scripture we see over and over comparisons to nature or farming. He has revealed himself to us in his creation and at the base level we can thank him for showing us how to grow!
The book is only 30 days; I could easily see this being something you read again— every month if you want!— because we need these reminders of truth.
Here are a few other quotes from the book that I thought were really good:
“This is the real power behind gratitude: that even in the moments when God feels far away and life is just plain hard, it points us back to God’s presence. With each breath of praise, in every word of thanks, our hearts are directed back to this truth that ‘God is with us.’”
“When we give thanks, it helps us to see what is, in fact, true. When we’re steeped in our circumstances, it can be easy for our minds to wander from God’s truth. But expressing gratitude—giving God thanks— is one of the surest ways in which we can align our lives with his promises”
“In order to bear much fruit, the seed must first die. Growth can only happen if there is first a death. The process of darkness and waiting is the very thing necessary for the seed to fulfill its purpose—to bear fruit. The burial is a new beginning. I wonder how many of us have seeds within us that must first die before we can begin growing the good things that God has for our lives?…As you repent of grasping tightly to your will and then burying your own expectations, that act of dying to self is exactly what’s necessary for you to grow.”
“Offer up a sacrifice of praise (Heb 13:15). It costs us, but it most certainly won’t cost us anything we truly want to keep. It may cost us our fear, but it will grow our faith deeper. It may cost us our despair, but it will increase our joy. It may cost us our pride, but it will reveal to us a greater view of the limitless depths of Christ’s love. Because praise reminds us most of all that what God says is true. Praise points us straight back to God’s presence. And fear and anxiety simply can’t stick around wherever our God is.”
“Gratitude is so critical. Because, in our broken world, every good gift is also going to come with some slightly less desirable parts. And before we know it, the very things we were once so grateful for can begin to feel more like burdens than blessings.”
“What a blessing to know that God has already given us everything we need in him. The answer to living a more grateful life isn’t about trying more but relying more… we have his Spirit inside us. He is guiding us, transforming us, and growing the godly fruit inside our hearts that day by day makes us look more like Jesus.”
Recommendation
If you are looking for a short little devotional to supplement your Bible reading or if you, like me, feel like you’re lacking in gratitude, I would definitely recommend you pick this book up.
It is an encouraging, daily reminder that gratitude is essential to our faith and trust and growth, and we can’t neglect it. How our outlook of our life and circumstances would change if we turn our eyes and hearts to our Creator, thanking him for being enough for us!
Honestly, even if you feel like you’re already a grateful person, I can’t think of a reason NOT to read this book. It’s probably not a great fit for young kids, but I think it could be done with teenagers if you want to make it a part of family devotions.
And if you enjoy the book, you can also follow Allison Brost on Facebook (probably on other platforms too but I don’t have those) and she posts fairly regularly with the same kind of biblical encouragement for daily life.
**Received a copy from The Good Book Company in exchange for an honest review**
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