Faithful on the Clock is a podcast with the mission of getting your work and faith aligned. We want you to understand Who you're serving and why so you can get more joy and legacy from every minute spent on the clock. Thanks for joining us and taking this step toward a more fulfilling job and relationship with God!

Want to join us on social media?

We'd love to have you stay up-to-date with the show on all our platforms!

Threads

Bluesky

Facebook

Pinterest

Instagram

LinkedIn

YouTube

In this episode...

Gratitude, God, and Perceiving Proper Value

https://faithfulontheclock.captivate.fm/episode/gratitude-god-and-perceiving-proper-value

Most people consider gratitude during the Thanksgiving holiday. But Episode 139 of Faithful on the Clock asks: Are you grateful for God as He is, or just His blessings?

Timestamps:

[00:04] - Intro

[00:42] - My experience of feeling inferior walking past nice houses; how a sense of material items, gratitude, and the sense of self can get wrapped up together

[03:53] - The futility of trying not to want what you want; the white bear problem

[04:38] - What’s better than the things we covet; the relationship between the value we perceive and the amount of gratitude we have and how it influences our ability where gratitude gets directed

[06:22] - God sees us as the most valuable and is grateful for us, so much that He gave His Son, Jesus

[7:18] - The need to honor the reciprocity in our relationship with God; why we need to be grateful not just for God’s blessings, but for God as He is; how Job’s story shows reciprocal value and gratitude between God and Job and God correcting the Devil about what love is

[10:47] - Prayer

[11:43] - Outro/What’s coming up next

Key takeaways:

• When I was walking my dog, seeing expensive houses made me feel inferior and sad, despite what I know about God’s provision and instruction not to store up treasures on Earth. My sense of worth was jumbled up with the worth of material items and perceived blessings.
• Gurus will tell you to learn to be more grateful for what you have, but the best way to abandon something is to find something better to replace it with. Because gratitude is proportional to the value we place on something, we have to learn to put value on the right things to be grateful for them. This includes God!
• Our relationship with God is reciprocal. He sees value in and is grateful for us. In return, we should see value in and be grateful for Him, not just the blessings He might offer to us. God doesn’t want to be appreciated just for what He gives, but rather, for Who He is.
• This Thanksgiving, challenge yourself to tell the Devil that your love and gratitude is for God, not just stuff or conveniences. This replays the story of Job, where Job put the Devil in His place by loving and appreciating God even when all of the blessings God had given to him were stolen.

• Grace in the Grind: 52 Devotions for Thriving in the Workplace by Wanda M Thibodeaux | Amazon
• Grace in the Grind: 52 Devotions for Thriving in the Workplace by Wanda M Thibodeaux | Barnes & Noble®
• Wanda Thibodeaux on LinkedIn -- Being Grateful for God as He Is

CTAs:

• If you identify specific blessings God has given to you, express gratitude, but then also identify the points of His character behind that blessing you can appreciate.

What’s coming up next:

Most of us never feel like we have enough time. But in Episode 140 of Faithful on the Clock Lissa Figgins explains why stewarding our hours is better than managing them.

Support the show!

Visit the Faithful on the Clock Patreon page to choose a tier plan and become a supporting member. You'll gain access to goodies like early episode access, newsletters, and more based on the plan that's right for you.

patreon.com/faithfulontheclock

Give a one-off tip or donation on our Captivate support page. You can become a member there with the same great tier options you'll find at Patreon, too.

Support Faithful on the Clock

Visit our sister site! Faithfulonthclock.com features additional free, free-with-registration, and paid access content to grow your faith, including

• social media archives,
• previously published faith-based articles,
• original blogs,
• inspirational videos,
• episode teasers and replays
• exclusive faith-based essays and articles,
• exclusive videos,
• exclusive audio,
• exclusive in-depth devotionals.

Share the show! Like these episodes? Share them on social media, in texts or emails, or in person.

It’s that time again, listeners — time for another episode of Faithful on the Clock, the podcast for Christian professionals where every potato boils in the water to get your faith and work aligned. Here in the United States, we’re celebrating Thanksgiving, where we pause and consider all the people and other blessings in our lives. But today, I’m taking a fresh look at gratitude and the way we perceive proper value. Do we really need to be more grateful like so many gurus tell us? Or do we just need to direct our gratitude to the right place? Let’s get an answer, everybody.

So, a while back, I needed to walk my dog — I’ve got this adorable little Yorkshire Terrier who’s only about two years old, so, you know, he’s energetic and needs to get outside. And kind of on a whim, I decided I would take the dog a way I don’t normally go. I mean, it wasn’t like this huge hike that far from my house or anything, but we just don’t normally take that street. And even though it’s close to my house, I genuinely hadn’t really noticed what was in the area before. And pretty soon, I get into this section that was just…I mean, you could tell people there had a little more money, right? We’re talking multi-car garages, pillar door columns, like, absolutely pristine landscaping, whole nine yards.

And so, when I’d first started the walk, I’m in a pretty good mood. The sun was out, the dog’s behaving himself for the most part — but then, all of a sudden, all these thoughts started creeping into my head. So, like, I was thinking, “I’ll never be able to afford a house like that,” you know, stuff like, “I can barely pay to fix my car, let alone to get all this other stuff.” And it wasn’t so much that I was envious. It was just this sense of sadness that, even with as hard as I’ve always worked, there was still such a difference between what I have and what these other people had acquired. And I was just frustrated that that gap even existed. But at any rate, I started to try to pull myself out of it. And I thought about Matthew 6:19-21, where Jesus tells His disciples not to store up treasures for themselves on Earth. And then of course, there’s Matthew 6:31-34, where He reminds us not to worry about what we’re going to eat or drink and all of that.

So, in that moment, you know, I understand in my head that I don’t have to lean on myself to have enough. I get that everything I’m seeing as I walk along this street is just temporary. But in my heart, I still just felt really — if I’m gonna be totally honest, just really inferior. But I didn't know how to get rid of the want I had, because somehow in my head, with that feeling of inferiority, it felt like, “Well, if I just had all the stuff that has value, then maybe I’ll have some value, too.” And maybe some of you out there can relate to that, this feeling like if you just have some physical proof that God’s taking care of you, then it’s no sweat to say, “Wow, God, thanks. Like, you must think I’m worth something.” Like, all the stuff and gratitude and our sense of self all get wrapped up together.

But as I kept walking, you know, in my head, I’m hearing all of these gurus who have said, well, “You just have to learn to be more grateful for what you have.” And it’s really this idea that your gratitude is deficient somehow, that all of the envy or bad feelings you have will go away if you can just increase how thankful you are. And they might even quote verses like 1 Thessalonians 5:18, which says, “Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.”.

So, the easiest way I have to explain this is, think about little kids for a second. If you want them to leave something behind, what do you do? You don’t tell them they don’t need it or that they shouldn’t think about it. If you’ve ever heard of the white bear experiment, it’s proved this idea about the brain that when you try not to think about something, you end up thinking about it. So, no. When you want a little kid to leave something, you make something else seem better so they feel like they’re winning by setting the first thing aside. Psychology would call this positive manipulation. And it doesn’t work with just kids. Even my dog will leave one toy he’s playing with if I present another one he sees as having a higher reward value.

So, then my mind pulled up some sermons I had heard Craig Groeschel of Life Church give. And just to kind of paraphrase across those, he basically said that if you want to ditch a bad habit, you have to replace it with something better. And so then the next obvious step was, I asked myself, “OK, well, what’s better than all these houses along this street?”

Now, the most obvious answer according to Matthew 6:19-21 is God’s house, right? That’s where all of us who have faith in Jesus are headed. But there are so many things I could label that way. Like, hugs from my kids, right? Or, you know, my dog, he’s got this way of sleeping on his back and letting his tongue just peek out. Now, pay attention to what I’m gonna say, because it’s gonna hit, OK? Because the value I perceive from those things is higher than the value I see in the nice houses, I don’t have to convince myself to be more grateful for them. It’s not something I have to work on or insist is true. The gratitude is just naturally there.

So, here’s the deal. What I learned from this is — see, most of us, we don’t need to learn how to be more grateful. To feel gratitude, we already can do that. That’s a capability God has always gifted to us. But because gratitude is proportional to the value we perceive, we need to learn how to perceive what we have as being more valuable than whatever it is we covet. It’s not a matter of increasing the gratitude quotient, but rather of directing the intense gratitude you innately have to the right thing.

And I know some of you out there are saying, “OK, Wanda, but what does that really mean for our relationship to ourselves and to God?” Well, the first thing is, and I really want this to sink in for you today, to God, there is nothing more valuable than His kids. He sacrificed everything including Jesus to make sure He wouldn’t lose us. And so, when you look in the mirror, friends, you should understand that you’re seeing God’s passion. He suffered not just to make some grand statement, but because there’s genuinely nothing that God puts more value on — and, therefore, has more gratitude about — than you.

This is such a precious, precious truth. I mean, the Creator of the Universe, He’s grateful for us? Yes! Because He knows the joy we can reflect back to Him. He knows how much infinite value that joy has.

[7:18]

But I want to convict you a little bit, OK? Relationships are supposed to be reciprocal things, right? Both parties in a relationship are supposed to give and take. Isn’t it reasonable, then, that if we want to direct intense gratitude to the right thing, we learn to see the value in how He loves us? So long as we reciprocate that love and consider Him to be more precious than anything the world might hold, we can easily let go of whatever else we might have coveted. We can put our gratitude not toward even the heavenly gifts God would give us, but rather toward the Father Himself.

The world is so, so good at telling us to be grateful for our blessings. You know, you’ve seen it everywhere, every social media post and cat poster out there, everybody’s like, hashtag blessed. But what I am preaching to you today is that there’s nothing with more value than the One doing the blessing. And if the Bless-or has more value than the individual bless-ings, then let’s show the most gratitude for Him just because He’s the God He is. Like, of course, you can tell God thank you. I’m not saying not to do that. I’m just saying, like, anybody who’s gotten into money, they will tell you, at some point, you don’t want people to just say, “Wow, thanks for paying for x or giving me y.” You start to understand that they appreciate all the stuff more than they appreciate you, right? And at some point, it just feels super awful, because you just want to be seen for you. You don’t want people to like you just because you give them stuff. And what I’m telling you is, of course God appreciates a thank you, but He wants to be enough for you just as He is. Because that’s how He loves us. He says, “It doesn’t matter if you’ve got a million dollars or a penny — I don’t love your stuff, I love you. I love your heart and I love your faith and I love all the goofy little quirks, and I want you to come to me at 2 a.m. no matter how broken you are, and I want to pour out all of Who I am to you. Because that’s what friendship is. That’s what love is.” And if you look at the story of Job, this is how the Devil tried to hurt God the most. He basically said, “You’re giving this guy all of this stuff. He doesn’t really love you. He loves your blessings, but He doesn’t love YOU.”

So, here's my challenge to you in this Thanksgiving season. I want you to look back at the Devil and say, “I know where my love is going and it’s not to the stuff or even to the conveniences in my life. It’s to the One Who’s faithful to me even if you take all His blessings away.” Because — and I’ve said this in other episodes of the show — if you know the story of Job, it’s not about God sending some lesson to Job. God already knew what Job was like, and Job knew what God was like. It’s a story about God and Job seeing value in and being grateful for each other, and in that, teaching the Devil He's not a speck as smart as he thinks he is. Every time you give your highest amount of gratitude to God and prove to the Devil what love really is, the Devil has to tuck his tail a little bit further between his legs and walk a little faster back the way He came.

So, all of that being said, I hope you’ll take a moment now to just bow your head a moment and share a quick prayer with me.

God, you know I haven’t had a lot of material gain in my life. That might always be true. But what I have had is the promise in Scripture of what relationship with You is like. And when push comes to shove, even when I pass by those nice houses, I don’t want those nice houses nearly as much as I want to be with You. And Lord, I pray today, just shine that same desire in the hearts of everybody listening. Let’s appreciate the blessings You gift to us, Lord, but as David did, let’s long completely for You. In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen.

That about wraps it up, everybody. As we dive into the holidays here in the United States, I know a lot of you at the end of the year are like, “Oh, my goodness! There just aren’t enough hours in the day!” Right? If you’ve been watching the clock even more than usual, our next show might completely shift your approach to time. I’ll be speaking with time steward Lissa Figgins about how leaving time management behind can actually be the path you need to a more relaxed, fulfilling, and service-driven life. And I’ll also give you a quick reminder that our brand new devotional, Grace in the Grind, is now live to order. I’ll drop some links for that in the show notes so you can order, or you can check our social media for those links, as well. I’ll see you in two weeks, everybody. Be blessed.