Don’t Forget to Count Your Blessings by Elizabeth Melville

It was a mundane Tuesday evening. My husband, Jonathan, was fielding bedtime questions from our especially chatty 8-year-old, who was doing his best to delay sleep. They were laughing together when I heard Jonathan refer to me as his wife.

As I loaded the dishwasher, those words struck me afresh.

I am his wife.

Fifteen years in, I’m mostly accustomed to that title. But in our newlywed days, the words husband and wife carried a kind of electric joy. We were deeply grateful to God and to each other for the gift of companionship, for the rest and delight we found in one another. From that union, God has given us three beautiful children, gifts we once prayed for and now, if I’m honest, sometimes take for granted too.

My heart was quietly convicted. How many blessings do we enjoy today that we once pleaded with God to provide? How easily do we shift from gratitude to entitlement?

As Christians, we should be marked by resounding gratitude. We know the truth about ourselves, that apart from Christ we deserve judgment, yet we have been given eternal riches instead. Grace should produce thanksgiving.

Earlier that day at Bible study, I was also reminded of this. Our class is a sweet mix of older and younger women, and many of the older women are now widows. They gently exhorted us to cherish our husbands, to be thankful for godly men with whom we can mine the treasures of Scripture, share burdens, and walk faithfully through life.

We are studying the book of Isaiah, where God’s people are rightly rebuked for their rebellion and forgetfulness. They grumbled. They strayed. They were proud. They had tragically short memories of God’s faithfulness.

We have short memories, too.

But God has not left His will a mystery. He tells us plainly:
“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”
—1 Thessalonians 5:16–18

And again:
“…giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
—Ephesians 5:20

Gratitude is not a personality trait reserved for the naturally optimistic. It is a command. And it is comprehensive, always in everything.

Gratitude is a heart posture of faith. It is trust in action. It rests in the promises of Romans 8 that God is sovereign over all things and is working them for our good. He alone sees the whole picture. He gives what is best, even when it does not feel best. We rely on His mercy, trust His purposes, and depend on His Spirit to supply what we lack.

This is how we live out the call of James 1 to “count it all joy.”

Throughout Scripture, we see that gratitude is commanded, it shapes our identity, and it guards our hearts. Ingratitude, on the other hand, signals spiritual drift. The apostle Paul warns in Romans 1 that a failure to give thanks is part of humanity’s rebellion against God.

Jesus Himself modeled a life of thanksgiving, repeatedly giving thanks to His Father, even on the night He was betrayed. Gratitude, then, is not sentimentality. It is defiant trust in the revealed character of God.

So what blessings have you quietly stopped noticing? What prayers have been answered so long that they now feel ordinary?

Let’s be a people with long memories and long gratitude lists. Let’s rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and give thanks to our generous Father, the Giver of every good and perfect gift.