Sunday Teaching: A Thankful Heart 2 - Recognizing Unthankful Hearts

Happy Sunday to everyone on this page, and hope you all had a marvelous service with the Lord. Today I will be discussing a very serious topic that still had to do with thanksgiving. It hurts when people never know what they are missing when they are never grateful for anything done for them. It's a common logic, even in our daily lives when people don't show appreciation on things you do for them, will you keep doing good things for them?. Certainly the answer is "NO" so is it with us and God. Last week I mentioned three parts of thanksgiving:
1. How God sees a thankful heart & Even when things fell apart
2. The seriousness of unthankfulness & Symptoms of an unthankful heart
3. How to become thankful.
Today I will be moving on to the second point which is: The seriousness of unthanksgiving and  Symptoms of an unthankful heart.


 The seriousness of unthankfulness

An unthankful heart is found in somebody who doesn't appreciate the things that God has given them. Each one of us have been given more than we'll ever know, so there are no excuses for God's children to be unthankful! Unthankfulness is looking at the negative, despite the positive.Romans 1:21,26-27:

 "Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened... For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet."

Symptoms of an unthankful heart 

People who are unthankful will naturally have negative personalities, find it easy to complain about little things, or easily become moody. Their minds aren't deeply rooted and grounded in a positive or thankful pattern of thinking, therefore when something comes up that pushes their buttons, they quickly forget about the goodness that God has blessed them with, and begin to complain and grumble in their hearts. This brings about a negative/pessimistic personality or mood. Read Numbers 11:18-20

1. Unthankful people are known to be bitter or unforgiving towards themselves, God or other people.

 In Matthew 18, we see a picture of the unthankful servant who was forgiven of a great debt, but could not forgive his fellow servant of a much smaller debt. If a person is bitter or hold things against others, then it shows us that they are unthankful for what God has done for them. Matthew 18:32-35:

"Then his lord, after that he had called him, said unto him, O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me: Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellow servant, even as I had pity on thee? And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him. So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses."

2. Unthankful people are always looking down upon themselves or suffer from low self-esteem.

God's Word tells us that we have been created in the very image of God, and knit together by the hands of God in our mother's womb, and when we see ourselves as failures, we are in turn being unthankful for the person that God has made us. If we see ourselves as ugly, then we are claiming that God's creation (our bodies) are ugly. Would you walk up to God and dare tell Him that something He made was ugly? I should hope not! But that's what we do everytime we look at ourselves in the mirror and see ourselves as ugly. The same is true with our minds and intelligence.

3. Unthankful people are never satisfied with what they have been given, but always want more.

This is an obvious sign of an unthankful heart. Greed is a sin that causes us to become unthankful for the things that God has blessed us with. When we become greedy, we are thinking about things we don't have, rather than things we do have.


4. Unthankful people don't take care of the things God has given them.

Those who are thankful for the good things that God has given them will take good care of those things, whether it be their mind, car, body, spouse, children, job, etc. Taking good care of the things which God has given us shows Him that those things mean something to us and we are thankful for them. Not that we ever should worship the things God gives us, but we should take good care of them. All of these symptoms should not be found in our lives, but if they exist (and I doubt many of us are immune!), there is something we can do about it.