Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Gratitude | Habits

Episode Date: December 27, 2022

Join the TMBT community in reading the entire New Testament in 2023. Get your FREE reading plan here. Studies show that creating a habit of gratitude can improve your mental health. How can you practice gratitude in daily life? What does the Bible say about giving thanks? Is it possible to change your negative thought patterns to positive patterns? In today's episode, Tanya shares 3 helpful tips for growing in gratitude. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Romans 12:2

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Tanya Wilmuth. Money may not buy you happiness, but maybe gratefulness can. A recent study shows the impact of gratefulness on our brains. See, there was an increased demand for mental health services, as you're probably aware. And so healthcare workers wanted to figure out if they were something they could offer clients to do at home to improve their mental health between clinic visits. But they needed it to be low-hanging fruit. They needed it to be easy to do without a lot of guidance.

So they enlisted a group of 300 college students who were seeking mental health services, and they divided them into three groups. The first group was assigned to write a letter of gratitude to someone every week. The second group was tasked with keeping a list of negative thoughts and emotions. The third group, they had no assignment. That's called the control group. Now, when the study compared the letter writer, with those who kept a list of negative emotions,

they found that the group of gratitude reported increased mental health at four weeks and 12 weeks after their writing exercises ended. This showed them that focusing on gratitude was not just a good practice, but actually reduced levels of depression and anxiety. As they dug deeper, they found more about how gratitude works. They noticed that students who wrote letters of gratitude use more plural pronouns like we and us. and less singular pronouns and negative emotional words. Something about their practice of gratitude made less room for negative thoughts and emotions to surface in the brain.

Those who practiced gratitude also had more healthy activity in their frontal cortex, where decision-making takes place, according to MRI. This means they were more attentive to situations that produce gratitude and ways to express that gratitude outwardly. Their mental activity also increased over time, indicating that expressing gratitude may have lasting effects on the brain. Being grateful of something we've all been taught, and it's probably something we can all agree we need to practice more often.

But to understand the science behind it is to bring into focus the way our creator made us and how he tells us to care for our brains. If you have an Apple device of any kind, you experience the benefits of search engine history. When you open your internet browser, it automatically shows you the last six sites you've visited or your six most frequently visited sites you get to choose. It also stores cookies to remember the things you're looking at and reminds you when you're scrolling your social media feeds. It's a pre-programmed clutter

box of what the inside of our brain looks like. Our brains are programmed to go down the same pathways and react the same way to the same stimuli. We also have our top six six most visited thought patterns. They could be a particular worry, a desire to look at something, a desire to have something, or a negative thought about someone else. The more we coddle that thought pattern, the deeper the groove becomes in our brain. It just gets easier and faster to go down that path. When Paul tells us to renew our minds in the New Testament, he's tapping into something

that is true about the way we are made. If we leave our minds to their own, they're going to keep looking like that internet browser. Just like we need to clear the cookies on our device and put it in another room so we don't reach for it when we wake up, we need to create opportunities to reset our brains. I like the way Paul says it, and this is one of the few verses I actually have memorized. It comes to me when my thought life gets chaotic. In Romans 12, too, Paul says, do not conform to the pattern of this world,

but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. From the study, we know gratitude is a great and easy way to begin to renew our thoughts. It's also prescribed to us in the Bible, so it's something we should take seriously. When David was feeling depressed and alone, he often sang songs of gratitude, and we find many of these in the Psalms. They aren't just an expression of David renewing his own mind, mind, but God's word for us to take heart. Psalms 95 says, oh come, let us sing to the Lord, let us make a joyful noise to the rock of

our salvation. Let us come into his presence with Thanksgiving. We have a funny saying in our house that it's hard to be in a fight when there's Christmas music playing in the background. It's still possible, but it's harder. It's also hard to focus on what we don't have when we're singing songs of praise to God. Okay, maybe. that's not for you because you're not much of a singer. But Philippians 4-6 says,

do not be anxious about anything. But in everything, by prayer and supplication with Thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God. We are probably familiar with the do not be anxious part. And we probably stop there and just feel more anxious about the fact that we're still anxious. But what if we pause in those moments and talk to God about what we're thankful for? While we ask him to help us with what is making us anxious. Now, that study of college students found that those who practiced gratitude increased their gratitude awareness, and they also made more decisions out of gratitude instead of guilt. For example, when a benefactor gave them money and told them to pass it on, the students who wrote gratitude letters were motivated more by positive emotions

than by guilt and obligation. The Bible also teaches that gratitude begets gratitude. In 2 Corinthians, Paul describes, You will be enriched in every way, to be generous in every way, which through us will produce Thanksgiving to God. There's a cycle of Thanksgiving that leads to generosity that leads back to Thanksgiving, and it all builds up the kingdom and glorifies God.

Gratitude is a practice you can make part of your life today. You don't have to buy a book or a fancy journal. Just start where you are. First, ask you. God to help you be aware of what you have to be grateful for. Ask him to increase your awareness. When Corey Tan Boom was in a Holocaust camp with her sister Betsy, she was irritated that Betsy made her thank God for the fleas in their beds before they went to sleep at night. Corey thought that amount of gratitude was a little inauthentic and over the top. But one night,

while Corey and Betsy relying in bed, they heard the guards arguing about who would go in to do roll call and enforce the bedtime restrictions. They quickly hid their Bible knowing it would be confiscated if the guards found it. But during the argument, they discovered that none of the guards was willing to go in because they were all afraid of catching the fleas. Corey quickly became grateful for the fleas that protected her opportunity to read the Bible and share it with the other women in the camp. The second way to be grateful is to connect what you're thankful for to the giver.

the gift to the giver, if you will. Those fleas in the concentration camp showed Corey and Betsy that even in that place God was sovereign and in control. They could have inner peace, even in that horrible situation knowing God was bigger than the German soldiers. What do the things you were thankful for

reveal and teach you about God? How does this help you love and know him more? The last step is probably the most forgotten and yet the one that really seals our minds and connects us with God. Find a way to express your gratitude in worship. David sang songs and wrote poems because it was hard for him to feel anxious and lonely when he was doing those things.

Your worship could be praying, giving, journaling, serving others. An outward expression of gratitude solidifies those pathways of gratitude that are forming in your brain. Worship also squeezes out the pathways that are negative, critical, ill-content thoughts have formed. Regardless of whether you're facing mental challenges or unhappiness, I encourage you to be intentional about your gratitude. Much of our time and energy is spent pursuing things we don't currently have. Gratitude renews our minds. It resets our priorities to focus more on the people and things we do have. Gratitude opens our eyes to see the goodness and character of our creator.

And I don't know what your plans are for a 20-23, but here on TMBT, we're going to go through the whole new testament in a year. We hope you'll invite a friend and join us because everything is better with company. See you there.