Practicing Thanksgiving: A Reflection on Colossians 3:17

Practicing Thanksgiving: A Reflection on Colossians 3:17

As Thanksgiving approaches, our minds turn to gratitude. We pause to count our blessings, gather with loved ones, and express thanks for the good in our lives. But the spirit of Thanksgiving is more than a single day; it’s a way of life—a continual response to God’s goodness. Colossians 3:17 reminds us of this calling:

“And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him.” (Colossians 3:17 KJV)

This verse challenges us to weave gratitude into the fabric of our daily lives, aligning everything we say and do with Christ’s purpose. Let’s explore how we can live out this Thanksgiving spirit every day.

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1. Gratitude as a Lifestyle

The verse begins with “whatsoever ye do,” encompassing every word and action. Gratitude is not just an isolated act but a way of approaching life. Whether we’re working, serving, resting, or celebrating, every moment is an opportunity to give thanks to God.

This perspective shifts our focus. Instead of waiting for ideal circumstances to feel thankful, we start to see God’s hand in all things. Gratitude becomes a lens through which we view both blessings and challenges, trusting that God is working all things for good (Romans 8:28).

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2. Doing All in the Name of the Lord Jesus

Living in gratitude means dedicating every aspect of our lives to the Lord. Colossians 3:17 calls us to do all things in Jesus’ name. This means our words and deeds should reflect His character—kindness, humility, and love.

In practical terms, this might look like:

• Speaking words that uplift and encourage rather than tear down.
• Approaching tasks, even mundane ones, with a heart of service.
• Choosing integrity and compassion in our interactions with others.

When our lives point to Christ, thanksgiving naturally flows, because we recognize that all we have and all we are comes from Him.

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3. Giving Thanks Through Christ

The latter part of the verse emphasizes the source of our gratitude: “giving thanks to God and the Father by him [Jesus].” Through Christ, we have the ultimate reason to be thankful—salvation and reconciliation with God.

Even in seasons of difficulty, when blessings seem scarce, we can hold fast to this unchanging truth. Jesus’ sacrifice ensures that we are loved, forgiven, and secure in God’s hands. This eternal perspective fuels gratitude that transcends circumstances.

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4. Thanksgiving in Action

How can we put Colossians 3:17 into practice during this Thanksgiving season and beyond?

• Start Each Day with Thanks: Begin your mornings by naming three things you’re grateful for. This simple practice aligns your heart with God’s goodness.
• Serve Others: Gratitude grows when we bless others. Volunteer, lend a helping hand, or show kindness to someone in need.
• Speak Life: Use your words to express appreciation. Whether it’s a heartfelt “thank you” to a family member or a prayer of praise to God, let gratitude shape your conversations.
• Pause and Reflect: Take time to meditate on Christ’s love and sacrifice. Consider journaling your thoughts on how He has been faithful in your life.

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5. Thanksgiving as Worship

Ultimately, gratitude is an act of worship. When we live with thankful hearts, we glorify God. Our daily actions and words become offerings of praise, echoing the message of Colossians 3:17.

This Thanksgiving, let’s celebrate not just with turkey and traditions but with hearts fully devoted to God. Let’s commit to living every day in gratitude, doing all in the name of Jesus, and giving thanks to the Father through Him.

As you gather around the table this Thanksgiving, take a moment to reflect on how you can carry the spirit of the holiday into every day. And remember: whatever you do, in word or deed, do it all for Him—with thanksgiving.

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A Prayer for Gratitude:
Heavenly Father,
Thank You for Your countless blessings. Help us to live each day with grateful hearts, dedicating all we do to You. Teach us to see Your hand in every circumstance and to give thanks in all things. Through Jesus Christ, we offer our praise and gratitude. Amen.

Happy Thanksgiving!

You Don't Have To Be Perfect To Be Amazing!

You don't have to be perfect to be amazing! According to the Apostle Paul, we are God's masterpieces, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which he prepared in advance that we might walk in them! Ephesians 2:10. God does not make mistakes! And if you are his workmanship, you must be pretty awesome!

"You Don't Have to be Perfect to be Amazing!"

Forgive Yourself!

If you have done anything wrong, then ask God for forgiveness, and then receive that forgiveness. Forgive yourself!

Don't try to have a higher standard for yourself than God does. He has made forgiveness easy, so don't you try to make it difficult. Forgive yourself!

If you have harmed someone else, then apologize for what you have done. Don't focus on what the other person did. Just acknowledge what you did or failed to do. If there is something that can be reasonably done to right the wrong, then do it. The key word is "reasonable," which can be tough to determine when you are one of the parties involved in a conflict. Ask a neutral third party whose judgement you trust what you think you should do. Pray about it. And once you have a genuine conviction about what you should do to make amends, then do it.

And once you have apologized and taken reasonable steps to make amends, then move on with your life! Forgive yourself! Just like you would forgive someone you love dearly, like your child or your best friend.

Jesus said that you should love your neighbor as yourself. Interestingly, for many people, the stumbling block here is loving themselves! And if you don't love yourself -- if you instead have hatred and contempt for yourself and criticize yourself constantly -- what kind of love can you possibly offer anyone else? If you have mostly negative feelings towards yourself, then you will more likely hate your neighbor like you hate yourself, rather than loving them!

Change Your Perspective about the Past!

If you are looking back over your past and you feel like you've had more failures than successes, more regrets than good memories, and more sorrow than joy, you've got to change your relationship with your past. The past is over and done with. You can't go back and change it now. But you can change how you think about it.

Here's something you can try: look at your life as it is right now and find some things to be grateful for. You may not feel like it, but it's the only way to change your negative habits of mind. Maybe you have trained yourself to look for the bad in each situation, so that you expect things to be bad and to only get worse. That habit of mind won't change on its own. You have to conscientiously make a point, each day, of looking for things you can be grateful for. 

Start a gratitude journal! Every morning, as soon as you wake up (or maybe after you've poured yourself a cup of coffee to drink while you do this), write down three things you are grateful for. And don't just do this mechanically. As you write each one down, stop and think about it for a minute. Savor it, if you can. Imagine what it would feel like to lose it, and then imagine how overjoyed you would feel if, after losing it, you found it again! By doing this, you can increase your appreciation for what you already have, and stop beating yourself over what you don't have; and you can become happy to be who you are, where you are, with the life you're actually living, rather than some idealized vision of how things could have turned out if you had taken a different path -- a vision which is almost certainly unrealistic and leaves out a lot of the difficulties you would have faced if you actually had taken that different path. Instead of ruminating over what you think went wrong, express gratitude for what has gone well! 

Have an attitude of gratitude! Give thanks to God for what you actually have -- especially your relationships with God and with others -- and thank God for the life you are actually living!

Here's another thing you can do: make peace with your past. It is what it is, but it's not who you are; and it's definitely not who you're destined to become. As 1 John 1:9 says, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness." Take God at his word and receive his forgiveness. 

If you feel discouraged, pause for a minute, turn your attention towards that feeling, and examine it in a dispassionate, open-hearted, and curious way: examine it like you would examine a piece of cloth or something equally impersonal. Pay attention to the physical sensations associated with the feeling. Where do you  feel it? Become aware of it, not as a judgment about you or your life, but merely as a pattern of energy in your body. In doing this, you may discover something ironic: as you become willing to feel this sensation and pay attention to it more closely, rather than trying to fight or suppress it, you will find (with enough practice) that the emotion loses energy and dissipates on its own.

Remember this: a feeling is not a fact, even if it purports to be. Maybe a feeling of sadness feels like a compelling judgment that your life is bad, but it is not. Practice the technique of "reframing" -- which is where you change your perspective on something by shifting your frame of reference; sometimes this is also called "paradigm shifting." Here's an example: let's say the traffic is unexpectedly bad and you are running late for an important meeting. One perspective would be to focus only on the inconvenience of being late, the feeling of pressure to arrive on time, or the anticipation of being embarrassed to arrive after the meeting has already started. If you make that your focus, your mood will be negative. Instead, try thinking about how you would have felt if, instead of simply running late because of bad traffic, you had experienced a breakdown and you had to wait on the side of the road for a tow truck -- that would surely be so much worse than just being a little late because of traffic: focus on what a blessing it is to have a car that is working the way it should! You may be late, but at least you're moving towards your destination! And then think, how bad is this really going to be? Probably not nearly as bad as you imagine! And will it really matter in 20 years that you arrived late today for this meeting? Probably not! By shifting your perspective, you will  soon find that your negative feelings about the situation subside, even if just for a moment; but the fact that your feelings can change like that, when your circumstances have stayed the same and only your perspective has changed, shows that your feelings are not so absolutely and objectively true as they "feel."

Progress, NOT Perfection!

The reality is, as long as we are living in this world, we will always be "on the road" to somewhere else. We never arrive once and for all. And so that means we are continually making progress, which means we aren't perfect! Perfection is not the goal in this life: progress is. As the recovery-program slogan goes, "Progress, NOT perfection."

You Don't Have to be Perfect to be AMAZING!!!

You don't have to be perfect to be amazing. God already loves you and has a plan for your life. God has already forgiven you and set you free. Be free! Allow yourself to be as amazing as God wants to empower and enable you to be!

Be a Blessing to Someone Today!

The best way to feel blessed yourself is to be a blessing to someone else today!

Love your neighbor as yourself! Bless someone else, and you will be blessed yourself!

In our hyper-individualized American culture, the cultural wisdom tells you that if you want to feel better about yourself, you should engage in "self-care." And "self-care" often means being intentionally self indulgent and self centered.

But once you have a healthy level of self-respect and proper boundaries, focusing excessively on yourself will actually make you less happy and less fulfilled. 

Of course, if you don't have a healthy level of self-respect and proper boundaries, so that others push you around and walk all over you without any repercussion, then that is a separate issue that needs to be addressed.

Healthy Self-Respect and Proper Boundaries Help You to Help Others More Effectively 

A message if self-care may sometimes be needed to correct for low self-esteem and codependency, where a person feels obligated to put themselves last in any and every situation, no matter what. Some people were raised with an unhealthy belief that enjoying nice things for yourself is somehow sinful. (Usually, this belief is encouraged by selfish and narcissistic religious leaders who don't practice what they preach.) Sometimes, people do need to learn how to say "No!" to the unreasonable and selfish demands of others and to say "Yes!" to their own legitimate needs and desires. After all, you can't obey Jesus's teaching of loving your neighbor as yourself, if you don't love yourself!

If that is the case, find a Christian leader whose life you would want to emulate. Pick someone who is genuinely happy and who has healthy, happy, mutually rewarding relationships. In other words, find someone who both talks the talk and walks the walk. Once you have identified some people like that, ask them to counsel you. As Proverbs 11:14 says, there is wisdom in having multiple good counselors.

Learn to love yourself, but don't stop there. If you love yourself, you're only doing half of what Jesus taught when he said to "love your neighbor as yourself."

Once You Respect Yourself and Have Healthy Boundaries, Look for Ways to Show Your Love for Others! 

Assuming you do have a healthy self-respect and have proper boundaries in your relationships with others, then engaging in "self-care" will only take you so far. 

If you focus only on yourself and your own needs and wants, you will paradoxically become less happy and less fulfilled in life. 

As it turns out, the best way to make yourself feel happier and more fulfilled is to do something nice for someone else! Of course, this is what all the world's major religions have taught for centuries. Now, research in the field of positive psychology is confirming that teaching!

In Luke 10:25-37, Jesus tells the parable of The Good Samaritan in response to a series of questions from a religious leader. When asked about how to gain eternal life, Jesus responds with a question: what does the Law say? "Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart . . . and love thy neighbor as thyself." (Luke 10: 27.) So the religious leader asked a followup question: "Who is my neighbor?" Jesus responded with the story of a man in desperate need of help; his own countrymen pass him by without giving aid, ostensibly because of religious considerations (if the man was dead, they would be ritually impure for temple services). But a Samaritan, a member of a lower caste and a natural enemy of the injured man, stopped to help him. Jesus said that this is an example of how we should be towards others: the best way to show our love for God is to perform acts of loving kindness towards others. (See also, the parable of the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25:31-46!)

In John 12:24-25, Jesus declares something of a paradox: if you try to hang on to something, you will lose it; but if you let go of it in order to serve God by being a blessing to others, you will gain more than whatever you gave up. How does this work? How can you be better off when you sacrifice for the good of others?

In addition to the spiritual blessings promised by Jesus (as well as the leaders of the world's other major religions), we experience verifiable emotional blessings when we act kindly towards others! 

We are social creatures. There are no indigenous people anywhere who live in isolation: every people group throughout the world originally lived in small tribes. For a person who ventured out on his own, there would have been a lot of hungry predators waiting to eat him! We are physically one of the weakest animals on the planet; in one-on-one, hand-to-hand combat, we would be quickly killed by most of the large predators out there. But what allowed us to survive and thrive as a species was our ability to work together (in addition to our opposable thumbs). Consequently, our instincts and emotions are designed to get us to seek companionship, since relationships with other people are so critical to our survival.

Our brains are "wired" to reward altruism, since acts of kindness towards others strengthens our relationships and social bonds. Because of the type of creatures we are, doing good to others makes us feel subjectively happier and more fulfilled!

Check out this video below (embedded from YouTube) of Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar discussing the scientific evidence for the benefits of being kind towards others!

Spirituality and science agree: in order to live a fulfilled and rewarding life, we should perform acts of loving kindness towards. So go and be a blessing to someone today! Not only will you bless the other person, you will also bless yourself!

How to Stop Procrastinating Now!

Stop Putting Life on Hold! Stop Procrastinating NOW!

"I want to stop procrastinating . . . starting tomorrow!" announced someone who will never stop procrastinating!

But seriously, how do we break the habit of putting life on hold until some distant future day, when we will hopefully feel up to it, feel sufficiently prepared for it, or feel like we finally have enough time to deal with it? 

How do we stop procrastinating NOW?

There Is Never Going to Be a Better Time than Now!

In 2 Corinthians 6:2, the Apostle Paul said, "Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation." Today! 

It has to be Today! Whenever you experience God's grace, mercy, forgiveness, redemption, empowerment, and blessing, you are experiencing them in the present. Today.

Tomorrow, by definition, will always be a day away. Whatever day it is, that day is today, and today is the day to seize all the opportunities and to use all the tools and resources God has given you.

Today, right here, right now, is the only day we have in which to act, to change, or simply to be present in our lives.

Lord willing, we will be alive tomorrow to do all of those things, but guess what? When "tomorrow" arrives, that day will be "today." 

All of this may sound so basic as to not be worth saying. But this really is an important insight! It is always NOW. You are alive TODAY. Not yesterday, not tomorrow, but TODAY! Really embracing and living in this truth can be profound and profoundly life changing. 

Our default is not to be fully engaged in the present moment. Our default is to daydream about the future or ruminate about the past. And if our attention is on the past or future, then it won't be on the present, which is the only time we really have to experience and live Life.

With God, It Is Always Now!

It is always now! Maybe this sounds Buddhist or New Age, but guess what? It is also Biblical. And I'm not going to miss out on Biblical wisdom just because it's an insight that Buddhists or New Agers have popularized. 

Why should we be fully alive and engaged in the present? Because that's how God is! In John 8:58, Jesus said, "Before Abraham was, I am." He didn't say, "Before Abraham was, I was." (If your translation says "was" or "existed," it is incorrect.) Thousands of years ago, Jesus is. Let that sink in. Abraham may past tense, but Jesus is always present.  

Think about it like this. In Mark 12, the Sadducees questioned Jesus about the resurrection and tried to trip him up with an apparent paradox from the Torah. Jesus didn't take the bait. He recognized that the question was based on false assumptions about God and the Mosaic Law. In his reply, Jesus said that God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. (Mark 12: 27.) 

I think it's consistent with Jesus's teachings to paraphrase him in the following way: God is not the God of the past, but of the present. For us, there is no way we can be present 2000 or 10,000 years ago. We are bound by time, just as we are bound by space. We can experience only the present moment, just like we can only be in one place at a time. But for God, there are no such limitations. God is always present. For God, it is always now. That's what eternal means: not bound by time.

So the bottom line is this: God is oriented to the present. We should be too.

As the Psalmist said, "This is the day that the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it." Psalm 118:24.

Today is the day to live, to act, to be, to make a change.

The writer of Hebrews spoke of "Today" as a day of sabbath rest for God's people. (Hebrews 4:3-11.) You can rest from your own self-centered efforts and agenda today, because God wishes to work through you today to accomplish something bigger and better and more fulfilling than you could ever do on your own. That's the very definition of working smarter, not harder.

It actually takes a lot of mental and emotional energy to daydream about the future or ruminate about the past. This isn't to say that we shouldn't plan for the future -- that's something we can do today -- but our focus should always be on what we can do and experience and be in the present.

Today is the day of God's salvation. Today is the day to rejoice and be glad. Today is the day of resting in God's presence and grace and empowerment.

Once you really believe those truths, you will be ready and willing to act now. Today. In the present moment.

Like Nike Says, "Just Do It!"

Dr. Laurie Santos coined the term "The G.I. Joe Fallacy" to describe the erroneous belief that (according to the 1980s G.I. Joe cartoon series) "knowing is half the battle." Knowing is not half the battle. You still have to do.

Sure, now you know that God is ready to act in you and through you to accomplish great things today, but just knowing that isn't going to change anything. Like James said, "Faith without works is dead." (James 2:20.) You have to put God's word into practice to make it effective in your life. God's word tells you that today is the day that God has made, but now you have to act like you believe it by doing something with that knowledge.

In Steven Covey's classic book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, the first habit is being proactive. Effective people don't wait for change to happen; they take action to bring that change about. Don't let Life happen and just react to it. Believe that you are someone God can use to change the world for the better. Be proactive!

Fortunately, positive psychology has developed useful tools to help you make positive changes in your life, starting today. But you have to decide to act and then follow through. You have to do the work. But fortunately, as many people have discovered first hand, these tools do work, and you can use these life hacks to form new habits and break old ones.

Dr. Gabriele Oettingen's Life-Hack Called "WOOP"

Click below to listen to an episode of the NPR podcast "Hidden Brain" about the tool developed by Dr. Gabriele Oettingen called "WOOP," which stands for "Wish, Outcome, Opposition, Plan." This life hack has been proven to work to help people accomplish their goals! Applying this technique won't cost you anything, and it takes relatively little time, so why not give it a try!

 
So go ahead and put your plan into action! Try out different tools and "life hacks" and find out what works best for you! Just be proactive, and act! The Lord bless you and keep you as you do!

If you have any tips you'd like to share on how to stop procrastinating now, please add them below to the comments section! And check out other articles on this site about claiming victory in Jesus today!