Cultivating a Heart of Gratitude: A Thanksgiving Special

What if the key to a healthier, happier, and longer life isn't found in a pill bottle or at the bottom of a kale smoothie, but in gratitude? Imagine transforming your life through the simple act of saying thank you. Join me, your host Nick Coupelethis, in another insightful episode as we unwrap the essence of Thanksgiving and the life-altering power of gratitude.

 We'll delve into the difference between merely being thankful and nurturing a truly grateful heart. I'll also reveal the countless benefits of gratitude—how it can enhance sleep quality, lower blood pressure, prevent overeating, and even extend your lifespan! This journey will take us beyond the physical benefits of gratitude, to the ways it can foster self-confidence, improve relationships, and boost productivity. Together, we'll discover the profound biblical connections between gratitude and prayer, and the significant role of God's grace in our lives.

In this journey of gratitude, I'll guide you down the AAA road to gratitude, showing you how to cultivate a heart of gratitude. We'll learn to be mindful of our surroundings, cherish the present moment, and appreciate the good things in life. As we conclude this enlightening episode, I want to express my gratitude to all listeners and invite you to support the Koopalethes podcast through donations, subscriptions, and shares. I look forward to your company in the next episode, until then, let's practice gratitude for a healthier, happier, and richer life!

Chapters

• 0:00 Gratitude and Enjoyment Through Thanksgiving
• 8:49 The Power of Gratitude
• 14:17 Cultivating a Heart of Gratitude
• 31:52 Supporting the Coupelithus Podcast

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

the Coupelethis podcast. Happy Thanksgiving, 2023. Happy Thanksgiving, merry Christmas, new Year, and whenever you are listening to this, I am Nick Coupelethis, your host, and this is episode number 23. Can you believe that this is episode number 23 and we're almost at the end of 2023. And this year went so quick.

Speaker 1: 0:35

I hope you're having a wonderful, wonderful holiday season and I'm excited because Thanksgiving is tomorrow. Yes, it is tomorrow. I cannot wait to eat some delicious Thanksgiving food. What's your favorite? What's your favorite food? What's your favorite thing that every year you look forward to?

Speaker 1: 0:55

I remember when I was a kid. When I was a kid, it was pumpkin pie. That was pumpkin pie, and for some reason, when I was a kid, I didn't like apple pie. I don't know, I like grew into that one as I got older apple pie and vanilla ice cream, but the apple pie. But listen, I like any food, any food. I mean sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, turkey ham it doesn't matter what it's. Cranberry sauce, stuffed stuffing it doesn't matter what, everything is good. And so I'm looking forward tomorrow for a potential but not gluttonous food coma.

Speaker 1: 1:36

And actually, the truth is turkey. As you know, if you heard this a million times, turkey meat does contain tryptophan. It's an amino acid in the body. It makes you know B3, serotonin hormone. That really helps you sleep, it helps you relax, it helps you go into never neverland. And did you know this? I looked this up, orlando Health. This is what it says. It says that turkey has 250 to 310 milligrams of tryptophan in a three ounce serving. So that's probably have a lot more than three ounces of turkey. And so you're gonna, you're gonna get a dose that's gonna relax you. But I would. I remember. When I found this out I was like oh yeah, that's probably more true, especially for us A little heftier Americans, is that it's not the tryptophan, it's the fact that you're eating three or four, five, six, seven, eight, nine thousand calories in a sitting and your body's like I can't, I can't take, your body can't take it right. It's so many galleries in one moment that your body is on overload and so, like a bear, goes into hibernation. And I have to say I am looking for forward to a non gluttonous hibernation, food coma tomorrow, and that does exist. I have really been trying to eat well and so I probably will not overeat tomorrow, but I will enjoy the food I want you to enjoy.

Speaker 1: 3:10

Thanksgiving my favorite memory, really, of Thanksgiving is probably going back to when I was a little kid at my parents house and they had this, this amazing gift of hospitality, this amazing gift. My grandmother, really full blooded Italian. She could, she could prepare, she could cook, she could entertain, she could do it all really tirelessly into her, I want to say late 70s, even 80s. She was able to do so much and I just remember having these massive spreads of food and family and laughter and this is actually this, like this wheeled tray that I have to like wheel from the this tray table that I have to wheel from the table to the kitchen back and forth as a little kid, and just remember the glass top violently shaking on this wheel tray, on this tray with wheels, and I was thinking to myself that I was going to break something on this tray. And I don't think I ever broke anything, nothing that I remember or it would admit to, but anyway, just, I loved having Thanksgiving there and it's actually one of my greatest memories of growing up. It brings me such happiness and joy even to think about it right now as I'm talking with you, and actually do you know that it brings me joy because it's actually and you and I both are actually designed to reap, blessing and benefit from cultivating a heart of gratitude.

Speaker 1: 4:49

So let's, right after the break, let's get into this. You know, there's a lot of times where we ask this question, like, what's in it for me? And I think that, especially in this day and age of materialism and everybody just including myself in certain areas, in the pursuit of more and more stuff, more and more things, we don't know what it is to be grateful. And so if we need some motivation and you want to say, well, what's what's in it for me? Well, let me just tell you this you and I are designed by our creator Hear me, and this is scientifically proven. We are designed by our creator to reap health benefits from having a heart of gratitude. So let me read you these health benefits. Okay, this is from researchcom, I'm going to read you this.

Speaker 1: 5:42

But let me say this what's, what's the difference, right, between being thankful and having a heart of gratitude? Well, for us, today, in this context this is what I'm saying you can have an emotion or a mood that's thankful. Somebody gives you something, Somebody serves you something, somebody does something for you, and you say thank you so much, and so that could be an emotion you feel good in the moment, or it's a mood You're like in a season, things are going well, and so you like feel good, so you feel thankful, you're appreciative of those things that are around you, you're appreciative, maybe, of something or someone, and an emotion is good and a mood is good. But I think that there's something deeper, because the Bible says be thankful in all circumstances, and it doesn't say that you know, be thankful when you're feeling good or when your emotions are high, or when your mood is right. It says be thankful in all circumstances.

Speaker 1: 6:43

So I would probably submit to you that it's not necessarily the Bible's not talking about just an emotion or a mood, which those are good things and we should have those but the Word of God is talking about a virtue, a virtue, something that is inside of you, that's part of your character, that's something that needs to be cultivated, and when we see gratitude as a virtue to be cultivated, we can then be thankful in every season and in every circumstance, not just when we feel like it. Now I'm preaching to myself here Okay, that's what I feel like. I'm like okay, because I can complain with the best of them, I can criticize with the best of them. I know that there's sometimes things that come up in my heart that just aren't good and you know, I really have to recognize that if I'm ungrateful ungrateful that I'm actually robbing myself from health benefits, emotionally, physically, spiritually, mentally. There's benefits and blessings because we were designed, we were designed to be blessed by God and actually gratitude is one of those things that brings those benefits. Now, scientifically speaking, from researchcom I'll just read through this massive list pretty quickly here. But when you're actually cultivating a heart of gratitude, guess what? You're getting healthy. You're getting healthy. We need some health anyway, because there's a lot of entitlement these days, there's a lot of criticism these days, there's a lot of brokenness these days, and it's easy to get disgruntled and have discord within us. But if I can remember that that gratitude actually, scientifically speaking, brings health benefits, you know what? I'm going to practice this virtue, I'm going to stir up this virtue. Here we go Ready, I'm going to read you this list. I'm not going to read you every study associated with this list, I'm just going to give you kind of the points.

Speaker 1: 8:49

Gratitude helps improve sleep, helps lower blood pressure, helps prevent overeating. It motivates you to exercise. It strengthens your immune system. It improves your pain tolerance. It helps glucose levels keep your glucose levels under control. It expands and extends your lifespan. Gratitude helps patients with heart and illness. According to a study, the practice of gratitude contributes to reducing the biomarkers of inflammatory by 7% among individuals diagnosed with congestive heart failure. I mean just even these scientifically proven.

Speaker 1: 9:29

You're like, wow, god, you're pretty awesome that you're telling us to be thankful in all circumstances, because you know, if we can cultivate a heart of gratitude, there's going to be blessing in the midst of adversity. There's going to be blessing in the midst of sickness. There's going to be blessing in the midst of life and in the hard places. See, god knew what he was doing. God knew what he was doing. Let's keep going here. Gratitude boosts self-confidence. Gratitude improves patients. Gratitude improves resiliency. Gratitude reduces envy and jealousy. Gratitude makes you more optimistic. Gratitude makes you less materialistic. True Gratitude makes you more forgiving. Gratitude helps battle against depression. Is that awesome, coming out of the pandemic and a lot of people dealing with anxiety and depression, people that I love dealing with anxiety and depression, maybe this is one of the things that helps bring our culture back out of that darkness is that.

Speaker 1: 10:37

How do we cultivate a heart of gratitude? Let's keep going here. Gratitude enhances vitality. Gratitude, it says, enhances spiritualism. Well, it's secular. We know this. I think gratitude, when we're thankful to God, it actually gives worship to the Lord Because we're recognizing what he's done. Let's keep going with this.

Speaker 1: 11:00

Emotional benefits practicing and showing gratitude improves your mood. Gratitude makes you see our memories in a positive light. That's pretty awesome. Gratitude contributes to happiness. How about social benefits? It strengthens your romantic relationships. Your marriage is feeling tired, your feeling old. Take a little time, thank God and maybe get your thankful journal or gratitude journal, or whatever you write it and just say I'm thankful for my spouse. Because of these reasons, gratitude helps improve relationships. Gratitude helps strength. Gratitude strengthens family support, even on jobs. Gratitude improves retention within companies. Gratitude enhances productivity, pivity. Gratitude helps build better relationships among work colleagues. There's just so many benefits to gratitude.

Speaker 1: 11:56

Gratitude, what is gratitude anyway? It's a virtue, definitely a virtue to be cultivated. It's a strong feeling of appreciation. But I'm a Christian, I love Jesus. I'm not shy about that and this is how I think the.

Speaker 1: 12:13

The perspective of Thanksgiving in gratitude as a virtue is portrayed to us in the word. It's actually recognizing Someone or something outside of us that's blessed us. And this is how I would say it, because this actually in the Greek, the word for being thankful, actually really means Acknowledging that God's grace works well. So this is what's cool, right? This is I thought this was pretty cool when, when I was studying this out Is that what is grace? Grace is God's unlimited power to us, in us and through us. That's what grace is. It's God's favor upon us, it's God's power to us. By grace we are saved. That's what grace is. And so in the Bible, it's this, it's the, where we get gratitude and thankfulness from. Is Is recognizing God's grace to us. And this is so cool because we see this in the word Paul.

Speaker 1: 13:17

Paul writes these words to the Philip, the church in Philippi. He says do not be anxious, which means pulled in many directions. Don't be anxious about anything, but in everything, with prayer and supplication just two types of praying, prayers and exchange A conversation. Supplication is a heartfelt passion, crying out, Kind of prayer, he says, but with prayer and supplication. And he says with Thanksgiving, present your request to God. Well, why, with Thanksgiving? What are you thanking God for? Yes, we can say well, we're thanking God for the circumstances. We're thanking God for who he is, yes, but I think that we could draw from this we're actually thanking God for his grace, his favor and his power in order to see those prayers and supplications answered.

Speaker 1: 14:17

God likes to answer prayer. Right, that's biblical. God likes to answer prayer. And so here's the thing, and that's the blessing and that's the benefit that in the midst of your prayers and supplications, in the midst of Hard trials that you can't see, maybe protocols you're you're trying to pray in and pray home to the Lord, and maybe financial situations and in marital situations and all different kinds of things, he says present your request with Thanksgiving. What's he saying? Recognize that God's grace and blessing and benefit are there for you. Is it any wonder that? Why, even even heart patients, when they have thankfulness and gratitude, they actually start to get healthy again, according to what we've just read before? Now, I'm not saying don't take your medicine, I'm not saying don't go to the hospital. What I'm saying is that there's a benefit to the body because when we're thankful and we're recognizing God's grace Guess what?

Speaker 1: 15:13

We can't be anxious. God's grace and favor doesn't coexist with anxiety. They say pastor, but I pastor, I'm Nick on this podcast. But you're saying, you're saying Nick. You're saying, nick, I'm struggling with anxiety. Well, there are days where I struggle with anxiety. There are J's where I feel pulled in many directions. There are paid days where I feel desperate, and it's in those days I have to press, press into the Lord. Well, what does that mean? Pressing doesn't mean that I'm striving hard. Press into the Lord means that I wrote a book about the Lord. Press into the Lord means that I relax into his loving arms and I can trust him. It means, if I fall, I fall forward into his heart, into his power, into his presence. It means I'm trusting him to carry me, even when I can't carry myself, and I'm really, really thankful for that.

Speaker 1: 16:06

There's this great quote by From 1990, and this is how the quote goes. It goes gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order and confusion into clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates vision for tomorrow. Wow, what an incredible quote.

Speaker 1: 16:50

So here's the thing we're going how do I cultivate this heart of gratitude, how do I reap these benefits? How do I unlock as we just read the fullness of life? And the truth is there's a lot that can keep us from the fullness of life. And I'm not talking about things outside of us, I'm talking about things inside of us. We can be prideful, we can be unappreciative, we can become familiar with people and things around us and we can just take for granted the world that we live in and and be just feeling so entitled, and you know, and we lose the benefit and we lose the blessing.

Speaker 1: 17:32

So you say, nick, how do I get to that spot where I'm cultivating this virtue of gratitude? How do I cultivate this thing? Well, let's call it the AAA road to gratitude, all right. So here it is, the AAA road to gratitude, and this is a two-way street, okay. And so you're saying what's the first step, what's the first leg of the trip?

Speaker 1: 17:55

And the first leg of the trip to a cultivating a heart of gratitude is awareness. That's the first, a awareness. You have to be aware of your world. You know, a lot of times we're like horses with the blinders on. You can only see like one direction and you know what we just got, to take the blinders off and we need to look around and we need to look at the world that we're in and we need to appreciate the people that are around us, appreciate our families, appreciate America, appreciate, appreciate the things that we've been given from on high awareness.

Speaker 1: 18:32

Awareness is difficult in this day. Everyone's in the grind, everyone's doing their thing. It's like I need to be aware. So how do I become aware? You know what? Sometimes you need to pause. You need to pause Every now and then.

Speaker 1: 18:48

I, well, every now and then, every Tuesday, I take the garbage cans down our road and I put them at the end so the city can pick them up. And there's sometimes when I'm walking back to my house. I just slow down and I look up and I become aware of the stars, aware of the moon, aware of the sky, and for the most part, I don't do that. I don't do it enough. You have to pause, you have to stop. So if you're going to get to a place of gratitude, you need to pause for a moment and see the world around you. When was the last time you just stopped and you stared at your spouse? Don't be creepy, okay, stop, stop, don't be creepy. Or your kids, or just the world around you. When was the last time you just took a moment, you just took a moment?

Speaker 1: 19:57

As a pastor, I hear a lot of heartbreaking stories. I just heard about a heartbreaking story of a young person who went home from college and he had cancer and he died. It was sudden, it was horrible. You know what that reminds me? That I need to be aware in the moment because you never know what the next moment can bring. You have to be aware in the moment and aware of the good things and aware of the healthy things, and I can't say that I've done a great job of this, but I want to do a better job, especially in the coming year, of being aware. So you got to stop and just be aware of things, look around, take stock.

Speaker 1: 20:44

The second thing is you can be aware of it, but you have to be appreciative, have appreciation. First A is awareness. Second one is appreciation. You have to appreciate the world around you. What does it mean to appreciate? Let me see, I just copied the definition. It means recognition and enjoyment of the good qualities of someone or something.

Speaker 1: 21:13

Recognition and enjoyment of the good qualities, first of all, if you're a narcissist or you're selfish or you're self-absorbed which is all those things, you'll never make it past the first A. But even if you were to make it past the first A, if you're an insecure person, it's going to be really hard for you to appreciate others I mean truly appreciate others, appreciate people that are loving and kind and maybe just succeeding in life. But appreciation is so important. So if you're having trouble appreciating people around you, it might not be on them, it might be on you, but you take stock and you look around you. Thank God that we're here today. Thank God that my family is here today. Thank God for health and some of you. You're in the midst of a battle. Maybe you have a loved one with cancer. Well, thank God, they're not gone yet. Thank God, and you can appreciate them and you can pick it up the phone and call them or you can go and visit them.

Speaker 1: 22:19

Take a moment and appreciate the world around you. You know what robs you from appreciation Bitterness, offense. There's things that when we start to be critical of the world around us, we're critical of people. Listen, when we get so critical of people that we first of all, you can't have a heart of gratitude if you're critical of everything around you. But you're, you're, you're being robbed of this gift of life that's been given to you. When you, when you, when you're critical, you, you can't be aware, right, you can't be aware of people if you're critical.

Speaker 1: 22:56

But the first thing is being aware. Second thing is appreciating, and so it's like Lord, keep my heart right. Let me have judgments that are without condemnation and even in places that I see the negative, help me be a person to bring the positive, help me be a person that brings redemption from things that are broken. And so let me be aware, but then let me also have appreciation, so you can have first the awareness and the appreciation, and then the third thing is the applause. That's the third A is the applause. And the applause is so important because now, and I think, when we think of an applause, we think of a round of applause, we think of a clapping, we think of an honoring, we think of an appreciation shown. And that's the thing, especially for us men, this can be hard. It's that first we have to have an awareness, second, we have an appreciation, but the third is an applause, meaning you have to verbally extend or physically or give a gift or give a word of encouragement, but you have to actually give applause to someone. And that's what you're doing is you're taking the appreciation that you feel or know that's inside of you and you're giving it to that person. And this is how we cultivate a heart of gratitude. You begin with awareness, you go to appreciation and then you go to the applause. Now check this out.

Speaker 1: 24:28

I said in the beginning this is a two-way street. Why is it a two-way street? Because if I go from awareness to appreciation, to applause, I'm going to find a place of gratitude. But now, if I go from applause to appreciation, to awareness this is what I mean. Let me finish that sentence If I go from all those things, I'm actually go to a place of being ungrateful.

Speaker 1: 24:50

What do I mean by that? The applause. If you get hurt, what do you do? You cover yourself up. If there's pain, you try to find a coping mechanism. And so when we begin to deal with life and we don't have this as a virtue that we want to cultivate, or we don't forgive, or we, you know, maybe even we harbor with our mouth slander and gossip and we can't give applause.

Speaker 1: 25:21

And when you stop giving applause, it actually you go to a depreciation, not an appreciation. So if I'm going from awareness appreciation to applause, I'm actually literally appreciating value. If I go from applause and I stop the applause. Well, once I stop the applause and giving honor, it's not long after that I stop the appreciation, I stop valuing that person or that thing. And if I stop valuing that person or thing, I stop recognizing even the grace of God that's in that person and what ends up happening is that my awareness of who they are and the blessing becomes lost in the offense and in the hurt. This is why it's a two way street. If I go one way, I foster a heart of gratitude, but if I lose the applause and lose the appreciation and I lose the awareness, I actually depreciate. And here's the thing you depreciate something that God has put value on and you miss the blessing.

Speaker 1: 26:34

There's a great quote and I'm going to kind of land this plane here what is? By a lady named Anne Vonskamp, and she said this gratitude is a virtue most worthy of our cultivation. Indeed, all the Christian life, gratitude is to be planted, watered, dressed and harvested. Gratitude gets at the very essence of what it means to be created by night fallen and then redeemed and sustained by God of all grace. That gratitude and I would just say to you, the greatest centering piece of gratitude is understanding what Anne's talking about here, that what Christ has done, what Jesus has done for us.

Speaker 1: 27:34

When you forget how he saved you from being a wretched going to hell, when you forget that Christ died on the cross for you and took your sin, when you forget that God loved you so much he gave his most precious, precious gift, which was his son, to die in your place, to take your sins, to remove the wrath of God from your life. When you forget that, that's when you become ungrateful, that's when you treat people around you with contempt, that's when you're not cultivating gratitude, that's when you're not receiving the benefits. That's that place where you are your own God and you realize that you are in need of a savior. When you forget what Christ has done for you, that's really the heart, that's how you remember it.

Speaker 1: 28:33

Because I'm going to tell you something I didn't deserve. I didn't deserve God's favor. I didn't deserve God's grace. I didn't deserve what he did for me when he saved me when I was 16 years old. I deserve to go to hell forever. I deserve to be separate from his presence. I didn't deserve the blessing of God, but yet he reached out and he saved me by his spirit. I got saved and I'm never going to forget that. I'm never going to leave that, because that is ultimately why we should be generous and kind and this is why we should be forgiving. This is why because God demonstrated to us his love for us. That's why I'm grateful, because when I was a sinner, he demonstrated his love for us when he when I wasn't thinking about him and I was rebelling against him and I hated him he died for me. That's amazing and if I can remember that then I can over flow with gratitude. If I can remember his goodness, then I can cherish and love my wife and love my kids and find every day something to be aware of, something to appreciate and something to applaud.

Speaker 1: 29:56

Let's foster a heart of gratitude and if there are areas in your life maybe you're mad at your church, maybe you're mad at God, maybe you're mad at your spouse, maybe you're mad at your dog, maybe you're mad, mad, mad. At first you got to admit that. But maybe just take a moment, stop, come aware, appreciate and applaud that every thing you say. Well, I don't feel like it. Remember, gratitude is not an emotion you say I don't want to do it. It's not a mood either. It's a virtue to be cultivated and, by God's help, remember where you were when God saved you.

Speaker 1: 30:42

In that Thanksgiving, that place of busting forth, that spring of life will come up inside of you and you're like, wow, I'm so grateful to God. And if you can be grateful to God and receive the benefit and the blessing from God, it's going to help you and empower you. I believe supernaturally to be to cultivate a heart of gratitude. Hey, you know what I'm thankful for you. I'm thankful for you, I'm thankful that we get this time together. I'm just going to pray God. Thank you for this country, thank you for your grace, thank you for the world around us, thank you for the hardships, thank you for the good things, thank you for the benefits, thank you that we're designed to be healthy and whole. God, let us, by your grace, in your favor, cultivate this heart of gratitude. Hey, I love you so much. God bless you.

Speaker 1: 31:52

Thank you so much for listening to the Coupelithus podcast. Please consider supporting this by a donation at thecoupelithuspodcastcom. It is a tax deductible donation. If you would like to write into the show, you can write me at coupelithus at gmailcom. Yes, you got to figure out how to spell that. But share, subscribe. See you next time. God bless you.