In an arsenal that’s supposed to include things like mountain-moving faith, radical obedience, patient long-suffering, and second-mile self-denial, gratitude can feel like an optional add-on. Nice if you can get it, but not all that critical to making life run the way it should.

And yet gratitude is far more significant than its lightweight reputation might suggest. What appears at first to be merely an accessory, an accent piece, is in reality a much more necessary component to the Christian life.

Try to sustain persevering faith without gratitude, and your faith will eventually forget the whole point of its faithfulness, hardening into a practice of religion that’s hollow and ineffective.

Try being a person who exudes and exhibits Christian love without gratitude and over time your love will crash hard on the sharp rocks of disappointment and disillusionment.

Try being a person who sacrificially gives of yourself without the offering being accompanied by gratitude and you’ll find every ounce of joy drained dry by a martyr complex.

True gratitude is not an incidental ingredient. Nor is it a stand-alone product, something that never actually intersects with real life. Gratitude has a big job to do in our hearts. It is one of the chief ways that God infuses joy and resilience into the daily struggle of our life.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss [Adapted]