Gratitude is the password into God's presence

            Gratitude is such a key concept of our worship to God. If we don’t thanksgiving into our worship, our worship is empty and dead. The psalmist in Psalms 100:4 says, “Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name!” When we come before the Lord and seek to enter His manifest presence, it is essential that we enter His gates with thanksgiving and gratitude.

            Without gratitude, what can our worship even mean? It means nothing. If we go up to lead worship with music, but our own hearts are filled with ingratitude, we are just putting on a mask. Our worship is supposed to be pure of heart and bring nothing but glory to God. If it is anything else, it is just meaningless. Dr. Sanchez phrases it nicely, “Gratitude is the ‘True North’ of biblical worship.” Like a compass has a true north and will always lead us in the northern direction, gratitude will lead us in the right direction of what our worship needs to be.

            When we try to worship with our hearts full of ingratitude, we are not only deceiving ourselves, but the ones we lead, and more importantly God.  If our worship is full is not grateful, it will spread like a cancer through our entire worship lives. Everything will become tainted by it because we aren’t thankful for God’s blessings. We will open ourselves to being lead astray from God, and since we are in leadership positions, we will also leave ourselves open to lead others astray.

             Dr. Sanchez says that gratefulness is the key to God’s presence. He has an amazing definition for gratitude, “The redeemed heart’s inability to easily recover from a deep sense of amazement at the grace of God.” Psalms 30:11-12 says, “You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness, that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever!” Our worship is supposed to be filled with this kind of gratitude. The kind of gratitude breaks our pride and causes our hearts to sing. There is a saying that says, “Faith is hearing the music. And hope is dancing to it.” This can be applied to gratitude in worship as well. Grace is hearing God and gratitude is dancing to it.