Bible verses about gratitude: 17 passages for a more thankful heart

Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise; give thanks to Him and bless His name. For the LORD is good, and His loving devotion endures forever; His faithfulness continues to all generations.

The psalm’s heading calls it a psalm for giving thanks. Thanksgiving is pictured as the way in, the gate you walk through to come near to God.

Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good; His loving devotion endures forever.

This same line opens several psalms. Psalm 107 goes on to tell of wanderers, prisoners, the sick and sailors in a storm, each rescued and each told to give thanks.

Bless the LORD, O my soul, and do not forget all His kind deeds— He who forgives all your iniquities and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the Pit and crowns you with loving devotion and compassion, who satisfies you with good things, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

David talks to his own soul and tells it not to forget. Gratitude, in the Bible, is largely an act of memory.

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, with whom there is no change or shifting shadow.

The lights in the sky shift and cast moving shadows; God does not. Every good thing in your day has one source.

For the choirmaster. To the tune of “The Death of the Son.” A Psalm of David. I will give thanks to the LORD with all my heart; I will recount all Your wonders. I will be glad and rejoice in You; I will sing praise to Your name, O Most High.

To recount means to tell them over, one by one. Thanks becomes fuller when it is specific.

Rejoice at all times. Pray without ceasing. Give thanks in every circumstance, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

Paul says in every circumstance, not for every circumstance. You do not have to be thankful for the loss to find something to thank God for within it.

I am not saying this out of need, for I have learned to be content regardless of my circumstances. I know how to live humbly, and I know how to abound. I am accustomed to any and every situation—to being filled and being hungry, to having plenty and having need. I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.

Paul says he learned contentment; it did not come naturally. The famous verse 13 is, in context, about being able to face both plenty and hunger.

Though the fig tree does not bud and no fruit is on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though the sheep are cut off from the fold and no cattle are in the stalls, yet I will exult in the LORD; I will rejoice in the God of my salvation!

Figs, grapes, olives, fields, flocks and herds: the whole economy of the land fails, one line at a time. The yet that follows is a choice.

Of David, when he pretended to be insane before Abimelech, so that the king drove him away. I will bless the LORD at all times; His praise will always be on my lips.

The heading places this psalm just after David fled for his life and pretended to be mad to escape a king. He writes about praising at all times from a very low point.

About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them.

They had just been beaten and their feet fastened in stocks. The other prisoners were listening, and gratitude like that is noticed.

Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may be blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and perverse generation, in which you shine as lights in the world

Paul borrows words Moses once used of Israel in the wilderness. A thankful person stands out in a complaining world like a light at night.

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, for to this you were called as members of one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.

Thankfulness appears in each of these three verses. Paul connects it to peace, to singing together, and to everything you do.

When one of them saw that he was healed, he came back, praising God in a loud voice. He fell facedown at Jesus’ feet in thanksgiving to Him—and he was a Samaritan. “Were not all ten cleansed?” Jesus asked. “Where then are the other nine?

Ten men with leprosy were healed; one came back, and he was a Samaritan, an outsider. Jesus notices both the thanks and the missing nine.

always giving thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

This follows Paul’s call to be filled with the Spirit. One of the clearest signs of the Spirit at work is a person who keeps giving thanks.

I thank my God every time I remember you.

Paul’s gratitude was full of people. Thanking God for someone is also a way of seeing them differently.

Therefore, since we are receiving an unshakable kingdom, let us be filled with gratitude, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe.

Everything else can be shaken; the kingdom we are receiving cannot. Gratitude is the fitting response to a gift that secure.

Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!

Paul ends two chapters about generous giving with this line. All our generosity flows from the gift of Christ, which words cannot fully describe.