#8 - The Season of Gratitude (Part 2) - Cultivating Gratitude in the Heart of a Child

Barbara Rainey's Top 10 Interviews

Click Here to Listen to the other parts in the series
The Season of Gratitude (Part 1) - Forget Not His Benefits
The Season of Gratitude (Part 2) - Cultivating Gratitude in the Heart of a Child

FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript

References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete.

Cultivating Gratitude in the Heart of a Child

Guest: Barbara Rainey

From the series: The Season of Gratitude (Day 3 of 3)

Air date: November 6, 2015

Bob: Are your kids as grateful as they ought to be? Maybe, they need to be hiding God’s Word in their heart. Here’s Barbara Rainey.

Barbara: One of the easiest to memorize is “Give thanks in all things,”—

1 Thessalonians 5:18. It’s very easy for even a three-year or a four-year-old to memorize. It’s just as important for the 18-year-old and the adult because that’s a pretty comprehensive verse. When you stop and think about it—giving thanks in all things—that is never going to run out in anybody’s life.

Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Friday, November 6th. Our host is the President of FamilyLife®, Dennis Rainey, and I’m Bob Lepine. Thanksgiving is more than just a day on a calendar. It is a commandment from God that we be thankful. We’ll talk about how we cultivate that in our own hearts and in our families today. Stay tuned.

1:00

And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us on the Friday edition. We’ve been talking this week about the fact that there’s a big holiday coming up this month—and that we ought to pay attention, we ought to make memories, we ought to help our kids embrace gratitude as a way of life / be thankful. The reality is—everything we are talking about is not going to happen unless we have a little intentionality about this.

Dennis: That’s exactly right, and you know why?

Bob: Why?

Dennis: Because there has been a robbery. There has been a robbery—

Bob: Okay? What’s been taken?

Dennis: —of Thanksgiving from families. Families are not thankful. What they need to realize is—and I just wrote some of them down—and by the way, welcome to the broadcast, Sweetheart—Barbara joins us again on FamilyLife Today. Welcome back.

Barbara: Thank you. Glad to be here.

Dennis: All of our listeners are glad you are here. You add a lot of credibility and reality to this broadcast—not that Bob and I don’t have either, but you add more. [Laughter]

2:00

Barbara: I’m an eyewitness; right?

Dennis: Yes. So, here are some of the robbers of Thanksgiving in our families—the first one—pace. You think that robs a lot of families?—just the sheer busyness of life.

Bob: Now, are you talking about things that rob the holiday or things that rob the attitude of Thanksgiving?

Dennis: I’m talking about—

Barbara: The attitude.

Dennis: It’s the attitude; but frankly, it also robs the holiday too.

Bob: You’re just saying that the constant pace of life—the speed at which we are running—we forget to be grateful.

Dennis: Most families are running flat-out. In fact, we look at our five married children—look at their schedules—remarkable. Second one, neglect—we just neglect to make thankfulness a part of our everyday lives. As a result, we take each other for granted.

Third—this is the human heart here—greed, jealousy, envy, discontent. It’s our nature to be critical / to be fault-finding, to grumble—

3:00

—like we talked earlier—to dispute / to gripe. These robbers are coming at families, left and right. What we have to do is find a way to seize the holiday—and not merely the holiday—but to make thanksgiving a part of the DNA of our families.

Bob: One of your children was asked one time how he would describe you in a single word. You know the story I’m talking about; right?

Dennis: I do.

Bob: And you know how—

Barbara: I know it too.

Bob: —your son—what was the word he used?

Dennis: I thought he could have picked a better word.

Bob: What was the word that he used?

Dennis: I would not have thought of this word in a hundred years. [Laughter]

Barbara: But it’s true.

Bob: Barbara, what was the word?

Barbara: The word was “intentional.”

Bob: And you agree that that—

Barbara: I would agree.

Bob: —is the defining word?

Barbara: I don’t know if it’s the defining word; but it is definitely, I would say, one of the top five.

Bob: And if they were asked—if the kids were asked to define you in a word, would intentional be one of the top five for you?

Barbara: I would think it would be in the top five. [Laughter]

Bob: So, Mr. Intentional—

Barbara: They got a double dose!

Bob: —and Mrs. Intentional got married; huh?

Dennis: Well, we’re both about seizing the moment.

4:00

Barbara: Yes, we are. I think it’s—in the holidays, it’s especially important that we seize the moment and that we are intentional about making it what we want it to be. If we want to focus on gratitude, we’ve got to find a way to do it because it’s not going to happen naturally.

Bob: So, if parents are thinking, “Okay, I want to be intentional,”—and we want them to be intentional and have some focus. Yet, as soon as you start talking about it—Dennis, you said pace i...