Thankfull

In Week 1 of THANKFULL, Pastor Doug Bell teaches that gratitude is not a reaction to a season — it is the posture of your heart before God. Gratitude isn’t something we feel when life finally “gets better”; it’s something we choose before the blessing, during the confusion, and through the chaos. As Pastor Doug said, “Thankful starts before the crisis happens… Thankful comes during the confusion, the chaos, the mess, the hell you're going through.”

Life is layered — we can be blessed in one area and broken in another. Because of that, gratitude cannot depend on circumstances. It must be anchored in recognizing, remembering, and responding to the goodness of God, even when His goodness is hard to see (recognition), easy to forget (remembering), or costly to obey (responding).

Pastor Doug walks us through four biblical models of gratitude as a posture:

• Job: Gratitude as surrender, worshiping even in devastating loss.

• Joseph: Gratitude as trust, especially in the chapters we cannot read yet.

• Paul: Gratitude as dependence, embracing weakness to experience God’s strength.

• David: Gratitude as humility, remembering that every blessing comes from God’s hand.

Pastor Doug reminds us that grief, mystery, weakness, and even blessing all demand posture. Gratitude is the anchor that keeps us from being carried away by storms — it doesn’t erase the grief, it anchors us in it.