Free Gratitude Scripture & Song Lists
Turn your heart toward gratitude with 25 Scripture passages and 25 songs.
This free, printable PDF includes clickable links so you can read and listen.
Gratitude in the Middle
It can be hard to think about gratitude when something you’re going through is taking up so much of your attention. You’re praying about it, trying to figure out what to do, waiting for something to change.
And that’s where I want to meet you today. What does gratitude look like while we’re still asking God for help?
Hey there, Figs. Welcome to Beneath The Fig Tree, where we’re cultivating a devotional life we love.
We’ve been talking about gratitude for the life we’re actually living. And today, I want to spend some time with the parts of that life we wish were different.
Because when I invite you to notice God’s goodness, I know there may be something very hard sitting right beside it. Something you’ve prayed about for a long time. Something that’s changed your everyday life. And I don’t want us to hurry past that just so we can get to the gratitude part.
We can talk to God about all of it.
Being Grateful When Life Is Still Hard
In the first episode of this season, I encouraged us to thank God for something good without pretending that the hard thing beside it isn’t hard.
I want to come back to that, because it’s easy to agree with when we’re talking about gratitude in general. It gets more complicated when we’re talking about our own lives.
We can start to question whether we’re being ungrateful when we admit we’re disappointed. Or whether trusting God means we should have stopped struggling with this by now.
But telling God we’re having a hard time doesn’t disqualify or diminish our gratitude. He already knows what we’re carrying. We can thank Him for how He’s helping us and still ask Him to help us more.
Brandon’s Song and the Years of Waiting
Last year, I had one of those moments when the gratitude just caught me off guard. Our worship team was rehearsing a song my husband, Brandon, had written about fifteen years earlier.
Up until then, he and I were the only ones who’d heard it. So hearing it with the other voices and instruments was a moment I’ll never forget. Just a few lines in and I choked up.
There was a lot of life between when he first wrote that song and when we stood there practicing it with our worship team.
Brandon was diagnosed with cancer in 2014. After a brain biopsy, he was left with cognitive challenges that made things like writing and playing guitar harder. His songs got put away.
And they stayed put away for a long time.
So that rehearsal meant more than finally getting around to doing a song he’d written. I knew some of what it had taken for him to be there. I knew how much harder things had become that had once come more easily.
I was so, so grateful for how God had been working in him. And I was hearing this song that had been waiting all those years, now being played and sung by other people.
There was so much to thank God for in that room.
When I shared about it last year, I wondered whether we were seeing the beginning of a new season for Brandon’s worship and songwriting. I didn’t know exactly what God had in store. But I knew my God. He is good. Always.
That was something I could say while there were still things I didn’t know.
And I could be thankful for that rehearsal without having to call everything that led up to it good. Cancer was hard. The challenges following the biopsy were hard. Hearing the song didn’t erase those years or give us answers to every question.
It gave us something to thank Him for right there.
If you’d like to hear the song, I’ll link the video we did last year. We also wrote a companion devotional, He Came For Me, and I’ll link that for you, too. If this is meeting you in something you’re walking through, you can spend a little more time with us there.
Trusting God Before We Have Answers
I think this is where gratitude and trust become very personal.
There are things we can look back on now and see how God helped us. We can recognize provision or timing that we couldn’t understand while it was happening.
But there are other things we still don’t understand. And I don’t want to suggest that, if we wait long enough, we’ll understand or be able to explain all of them.
Some of you have lived with unanswered questions, unhealed bodies, unreconciled relationships for years. You don’t need me to tell you there must be a reason you just haven’t discovered yet. In fact, I don’t know that there’s actually a reason for everything. But I do know we have a Father can make everything can cause all the things to work together for our good. Even if we don’t get to see what that “good” is this side of heaven.
What I do want to encourage you in is that you can keep coming to God with those questions. You can ask Him for what you need today. And when you recognize His care, you can receive it, even if it comes while you’re still waiting for the bigger answer.
That can take some practice, especially when the hard thing needs so much of our attention.
When someone we love is struggling, of course we’re thinking about them. When we’re waiting on medical results or trying to figure out how to pay for something, those concerns don’t politely step aside so we can have a peaceful moment with God.
We bring them with us.
And right there, with all of that still on our minds, we can ask Him to help us recognize how He’s meeting us.
What Habakkuk Shows Us About Gratitude in Hard Times
There’s a passage at the end of Habakkuk that comes to mind.
In Habakkuk 3:17–19, he describes the fig tree failing to blossom, the vines without fruit, failed crops, and empty stalls. These were losses that affected people’s ability to live and eat. He names them plainly.
Then he says he will rejoice in the Lord and be joyful in God his Savior.
I want us to take our time with that. We can read a passage like this and turn it into another expectation we’re supposed to meet. We hear that Habakkuk rejoiced and think we ought to be able to get ourselves there immediately, too.
But read the rest of the book. There are questions and distress. Habakkuk brings what he sees and what he doesn’t understand to God.
By the time we reach those final verses, we haven’t been given a picture of someone who never struggled. We’ve heard him wrestle with God over what’s happening.
And his closing words point us toward God as his strength.
That matters when we’re tired. We can ask God to help us trust Him. We can bring Him the part of us that’s grateful and the part that’s scared about tomorrow. We don’t have to sort all that out before we pray.
A Simple Prayer for the Middle
So here’s what I’d like to invite you to try sometime this week, when you have a moment with God.
This is hard. God is here. Today I can thank Him for…
Start by being honest about what’s hard. You don’t have to soften it or compare it with what somebody else is going through. Tell Him what’s weighing on you.
Then give yourself a moment with “God is here.”
You may need to ask Him to help you recognize that. Or maybe you can see Him in but still wish you felt it more. You can tell Him that, too.
And then, “Today I can thank Him for…”
Let something specific come to mind. A friend who checked on you. Help with something you couldn’t manage on your own. A moment when you were able to rest.
Whatever you name doesn’t have to be big enough to make up for what’s hard.
And that’s important, so let me say it again. Whatever you name doesn’t have to be big enough to make up for what’s hard. You’re simply thanking Him for that particular kindness, that particular help, in the day you’re living.
And you can keep praying about the hard thing.
I think about standing in that rehearsal,
singing Brandon’s song with our team. There were years behind that moment that I would never have chosen. There was a future ahead of it that I couldn’t predict. And there was something happening right then that I was so thankful to be there for.
I don’t know what the middle looks like for you today. But I hope you’ll give yourself room to be honest with God about it, and room to receive the good He brings into it.
You can still need His help and have something to thank Him for.
So let’s cultivate a devotional life you love. Like really love, because it is possible and it’s so much easier than you think.
Chat soon, Figs.
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