Expressing gratitude is never wrong. The urge to give thanks is one of the signals that God sends you to remind you that He is real. Gratefulness is a spiritual phenomenon that requires belief in the supernatural.

When a comedian thanks his friends and family for helping him achieve success, that is thanksgiving at Kindergarten level. I’m not criticizing. Everyone passes through Kindergarten at some point in their life. Thanking people for your success is a bit like thanking a chicken for your omelet. It is true that the chicken contributed and it is not wrong to acknowledge that contribution. It is, as I said, thanksgiving for beginners.

Thanking chickens for your omelet leaves out a lot of other people who contributed to your breakfast. What about the farmer who tended the chicken and collected the eggs? What about the truck driver who delivered the eggs and the grocer who inventoried them? I bet, if you thought about it, you could come up with a dozen or more people who played some role in helping that chicken produce your egg.

Gratefulness is the feeling you get when you realize that you aren’t personally responsible for the good things in your life. You didn’t ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ to get here. Every step you take requires the assistance of someone else. There are no self-made men.

You are reading this on the internet which requires a mind-boggling number of people to operate. Were it not for the assistance of untold millions of people creating the technology we’re using, I wouldn’t be able to speak to you right now. It is good to express gratitude for those folks.

But we’re still doing beginner thanksgiving. None of the people we are thanking can take full credit for their accomplishments. They are just like us. They didn’t give themselves strength, talent, or intelligence. Every person who ever achieves success is the recipient of God’s goodness.

Next level gratitude expresses thanks to the source of every good gift. The omelets in my life don’t exist because of hard working chickens. The people in my life don’t exist because of their own will. When I’m grateful for either omelets or friends, I should say thank you to the One responsible for both of them.

(Colossians 3:17) And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.