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Anchor Point Films

Chad Kreuzer

The Brain and Body on Gratitude

Heavenly Father, we thank You so much for Your love.

Thank You for this time together to fellowship, to visit, to talk.

Lord, I pray just now that Your Holy Spirit would guide us, that you draw each and every 1 of us nearer to you in Jesus name amen now many of you probably heard the story of a man by the name of George Mueller in the 1800s had a had an orphanage at 1 time that had a thousand young children within this orphanage and there was a particular time period in this orphanage where they literally ran out of food.

They didn't have food prepared for the young children.

And so what he did, George Mueller gathered together the people that were there, all the children and so forth, and he said, let's pray to God.

And so they had a time of prayer, and in his prayer he prayed, thank you God for the food that you have prepared for us.

And at the end of that prayer, he heard a knock on the door, opened the door, and there was a baker at the door and he said, God shared with me last night, he impressed me that I needed to bake a bunch of bread for your young people.

And then right after that, there was another knock on the door and who was it?

His milk truck had broke down just by the orphanage.

And he told him, he said, listen, I want you to have all of the milk that I have because I'm not going to be able to use it anyway.

How could it be that this man in a time where it seemed like there was no hope, it seemed like there was no food, it seemed like you would give up and say, God, I thought you would call me to this ministry to these children, and yet he said no.

He said we're going to thank God for the blessings that he has given to us, even if we haven't seen them yet.

And so sometimes we need to thank God even when it doesn't seem like there's anything to thank him for, right?

We need to be thankful in all things the Scriptures reveal.

By the way, If anybody's from a different area or you'd like to contact us, you can contact my wife and myself at anchorpointfilms.com.

And we travel around full time, so if you'd like to contact us, we'd love to come and visit with your church or in your area.

You can contact us at anchorpointfilms.com.

But here's a question, is giving God thanks good for your health?

It's interesting because the Bible says in the book of Deuteronomy, The Bible tells us in chapter 6 verse 24, it says, and the Lord commanded us to do all of these statutes.

So the Lord commanded us to do all of His laws, all of His statutes, and then it says to fear the Lord our God, and then it says, for our good always, that He might preserve us alive as it is this day.

Meaning the Scriptures reveal that God says that everything He commanded us to do is actually for our own good and then He says, He finishes the statement by saying that it might preserve you alive.

Meaning that all of God's commandments are actually for our benefit.

They're not just, you know, arbitrary statements, you should do this, you shouldn't do this, but they are statements that are actually beneficial to us, and then he says they preserve our longevity, they preserve our life.

So 1 of the things we're told to do in scriptures is we're to thank God, we're to praise God.

Now is there any research out there that talks about gratitude, being thankful, and what that does for our health?

This here is taken from the John Templeton Foundation from UC Berkeley.

This is a white paper that is looking at the research that has specifically been done study after study after study on the research on gratitude and what it actually does to our physiology, what it does to our body, what it does to our brain, and what are the impacts.

Now research has been conducted on people with heart failure.

Individuals who had more gratitude, slept better, were less tired, and had lower levels of inflammation.

Within our body, inflammation is a natural process that can actually be beneficial to our health.

Meaning if you get cut, a cut, there's, you know, it'll turn maybe red around it and there's a natural form of inflammation that can help the healing process.

But when we have chronic inflammation in our body, it can actually be detrimental to our health and longevity.

And so research has shown that potentially people who have more gratitude, they sleep better, they're less tired, and they have lower levels of inflammation, and higher levels of inflammation can cause potentially higher levels of cancer, diabetes, and various other lifestyle diseases, potentially even depression.

So, but someone might be thinking, okay, well maybe, but this is maybe because healthier people are happier, maybe they're more thankful, and so that's why it is.

But what happens when you put it to the test and do an interventional trial with gratitude?

Researchers randomly put people who were patients up for heart failure in 1 of 2 different groups.

1 group was to write about the things that they were grateful for each day.

So every day they were to write about things they were grateful for, for a total of 8 weeks.

The intervention group, meaning those who had journaled about things they were grateful for, had lower markers for inflammation.

So what this gives evidence for is that if we are, we choose, meaning we're people who maybe weren't grateful.

Maybe we weren't historically someone who constantly, day after day after day was thankful to God and said, God, thank you for doing this for me today.

And choosing to go back over the things, hey, what am I thankful for today?

But if we begin to do that, it actually benefits our physiology.

It actually benefits our health and lowers levels of inflammation.

Now, that being the case, what do we see?

Now if you think about this also, if you think about this, the very first time the Scriptures mention being thankful, not that this is the first time anybody in history was thankful, Just the first time it's specifically mentioned in the Bible.

It says in 1 Chronicles chapter 16 verse 4, it said, and he, speaking of King David, appointed certain of the Levites to minister before the ark of the Lord and to record and to thank and praise the Lord God of Israel.

It says that David actually appointed men, so God actually had people appointed, and it was their job, it was literally their job to, 1 of the things anyway, was to praise and thank the God of Israel.

So there were people who actually had positions to be thankful to God for all the things that he had done, for all the blessings that he had given them.

We read here in 1 Chronicles 23, 24, and 30, these were the sons of Levi, and to stand every morning to thank and praise the Lord, and likewise at even.

So notice twice a day they would actually spend time being thankful and praising God, the God of heaven, for the blessings that He had bestowed upon the Israelite people.

And what might be the benefits for us if we would literally take time every single day thinking, God, What have you done for me?

And it's interesting because sometimes you think, oh, it has to be something big and massive, but we can be thankful for the little things like, Lord, thank you that I have hands, that my hands actually work, right?

And you know, When the snow comes, we haven't had much snow yet, but I mean, if you have to go out and shovel, and you think, oh man, I gotta go shovel.

Well, Father, thank you that my body works, that I can use my legs, I can use my hands, because think of all the people who don't have those things, literally, right?

So we have so many things to be thankful for, and we should literally think about these things how often?

Now we see this with the priests or the Levites, but notice what Scripture says in 1 Peter, in the New Testament, chapter 2 and verse 9, speaking of God's people, the true Christians of today, those who've given their lives to Jesus Christ, it says, but you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, and holy nation, a peculiar people that ye should show forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into His marvelous light." So notice it says God's people, God's faithful, those who have once again given their lives to Jesus, they are to be a priesthood, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, and They are to show the praises of God.

So we too, meaning this was something that was done through the Levites or the priests in the Old Testament, but so too with us in the New Testament, God has called us to think of Him and to praise Him.

And we know it was how often, it was a daily experience.

And this is something that we can be a part of.

And you probably heard a very popular psalm, Psalm 100, in verse 4 where it says, Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise.

Be thankful unto him and bless his name." When we come to church we can always have something to be thankful for.

Even in the midst of trials, even in the midst of tribulation, there's always something that we can be thankful to God for.

Every single day, every single week as we enter into His gates, we can enter into them with thanksgiving.

But let's get back to the research for a moment.

A preliminary study indicates that people with high levels of gratitude, who are more grateful, have lower levels of A1Cs.

This is a marker for how high your blood sugars have been over the course of multiple months.

And if you have too high blood sugar, the consistently high blood sugar, we call this diabetes.

For those people who get it later in life, We used to call it childhood onset diabetes, but now we used to call that type 1 diabetes, but now people even are getting type 2 even as children.

So now we have type 1 and type 2 diabetes.

But what happens is if your blood sugars are high, consistently it can do damage to various portions of your body.

It can damage your blood vessels all throughout your body.

And so having high levels of sugar is actually detrimental.

They found that the A1Cs, which are a marker for how high your blood sugars are over the course of months, they're actually lower in people who are more grateful.

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The Brain and Body on Gratitude

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