Just before I put these feet to these old pine-planked floors in the here in our farmhouse every morning, I often think of how Jews pray, as soon as they wake, before their feet even hit the floor, a prayer of Thankfulness to God, called “Modeh Ani, ” a prayer of only 12 words long and goes like this:
Thankfulness is the password into the full life: a genuinely full life of wholeness and wellness.
“Thankful am I to You,
Living and enduring Sovereign,
for restoring my soul to me in compassion.
Great is Your faithfulness beyond measure.”
And it always strikes me: Why say: “Thankful am I — instead of I am thankful?”
Because God’s people believe that very first words out of our mouths in the morning should not be the word, “I” – but rather, “Thank You.”
Not the focus on I – but eyes on God, and thankful to Him.
The first word in everything… is always THANK YOU….
We are called to more than believe – we are called to be thankful. We are called to more than a people of doctrine — we are called to be a people of doxology.
The Hebrew word for “thanksgiving” is actually “todah”— which is kin to the root of the Hebrew word and name: Judah.
Judah, the son of which all Jews derive their name (Jewish people come from the line of Judah), who was so named by Leah because, “This time I will thank God” (Gen. 29: 35).
And whole Jewish family come from this one man, Judah – an echo of “todah,” the Hebrew word for thanksgiving – was named thus because of thankfulness to God.
As Rabbi Sacks says, “The word Modeh, ‘I give thanks,’ comes from the same root as Yehudi, meaning ‘Jew.’ … Jewishness is thankfulness: not the most obvious definition of Jewish identity, but by far the most life-enhancing.”
Jewishness is thankfulness.
And for those who follow the Jewish Messiah, those of us who follow Jesus, the Lion of Judah, that too is our actual, deepest, truest identity. We are called to more than believe – we are called to be thankful. We are called to more than a people of doctrine — we are called to be a people of doxology.
At its core: Christian faithfulness is thankfulness.
Orthodoxy always become doxology. There is no true orthodoxy without true doxology.
At the heart of genuine Christian identity – is always a genuinely thankful heart.
At its core: Christian faithfulness is thankfulness.
Because: Thankfulness is the password into the full life: a genuinely full life of wholeness and wellness.
There’s no other way into wellness apart from thankfulness.
“Enter with the password, “Thank you” is how some translate Psalms 100’s words: “Enter into His courts with thanksgiving.”
Enter into His presence, enter into wholeness, enter into wellness, enter into the abundance, enter into the good life: with the password “Thank you.”
There’s no other way into wellness apart from thankfulness.
I’m not sure I’m thinking that when I reach for a pen before 10 am, and jot down a few more gifts in my gratitude journal, but there are days I wonder what in the world does your brain actually look like on thankfulness?
WHAT DOES YOUR BRAIN LOOK LIKE ON Thankfulness?
Apparently? “Participants who practice gratitude show lasting increased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex—even 3 months after journaling.” (NIH study, 2016)
To give thanks — is to get mentally strong. Giving thanks gives us a new brain.
“When we express gratitude… our brain releases those “feel-good” chemicals, dopamine and serotonin, the two crucial neurotransmitters responsible for our emotions…. By consciously practicing gratitude everyday, we can help these neural pathways to strengthen.”
Why in the world is genuine Christian identity, at heart, about having a genuinely thankful heart?
Because: To give thanks — is to get mentally strong.
Which is to wildly say:
Giving thanks gives us a new brain.
Who in the world doesn’t want a new brain?
Doxology is an anti-dementia intervention!
A recent 2025 review on certain interventions in early-stage cognitive impairment notes that the practice of gratitude is powerfully associated with higher cognitive function, and actual structural differences in emotion/memory regions of the brain, in older adults.
Doxology is an anti-dementia intervention!
Giving thanks is not only spiritually wise—it’s biologically transformative. Thankfulness builds a bigger, better, healthier brain more inclined toward genuine joy, deep peace, and steadying trust.
“Gratitude trains your brain to scan the world not for threats, but for blessings,” is how Harvard researcher, Shawn Achor, describes and prescribes thankfulness.
The fact is that neuroscientists can now see on brain scans that when we practice gratitude, it activates the prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate, regions of the brain responsible for emotional regulation, attention, and meaning-making.
It’s impossible for gratitude and fear to dominate your brain at the same time.
Gratitude also engages parts of the limbic system where emotion and memory are stored and processed. Over time, when we give thanks again and again, count gift after gift, repeated thanksgiving not only strengthens these neural pathways, but it down-regulates the activity in our brain’s threat circuitry, and tamps back the alarm system that keeps our brains always scanning for danger.
When caught in stress or anxiety, the brain keeps releasing that stress hormone cortisol. But when we intentionally practice gratitude, research shows giving thanks can help lower cortisol levels, reduce sympathetic nervous system activation, and support healthier parasympathetic rhythms — our body’s built-in calming system.
Which means?
It’s impossible for gratitude and fear to dominate your brain at the same time.
Because fear and gratitude are competing for the same neural real estate in our brains.
While fear accelerates – gratitude regulates.
The more we practice thanksgiving, the more we space we give to strengthen those circuits of calm, connection, and joy — and fear has less space and fuel to hijack our. Literally: Gratitude overtakes, and down-shifts, fear. Like a car dropping into a lower gear to slow safely on a steep descent, thanksgiving signals the nervous system to step out of fear’s fight-or-flight and into deeper calm and trust. While fear accelerates – gratitude regulates.
If you want to push fear out of your life, let thankfulness be at the center of your heart and mind.
If you want to push fear out of your life, let thankfulness be at the center of your heart and mind.
And after giving thanks for thousands and thousands of gifts and blessings, in gratitude journal after gratitude journal, over the last decade and a half, that is what I can testify to:
The wellness experienced because of thankfulness isn’t only about what a brain looks like on thanks — but how a whole body works healthy on thanks.
WHAT DOES YOUR BODY LOOK LIKE ON THANKSGIVING?
Research’s found? “Those who were grateful had better cardiac functioning and were more resilient to setbacks and hard experiences” (McCraty & Childre, 2004).
The more of life’s little gifts you give thanks for, the more you can handle all of life’s really big, hard things.
The more gifts you count, the more stronger your heart is.
The more gifts you count, the more resilient you are.
Thanksgiving literally lowers your blood pressure, reduces your heart rate variability caused by stress, and has actually been found? To Improve outcomes in patients with congestive heart failure and coronary artery disease. In a study from the University of California, San Diego, heart failure patients who kept a daily gratitude journal had reduced inflammation markers and improved heart rhythm (HRV) (Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 2015).
The more of life’s little gifts you give thanks for, the more you can handle all of life’s really big, hard things.
But your body on gratitude effects more than just your body’s heart – giving thanks effects the way your body sleeps:
People who practice gratitude before bed, fall asleep faster, sleep longer, and wake up feeling more refreshed. Why? Because, again, cortisol accelerates, and thankfulness regulates – and gratitude lowers cortisol, the stress hormone that can spike at night with anxious thoughts.
Counting gifts, instead of sheep, helps you sleep.
The point is: Counting gifts, instead of sheep, helps you sleep.
Yet, honestly, after these more than 10 years of living into thanksgiving as more than a holiday, but as all of my days, maybe the secret I’ve most deeply discovered, especially now as I’m working on my doctorate in soul care, is that thanksgiving’s greatest health transformation happens more than only in body and brain — but in one’s soul.
WHAT DOES YOUR SOUL LOOK LIKE ON THANKSGIVING?
Cut to the quick. Startled. That’s the only way to describe what happened when Luke 17 jarred me awake to the secret to real soul health. The story started with sickness — with 10 sick lepers.
“One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him” (Luke 17:15–16 NIV).
Then Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.” (Luke 17:17–19 NIV)
Wait. I tace those lines back, track down the secret to true wellness.
Our wholeness, our wellness, our very salvation — our true soul health — is associated with our actual thankfulness.
Hadn’t Jesus already completely healed this leper? Exactly like the other nine who were cured, who hadn’t bothered to return and thank Him? So what does it mean for the truly soul-healthy, and what in the world does Jesus actually mean when he says “Your faith has made you well”?
Jesus’ words, as a literal translation read, “And [Jesus] said to him, ‘Having risen, be going on, thy faith has saved thee.’” — or made you well. The word is sozo in the Greek. Many translations render sozo as being made “well” or “whole,” but its literal meaning, I read it—“to save.” Sozo means true wellness, complete wholeness, real salvation. To live sozo is to live the whole, full, saved, truly healthy life.
Jesus came that we might live life to the full; He came to give us wellness and wholeness, He came to give us sozo. And when did the leper receive sozo—the saving to the full, whole, healthy life? When he returned and gave thanks.
Our wholeness, our wellness, our very salvation — our true soul health — is associated with our actual thankfulness.
We only get to enter into the fullest, wholest life if our faith gives thanks.
The physical leprosy is healed in all 10 of the lepers — but only the one leper who says THANK YOU experiences sōzō—salvation, completeness, wellness, wholeness.
This is the deepest secret to real soul health:
Jesus counts thanksgiving as integral to a faith that gives salvation.
We only get to enter into the fullest, wholest life if our faith gives thanks.
Because how else do we accept His free gift of salvation if not with thanksgiving?
Thanksgiving is inherent to a true salvation experience; thanksgiving is necessary to live the well, whole, healthy fullest life.
It was that esteemed theologian, Charles Spurgeon, when he sat with the only one leper who came back to say thank you, and his heart ached as he wrote:
“There are more who receive benefits than ever give thanks for them” Spurgeon wrote.
“Nine persons healed, one person glorifying God; nine persons healed of leprosy, mark you, and only one person kneeling down at Jesus’ feet, and thanking Him for it.
[We] cannot attempt a catalog all of the benefits, the gifts, the riches of His grace that we receive day after day; and yet is there one man in ten that thanks God for these? …
Who is in the top 10 percent in life – who give God thanks for the gifts of their life?
We receive a continent of mercies, and only return an island of praise…. Multitudes of our fellow citizens pray when they are sick and near to dying, but when they grow better, their praises and thanksgiving then grows sick unto death, with no song of thankfulness…
There is a great blessedness in thankfulness.
Personal thanks to a personal Savior must be our life’s objective.” (Spurgeon)
You know you’re truly healthy when you know your brain, body, and soul can’t afford to let your gratitude grow sick.
You know you’re truly healthy when you know your brain, body, and soul can’t afford to let your gratitude grow sick.
Who will be the one in ten – who goes back to God to give Him thanks?
Who is in the top 10 percent in life – who give God thanks for the gifts of their life?
Only those who pick up a pen and write down the gifts they’re grateful for, who live with a brain on thankfulness with a body on thankfulness, with a soul on thankfulness, can experience true wellness, complete sozo, real wholeness.
A life of wellness — is only found in a life of thankfulness.
As C.S. Lewis writes in Reflections on the Psalms: “Praise is inner health made audible.”
Our thankfulness is our inner wellness made audible.
When heads bow around the table, when I join all those offering their “thank you”– it’s all our souls saying aloud that they’re healthy and whole.
Thankfulness is a measure of our soul wellness…
Our thankfulness is our inner wellness made audible. Thankfulness is a measure of our true soul wellness…
Which is why thanksgiving is meant to be more than just a holiday — but the posture of all of our days — all of our healthy days.
Though I do wonder if it’s possible:
Thanksgiving is perhaps the most favorite holiday because it comes asking for almost nothing — no baskets to fill, no gifts to wrap, no candy to sort — just an invitation to come to a table with a thankful heart.
And so we do.
We dare to come, every morning with the first words out of our mouths, “Thankful am I…” and every evening, coming to the table, one of the wild and grateful 10 percenters, because at the heart of all the truly healthy, and at the heart of a true Christian identity –– is always a truly thankful heart.
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When the ache feels like more than the heart can carry, and you’re longing for a truly healthy live, body, mind and soul — try gently picking up a pen and looking for miracles and gifts of grace, even here, to count gifts, all from a good and relentlessly loving God who draws near with grace upon grace in our heartache.
The Best Little Gratitude Journal for you — has spacious lines to name three miraculous gifts of grace each day, and is uniquely formatted to daily see how God has shown up with gifts on this day of the month, on all the previous months.
THIS GRATITUDE JOURNAL IS LIFE-CHANGING: Gifts & Gratitudes gently helps grow trust in a God who doesn’t always explain our suffering but who always enters into it with us.
When you don’t know what or who to count on tomorrow… if you start counting Gifts & Gratitudes — your eyes… and heart… begin to open to Who you can always count on…. especially on the hardest days.
And how exactly does the Christ-life of thankfulness THAT IS WELLNESS? My story of just that: One Thousand Gifts.
Are you ready to begin—or begin again—a life-changing habit of daily gratitude? Want DEEP HEALTH, to reset, refresh, reboot your life and literally rewire your brain? Be one of the more than 2 million people who have stepped into the life-change of this experience.
It’s only in the expression of gratitude for the tender, complicated life we already have, we discover miracles of grace in this same life . . . a life we can take, give thanks for, and break for others. We come to feel and know the impossible right down in our bones: we are wildly loved – by God.
Let’s end the year strong and genuinely soul-healthy… Life is a miraculous gift and far too short to do anything but awaken to the miracles of grace in the midst of the brutally hard — to live thanksgiving and count all the ways you are truly, deeply loved.
