Gratitude in Missional Enterprise

Since most of our readers are in the U.S., many of you will be celebrating Thanksgiving this week. It’s a good time to reflect on the importance of giving thanks, especially as we lead businesses for God’s glory. This week, we are featuring a repost of a (slightly revised) article from November 2022. We hope it helps lead us all to deeper expressions of gratitude, especially in the context of the enterprises we lead!

Business professionals and scholars are recognizing the power of gratitude. For instance:

• Writer Eric Mosely, in a Forbes article entitled The Business Impact of Gratitude, references a variety of studies linking gratitude in the workplace to improved business outcomes, which he calls “the gratitude effect: a ripple of acknowledgment and appreciation that surges forward, transforming and inspiring us, and improving business outcomes.”
• A recent article in Entrepreneur even describes gratitude as a “Major Business and Life Hack” and gives some suggestions for doing it better, especially in the workplace.

Of course, as followers of Jesus, gratitude is more than a “life hack” and the main focus of our thanks is God himself.

The team at the Theology of Work Project has compiled a collection of “Thanksgiving Prayers About Work.” We encourage you to explore the site and consider using one of the prayers to express your thanksgiving to God this week. Here is one we found especially encouraging:

Almighty God, we praise you for all your gifts to us in creation. We acknowledge the skills with which we have been endowed, the materials available for our use and the opportunities to meet the needs of others. We thank you for what agriculture, industry, commerce and local government have achieved and for their contribution to our lives. May our gratitude to you be plain in all we do. Help us to use all your gifts wisely and for the good of all, in the knowledge that through our daily work we contribute to your loving purpose; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Finally, we want to express thanks to all of you for joining together in the adventure of glorifying God through missional enterprise. May you be richly blessed and may God fill you with a heart of gratitude.

Verse(s) of the Week:

Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. Colossians 2:6-7 (ESV)

As you walk in Christ Jesus the Lord this week, may God enable you to abound in thanksgiving.