Spir Dynamics 986-1012 2/11/97

DOCTRINE OF GRATITUDE

A. Introduction to The Gratitude Gauge and its Increments.

1. The gratitude gauge originates from:

a. Ps 138:2b, “You [human nature of Christ] have magnified Your word above and beyond Your person.”

b. Mt 4:4 (quoting the Septuagint of Dt 8:3), “This man [humanity of Christ] shall not live only on bread, but on the basis of every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.”

2. The gratitude gauge is a spiritual system for measuring the progress of the spiritual life in the soul. Gratitude is the ministry of God the Holy Spirit in making the benefits of the unique spiritual life of the Church Age pleasing to the mind, so that the accumulated increments of happiness become the measure of capacity for life.

3. Spiritual progress in the soul of the believer is based on the consistent use of the two power options resulting in increased metabolized doctrine circulating in the seven compartments of the stream of consciousness.

4. The result is the progressive development of the problem solving devices on the FLOT line of the soul. Each problem solving device is an increment or increase in your gratitude. There are ten increments or measurements on the gratitude gauge in the soul. The moment we are born again this gauge is on zero. The increase in gratitude requires Bible doctrine in increments. Occupation with Christ is when the gauge reaches maximum.

5. The word “gauge” is defined as an invisible system of measure in the soul which conforms to the divine standards of quality and capacity in the two unique categories of the spiritual life—the dispensations of the hypostatic union and the Church Age. The gratitude gauge does not apply to our Lord Jesus Christ because He was perfect. It only applies to Church Age believers.

6. The system of measure on the gauge is called increment. An increment is defined as an addition, an increase, a gain. The gauge is measured in terms of increments of advance in the spiritual life. There are ten increments in the gauge.

7. Each increment is represented by a problem solving device deployed on the FLOT line of the soul. Each increment (deployment of another problem solving device on the FLOT line of your soul) represents an advance in the spiritual life and an advance in your gratitude. There are millions of believers who have no gratitude toward God because they do not even understand rebound or the filling of the Holy Spirit.

8. The gratitude gauge begins at zero at the moment of salvation. It is activated by perception and metabolization of Bible doctrine.

a. The capacity issue is related to the gratitude gauge. Each increment reading on the gratitude gauge (problem solving device) represents an increase in capacity for life. Capacity for life includes capacity for fellowship with God, capacity for integrity of the soul, and capacity for problem solving.

b. Capacity and gratitude is measured in terms of increments composed of problem solving devices on the FLOT line of the soul. Each increment is capacity for happiness and solutions.

c. Through these increments a mirror is formed in the soul.

d. This mirror forms the basis for the application of doctrine through objective introspection. You were designed to counsel yourself and solve your own problems.

e. Jam 1:22-25 mentions this mirror. The mirror is designed for objective self-analysis in the privacy of your priesthood. “But become doers of the word and not hearers only, but prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who observes his natural face in a mirror; for once he has glanced at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what sort of a person he was [with regard to the spiritual life]. But one who looks intently into the perfect doctrine, the doctrine of freedom, and has persisted, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man will be happy in what he does.”

f. Self-analysis replaces self-absorption and the result is capacity for life, love, and happiness.

g. Each increment of the gratitude gauge has two functions:

(1) Capacity for integrity, life, love, and happiness.

(2) Is the basis for solving problems

h. You cannot solve problems when your gratitude gauge is on zero. You create problems you cannot solve.

9. Through the mechanics of the spiritual life the gratitude gauge measures increased capacity for integrity, virtue-love, and happiness through these increments. Each increment is both a source of maximum blessing and doubles as a problem solving device. Only perception and application of Bible doctrine can raise your level of gratitude. Gratitude comes from Bible doctrine in the soul. The capacity of the soul is directly related to the Bible doctrine and gratitude in the soul. The gratitude gauge functions on the basis of metabolized Bible doctrine circulating in your stream of consciousness through the filling of the Holy Spirit.

10. The gratitude gauge is described in:

a. 1 Thes 5:18, “In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” It is God’s will that you thank Him for everything. No one can fulfill this verse without maximum Bible doctrine circulating in the stream of consciousness. Thanksgiving or gratitude can only exist where there is maximum metabolized doctrine circulating in your stream of consciousness.

b. Eph 5:20, “Always be thankful with reference to all things to God even the Father through the person of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

c. Col 2:7, “Having been rooted and grounded and having been edified in Him and being stabilized by means of doctrine as you have been taught, overflowing with thanksgiving.”

d. Col 1:12, “Giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us for a share in the endowment of the saints.”

11. The gratitude gauge does not apply to other people, it applies to God, God’s grace, and to self. The gratitude gauge is your appreciation of God, not people. The gratitude gauge is designed for fellowship with God. The gratitude gauge measures your relationship with God. Ps 119:11, “Your word I have treasured in my heart that I may not sin against You.” If your relationship with God is correct, your relationship with people will be correct.

a. The purpose of the gratitude gauge is to establish a relationship between God and each believer individually. All blessings in life start with the grace of God.

b. The gratitude gauge is measured in terms of the believer’s capacity for fellowship with God.

c. Your capacity for life, happiness, love, integrity and ability for problem solving is measured by your relationship with God.

d. Your spiritual life is measured by your relationship with God. Therefore, the gratitude gauge in your soul measures the capacity of your rapport with God, your postsalvation spiritual life.

e. Your spiritual life is your relationship and rapport with God based on the amount of metabolized doctrine circulating in your stream of consciousness through the filling of the Holy Spirit.

(1) Rapport is defined as a harmonious relationship with God. The basis for this harmonious relationship with God begins at salvation by faith alone in Christ alone but it is a postsalvation life.

(2) The harmonious relationship with God is fulfilled by the unique spiritual life of the Church Age. If we are going to have this harmonious relationship with God, then it must be on the basis of His mandates, His commands, His plan. God must tell us what we must do to have a harmonious relationship with Him.

(3) Rapport with God must precede rapport with people or your fellowship with people will be a disaster.

(4) This involves doctrinal thinking—thinking the mind of Christ or metabolized doctrine—which eventuates in reaching a gratitude gauge of sharing the happiness or God or occupation with Christ, both of which glorify God. It takes a power equivalent to God’s power to execute the spiritual life. We have two categories of equivalent power—the filling of the Holy Spirit and Bible doctrine in our souls.

(5) Consequently, the subsequent virtue and integrity from thinking doctrine results in true love and true happiness. (Without this you have only blind love, which focuses only on something you admire physically in the object of your admiration rather than on the soul.) This true love and happiness is measured in readings seven through ten on the gratitude gauge.

(6) Eph 4:23, “Then become renewed [rebound] (or reinvigorated—the recovery of the filling of the Spirit; or refreshed— restoration to your fellowship with God) through the agency of the Holy Spirit and by means of your thinking.”

(7) 2 Tim 1:14, “Guard the noble deposit [Bible doctrine in your soul] through the agency of the Holy Spirit who keeps on dwelling in us.” (8) Eph 3:19, “And come to know the love for Christ which surpasses gnosis, that you may be filled resulting in all the fullness from God.”

12. The gratitude gauge has three purposes.

a. Fellowship between the individual believer and God. This is translated into postsalvation relationship with God, as illustrated by 2 Cor 13:14, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love for God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”

b. Capacity for life, love, and integrity, but above all capacity for happiness.

c. Deployment and function of the problem solving devices on the FLOT line of your soul. The problem solving devices are the measuring instruments of the gratitude gauge for recording your spiritual life.

13. Each increment reading on the gratitude gauge represents an increased capacity for life in three categories:

a. Your capacity for fellowship with God. “He must increase, I must decrease.”

b. Your capacity for integrity in the soul, which translates into virtue-love and true happiness. Love and happiness are the basis for integrity.

c. Your capacity for problem solving.

14. Each increment reading on the gratitude gauge also has three functions:

a. Capacity for fellowship with God is your postsalvation spiritual life.

b. Capacity for virtue and integrity in the soul is your only source of true happiness in life.

c. Problem solving is the measure of your spiritual dynamics.

15. Minimal capacity for gratitude in the soul means maximum vulnerability to carnality.

B. Happiness Related to Gratitude.

1. For true happiness Bible doctrine must be more important than we are. True happiness is the deployment of problem solving device number nine (sharing the happiness of God) on the FLOT line of the soul.

a. The only true happiness in life is sharing the happiness of God. Things in life will not make you happy. Happiness has nothing to do with what you lust for in your life.

b. Happiness is not in your body, but in your soul. Happiness does not depend on circumstances outside of the soul, but on circumstances inside of the soul.

c. There is a happiness that does not depend on the lust pattern of the sin nature. The unhappiness that comes from trying to be happy is the reason why people are miserable all of their lives.

d. The maximum function of the gratitude gauge is how you deploy sharing the happiness of God as a problem solving device. The feeding of the soul with Bible doctrine gives us the spiritual dynamics of adding increments to the gratitude gauge until we reach the maximum gratitude of sharing the happiness of God. Only as you metabolize doctrine daily will you find true happiness in life.

2. This is tantamount to maximum reading on the gratitude gauge of your soul. The measure and quality of our happiness is based on increments in the gauge—how much Bible doctrine is circulating in your stream of consciousness.

3. Gratitude is the basis for true happiness in life. No one can have true happiness without gratitude. The lower the gratitude the less happiness you have. The gratitude gauge moves up from zero to maximum as you learn doctrine.

4. To possess this happiness the believer must magnify Bible doctrine above and beyond his person (Ps 138:2), live on the basis of every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God (Dt 8:3; Mt 4:4), and in everything give thanks for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus.

5. Gratitude in the soul is the basis for true happiness in life—the deployment of plus H or sharing the happiness of God.

6. Gratitude in the soul is the entrance into maximum blessing of the spiritual life—occupation with the person of Christ.

a. You can never be blessed by God unless you have the capacity for it, and that capacity includes Bible doctrine in the soul and gratitude

. b. The greater the gratitude the greater the blessing. When you take blessing for granted your soul dries up. People go through life exposed to blessing, but have no gratitude. Instead they have dried up souls and no happiness.

7. This is the happiness by which Jesus Christ endured the Cross, Heb 12:2, “Be concentrating on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our doctrine, who because of His exhibited happiness, He endured the cross, disregarding the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” The happiness of the humanity of our Lord solved the problem of staying on the Cross while being ridiculed and being judged for our sins. True happiness has the capacity to endure the most horrible things in life.

8. The gratitude which deploys plus H is the entrance into occupation with the person of Christ, tantamount to maximum reading on the gratitude gauge.

a. Without gratitude to God and grace orientation there is no happiness for the believer, even if all of your lusts are fulfilled, because there is no capacity for happiness.

b. Gratitude is your gauge for the happiness in your soul. You will always be miserable when you have no gratitude to God. If you have a gratitude gauge of zero, then you will never have any happiness and nothing in this world will make you happy.

c. Gratitude is one of the great productions of the spiritual life.

9. The believer in a perpetual state of carnality suffers two great disasters. The first great disaster is to have the gratitude gauge read zero after years of being a Christian. In perpetual carnality you cannot be distinguished from the unbeliever—you have no gratitude toward God. The second great disaster is to die the sin unto death.

10. When the old sin nature controls the soul, you have zero gratitude. Zero gratitude in the soul creates a vacuum into which bitterness and irrationality flood the soul with zero capacity. Believers in the function of the arrogance complex of sins become an emotional wreck. Without the deployment of grace orientation, doctrinal orientation, and a personal sense of destiny, there is no happiness in the life of any believer. There is nothing you can do to make this person happy. The no happiness status quo results in self-pity, which opens the door for the function of the three arrogance skills.

11. You cannot make a person happy when they have no capacity. They have moment of stimulation but no happiness. This minus zero reading on the gratitude gauge results in accumulated venom in the soul. There is no happiness in your life with venom in the soul.

12. You will never have happiness until you reach plus H or sharing the happiness of God.

C. The Example of Zero Gratitude—the Exodus Generation.

1. God gave more miracles to the Exodus generation than to any other group of people, but they had no gratitude. One of the greatest miracles was the manna provided as food in the desert, Ex 16. But the Jews rejected this manna as food because they rejected both God and Moses. Num 21:5b-6, “The people spoke against God and Moses...For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this miserable food [manna]. Therefore the Lord sent poisonous snakes among the people and they bit the people so that many died.”

a. The venom in the fangs of the snakes matched the venom the souls of these negative believers, so that they died a miserable death after a meaningless and useless life. They rejected the manna from God because they rejected God, rejected Bible doctrine, rejected Moses, and had no gratitude in their souls.

b. A whole generation of believers negative to doctrine were wiped out during the next forty years. If you do not function under the rebound technique (1 Jn 1:9), there is no way you can stay in fellowship with God and live the spiritual life after salvation.

c. They had the best leadership in all of human history and great doctrinal teaching, but never understood it or appreciated it. Moses was the humblest man on the face of the earth.

d. Ex 16:4, “Then the Lord said to Moses, `Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for your sake; then the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day, that I may test them, whether or not they will walk in My instruction [TORAH].’” The issue was the soul even with this grace gift of manna.

e. Ps 78:17-19, “Yet they still continued to sin against Him and to rebel against the Most High in the desert. And in their heart they put God to the test by demanding food on the basis of their lust. Then they spoke against God and said, `Can God prepare a table in the desert for us?’”

2. God did everything for them in grace. They could not be happy no matter what God did for them. You cannot make anyone happy when their gratitude gauge is on zero. No believer will ever be happy unless he moves up the gratitude gauge to sharing the happiness of God. Nothing outside of the spiritual life can make you happy. Stimulation for a few moments in the body will not make you happy.

a. True happiness is located in the soul, not in the body.

b. Therefore true happiness is based on capacity in the soul.

c. Capacity in the soul originates from Bible doctrine in the soul measured in the increments of the gratitude gauge.

d. No believer can have true happiness without gratitude in his soul.

e. No two believers have the same capacity for happiness because they do not have the same amount of doctrine in the soul and on they are at different points on the gratitude gauge.

f. Unless the doctrine is metabolized, it is not available as capacity. If you have no gratitude, nothing will make you happy and you will spend your whole life blaming someone else.

3. The unhappy believer cannot solve problems, his own or anyone else’s .He can only make problems and accumulate problems and be miserable because he does not have any gratitude. Divine discipline has not alerted that believer that he is out of fellowship. Because of the lack of metabolized doctrine circulating in the stream of consciousness, that believer is in the worst trouble of any person alive. Problem solving devices are capacity for life, love, and happiness, as well as problem solving devices. When you deploy problem solving devices, you are also deploying happiness in the soul and gratitude.

4. Happy people are the only people who can solve their problems without creating problems. You were designed to solve your own problems.

5. A whole generation of Jews rejected Bible doctrine (with a few exceptions) and therefore could not be happy no matter what happened to them. They did not use the spiritual life which they had, therefore, nothing could make them happy.

In contrast, Moses left Egypt sharing the happiness of God and occupied with the person of Christ and could endure all of the antagonism of these negative believers.

6. There are two laws by which perpetually carnal believers who have no gratitude toward God are judged.

a. The law of volitional responsibility.

(1) Hos 8:7, “For they sow to the wind, and they reap the whirlwind.”

(2) Gal 6:7-8, “Do not be deceived. God is not mocked. Whatever a person sows that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh [old sin nature] from that he will reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.”

(3) Col 3:25, “For he who does wrong will receive the consequences of that wrong, and there is no partiality.”

b. The law of divine punitive action. Believers are the most miserable people in the world when they are under the law of divine punitive action.

(1) Prov 3:12, “For whom the Lord loves, He disciplines, even as a father disciplines the son in whom he delights.”

(2) Heb 12:6, “For whom the Lord loves, He chastens, and He skins alive with a whip every son whom He receives.”

(3) 1 Cor 11:30-31, “For this reason many are weak among you and sick, and a number sleep. If we would judge ourselves, we will not be judged.”

c. Both laws are stated in Prov 22:8, “He who sows wickedness shall reap trouble, and the rod of His wrath shall be ready.”

7. The disasters which follow having no gratitude in your soul.

a. You create a vacuum in the soul into which comes bitterness and irrationality, giving you no capacity for happiness.

b. The sin nature takes over control so that you live under the lust pattern of the sin nature, seeking social pleasure, sexual, power, approbation, money, criminal, crusader, chemical lust.

c. You lose the battles of the soul—the battle of stress in the soul, sin in the soul, false doctrine in the soul, and problem solving incompetence.

d. The four horseman of apostasy take over your soul: emotional revolt of the soul, locked-in negative volition, blackout of the soul, scar tissue of the soul.

e. No gratitude results in the function of the three arrogance skills, which is grieving the Holy Spirit.

8. Zero reading on the gratitude gauge results in the sin nature controlling the soul. Zero reading on the gratitude gauge is not only carnality in general, but it is also specifically the perpetual carnality of the believer. The gratitude gauge reads zero under the grieving of the Holy Spirit, resulting in the accumulation of venom in the soul. Zero reading on the gratitude gauge means total lack of virtue-love and integrity. There are millions of believers who have rejected the truth of the word of God and live in a state of zero gratitude. Consequently, the virtue in their thinking and application of Bible doctrine is not there. They have no gratitude toward God and can never be happy.

9. 1 Cor 10:11-12, “Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come. Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall.” Without gratitude you have no capacity for the spiritual life and you will live out your life in perpetual carnality until you die the sin unto death. 10. The cobra was related to rebound for the Jews of the Exodus generation, Num 21:6-9. A bronze, Egyptian cobra was placed on a pole. Any Jew who looked at that bronze cobra was healed from the snake bite of the poisonous snakes. This was a picture of the rebound technique. Rebound saved these Jews from the sin unto death.

a. The cobra was very familiar to the Jews when they lived in Egypt, since it was considered the god that guarded the royalty of Egypt. The cobra was the poisonous snake used to administer the sin unto death to those Jews who rejected the manna provided by God.

b. The Egyptian cobra is also mentioned in Ps 140:3; Isa 30:6; Rom 3:13b-14a, “The venom of cobra’s is under their lips, whose mouth is full of bitterness.”

c. The Exodus generation used the three arrogance skills to fill their souls with venom and they struck against Aaron, Moses, and God. The supreme court of heaven used their venom of arrogance against themselves in the administration of the sin unto death.

d. Deut 32:24, 33, “They shall be wasted by famine, and consumed by disease and bitter destruction; And the teeth of the wild animals I will send upon them, and the venom of snakes that glide in the dust. ...Their wine is the venom of snakes even the deadly poison of cobras.”

e. This bronze cobra was destroyed by king Hezekiah in 725 B.C. because some of the Jews had started worshipping it, 2 Kg 18:4.

f. Any Jew who simply looked at the bronze serpent lifted up on the poll was saved from the sin unto death. This was used as a teaching illustration by our Lord to illustrate the judgment of sin for the unbeliever, Jn 3:13-15. Anyone who believes in Christ has their sins blotted out—the doctrine of unlimited atonement. Anyone who rebounds has their sins blotted out. The sins of all unbelievers are judged on the Cross, so that sin is not the issue for the unbeliever at the last judgment.

R. B. Thieme, Jr., Bible Ministries 5139 West Alabama, Houston, Texas 77056 (713) 621-3740

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