Buying things makes us happy. It busts depression, grows our circle of friends, solves our family problems. Buying things is the quickest path to robust health and a future of ease. At least, that’s what the ads tell us.

Experience, on the other hand, tells us something quite different: that buying things usually just gets us more things—more things that need to be taken care of, more things that break.

With December just beginning, the Christmas buying binge already has the world by the throat. In our materialistic world, shopping has become a common addiction, something we end up needing to do not to supply our needs, but for its own sake. This greed habit comes with a high cost: escalating debt, pervasive discontent, stress-related sickness, strained and fractured families.

There is a cure for all that madness. If any single thing can yank us out of the rat race of materialism, here it is: thanksgiving. An attitude of gratitude for those blessings we already possess—particularly the spiritual blessings.

Thanksgiving is the overlooked holiday—buried under an orgy of football and feasting—already ancient history immediately after it is over. But that noble public holiday represents a godly attitude we need to cultivate daily.

Jesus Christ tells us not to accumulate treasures on Earth, which can break down, fall apart or be stolen (Matthew 6:19). Instead, we are to accumulate incorruptible spiritual treasures (verses 20-21).

The Apostle Paul offers this timeless wisdom: “Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth” (see Colossians 3:1-2). He followed his own advice and remained always content, whatever his physical circumstances—rich or poor, better or worse (Philippians 4:11-12).

When we concentrate on and worry about what we don’t have, we make ourselves poor. When we are grateful for and content with everything we do have, we discover how rich we truly are.

A lack of contentment is really a lack of perspective. If you are anxious about what you’ll eat or drink, your perspective is off, Christ instructs us. Just be thankful you have a life to sustain with food and drink! Don’t fret about clothes—be thankful you have a body to clothe! (read Matthew 6:25-34).

And God not only wants us to have an attitude of thanksgiving, but He also wants us to express that thanks to Him. Follow Paul’s admonition in Hebrews 13:15 to “offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name.”

My two daughters are growing up with a much higher material standard of living than the one my wife and I had at their age—in their home, the amount of their toys, the opportunities available to them. As they have been able to travel and attend certain special events, my wife and I have detected a certain danger in the prosperity they enjoy. In fact, we have already decided to scale back some of those things in their lives. They don’t need those opportunities, and I want to make sure they never feel entitled to them. Woe be to any of us when we start feeling entitled to what are actually luxuries.

In making this decision, my wife and I are simply trying to follow God’s example as a parent.

God has much to give; He could prosper each one of us to the heights in a minute! But He knows that instant prosperity could hurt us, and only supplies what we can handle.

Read the 8th chapter of Deuteronomy; it vividly shows how God walks the line with His people between blessing us and spoiling us. Just as the Israelites were about to enter the Promised Land, God had a powerful message for them—one extremely relevant in our world today. If you remain obedient, He told them, I’ll bless you abundantly! Then He reminded them of how much gratitude they owed Him for bringing them to where they were. Surly they looked back on their time in the wilderness as a massive trial—but God said, Look, I orchestrated that whole experience. I was right with you the whole time, and it was all for your spiritual benefit. Remember that. Now, as you enter the Promised Land, I want you to enjoy it to the full! But remember where it came from. That prosperity is not your own doing! Be thankful, and don’t take it for granted.

God knows human nature well enough to know there was a danger that the Israelites would get their minds too much onto physical things and off Him.

How thoroughly up to date that speech is! We are modern-day Israel, frighteningly susceptible to the same traps our forebears fell into.

God, like any parent, wants to bless us abundantly. But when He detects a lack of gratitude in us, then He thinks twice about blessing us. And sometimes He will withhold a blessing in order to benefit our character.

“Two things have I required of thee; deny me them not before I die,” reads a prayer recorded in Proverbs 30:7-9: “… [G]ive me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me: Lest I be full, and deny thee, and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the name of my God in vain.” These few verses contain much wisdom. They provide insight into how God must think when considering which blessings to extend to us and which to withhold.

In the end, God is mostly after our character development. Sometimes physical blessing helps us develop character. Sometimes deprivation helps us even more.

How do you respond to God’s blessings in your life? God gives us blessings as it pleases Him—and as we please Him. Once we receive them, He expects us to thank Him. And He wants us to be content even when we don’t receive those blessings.

“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (James 1:17). Make a mental list of all the good and perfect gifts your Father has given you. His love, His character, His reliability. His Bible, and the array of promises in it. Your calling, your spiritual begettal, your earnest of the Holy Spirit, your potential, your future. Your family, physical and spiritual, your friends, your minister. Peace. A job, a roof, food for your belly. And so on, and so on.

God even tells us to count our trials as blessings, since they produce positive spiritual growth in us (e.g. James 1:2-3). Can you honestly think of one thing in your life, then, that isn’t a blessing, for which to thank God?

When we begin to set our affections on things on this Earth, it is easy to lose perspective. But what joy it brings into our lives when we focus on the real, the true, the incorruptible, the eternal—when we are really thankful to our great God for all the blessings He gives us, even for our trials! Greed shrinks; discontent dissolves; materialism melts away. When thankfulness moves in, it brings its companions contentment and peace. “And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful” (Colossians 3:15).

How nice—a cure with no negative side effects. And on top of all the other benefits, it might even fatten your wallet.