Gratitude: Part 1

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and helpful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added. Which are so extraordinary in nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of almighty God. They are the gracious gifts of the most high God who while dealing with us in anger for our sins have nevertheless remembered mercy. It is seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficence Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the inscriptions justly due to him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also with humble penitence for our national perverseness in disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or suffers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged. And fervently employ the interposition of the almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and union. Now, you may not know who said that, but who it was, was President Abraham Lincoln. Now President Lincoln said this in October of 1863. And in October of 1863, we were right in the middle of a civil war. It's interesting to me that in the middle of a civil war with a country that was war torn and in trial, what Lincoln called for was gratitude to God. That's what he called for. I think his instincts were right actually. It makes sense to me because it's almost as if he assumed that bound up in the hearts of people is the need to express gratitude. And that that gratitude would actually transform the perspective that people have when it comes to looking at the world. Now, science actually bears this out, if you don't believe me, that gratitude is something that is significant and that it bears this idea out. The John Templeton Foundation that was working on behalf of University of California, Berkeley, did some research just a few years ago on the idea of gratitude. Here's what they found. They found that 90% of people believed that grateful people lead more fulfilled lives. That makes sense. It's not something That we would be shocked to find out or to understand. We believe that to be the case. 95% of people believe that parents should teach their children about gratitude. Oh, that makes sense as well, not a shock to find out. Only 1% of everybody that was researched and surveyed believed that gratitude was unimportant. That means 99% of everyone that was researched and surveyed said gratitude is really important. There were a bunch of other findings in this particular research, but one of the things that I think, that I kind of paid attention to was this, is that 80% of people felt like that gratitude actually occurs naturally. In other words, that it doesn't have to be set off by a specific occurrence to make us grateful, but that there are times 80%, eight out of 10 people, believe that gratitude just happens naturally at times. Sometimes we just well up with gratitude and it comes seemingly out of nowhere, not precipitated by a specific event. That's an interesting thought for me because as I thought about that, I thought to myself, that must be a really odd occurrence for an atheist. To have this gratitude that wells up inside of them and not have anyone to thank. So the writers of scripture are not silent about gratitude. We're not particularly shocked that gratitude itself is something that makes sense to us, but the writers of scripture are not silent about it. And like President Lincoln, I think for what we are experiencing as a nation and as a world right now, that coming back to thankfulness and gratitude, is the right impulse. Just like it was then, I think it is now. Now I could take you to a number of different places in the scripture itself that we could talk about the idea of gratitude or thankfulness. But I wanna take you to the end of one of Paul's letters. Paul's writing to the Thessalonicans, right? The Thessalonians, we would say. And in his first letter toward the conclusion of that letter, Paul says something very stark, very direct. And I want you to see what he says is in 1 Thessalonians 5 beginning verse 16. He says this, "Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you." Now, when Paul says this, this is straightforward language. What you have to remember is that in Thessalonica, it was difficult for the followers of Jesus. This was a place that was really challenging to live for Jesus. Not only might you have the Romans that were overseeing this city, persecute you because of your faith and following Jesus, but you also may be subject to the persecution of the Jewish leaders that had established synagogues there and were not happy when either Gentiles or Jews converted to faith in Jesus Christ and became known as Christians. That you could be persecuted from either side. If you were to pay attention to what happened in the Book of Acts, seeing the history of the early church, If you were reading in Acts 17, you would find out that Paul and Silas almost died in Thessalonica. This was a huge amount of trouble. A riot was stirred up because they were preaching the gospel and many of the Jews in fact were causing a bunch of trouble. And the Romans had to get involved in quelling the riots. They even had to slip Paul out of town under the cover of darkness because his life was under threat. And he ended up going to Berea. But you know what happened? The people that were angry at him at Thessalonica actually tracked him down in Berea and they had to ship him out to Athens. Like this was a very difficult place to be a Christian. In fact, Thessalonica had trade guilds where, you know, almost like a union, so to speak, not quite the same, but they had these trade guilds, and if they found out that you were a follower of Jesus, you were a Christian, they would actually have you shut out of these particular trade guilds. So you could lose your employment for being a believer in Jesus. This was a difficult place to follow Jesus. And it's into that group of people, at that particular moment, in that particular circumstance, that Paul issues these commands. Where he says, I want you to rejoice all the time. I want you to pray in all times. And I want you to give thanks in every single circumstance. Now, when Paul says to give thanks in every circumstance, what he didn't say is to give thanks for every circumstance. Sometimes circumstances are bad. And we can call them that. Sometimes they stink. Sometimes the circumstances that we get ourselves into, sometimes the circumstances that we have no control over that happened to us, sometimes they are no good. But what Paul is saying here is not so much that we're thanking God for either bad circumstance or even evil things, but that we can thank God in them. That's what we have to hear in this command. And by the way, these were three imperatives that Paul gave to us. And these were commands. So here's the question maybe that we could ask of ourselves. Why should we give thanks in all circumstances? This is the command that's given to us, right? It's command language. It's written in the imperative. Paul's not making a suggestion and he's not just going, "Ah, think about being thankful, that'd be nice." No, Paul is actually saying, this is something that I'm commanding you to do by the authority of Jesus Christ, as an apostle of Jesus Christ. I'm giving to you this in authoritative language. And he says, "I want you to give thanks in all circumstances." So why should we give thanks in all circumstances? Well, I'm gonna share with you a few things right out of the text, and I don't want you to miss them. I want you to follow along with me because we're gonna unpack this command that Paul actually gave us. Here's the first reason. That we should give thanks in all circumstances because it's the will of God. This should be obvious to us when we read the text itself, I want you to look again in 1 Thessalonians 5:18, Paul says, here's the command. "Give thanks in all circumstances," here it is, "for this is the will of God." So we don't have to wrestle over Paul's rationale for actually telling us why we should give thanks in all circumstances, even the difficult ones. Paul says the reason we do that is because it's the will of God. Now what we forget oftentimes, we forget that gratitude is a part of the will of God. I think that oftentimes when we talk about the idea of the will of God, something that gets lost on us is that we forget to talk about the idea of gratitude being a part, listen to this, of the will of God. So this isn't suggestive. This is God's saying, "It is my will that you're grateful, that you're thankful." Sometimes that gets lost on us. But if we look in the rear view mirror, down through the corridor of time, looking with that kind of way back machine rear view mirror, going all the way back to the beginning of human history, we shouldn't miss it. Because when we arrived there, here's what we find. We find a man, we find a woman, we find a garden. Of course, we also find animals around there as well, right? But there we are, a beautiful picture of creation. And this creation was called what? Good. In fact it was called good every single day after every single thing that was created each of those days, and on day six called good twice because human beings were made in the image of God. And not only were they called good, but it was described as very good, really good, like good, good. So you've got this beautiful picture of creation being good. You've got this man and woman who were there in creation as stewards of creation. There are plenty of sustainable resources all around them. You have ecological harmony, you have relational purity, you have physical safety and you have spiritual peace. Let me here just ask a question. What else do you need? You've got everything you could imagine, right? All of creation is in harmony. The relationship that you have is pure. You are physically safe and you are spiritually at peace. What else do you need? Apparently the serpent who was the voice of the enemy wanted to plant the seed that you don't have all you need. That they didn't have all they needed. And so he actually uses, listen to this, a temptation that's aimed to create an ungrateful heart. That's what you see at the very beginning. Temptation that the serpent, the voice of the enemy, right? That serpent of old, Satan, is tempting our earliest Father and mother, Adam and Eve, to be tempted toward the direction of an ungrateful heart. "Did God really say you can't eat of this? Man, he's holding out on you. I can't believe that you don't get to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, man." And of course they gave into that temptation. What if they would have answered differently? I wonder what human history would have looked like if Eve would have said, "What, are you joking me? Look around serpent! I've got everything I could possibly ever need. I mean, okay so yeah, God said, 'don't eat from this tree.' Do you know how many trees that I have here with fruit that is good to eat? Do you know how many things that I've got growing from the ground that I can eat from? Do you know that I can play with lions and tigers and bears, oh my? Do you know that I can do everything that I want to do? I can go anywhere I want to go. Do you know that God walks with us in the cool of the day? Are you kidding me, serpent? I've got everything that I could possibly ever need." Wonder what would have happened then. But that wasn't the response. The response from Eve and certainly of Adam, was one where they gave into the temptation to yield themselves to an ungrateful heart. You see God created human beings with a will that they would be grateful for all that he had given to them. But what happened is that they chose otherwise. Ann Voskamp who is a writer, a wonderful writer at that, wrote a book called "One Thousand Gifts". Some of you may have read that book by Ann. And in it she actually talks about this very idea and I really enjoyed what she had to say. She said this, she said, "From all of our beginnings, we keep reliving the Garden story. Satan, he wanted more. More power, more glory. Ultimately in his essence, Satan is an ingrate." That means he's ungrateful. "And he sinks his venom into the heart of Eden. Satan's sin becomes the first sin of all humanity, the sin of ingratitude. Adam and Eve are simply painfully ungrateful for what God gave. Isn't that the catalyst of all my sin? Our fall was, has always been, and always will be that we aren't satisfied in God and what he gives. We hunger for something more, something other." I'll tell you, I agree with Ann. I think that she's onto something ingratitude which is really, listen to this, ingratitude which is just another face of pride, destroys. That's what it does. It absolutely destroys. It eats us from the inside. In fact, Paul knew this full well because not only is he commanding that we be a people who are grateful. Why? Because it's the will of God. That we are actually designed to be a grateful people to God and to others, by the way. That we're designed this way. That this is a part of the divine design. This is a part of the nature of how God has created humanity. This is the will of God. But what Paul also writes in another place when he's writing to the church at Rome, he describes what sinful humanity actually looks like. Particularly in chapter one, Paul is describing this significantly. The idea of what sinful humanity looks like. And notice what he says in Romans 1:21. He says "For although they knew God," not in an intimate personal way, they just knew that God existed. They knew there was a God. "They neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him. But there thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Do you see the prospect here of sinful humanity? That although they knew of God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him. Why would they give thanks to him? Here's why. Because people are created according to the will of God to be grateful, to be thankful. So why should we give thanks in all circumstances? First because it's the will of God. But second, let me remind you of this, we should give thanks in all circumstances because it's the will of God in Christ Jesus. You see these are Paul's exact words. I wanna show them to you. It's here in 1 Thessalonians 5:18, He says, "Give thanks in all circumstances for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus." Now we need to pause here for just a moment and recognize that in Jesus what we see is we see a life that is lived totally and completely for the will of God. This is exactly what we see. When we observe the life of Jesus, we are seeing a human being who is fully God but fully the man who was living completely and totally in line with, in step with the will of God. And by the way, that life is available to us by the Holy Spirit. That very life of Jesus is implanted in us by the Spirit and the agency of the Spirit allows that life to live out through us. So we now, listen to this, not only is Jesus the recipient of our gratitude, he's also the guide to our gratitude. That we actually look at his life and his life teaches us a life of gratitude. While in the divine design, the first Adam failed, the second Adam came and actually lived a life of thankfulness to the Father. Lived a life of gratitude to the Father, actually fulfilled the will of God in this aspect that he lived thankfully. We can look at a number of places that we could find where Jesus is demonstrating his thanks or his gratitude to the Father. There's just a couple that I would note. You might remember when Jesus was feeding the 5,000 in Matthew 14. It says, "He directed the people to sit down on the grass taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven," what did he do? "He gave thanks and he broke the loaves. Then he gave than to the disciples and the disciples gave them to the people." That's a remarkable thing because we see in Matthew 14, when Jesus feeds the 5,000, he takes these, the loaves and the fish. And what does he do? He gives thanks to the Father. By the way if you fast forward into the next chapter, in Matthew 15, you'd also see him feeding the 4,000 and he was doing the same thing. He was giving thanks for the provision of God. There was another time where Jesus had sent out the 72 disciples. And he'd sent them out to be able to preach the gospel and share the gospel. And then they came back telling Jesus all that they've been able to do by the power of God through them. And then listen to what Jesus said. This is in Luke 10. It says, "In that same hour Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit." He had great joy in the Holy Spirit. And here's what he said. "I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father for such was your gracious will." And then if we were to look in where Jesus was dealing with his friend Lazarus who had died. Lazarus now being in the grave, Jesus having been away from him. And now it's the fourth day after he's died. Notice what it says in John 11, "They took away the stone Jesus told them to. And then Jesus looked up and said, 'Father, I thank you that you have heard me.'" By the way, he said that before Lazarus came out of the tomb. "Father, I thank you that you've heard me." And then Jesus said, "Lazarus come on out." And he did, right? So we see Jesus being thankful in a number of different ways. He's thankful to the Father for the provision of food, the supernatural provision, not just for himself, but for all those who were gathered there. He's thankful to the Father that he revealed his will to those who were lowly, instead of just those who were learned and understanding. But instead he revealed it to people maybe who didn't have all of the opportunity in the world and he revealed it to them. And then he thanked the Father that the Father heard his prayer. So in all of these things, Jesus gives thanks. But there's another place that I wanna remind you of, where Jesus gives thanks that's really, I think, remarkable to me. It's when Jesus is sitting down with his brothers at the Lord's supper, his disciples at the last supper, the time of Passover. And it says in Matthew 26, "While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples saying, 'Take and eat, this is my body.' Then he took a cup and when he had given thanks he gave it to them saying, 'Drink from it all of you.'" It is remarkable to me, actually stunning to me that what Jesus was giving thanks for, the bread and the cup, he was actually describing his own body and blood to his disciples. He was giving them a visual symbolic demonstration of what he was going to do on the cross. And do you know what he did? When faced with the greatest trial, the most difficult time that he was ever going to face in his entire life knowing the prospect of dying on a cross for the sins of humanity was staring him in the face. And he takes these symbols that were imbued with the power of this symbolism to say, "This is my body and this is my blood that is broken and shed for you." And do you know what he did? He gave thanks. He gave thanks for his own sacrifice. Of the most difficult time, the hardest time, the biggest trial that Jesus would ever face, what did he do in the midst of that trial? He was grateful. Why? Why was he grateful? Because he trusted that the Father was working out his good purpose. And Jesus knew he was grateful for a father who was good. A father who knows everything, a Father who is faithful. And in that Jesus just found himself thanking him that this was going to be the opportunity to walk in obedience to a good, good Father. And Jesus just found himself grateful. You know, when I read and study, I study a bunch of different things in terms of the language, and I read what are called critical commentaries as well when I'm studying passages of scripture. Critical commentaries don't mean that it's people that are saying mean things about the text. It just means that this is kind of a scholarly commentary. It's not a devotional commentary. It's really technical a lot of the time. It's the kind of thing that my wife says. You can read that, that's you know, speak to me in plain English, right? It's kind of that stuff. And so rarely when you're reading a technical kind of critical commentary, do you find what I would call these brilliant nuggets of language and wisdom that come out because they're just speaking so technically about the text and rightly so we need to understand the text itself. But I was reading a critical commentary that Dr. Leon Morris had written for the New International Commentary on the New Testament set. And he said something that I thought was worth all of us hearing. Here's what Dr. Morris said. He said, "When we come to realize that God's hand is in all things, we learn to give thanks for all things. Tribulation is unpleasant. Yet in the midst tribulation, who would not give thanks knowing that the Father who loves us so greatly has permitted that tribulation only in order that his wise and merciful purpose might be worked out." I thought in the middle of this critical commentary, this is a brilliant devotional thought for us all to grab hold of, to be reminded of the fact that God knows what he's doing in the midst of trial and what that means for us is that we should be able to acknowledge the will of God in Christ Jesus is that we like Jesus, are grateful. We're grateful for what he's doing. This is why Jesus teaches and models this for us. And this is why Paul commands it. He commands that we are thankful in every circumstance because this is the will of God in Christ Jesus. Jesus is helping us to see what a life of thankfulness looks like. And Paul is telling us that we like Jesus, need to embrace that life. Even when it's hard. Even when there's a pandemic. Even when school gets canceled. Even when we're fatigued by government orders. Even when businesses have to shut down. Things may be bad and we lament them. We're not thankful for businesses suffering. We're not thankful for kids' educations suffering. We want that to be different. We don't like that those things are the case. But we can still trust that God is actively involved in the affairs of what is happening in humanity even if the circumstances are less than desirable. God is at work in the midst of that, and our Father knows what his purposes are in this process, and for that, we should be grateful, thankful. Not thankful for the bad things, thankful in them. Because of a sovereign Father who we can trust and who we know is working for his glory and ultimately for his wonderfully wise purposes.

So, why should we give thanks in all circumstances? Because it's the will of God. Because it's the will of God in Christ Jesus. And we would hear Paul say, "Because it's the will of God in Christ Jesus for you." Notice again, what our text says in verse 18, "Give thanks in all circumstances for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus," here it is, "for you." See Paul's command is rooted in the life of Jesus. When he commands us to be grateful, to be thankful, that's rooted in the life of Jesus. See Jesus, who is the will of God made flesh was grateful. So that means Paul is saying, so should we be grateful. And that's why he commands this in this passage of scripture, that we are to be grateful because Jesus was grateful and Jesus in us will allow us to be grateful and fulfill the will of God for our very lives. That we're designed to be grateful, to be thankful. In fact, when Paul's writing his letter to the church at Colossae, he actually says on a number of occasions, the idea of thankfulness. He comes back to this theme a number of different times. He does in chapter one, chapter two, chapter three. Like the first three chapters you see Paul talking about this idea of being thankful. But listen to the very specific words he says in Colossians 2:6-7, he says, "So then just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught and overflowing with thankfulness." Why would we be overflowing with thankfulness? Because our life is rooted in Jesus and his life in us is a life of gratitude. That's why we would be a people who in every circumstance would be overflowing with gratitude. Paul also in chapter three, gives us a trifecta of thankfulness. Notice what he says. "Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns and songs from the spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus giving thanks to God the Father, through him. Three times that we are told in that series of verses. Three times we are told to be thankful, to have gratitude in our hearts, to give thanks to God the Father through the Lord, Jesus Christ. See what Paul is teaching us here and in 1 Thessalonians 5, is that gratitude, listen to this, gratitude is beyond just the idea of what God provides for us. What I've seen, and I think it, by the way, I think it's a tremendously great exercise. I see around this time of year, and I sometimes see at the beginning of a year, like in January, people who make gratitude lists or gratitude commitments. I think it's a tremendous exercise, I think it's beautiful. I'm grateful for this, and I'm grateful for this. And you start writing down what you're thankful for. I think it's a great exercise because it teaches us what we have. And by the way, we are not often yielding to the temptation of what we think we don't have when we are so caught up in being grateful for the things we do. That's what helps us to buffer against that idea or that very temptation. So I think it's a wonderful idea for us to list out the things that we are grateful for. But I need you to understand that this idea of gratitude that Paul is teaching us, that Jesus modeled for us is not just about what God gives, it's bigger than that. In fact, if you were jotting something down I would ask you maybe to write this down. Gratitude is not just recognizing what God has done or given, but revering a God who would do such things. See, this is the difference here. Gratitude is not just recognizing what God has done or given, even though we must recognize those things. To be grateful means that we recognize what God has done, what God has given. And we need to recognize that. But it goes beyond that. Gratitude actually gets to a place of not only recognizing what God has done or what God has given, but it leads us to a place of revering a God who would do such things. I'm grateful that I have this from God, and this from God and this from God and this from God. And the more we think about that, the more it teaches us about who God is. He's the kind of God who gives us these things. And because he's that kind of God, it causes in us a heart of worship, a heart of deep, deep gratitude. You see gratitude is an extraordinary powerful force, that we must never forget. Again, as I reminded us, as Paul reminded us, gratitude, being thankful is actually a part of the nature of the will of God. It's a part of the divine design that God has actually made us for. And that's at all times, everywhere, in all circumstances that we are to be a grateful people. And this gratitude when people see us as people who are grateful to God, grateful for what God has given, but grateful for a God who actually is a kind of God who does these things, it has a dramatic effect on people around us. I don't think that we recognize that when we do the will of God by being a grateful people, that it is a powerful witness to people around us. I'll give you an illustration of this. It's a story that I read. It's a true story about a real man. His name was George W. Truett. And Pastor Truett was one of the more famous American pastors at the time that he was alive. So this would have been in the late 1800s into the mid 1900s. He actually pastored the first Baptist Church of Dallas Texas for 47 years. He was known all over the country as a wonderful man of God as a great preacher of the gospel, and so he was in demand and would be asked to come to churches often. And I read this story about him that was in a magazine called the Presbyterian Survey. He wasn't Presbyterian, but it was called the Presbyterian Survey. And it was the March, 1922 edition. Some of you were wondering, "Why are you reading magazines from 1922?" Well, I came across it. So I didn't just go find it. So this magazine told the story of what happened when he was invited to a particular church. They had asked him to come and to preach, but they told him just prior to his preaching, he was there to preach the building dedication for this brand new building that they had built for their church. He gratefully came and, but right before he was going to preach, they said, "For us to have this building free and clear, we need to raise $3,500 by tomorrow. And we're counting on you to do that, to help us do that. Now $3,500 to you and me doesn't seem like a big deal, but in the 1920s that would equate to roughly in our dollars it would probably be a little over $100,000 that they had to raise like that. And the church wasn't enormous. Like it, wasn't just tons and tons and tons and tons of people. And so he's thinking to himself, "Wow this is a lot of pressure. So they wanted him to be the one who makes the appeal. So he ended up preaching the message he was normally going to preach, not a message about money or giving or any of those kinds of things. And at the very end, he just said, he said, "I've been obliged to also appeal to you that this wonderful building that you've dedicated to the Lord, that you need to pay it off by tomorrow. And so church needs to raise an additional $3,500." And then he sat down. And his observation was for the next 30 minutes this really guilt ridden kind of over the top appeal was being made to the people about how they needed to give all of this money. And he was really uncomfortable with it. They kept looking at him a few different times. Like, "Do you wanna come back up and say anything?" And he's like, "What do you want me to do? I don't have $3,500. Like I don't have that." And so anyway, it was actually, I take it back. It was actually $6,500 is what they had to raise. That's what would equate to $ 100,000, $6,500. And so they ended up raising over this 30 minute window. They ended up raising $3,000 and they needed 3,500 more. That's where my mind was stuck. They needed 3,500 more. They looked at him and Pastor Truett was like, "What do you want me to do? Like, I don't have $3,500." Which will be the equivalent of like breaking out his wallet and going here's $100,000. The guy was a pastor. And it was in the 1920s. He didn't have that. And so as they sat there, a lady named Jenny, an older lady who was sitting kind of in the back because this church had kind of, they were just all sitting there. There were a number of guests there, by the way, because it was a building dedication service. Some of you were thinking, "This would be like the worst case scenario." I invited guests to church and then we preach the message and then we're there for 30 minutes with basically various leaders in the church, appealing to us to give a lot of money to finish paying off the church while our guests are still sitting there. It's like a worst case scenario. Well, Jenny is sitting toward the back and her husband, Charlie is up front. Charlie's just recording if people have made any gifts. And of course they raised 3000 of the 6,500 and they had 3,500 yet still left to go. And about 30 minutes after a number of different pleas Jenny just says to her husband, Charlie out loud in the church service, "Charlie, you know that cottage that we have, the bank just told us yesterday that they would buy it back from us for $3,500. And as I'm sitting here thinking of how thankful I am for what Jesus has done for us in giving his life so that we might live, Charlie, do you think that maybe the Lord wants us to give our cottage so that his house maybe free?" Charlie looked at his wife said out loud, "Jenny, I was actually thinking about the exact same thing." And so right there, Jenny and Charlie committed to giving their cottage away so that the church could be paid off. Interestingly enough, though, that is an incredible picture of their gratitude to God for what he's done that led them to a place of generosity. That's not the end of the story. Because after a few minutes when they had made that commitment, grown men in the rooms started weeping. They just started weeping. And they began to shake their heads and say, "God has done this for us all, hasn't he? Jesus has given his life so that we might live. It really is all his, and they actually out of people who hear two four were either resistant to giving or completely opposed to giving, they raised the $3,500 like that from everybody else in the room so that Jenny and Charlie did not even have to give up their home. And do you know that while they were doing this, again, this was a story in the Presbyterian Survey in March of 1922. Do you know that while they were doing that, the spirit of God works so deeply on a number of people who were there as guests, that they started in that moment, coming to the front of the alter and asking, "How might I be saved?" This is the powerful witness of gratitude. Gratitude to God that resulted in generosity. It is a powerful witness, ladies and gentlemen. Do you know why? It's the will of God in Christ Jesus for us. So let's give thanks in every circumstance because this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for us. Now what I'd like for us to do, everybody everywhere, is I'd like for us just to take a moment and bow our heads together because I want us to, at least in these couple of moments, just reflect on what God may be saying to our hearts. What God may wanna do inside of us. As you're seated right there, I want you just to ask the Lord, "Lord, have I allowed your will to be stifled in my life? Because I have put aside gratitude and have replaced it maybe with fear, maybe with anger, maybe I've let frustrations that are legitimate come to a place of becoming overwhelming. And instead of being grateful in every circumstance I'm only choosing to be grateful in circumstances I like." Would you ask the Lord, how he wants to expand your gratitude. Maybe it's by giving you and I a fresh picture of what God has done for us in Christ Jesus. That while we were sinners, deserving of wrath, deserving of spiritual separation from God. That while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. That he gave his life so that we might live. He who had no sin became sin for us. So that in him, we might become the righteousness of God. We didn't do this, God did this for us. Out of love, out of grace, out of compassion, and mercy, and kindness. And maybe we've let the beauty, the awe, the wonder of the good news, the gospel. Maybe in this season, and in these days, we've pushed it to the side to be able to itch that temptation that our first father and mother also gave into. The temptation toward an ungrateful heart. Things are not going as I want them to go. Things are not happening the way that I think they should happen. And as a result, we become angry, frustrated, embittered. And maybe in some cases, that's well-placed frustration. Maybe it's a frustration for others, for our children, who we feel are being stolen from in their education. For business owners, that the weight of this can be crushing to them. For families that can't get to see that aged mother or father or grandparent. So many different ways that our frustrations can be justified. But if we allow them to keep running unchecked without the will of God being done in our hearts, of being grateful, thankful, then it will lead us to the same blunders. The same blindness to God that it has done to so many other people. Maybe in your heart and in mine, we may need to repent of some places in our hearts where we have allowed anger to become sin, frustration to become embitterment. Instead of in our anger not sinning, but instead having a heart of gratitude for all that you have done, God. May we also be reminded that your command to us through your apostle is not to be thankful in circumstances that you like. Circumstances that are comfortable, circumstances that are agreeable. But in every circumstance we give thanks. Maybe not for the circumstance itself, maybe it's legitimately bad, but in it, we can be thankful, because this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for us. Would you help us to be that kind of people, Father. Because ultimately the world needs to see the powerful witness of believers who live with such a deep gratitude to you, God. For all that you have done in Jesus Christ and all that you are as a God who does such things. That the world would be powerfully impacted by believers who are living out the divine design of the will of God to be a grateful people. Of all things, God, may we be a people that demonstrate love being filled with your spirit and that we fulfill your will by being grateful. Father would you do this in all of our hearts, I ask now for your own glory and in the name of Jesus, amen.