Thanksgiving | Craig Lapenski | November 23rd 2025

Lord, let every word that comes out of my mouth

be what you would have it to be.

Nothing of my own will, nothing of my own thought,

just your thoughts, and we just thank you and we

give you praise.

So I I thought I was going to be preaching

a different message in this, but it just keeps coming around,

and so here we go. Today's message is gonna be

a little bit like weight training. And what I mean

by that is that few years back, I decided I

was unhappy with like the level of health I was having,

and so I decided I was going to start exercising.

And then I was like, so I work out at home.

I had this particular trainer that I would watch and

eventually I've watched him so much I'm like, I need

something new. And so my wife was like, oh, you

should check out this guy, and so I you know,

you know, he says things that are ridiculous. He says

things like I'm here, I'm gonna get huge today, and

he just says the most ridiculous things like he's a

meathead and and it's it. And so it actually took

me a little while to like ignore what he was

saying to be able to catch on to the fact

that this guy's really brilliant in how he makes you

pick up weights and use them. And in scripture, uh,

it talks about that there's benefit to physical training, but

that there's actually a lot more benefit to spiritual training.

And so today there's gonna be a little bit. I'm

not gonna.

Tell you it's time, it's time to get huge.

I'm not gonna tell you that, but I am going

to tell you that we're gonna pick some weights up today.

And the benefit that you get is directly correlative to

whether or not you hold onto the weight and whether

you actually muscle the weight up.

You have to actually lift the weight to get the

benefit of the weight training. Okay, So.

The word thanksgiving appears twenty five times in the New

International Version translation, the Hebrew word for thanks appears seventy

two times in the Old Testament, and the Greek word

gratitude appears one hundred and fifty seven times one hundred

and fifty seven times in the New Testament. The words thanks, thanksgiving,

and gratitude are so absolutely interwoven through the scriptures that

you cannot get away from them. If you actually opened

up your Bible, you literally can't turn a page and

you're going to see one of those words or a

subset of one of those words that conveys the same thing.

And as we're getting ready to hang out with family

this week and rejoice and be thankful.

I.

Wanted to use this opportunity to talk to you about

true Thanksgiving and that it's not a day, it's a lifestyle.

Okay.

The Old Testament has the concept of the fellowship offering

of thanksgiving. Even in Jesus's miracles, before he feeds four thousand,

he goes and they give thanks and then they eat

right like it's everywhere, you cannot get it. So if

you think I'm like teaching something heretical, like I cut

out like fifteen scriptures out of here because we're going

to run out of time. But the point I'm making

is that this is so foundational to being a follower

of Jesus. I don't know that you can really be

an effective follower of Jesus without letting this like saturate you,

without letting this ruminate and come out of you.

Okay.

So the Hebrew word for thanksgiving is toda, and it

means adoration, confession, praise, thanksgiving, and listen to this last part.

This is out of your strongest concordance. It says by

implication and extension of the hand.

Weird.

Thanksgiving is by implication and extension of the hand. Huh,

I thought thanksgiving was saying something. No, Thanksgiving actually opens

up God's hand over you. The Greek word for thanksgiving

is eucharista.

Listen to.

Eucharista means gratitude. It means grateful language to God.

It means an act of worship.

Some of you that have come out of certain faiths,

maybe more liturgical faiths, you might be familiar with the

term eucharist right by taking of the which we just did,

the bread and the body the Eucharist. So the word

eucharista actually means. The word eucharista actually means thanks and honor.

So it's an act of worship. So when you are thankful,

do you know what you're doing?

You're worshiping. You might be.

Thinking that the only way to worship is up here

on a stage with really talented musicians and vocalists. But

believe it or not, every time you are thankful and

you express thanksgiving, you're actually worshiping the King. And when

you worship the King, something's happening over you.

His arm is extending and his eyes are on you.

Jesus Wow.

The history of Thanksgiving is that in sixteen twenty one,

there's a Native American tribe called the wam Pog that

meet with the Pilgrims at the time who came here

and they basically wanted the capacity to worship God and

to pursue him freely without anybody telling him what to do, okay,

And they have a really wonderful harvest, and so they

end up having this bountiful harvest season. They gather with

the with the tribe at the time and they have

a multi day festival, and the purpose of the festival

was to express thanks for how gracious or how bountiful

God had been to them in giving him a harvest.

It was all about expressing thanks.

And if you look at the early people who came here,

the Pilgrims, all of them were Christian, not all, but

almost all of them are Christians. They came here to

pursue God and they didn't want any human constraint or

interference with that.

They were wholehearted devoted to.

Creating a new land where there was no obstacles to

pursuing the king and being intimate with him.

They were translating that over to the Native.

Americans and in well, anyhow, so I'm gonna skip past

some of this stuff. But in eighteen sixty three, President

Lincoln actually created Thanksgiving as a national holiday by proclamation.

So we've been celebrating a few hundred years here in

America of this thing called Thanksgiving. Earlier this morning, Pastor

Dwayne was talking about having God's face turned towards you,

and that the devil is roaring around like a lion,

seeking whom he may devour.

But if we will humble ourselves before.

The hand of the Lord, if we will humble ourselves,

turn from our wicked ways, he will look towards us.

He will see us. And this is even him talking

about healing our land. Right, So he sees us when

we're walking in humility. And he always opposes pride. He

gives grace to the humble, He opposes the pride, the

pride fuller the person who's proud. Right, You guys know

what I'm talking about. These are not like new scriptures

to you. What I'm going to tell you is that

I think that most people, when they think about.

The term humility.

I actually think that they think it's self deprecation, that

it would be like beating yourself up or presenting yourself

in a lowly light to somehow get someone else to

think that you're like pious or like holy or something

like that.

That's a bunch of junk. That's a lie.

What's true humility is Thanksgiving. There is no other thing

on the planet that expresses humility more effectively than Thanksgiving.

And the reason why that is is because you're saying, Lord,

I couldn't do it.

You did it for me.

It's all you, and so naturally in Thanksgiving, humility is

the underlying current.

Of which Thanksgiving flows. Does that make sense?

And so if you're looking, if we don't want God

to oppose us because we're prideful, but we want him

to give grace because we're humble, we better be walking

in Thanksgiving twenty four to seven. Because that's the key

characteristic of humility. It's not saying, oh woe is me,

and so tough to be me.

No, that is not humility. To be totally honest with you.

More often than not, that's people looking for attention. That's

a wounded spirit that needs deliverance. There are few things

that will move the hand of God like a gratitude lifestyle.

It's not a day, it's a lifestyle, and it is

your superpower.

So the Lord gave me.

Before we get too far into this hope, you realize

that there's now no condemnation for all of us who

are in Christ.

Jesus correct that we're been hidden in him.

That's it's Christ in us, the hope of glory that

he's He loves us so much that he doesn't leave

us the way we are. He's renewing us day by day. Right,

this is this is what he's doing. He's our dad,

and so he doesn't like we come into the kingdom

and he just.

Doesn't leave us that way.

He loves us enough enough that he's trying to get

us to pick up the weights. So I'm going to

tell you that I had I have in the past

week done some whining and a little bit of complaining.

And it could be that maybe there's another person or

two in this building that might have done the same thing.

Could be possibly or maybe it's a different church.

Down the road, probably not new horizons. Do you know

that some sins, sins of commission, like if you went

and committed adultery, you're sinning. But some sins are a

sin of omission. Omission means you just didn't do the

right thing, but you should have done it. And a

lot of times, thanksgiving and gratitude, that's how they work.

You have so much to be thankful for, but yet

every day you're not getting up and giving thanks, you're

just taking it for granted. And so two hundred years ago,

people spent all of their time trying to heat their

home and get enough food where they could have food

in their tummy and make it through a season.

Today, you click a button, you flip a switch.

We're probably living in the easiest point in human history

right now. And do you know that people are less

happy today than they've ever been. Do you know they

whine and complain more today than they ever have. We're

actually a weaker society producing far weaker people. Yet we

have so much abundance it's available to us. And so

I believe that we actually commit the sin of omission

a lot, which is that we don't just simply step

back and look at all that we have to be

thankful for it and say thank you Lord. The three words,

the three words that I want to come out of

my mouth more than any other words are thank you Lord,

thank you Jesus, Thank you Jesus. Those are the three

words that should come out of my mouth more than

any other words on the planet. Those are the three

because you could be thanking him for what he did yesterday,

You could be thanking him for what he's doing today.

You could be thanking him for what you have today.

And you could also be thanking him for even that

maybe a difficulty or something where you need him to move.

You could just say, let's say you need him to

give you a job. You could say, thank you Jesus

fill in the blank for giving me this job, Thank

you Jesus that you've got this coming, Thank you Jesus

that the healing's on the way. You can actually function

in thanksgiving on any single thing, even something that you

want to see happen that you haven't seen happen yet,

that maybe.

Even some like wound in your heart. The Lord gave

me a picture.

This is how I ended up coming up with this message,

because I was actually planning on preaching on something else,

and the Lord gave me a picture, and the picture

he gave me was of his death on the cross

and the tearing of the veil from top to bottom

that happened when Jesus was crucified.

Okay, why was the veil torn? The veil was.

Torn to separate the holy place in the most Holy Place. Correct,

you guys are looking at me like, did I just

say something wrong?

Yeah? Yeah. The reason he tore it was to.

Remove the veil and to give us access, you and me.

He tore the veil so that we could have access.

He woke me up this morning really early, and I didn't,

and so I'm like, what are you talking about? And

in the Book of Exodus, if you'll look at the

veil that was torn from top to bottom, which means

man didn't tore it, God tore it. On on the

veil that he tore, the cherubim or woven in. It's blue,

it's purple, it's red, and it's woven in. And on

the other side of it, in the most Holy Place,

you have the Ark of the Covenant. And on top

of the ark is what the mercy seat, but the Cherubim.

So what happens is that he tore this veil to

give us access to intimacy with him, and he said unfortunately,

he said, my kids, they'll grab a needle and thread,

and they're working from the bottom to try and actually

sew the veil back together.

And I'm like, what are you talking about? So the

veil back together?

Hebrews or excuse me, numbers eleven one through six. Now

the people complained about their hardships in the hearing of

the Lord. And when he heard them, his anger was aroused,

and fire from the Lord burned among them and consumed

some of the outskirts of the camp. When the people

cried out to Moses, he prayed to the Lord, and

the fire died down, so that place was called Tabah.

Because fire from the Lord had burned among them, the

rabble with them began to crave other food. And again

the Israelite started to wail and say, if only we

had meat to eat. We remember the fish we ate

in Egypt at no cost. Also the qcum melons leaks

onions and garlic. But now we've lost our appetite. We

never see anything but this manna. Moses heard the people

of every family wailing at.

The entrance to their tents.

And it says the Lord became exceedingly angry, and Moses

was troubled. Moses actually pleads with the Lord, and he says, Lord,

why did you make me lead these people? And then

he actually says kill me, now, kill me now, I

can't deal with them. That's how frustrated Moses was with this.

And if you look what was causing the Lord to

be exceedingly angry where he actually burned, you know, sections

of the outermost aspects of the camp up.

Complaining.

But I thought he produced something for them. That's what

they needed in the manna. And you know, they couldn't

be thankful for the manna. All they could do is

wine and complain about the leaks, the onion, the garlic,

the fish that they had back in Egypt. Wow, I'm

gonna go to the New Testament now, so you don't

think I'm a heretic one Corinthians ten one through twelve,

For I do not this is the New Testament.

Okay, that was the Old Testament.

This is the New For I do not want you

to be ignorant of the fact, brothers and sisters, that

our ancestors were all under the cloud, and that they

passed through the sea.

They were all baptized into Moses. In the cloud and

in the sea.

They all ate the same spiritual food and drink the

same spiritual drink, for they drank from the spiritual rock

that accompanied them. The spiritual rock was Christ. Huh, I

thought we were talking about the Old Testament. I thought

it was Moses.

No.

Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them. Their

bodies were scattered in the wilderness. Now these things occurred

as examples to us to keep us from setting our

hearts on evil things as they did. Do not be

idolatrys as some of them were. As it is written,

the people sat down to eat and drink, got up

to indulge in revelly. We should not commit sexual immorality,

as some of them did, and in one day twenty

three thousand of them died.

We should not test Christ. We should not test Christ.

As some of them did and were killed by the snakes.

And listen to this, and do not grumble as some

of them did and were killed by the destroying angel.

Huh.

A destroying angel came and killed them because of their

grumbling and complaining. If you think I'm talking an Old Testament,

I want you to listen to the next verse, these things.

Happened to them.

As examples written down as warnings for us, for me

and you on whom the culmination of the ages has come.

So if you think you're standing firm, be careful that

you do not fall. The devil is roaring around like

a lion, seeking whom he and it may devour. And

I'm going to share with you that a lot of

times we don't realize that God may have a perspective

and culture has a different perspective. And I think a

lot of times, as Christians, we can actually become so

influenced by culture we might not even realize we're being influenced.

Grumbling and complaining opens us up to the destroyer.

We need to check ourselves.

Like sometimes when I start to whine or complain, like here,

it's almost like the Lord wants to slap my face,

give me a check. And then I hear myself and

I'm like, no, okay, rudder, get back where you're supposed

to be. Let's praise and exalt him, let's.

Give him thanks.

And so what happens is that complaining and grumbling and

whining cannot occupy this same space, cannot occupy at the

same time as Thanksgiving. So if you are whining, if

you are unthankful, if you are complaining, if you are grumbling,

do you know what you're not doing. You're not giving thanks,

You're not operating in gratitude. And I'm wondering how much

of our days are actually spent whining and complaining. And

you know what I know is if he says thanksgiving

is worship unto him and it causes his outstretched arm

to rest over us, I kind of want that. So

it means I better stay in Thanksgiving and not get

out of it. And you know, I can tell really

easy whether I'm in Thanksgiving or whether I'm not, because

this thing always it's out of the abundance of the

heart that the mouth speaks, and it'll give you away

every time.

It'll just tell on you.

And then thankfully the Holy Spirit will come and he'll

since you have the mind of Christ, and he comes

and he's like and then you're like, Nope, I'm not

doing that.

I choose to give thanks even if there's something I

don't like.

Lord Jesus, I thank you that you're working this out

for me. The Lord works in contrasts. What do I

mean by that? So he always when he tells you

to do something, he'll always tell you what not to do.

Okay.

So if he says, be anxious about nothing, but in

all things, by prayer and supplication, make your request known

to God, he'll give you the peace. He'll also tell

you in four eight of Philippians, he'll tell you.

So when he tells you, don't be anxious, he says,

don't do this.

And then he comes over here and he says, finally, brethren,

whatever things are true, right, noble, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent,

or praise worthy, think on these things.

He tells you, don't do this. Do this, okay.

If you look at the Old Testament in the book

of Deuteronomy, the blessing of the Lord is if you

will harken diligently to my voice. That's the Holy Spirit

on you telling you what to do. He says, these

blessings will accompany you. And then he also goes to

say that if you don't do that, this comes on you,

which is what we don't want.

It's called the curse, and we don't participate with the curse.

And so what happens. He always gives you the do this,

don't do that. You know what I'm talking about.

So anybody who's in here, who's ever been to a wedding,

you have heard First Corinthians, chapter thirteen talked about.

It's the love verses, right, love.

Is patient, love is kind, love is gentle. It's not arrogant, rude, proud,

or boastful. It's not self seeking. It considers others better

than itself. It keeps no record of wrongs. So in

those verses, there's fifteen things that's talked about. Seven of

them are love is, eight of them are love isn't.

So he tells you what it is and what it

isn't so you can figure out how to walk.

Do you know what I'm talking about.

He doesn't leave his kids without the direction like we're

not out here, like, oh what do I do?

Lord? No, I got direction for you. And so this

is how he operates.

And Pastor Frank last week when you were talking about

I believe it's First Corinthians, excuse me, Second Corinthians, and

it was chapter eleven, maybe like verse four or something.

We don't have to put it up right now, but.

He was talking about Paul talking to the church about

the gospel that they had received from Paul and making

sure that the gospel that they had received was accurate too,

the real gospel. And he was talking to them about

a spirit having been on them and that they didn't

want to receive a spirit that wasn't the true gospel,

the one that Paul preached. And he was talking about

how if Paul hadn't been careful, it could have.

Killed Paul if that spirit had been on him, because

he received a false gospel.

He was talking about this pertaining to the thorn in

the flesh, and which I don't believe is a physical malady.

We were talking about this preparing food in the kitchen

or something at the desert auction. I don't believe it's

a physical malady. I think that's a bunch of junk.

It was it was a spiritual It was a messenger

of Satan sent to buffet him.

This was a spiritual thing. It was not physical.

So if you anyhow, if you believe that's physical, you

need to keep looking.

Okay.

So Christians have been robbed of their faith because they

don't understand scripture and they can't rightfully divide it.

So that's kind of meddling. I'm sorry. Please forgive me, Lord,

Please forgive me, Please forgive me.

A lack of Thanksgiving brings opposition from the Lord as

well as stirring anger.

What does Thanksgiving look like? I think Thanksgiving looks like

you wake.

Up in the morning because we're talking about what it

is and what it isn't. It's not grumbling, it's not complaining,

it's not whining.

Right, what is it?

I think it looks like waking up in the morning

and saying, today is the day the Lord has made

I will rejoice and be glad in it. I think

it looks like making your espresso and saying thank you

Jesus that you gave me this espresso maker. I think

it looks like getting up and opening up your Bible.

And then you're like, Lord Jesus, thank you that I get.

To have a new international version and I also get

to open my phone and have a new American standard

and a message translation and the passage translation. Like I've

never been in an easier time in human.

History to be a Christian.

Like come on, Like, I think Thanksgiving looks like you

could have said thank you Jesus one hundred times before

you got to work, one hundred times before you got

to work. There should The three words that should roll

and emanate out of your mouth more than any others

on the planet is thank you and Jesus or Lord,

whatever you want to throw in there, both are good.

If those words aren't the three most prolific coming out

of your mouth, it might be that we're not.

Yet walking in the full level of gratitude that we

ought to have. Frank was referencing it was a.

Good word, you did, great job, and he was referencing

doctrines of demons, and I actually think that Christians sometimes

pastor Dwayne does a good job and recover or restored life.

I'm sorry with this, but I think that sometimes Christians

can partner with doctrines of demons and they don't know

that they are. If you look at our world right now,

this concept I'm talking about of thanksgiving being an act

of worship and God's outstretched arm is over you, Toda,

if you get what this is, it's a spiritual thing.

It's not just a physical act.

The words that come out of your mouth are a

response of what's in your heart.

Correct.

So we're living in an interesting day and age because

most of what Christian people not in you guys, not

in New Horizon and other churches out there, not us,

But a lot of times what happens is that Christian people,

without realizing it, have bought into something called the spirit

of entitlement.

And the spirit of entitlement is in.

Direct opposition to the real gospel that Paul preached, and

it's actually a doctrine of demons. And if you think

I'm crazy, what I'm going to share with you is

that in recent years, all of a sudden, it's become

people's perspective that everybody's supposed to have a cell phone

paid for by the government, that the government is actually

supposed to pay for your rent and everything else for you.

And then what you do is you take the money

that you have and then you use that for entertainment,

the movie theater. You can use that for a new

video game cartridge.

It's someone else's job to pay for your cell phone

and to pay for your housing. And I'm going to

tell you that that's a spirit attached to that, and

it's called a spirit of entitlement. It's how we just

have created a couple of people who are socialists who've

actually won office in our nation. And that's because a

spirit of entitlement is out there.

It's the spirit of the day, it's the cultural spirit

of the day. But it's in.

Direct opposition to the true gospel that Paul preached. Because

if I look at the parable the minas, if I

look at the parable the talents, if I look at

he who's faithful with little will be faithful with much.

I could give you so much stuff to absolutely prove

to you in two seconds flat that the spirit of

entitlement is not from God. And unfortunately, sometimes Christian people,

without realizing it, we may partner with that a little bit.

And if we partner with that a little bit, do

you know what spirit's not at work in us?

The spirit of thanksgiving. The spirit of thanksgiving is juxtaposed

to the spirit of entitlement. Because the spirit of thanksgiving says, Lord,

I have nothing apart from you gave it to me,

and You're good, and I love you and I appreciate you.

This is not true with the people of New Horizon.

This is not so for the people of New Horizon.

There is a never enough spirit that we can fall

prey to and partner with. If we're not aware that

there's a lion seeking whom he may devour. I'm going

to tell you something. I believe that there. I believe

that there is something called the woe is Me spirit,

and a good cartoon character that.

Would express it would be e Or.

And I believe that that spirit, it likes to whine,

It likes to complain, it likes to grumble. The scriptures

we just read in the Old New Testament whine, complain, grumble,

be unthankful.

Wow.

And I believe that if we're to walk the way

God would have us walk, we do not want to

partner with that spirit. We want to rebuke that. We

want to reject that spirit. We want to say no

to that spirit. So if He's always letting us know

what not to do and what to do, I want

you to listen to this scripture. This is First Thessalonians

five sixteen through eighteen. We're gonna read this together.

Okay.

Rejoice, always, pray, continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for

this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.

You know, sometimes people will say, I don't know what

the will.

Of God is. Well, boom, there it is. That's the

will of God for your life right there. Rejoice, always pray,

continually give thanks in all circumstances. For this is the

will of God for you in Christ Jesus. So next

time you're wondering what's his will, I want you to

take this verse and I want you to put this

on your refrigerator. I want you to put this on

a post it note. You put this on your bathroom mirror.

This is the will of God for you. What else

does he tell us to do? Let's go to Colossians

three point fifteen. Let the peace of Christ rule in

your heart, since as members of one body, you were

called to peace and be thankful.

Let the message in quiet Christ dwell.

Among you richly as you teach and admonish one another

with all wisdom through psalms him songs from the spirit,

singing to God with gratitude. There's that word again, gratitude

in your hearts. Thanks and gratitude. Toda eucharista, you see it,

Colossians two six through seven. So, then, just as you

receive Jesus Christ as your lord, continue to live your

lives in Him, rooted and built up in Him, Strengthen

in the faith as you were taught and overflowing with thanksgiving.

If I'm not overflowing with thanksgiving. And if you're not

overflowing with thanksgiving, this passage says rooted and built up

in him. It might be that our roots aren't quite

deep enough. It might be that our roots are kind

of shallow. Actually, So if the roots aren't deep enough,

we need to be meditating on this and we need

to be expressing more thanksgiving.

Thankfulness is your superpower. I'm telling you, if.

I could get this across to you, if you will

pick that you know how in scripture, put off, put on?

You know what I'm talking about the contrast again, if

you can put this on and keep it on, it

is a superpower. Like you are acting evading God's hand

on your life.

There is there is no obstacle that He will not

overcome for you. If you will put on this cape.

I'm telling you, you don't know how powerful this is.

You just do it. Wow.

Wow. If you're talking about what you do not have,

what you cannot do, and you're feeling sorry for yourself,

you are not walking in thanksgiving. I'm seeing three Lipenski

children on the second row. They would if I said

Lapenske's do not they would finish this statement they would say,

they're they're all shaking their head.

They agree.

So apart from the other scripture they said the most

when they were kids is they'd be like fighting in

the back seat and we would say, my wife, do

all that you can to live in peace with everyone.

That's like that was the scripture of our house.

But apart from that, they would say, lipenskis, do not

talk about what they do, not have what they cannot do,

and they never ever ever feel sorry for themselves because

you're beating up the spirit of entitlement. You're beating up

the spirit of woe is me when you do that.

If you can get this in somebody's heart and get

it so it's coming out of them, what happens is

you're destroying the demonic realm as you do this. Lord,

there was a gentleman, I'm going to give you a

story of contrast in thirty.

Seconds, am I doing? Okay?

Okay, thirty seconds the story of contrast. So I have

this lady that I saw I was talking to in

the past week and a half. She's probably one of

the most incredible Christian women I've ever met. I think

she's got I don't know if she's ninety two or

what she is. But she is the most pure hearted,

genuine sweet woman. She's the grandma you wish you had. Okay,

this woman said to me last week, She said to me,

so she does not come from a branch of Christianity

that we would come from, and so her branch of

Christianity is a little bit different.

But she was sharing with me that she had these.

Like two life hymns that she loved, and one of

them was called I think it was count your Blessings. Well,

I don't know any hymns because I grew up a heathen.

But this woman, you can see in her kids and

her grandkids and her great grands kids.

You can watch the spirit. Thankfulness is a spirit. You

can watch it over her life, over her children's life,

over her grandchildren, her great you can watch it over

all them.

And her two favorite hymns are count your Blessings, and

it was something else about Thanksgiving. I have an interaction

with this lady, and I'm like, this woman is going

to receive the largest crown in heaven. She'll be the

one that nobody down here knows, and in heaven we're

all going to be looking at her like, she's the one.

That same day, I had this experience where I was

engaging with a person and I've known the person for

probably eighteen twenty years. They love Jesus, great person. They

and their wife were in a room. I walked in

the room and I said to them. I said to him,

I said, well, what's been the biggest blessing in you're

past couple of weeks? And the person's response to me

was this, So I'm gonna I want you to watch

me first.

This was their posture, look at my lip. Well, I

don't know that I have anything to be thankful for.

I really wish the Lord would just do something for me.

This is somebody who is a blood bought believer who

knows Jesus, who has four kids and a whole bunch

of grandkids. And I said to him, I was like, well,

you woke up this morning and you flipped a light switch,

you turned on a faucet, and you had water.

I'm like, you went to a fridge and you had food.

And he was like well yeah.

So I'm like trying to talk him into being happy

and so he no. Seriously, I do this to people,

those of you who know me, I do this to

you on purpose? What's the biggest blessing in your I

do this. It's a question I ask everybody because I'm

trying to reformat their thinking to be this okay, I

don't want to let them stay in the thinking that

they're in. I'm going to ask them a question that's

going to spur this on. And if they don't cooperate

with me, which is this particular guy, he was just

still being super woe is meism and moping and whining.

And I started sharing a lot of his blessings with

him because I know a lot of his blessings. And

he said to me, he said, you know, he said,

you're awfully happy most of the time. And I said,

I know because Jesus loves me and we got a

good gospel. And he said, brother, things are getting darker.

And he was like, what do you think about that?

So I spent about ninety seconds and I told him,

I said, well, it just so happens that we might

think a little different on a couple things. I said,

the thing you're looking forward to this day that's so

terrible and shouldn't be a pregnant or a nursing mother.

It's going to be so bad, I said, I actually

am not looking forward to that day. I believe that

day already happened. And so I believe that day happened

in seventy eighty. And if you would look at the

writings of the Jewish historian Josephus, you would see that

the streets were running with blood. It was a terrible day.

That day happened, and we shouldn't be looking forward to

that day. So you know what you have to look

forward to? And ever expanding kingdom?

Do you know what you have to look forward to?

Have the glory of the Lord covering the waters?

Oh, my lord, you have the glory.

Of God coming and a revival coming, and you're sitting

here moping, whining and compla. I didn't say those parts,

But what I did tell him is I tried to

spur him on, and then I encouraged him. I gave

him some theology, and I said, let's talk more about this.

I'll recommend you read some things in the way, look

at some things. Okay, do you know between these two contrasts,

the sweet little lady who's two favorite hymns are count

your Blessings, and this guy over here that's super blessed.

But is ere.

Do you know you can see the spirit on him.

It's so it's so palpable, it's so tangible, like you

can see this thing from a mile away. It's like

you're just looking at it and you're like, oh, I'm

walking into this, and then you walk over here and

you're like, oh, my Lord, this is Mother Teresa. And

I'm just telling you that the spirit of Thanksgiving will

open up the gates of heaven. The veil has been

torn over your life. And if we walk around moping, complaining, whining, grumbling,

we're actually grabbing a needle and thread and trying to

sew that thing back together.

That from the bottom that he ripped from the top.

Do you get it? And we don't participate with that?

Come on, okay, we need to be done. I'm gonna

have you stand up.

The Lord told me that we're supposed to impart He.

Said, yeah, if I'm gonna tell you to stand up,

I want you to put.

Your arms out ahead of you like this.

He told me that we're supposed to impart today, the

spiritual impartation of Thanksgiving.

That a spirit.

So I'm gonna pray over each of you right now,

Lord Jesus, we receive the spirit of thanksgiving, the spirit

of gratitude, the Todas spirit, the arm of the Lord

moving spirit.

Over our lives, over our families.

As we meet with our families this week, as we

celebrate a meal, we just lift up right now that

the spirit of Thanksgiving ruminates in the room. We thank

you that the spirit of Thanksgiving is being deposited, that

we're depositing it from generation to generation, that kids and

grandkids are being just arrested with the deposit of a

spirit of thanksgiving. We rebuke grumbling, We rebuke complaining, We

rebuke whining, We rebuke the spirit that would be a

woe is Me spirit, And we just agree with a

spirit of Lord Jesus, you are worthy, You are the

exalted One. We are thankful for you, or thankful for

what you do for us. And we just agree with

the spirit of Thanksgiving moving so mightily in our hearts,

in our homes. And we would agree that we actually

adopt this not just as a day, but we'll put

on our capes.

We'll agree with the superpower of the spirit of Thanksgiving.

Then it would be a it would be a daily event.

It would be a hallmark, it would be a characteristic,

it would be a it would be a fruit of

the spirit that would so ruminate and manifest in our

lives that the gates of hell can not prevail against it.

We just thank you that your Church is prevailing over

the gates of hell, and that the spirit of thanksgiving,

that spirit of worship to the King, is extending the

King's arm, and we agree with it, we partner with it,

we put off anything that would be in opposition to it,

and we thank you with your hand moving on our

thanksgivings this weekend, and as we go through this week,

we just say, let more of thanksgiving ruminate out of

our hearts, out of our minds, and we agree and

participate with it in the name of Jesus