Rick Warren - Radical Gratitude – Part Two

Hello, and welcome to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. This is

the Bible teaching ministry of Rick Warren. Hey, We're so

glad you've joined us today. We're continuing a powerful series

called radicalis Developing Spiritual Roots. And in this series, Rick

will show you how to grow deep in your faith,

stay grounded in God's word, and become everything He created

you to be. And now here's part two of a

message called radical gratitude.

What is the definition of radical gratitude? Well, turn your

outline over and the Bible tells us of first Thesalonians

five eighteen. This is the definition of radical gratitude. He's

not talking about just saying well, I'm thankful for my

parents or my family. Anybody can do that. I'm thankful

for pumpkin pie. Anybody can say that I'm thankful for

freedom and health. Anybody can say that. Takes no intelligence,

no character, no faith to be grateful for the good

things in your life. Radical gratitude is this one Thesalonians

five eighteen. Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is

God's will for you in Christ Jesus. That's radical gratitude.

In all circumstances. Give thanks for this is God's will

for you in Christ Jesus. Now, friends, this is such

an important verse. I want to tear it apart word

by word. Here First, it says give thanks. That means gratitude.

It means appreciation, It means recognition, it means praise. It

means given credit to people where credit is due. In everything,

give thanks. By the way, the phrase gift thanks here

in the Greek word is the word eucharistaas Actually if

ukuli stayo yukari stayal is the word.

We get eucharist from.

Has anybody ever heard this word eucharist? Eucharist is one

of the words that we call the Lord's supper. It's

called communion, it's called the lord Lord's supper, it's called

the Eucharist. What does that mean? That's the Greek word

that simply means give thanks. And when we take the

Lord's Supper together, we're giving thanks to God for his salvation,

for his forgiveness, for our home in heaven, and all

of these things. We're just giving thanks. Now it says

give thanks in circle the word in, and then it

says all circle the word all. Now first notice, give

thanks in all circumstances. It does not say give thanks

for all circumstances. Big difference doesn't say four. It says

in you don't have to be thankful for the bad

in your life. You don't have to be thankful for evil.

And there's a lot of evil in the world. If

a little girl gets kidnapped and molested and killed, you

don't ever have to be thankful for that. If a

woman gets raped, you don't ever have to be thankful

for that. When a car by a drunk plows into

somebody and a family dies, you don't have to be

thankful for that. The Bible does not say be thankful

for all evil. There's a lot of evil that would

make God a sicko. Everything that happens in the world

is not God's will, because well it must be God's

will blowney. Most of the times God's will is not done,

My will is done. That's why we're to pray Thy

will be done on earth as it is in heaven,

because in heaven God's will is always done, and on

earth God's will is rarely done. So don't blame God

for all the evil in the world. And you certainly

don't have to thank God for it. He doesn't say

thank God for it, he says thank God in it.

Why can I thank God in every circumstance. Well, there's

a number of reasons. One, I know God is in control.

I know God can bring good out of evil. I

know even the stupid mistakes I make, God can turn

it around. I know that I'm not gonna have to

live on earth forever. I know I'm gonna go to

Heaven one day. I know I can't lose my salvation.

I know that no matter what happens, God isn't gonna

stop loving me. I could think of one hundred things

that I can be thankful for in the circumstance, even

when the circumstance stinks. It doesn't say for everything. It

says in now, It says in all things now. That

word there all circumstances all. The Greek word is the

word poss and posse means any all everything, anyone, all

the time, anywhere, everywhere, the whole thing. It means no exception,

no excuses, no exemptions. God expects you to be grateful

in every circumstance. That's called radical gratitude. Anybody can be

grateful for the nice presence somebody just gave you. But

to be grateful in all circumstances is radical gratitude. In

give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will

for you. In Christ Jesus, people say, I need to

know God's will.

There it is.

What God wants me to do with my life. There

it is in everything. Give thanks. This is God's will

for you. He say, What am I supposed to do

in the next decade. Am I supposed to get a

new job. Am I supposed to go to school? Am

I supposed to get married? Am I supposed to move overseas?

What am I supposed to do? God says, I'll tell

you number two when you start doing number one. Okay,

all those other number twos will work on those three, four, five, six,

But first let's work on this one. I want you

to in everything learn to give thanks for this is

My will for you. Once you got that one done,

we'll start talking about number two, three, four, five, and six.

This is clear. In everything, give thanks. This is God's

will for you.

Now? Why why is that true?

Why is it always God's will no matter what happens

in my life, that I am to give thanks not

for the circumstances. But in the circumstance, why is that

God's will?

Reasons?

You might write these down number one, because it honors God.

Gratitude honors God. Anytime you thank anyone, you honor them.

For instance, if I say to my wife, Honey, I

am so grateful for that great Thanksgiving dinner you made,

I have just honored my wife. When I say to

her mom, Mom, I want to thank you for having

ka so I could marry her, I am honoring her.

When I say to you, thank you for opening the

door for me, or thank you for coming to another service,

or thank you, But what I am honoring you. Anytime

you express gratitude, you honor that person. The Bible says

this about God giving thanks is a sacrifice that truly

honors me. When you sacrifice your giving thanks, what are

you sacrificing your time, your money, your thought? It takes

time to think of things to be grateful for. Now,

my life likes for me to say thank you for

the things she does for me. But if that's all

I ever did, she'd begin to wonder does.

He really love me?

Or does he just love me for the things I

do for him? At some point I have to start

moving to the higher level of thanksgiving, which is not

just thanking my wife for what she does, but thanking

my wife for who she is. That's a higher level

of thanksgiving. If my kids came to me and the

only time they thank me is when I give them

an allowance, I begin to wonder do they love me

or do they just love the money. Now, if all

you do is thank God, God, thank you for letting

me get into this class. God, thank you for giving

me this food. Thank you God for the things you

do for me, God starts going, do you really love

me or do you just love the things I do

for you? You need to learn to thank God not

just for what he does, but who he is.

God.

I thank you that you're smarter than me. I thank

you that your wisdom is greater. I thank you that

you know it'll make me happy more than I do.

God.

I thank you that you're consistent when I'm inconsistent. I

thank you for your love. I thank you for your mercy.

I thank you God that you're always fair. I thank

you that even when I don't understand it, you have

my best interest at heart.

That's thanking God for who.

He is and you need to get beyond the thank

you God for food, to thank you God for who

you are. That's taking your roots deeper. It honors God.

Develop the attitude of gratitude. Doctors have shown in many

many reports that gratitude is the healthiest human emotion. That

the more grateful you are in life, the healthier will

be actually physically, it's good for your physical health. The

more ungrateful you are in life, the more it actually

affects your health. Gratitude is good for your health. It's

good for your heart. And if you say, God, I'm

not going to put my feet on the ground in

the morning, I'm gonna sit on the edge of my

bed and before I do anything else, I'm gonna stop

say thank you. And I would say, just start this week.

Every day, sit on the side of your bed and

think of ten things to thank God for before you

get out of bed. It'll change your attitude. It'll change

your day. The first five minutes of your day sets

your mood for the rest of the day. And if

you start it with gratitude, you'll be healthier, you'll be happier,

you'll be closer to God. Your deep roots will be

going deeper. He just start saying, God, let me just

think of who you are, what you've done, how much

you've done for me. And I make a list and

I think of ten things, and I think of ten

more things.

Give thanks. It honors God.

The second thing it does is why is God's gratitude

God's will? Because it creates fellowship. It creates fellowship. What

I mean by that it builds relationships. Gratitude always builds

deeper relationships between you and other people, not just between

you and God, but between you and other people. Now, listen,

whoever you want to get closer to, start expressing gratitude

to that person, and you'll get closer. If you've started

moving away from your husband or your wife, you know

what you need to do. You need to start doing

what you did during dating. Express gratitude. Start writing little

kind notes, making calls during the day, do the things

you did at first. The reason you've lost that love

and feeling is because you've stopped doing the things that

created that love and feeling early on. And you take

each other for granted, and you want to rebuild that

relationship with a friend, with a parent, with a spouse,

with people in your small group, whoever you want to

get closer to start spending more time expressing gratitude to them.

You want to build your small group. Don't just go

to a small group during the week. Text them, email them,

call them, write them. See you know, I'm grateful for you,

and here's why I'm grateful. And you'll find that the

more grateful you are for your group, the more your group.

Will coalesce together.

The Bible says this, encourage one another and build each

other up. So I will encourage you to be more

intentional in expressing gratitude to the people in your small

group this week. Write some notes, you know, send some

text or emails, and just tell people how grateful you are.

It brings you closer together. Number three.

The third reason why it's God's will for you to

be radically grateful is it develops faith. It develops my faith. Now,

how does gratitude develop my faith? Well, it happens when

times are tough, when things don't make sense, when you

can't figure it out, when your prayers are unanswered, when

everything is going the way you didn't want it to go,

and yet you thank God in that circumstances. God, I

know You're in control. I know you love me, and

I know you can bring good out of this, and

I'm just thanking you. I'm not thankful for this situation.

I just got fired, but I'm thankful in the situation

that you're bigger than my problem and you can turn

off one faucet and turn on another just as easily,

and I'm thanking you for that. That is an evidence

of trust. And when you learn anybody can thank God

for good things, but if you can thank God even

in the bad things, your faith grows and your roots

go deeper.

It's also an evidence of humility.

You see when you thank God in a situation you

don't understand, you're saying God, I don't understand this, but

I'm humble enough to know I'm.

Not God and you are.

And I trust you, and I'm humble enough to admit

it that you know what's best for me. Now, there's

a guy in the Bible named Hubakuk, and I always

like to bring these guys from the little books the

Old Testament end because one day you're going to get

to heaven and the back is going to come up

to you and say, hey, how'd you like my book?

And I don't want you to look like a dude.

It's like, oh, oh, mister Becker guy didn't even know

you were in the Bible, So I want to make

sure you.

Know who these guys are. So you need to get

to heaven.

You're not embarrassed, and you could say, oh, you know,

I really liked what you said in chapter three, abacky,

that was good.

That was really good. Okay.

And here's what a backack said. He was going through

tough times. And he says, you know, even though the

fig trees have no fruit, and no grapes are growing

on the vine, and even though the olive crop failed,

and even though the fields produced no grain. In other words,

I'm going through recession. My business is in the tank.

And even though the sheep are all dying and the

cattle stalls are empty. In other words, he said, my

portfolio has hit the skids. My four oh one K

has become a one oh one k. He goes, even

though all this is happening, I will still, I will still,

I will still be.

Joyful and glad.

Why now, he's not thanking God for all the bad

things that have gone wrong, not for those things. He's saying,

what's his cause of gratitude? I will be joyful and

glad because here's the cause. The Lord is my savior.

Everything else thinks in life. But I can be grateful

because the Lord is my savior. He will pull me out,

He'll bring me through this, He'll help me out. I'm

not on my own. I'm not by myself. He hadn't

left me abandoned. I'm not an orphan, He's saying, I

will still give thanks to God. That is the ultimate

test of faith. Can you thank God when life stinks.

That's the test of whether you're a shallow Christian or

a deep one, whether you've got spiritual roots or you're

just superficial. Can you think God God even when life stinks,

when everything's going wrong, He says, if I'm going through

tough times, what I need to do is not look

at what's lost. I need to look at what's left.

I need to look at what's left, and I need

to be grateful for that. And no matter how bad

things are in my life, there's always always thousands of

things I can be grateful for. And no matter how

bad things are in my life, there's always always the

fact that I can be thankful to God just for

being God, and that he has promised to see me

through these situations, to help me out, to strengthen me,

to care for me, to do miracles, to answer prayers.

He's always promised, even when things don't go my way,

that he can work it for good in my life.

And so ultimately the plan is in action. That is faith.

God's will is gradical gratitude in all things, give things why.

It honors God, It creates fellowship, It develops faith Number.

Four, It serves others.

Radical gratitude, the attitude of gratitude that says, I'm just

going to walk through life being grateful in every situation,

no matter what, times of plenty, times of tightness, good, bad, right, wrong, whatever,

I'm just going to be grateful in every situation. He says,

that actually serves others. It becomes a ministry. Did you

know we've talked about this many times that every Christian,

every believer, is a minister. You are a minister, you

have a ministry. You're not a pastor, but every Christian

is a minister. What does that mean? It means we

are to serve other people. We're saved to serve, and

you can have a ministry called the ministry of appreciation.

Do you know what the word appreciation means. Well, if

you've ever bought a car, you know the meaning of depreciation. Okay,

the moment you drive it off the lot, it's worth

less than you paid for it. Even if it's brand new,

you take it back, it's worthless. Depreciation it means to

decrease in value. If you've ever bought a house, you

know the meaning of both appreciation and depreciation. You've see

the value go up, and you have seen the value

go down. To appreciate means to raise in value. And

this is a ministry. When you appreciate your husband, you

raise his value. When you appreciate your wife, you raise

her value. When you appreciate your kids, you raise their value.

When you appreciate your coworkers, your staff, the people you

work with in the office, you raise their value to

you and to the company. When you appreciate your boss,

you raise her value or his value. The ministry of

appreciation raises the value of people. And that's why God

says radical gratitude is a ministry. He and just go

around making a ministry out of raising the value of

people simply by appreciating them, going around, and you know

One of the things I've discovered is that everybody in

life needs massive doses of encouragement. I've never met anybody says,

oh no, I don't need a compliment. I have too many.

Please stop, please really, please, please stop. I'm too affirmed.

Please don't don't give me anymore.

You have an unqualified need to be affirmed, to be loved,

to be appreciated to people express gratitude for and you can,

and so does everybody else. And if you want to

be used of God, here's a little secret. Affirm everybody.

Appreciate everybody, show gratitude to everybody. You know, the team

that I travel with that we have a little pack

that we're just going to leave a trail of gratitude

wherever we go in the world, and we're going to

express appreciation to the people that everybody else ignores. And

so we make it a little game. We make sure

that the maid services who are fixing the sheets in

the in the motel, or the taxi driver or the

bellman or the clerk or the ticket agent, that we

express appreciation to them in the middle of their busy day.

That we're not going to have contact with any person

on the road without saying thank you. And I'm pretty

good at it. But Steve, he is a pro. He's

almost embarrassingly good at it, you know. I mean, he's

just he is so good at expressing appreciation to people.

I'm in awe of the guy how he does it

on the phone and stuff like that. And I'm just

and I have to be honest with you that we

have actually missed planes because we were still busy thanking people.

The nice thing about it is the people we think

then help us get on the next plane.

You know.

I was gone for two weeks. I was a week

in Africa and in Europe, then a week in Europe,

and one day we were on one day I was

speaking to pastors and we had breakfast in Brussels and

lunch in Paris and dinner in Vienna and all in

the same day. And I'm speaking to these groups of

pastors and We're just leaving a little trail of people

everywhere we go. It was so funny because in Vienna

I was sitting in a taxi and an elderly lady,

seventy nine year old woman, seventy nine year old woman

and her husband coming knock on the window.

I roll the window down.

She goes, I'm a fan friend of yours on Facebook.

I said, tell me your story. She says, well, I'm Romanian.

I'm going now wait a minute, a Romanian eighty nine

year old woman in Paris watching me on Facebook. It's

a new world, friends, we got a radical change here.

This is a radical and so it.

Helps other people. In fact, the Bible says this, do

not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouth.

In other words, that's critical, complaining, negative, cynical, sarcastic, always

putting other people down. Don't let that kind of stuff

come out.

Of your mouth.

But only the only thing that should come out of

your mouth is what is helpful for building others up.

He says, you tell you need to talk, not what

builds you up, but what builds others up according to

their needs. That it may benefit not you, but those

who listen. That's called the ministry of affirmation. So why

is gratitude radical? Gratitude in every situation always God's will.

It honors God, It creates fellowship, It brings you closer

to people. It develops faith, particularly shows your trust in

God in tough times. It serves other people and then

there's a fifth one.

It is a witness.

It is a witness to unbelievers. The best way to

share your faith with other people is a start with gratitude.

You know what I'm grateful for about you? That'll blow

their mind. Wow.

What a great message from Pastor Rick today, and I

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