Rick Warren - How God Blesses Grateful Hearts

Hi, everybody. Have I told you lately that I love

you because I do Happy Thanksgiving? You know, since this

next week is Thanksgiving, I'm pausing my series on Pains

that we can prepare ourselves for Thanksgiving Day. So you

know what I did this last week? I read through

again every reference to gratitude and Thanksgiving in the Bible,

and there are actually over four hundred passages that mention

thanksgiving or gratitude. Now, what I saw in my Bible

study were two big ideas. First, God wants gratitude to

be the primary motivation behind everything we do, or say

or think. Let me say that again. God wants gratitude

to be the primary motive, the primary motivation behind everything

that we do or say or think we want. He

wants us to do everything out of thanksgiving and out

of gratitude. The second thing I learned is that God

rewards gratitude with a long list of blessings and benefits

when we live with this continual attitude of gratitude or thanksgiving.

So today, if you'll get out your message notes, I

want to share how God blesses grateful hearts, how God

blesses grateful hearts. And I want to identify a short

sample list of benefits of gratitude, and then I'm going

to give you a starter list of Bible verses that

you can use on Thanksgiving Day. And then we're going

to practice God's three favorite ways that he loves for

us to use in expressing our gratitude to him. This

is what I call God's love language. Now, let's start

by reading the top two scriptures on the top of

your outline. Deuteronomy chapter twenty eight, verses one to eight

talks about the importance of obedience and the blessing that

God gives when we obey his commands. It says this

Deuteronomy twenty eight. One day, if you fully obey the

Lord your God, and if you carefully follow all his commands,

all of these blessings will be yours. And then he

gives us a laundry list. The Lord will bless you

in the city and in the country. He will bless

your children, as well as blessing your crops and your livestock.

The Lord will bless your harvest and the food you prepare.

The Lord will bless wherever you go. The Lord will

even defeat your enemies when they attack you. Yes, the

Lord will send his blessing on all you put your

hand to and bless everything you do. Now. God promises

these blessings to us if we do what he tells

us to do. In other words, if we follow us

instructions for life. He says, I'm going to bless everything

you do now. This past week, as I was studying

what God tells us to do about the importance of gratitude,

you know what, I noticed that five different times in scripture,

God tells us that gratitude is far, far more than

just saying thank you every so often. No, No, Gratitude

is a constant mindset. You might write that down. Gratitude

is a constant mindset of thankfulness. It's more than just

saying thank you every once in a while to God

or to people. It's an attitude of gratitude that you

make as your lifestyle. God wants us to respond to

everything that happens in our lives with an attitude of gratitude. Now,

what I want to do is read the next verse

aloud together. So everybody look at that first Thesalonians five

eighteen from the New Living Translation, and let's read it

slowly aloud together. Okay, Ready, always be thankful in all circumstances,

for this is God's will for you. Now, always be

thankful in all circumstances. That about covers everything right, there's

no loophole there. Always be thankful in all circumstances. For

this is God's will for you. Now, if you obey that,

God says, I'm going to bless you in every area

of your life. And notice that he says, this is

God's will for you, God's will for your life. You say,

I want to know God's will for my life. God's

will is that you are always grateful. You're always thankful,

You're always full of the attitude of gratitude. Now, of course,

when God wants us to help us do the right thing,

he always attaches a benefit or blessings to doing it.

I happen to have right now in my library seventy

nine different books on the topic of gratitude. So I've

studied this a lot, many nine different books just on

the topic of gratitude. And what I've discovered is that

both scripture and scientific studies show that having a mindset

of gratitude yields great, great blessings. This is an important

message that I'm going to share with you before Thanksgiving,

but you're going to use it the rest of your life.

This could actually be an entire series of messages, but

let me just breeze through some bullet points. There on

your outline, there's a list of bullet points on the

benefits of the blessings of gratitude. Notice first, gratitude improves

your brain and your physical health. Did you know that.

I don't have time to go into all of these

and talk about them, but doctors say that gratitude is

the healthiest human emotion. It improves your brain, it improves

your physical health. Number two, gratitude creates happiness. If you

want to be happy, develop a thankful heart. The happiest

people are those who are the most grateful. Number three,

gratitude helps you sleep better. You probably didn't know that.

That's a recent discovery, but the Bible told us that

literally thousands of years ago in the Book of Proverbs.

Gratitude Number four is the antidote to toxic emotions. In

other words, it defeats things like worry and depression and

anger and fear. You can't be grateful and worried at

the same time, or depressed and grateful the same time,

it defeats those toxic emotions. The next one, gratitude improves relationships.

You want better relationships, become a more grateful man or woman.

You know what, if you expressed gratitude more to your spouse,

you'd have a whole lot less conflict. And then gratitude

opens the door to people and to other opportunities. I

had a personal example of that. I could tell you

this week, but I don't have a time to tell you. Gratitude.

When you were expressed gratitude to people, you make friends.

It opens doors, it gives you opportunity. Gratitude, the Bible says,

is the evidence of spiritual maturity. You want to know

if your spiritual mature, how grateful are you? How much

do you live with the attitude of gratitude. Glossians two

nine says, this look on the screen. Plant your roots

in Christ and let him be the foundation for your life.

Be strong in your faith, always overflowing with circle. This thanksgiving,

all right, it is a mark of maturity. The more

mature you are, the more grateful you'll be. And then

gratitude pleases God and it brings his blessing. The Bible says,

it's the sacrifice that God loves most, the sacrifice of gratitude. Now,

what has always baffled me about Thanksgiving Day is how

very little actual time is given to thanksgiving of God.

We spend a full day preparing the meal. We spend

several hours watching football and talking and maybe just hanging out,

and maybe one or two minutes thanking God in prayer

because you don't want the food to get cold with

a long prayer. So even though it's Thanksgiving Day, it's

what we do the least of on that day. So

I want to give you some homework. It's a homework

assignment for Thanksgiving Day with those that you have Thanksgiving with.

Here is a starter list for thanking God this Thanksgiving.

He said, I don't know what to be thankful for. Well,

it's a list of verses. And what I would encourage

you to do is, when you're sitting at the table together,

ask everybody around your table to read one of the verses, okay,

And then after all the verses have been read, you

might start a discussion simply asking well, which of these

verses are you the most thankful for? And it may

be something that's already been mentioned, or maybe something that

hasn't been mentioned. What does God want us to be

grateful for, not just a thanksgiving but all the time. Well,

as we go through this list of verses, and again

didn't give you any blanks, so just circle the reason

in each verse. Okay, here are some reasons why we

need to be the most grateful people of all people. First,

because God gave us life. God gave us life Psalm

one thirty nine, thirteen and fourteen. You created informed me.

Circle that you created informed me in my mother's body.

So I thank you because you made me. I wouldn't

even be alive if it weren't for God. That's reason enough.

Number two, we can be thankful that we're still alive.

Are you glad you're still alive from a year ago?

Ecclesiastes eleven eight says, be grateful for every year you live.

That's another thing to be grateful for. Number three, we

can be grateful that He saved us Psalm thirteen, verse five.

My heart is happy because you saved me. Number four,

we can be grateful because God is good. God is good.

Circle this. I give you thanks because you are good,

says Psalm fifty four, verse six. Here's another one. I

can be grateful that God answers our prayers Psalm one

eighteen twenty one. I praise the Lord for answering my prayers.

And I can be grateful that he shows us how

to live Psalm sixteen, verse seven. I praise the Lord

because he guides me. Here's another one I can praise

the Lord. I can thank God that he forgives me

Psalm eighteen, verse one. Tell the Lord how thankful you

are because he is kind and always merciful. And then

number eight, I can be grateful that he will never

stop loving us Psalm one oh seven, verse eight. Give

thanks to the Lord for his unfailing life. Now, I

want to spend the rest of our time together looking

at what I call God's three favorite ways. God's three

favorite ways for us to express gratitude to Him. This

last week, in my study of every passage in the

Bible that references gratefulness of thanksgiving, I found at least

a dozen different ways that God tells us to express

our gratitude he tells us, But I want to focus

on just the three most mentioned ways because they are

mentioned more than all the others put together. These must

be God's favorite expressions of gratitude because, as I said,

he refers to them, these three that I must share today,

more than all the others combined. Now, the Bible has

a lot to say about the songs of Thanksgiving, the

offerings of Thanksgiving, and the top of Thanksgiving. I'm sure

you're aware that we all have, as human beings, different

love languages. Your love language is different than the language

of your spouse. What makes your spouse feel loved is

different than what makes you feel loved. We like to

be told that we're loved in different ways. That's because

we're all different. Well, so does God. And what I'm

going to share with you today are God's three top

love languages. These are the ones that bring him the

most pleasure. So let's look at the first one. The

first habit of expressing gratitude is this write it down,

singing back to God, singing back to God. Now you

may not know this, nobody has ever told us to you,

but God is a singing God. Did you know that

the Bible tells us that God sings. In fact, and

here's the shocker, he sings about you. He sings love

songs and joyful songs about you. Zeph Andiah three verse

seventeen says this, the Lord your God is with you,

and he is your mighty savior. He takes great delight

in you, calming your fears with his love, and he

rejoices over you with singing about you. Did you know

that verse? God rejoices over you with singing about you. Now,

let me just say this. Think about this. You've never

heard God sing over you. But one day in heaven,

you're going to hear God sing about you. And it's

gonna be the most beautiful, joyful sound you've ever heard.

I can't wait to hear pure perfect joy. We have

joy on this planet, but it's a broken joy. It's

an imperfect joy. When God sings, it is pure, perfect joy.

And you're gonna get to hear God sing over you

one day. That's something to look forward to. Have you

ever listened to a mother calm her baby by quietly

singing to that baby. I could never forget the sacred

moments of listening to my wife, okay, love our children

with lullabies. I can hear her voice in a soft voice,

humming and singing to our babies. That's how God loves you.

God sings. You didn't know that In fact, the only

reason music exists in the universe is because God invented it.

God is a musical god, and since you were created

in his image, you like music too. Horses don't like music.

They're not created in his image. Worms don't like music.

They're not created in his image. So let me show

you just a few verses of scripture where God tells

us to express our thanks to Him through singing Psalm

one seven, verse seven. Sing out your thanks to him.

Sing praises to our God Psalm ninety five, verse two.

Let us come before him with thanksgiving, that's what we're

talking about, and sing joyful songs of praise. Now now, friends,

this is one of the main reasons for coming together

to worship together instead of just watching a service online.

You miss the value of singing praise together. You may

not realize this, but you sing better when you sing

with others. Right. Yeah, I don't like to hear myself sing,

but I don't mind singing when there's five hundred or

one thousand other people out there. Colossian three point sixteen

says this, sing psalms and hymns and sacred songs, singing

to God with thanksgiving. In your hearts. This is the

first habit of thanksgiving that God loves singing back to God.

Are you doing that, Somi, I don't sing. Somebody saying

I can't sing. Somebody said I've lost my voice, Sir,

I never had it. Listen, listen closely to a pastor

who loves you. God loves your voice. He gave it

to you. He gave you your voice. He wants to

hear your voice from you, not somebody else's, not you

trying to be somebody else. He wants to hear your

voice because he gave it to you. And if you

are embarrassed about singing with your voice, I'll just be

honest with you. You've got a pride problem. You got

an ego issue. You need to learn to accept yourself

the way God does. You need to treat yourself the

way God does. God enjoys hearing you sing praise to Him.

God wants you to learn to sing to Him all

the time. Look at this verse on the screen. So

I'm forty four to eight. All day long we praise

our God, not just in service and worship on the weekends.

All day long, we praise to God. We are always

grateful to Him. Now, some of us hum more than

we sing. At least some are thanksgiving song. That's okay,

he said, well, okay, all day long. What about it night. Well,

if you're not gonna wake anybody else a single way,

go right ahead and sing away. But if you've got

a full house at your home. Psalm sixty three, verse

six from the Message says this, if I'm sleepless at night,

I spend hours in grateful reflection. What because that's not

going to bother anybody. The first habit of gratitude is

singing back to God. Singing back to God, it's one

of God's three favorite ways for you to express your

gratitude to him. Now here's the second habit of gratitude,

giving back to God. Write that down, giving back to God.

At Thanksgiving or any other time, we give thanks by

giving back to God. We give thanks by giving, We

give back the first part of what He has given

to us. Let's look at some scripture on this Psalm

fifty four, verse six of this, I will offer a

sacrificial offering as a special gift to thank you Lord,

because you are so good. That's a thanksgiving offering. We

talked about a thanksgiving song. But the Bible talks about

a Thanksgiving offering, an offering where we give to give thanks.

You know, about four hundred years ago, a group of

Christian believers who were being persecuted for their faith left

Europe and moved to North America in order to establish

a colony that allowed religious liberty so they could worship

God freely. And those original people who came four hundred

years ago from Europe were called the Pilgrims. Four hundred

years ago, they established with the Native Americans in their

area a Thanksgiving Day in the fall to give thanks

to God. That's where the whole Thanksgiving Day got started.

Of the modern days, now a lot of nations have

Thanksgiving Days. One hundred and fifty years later, after the Pilgrims,

America's first President, George Washington, created, at the urging of Congress,

the first national Thanksgiving Holiday. If you'd like to see

Washington's proclamation, just write me a note and give me

your email on a card. I'll be glad to send

it to you this week. You might want to read

Washington's original proclamation. It'll blow your mind what the President

of the United States said about the necessity of being

grateful to God. And it's pretty clear. So that happened

four hundred years ago, the first modern Thanksgiving, and then

one hundred and fifty years later the first Thanksgiving holiday

for a nation. But did you know that three thousand

years before that, three thousand years before that, God had

told the nation of Israel to establish a thanksgiving festival

every year called the Feast of Weeks, and they were

to celebrate God's goodness, and they were to expel pressed

their gratitude to God by bringing him a special thanksgiving offering.

That's three thousand years before the modern Thanksgiving day. Deuteronomy

chapter sixteen, verse ten, and eleven says this, I love

this in the TeV version, celebrate the harvest festival. To

honor the Lord your God by bringing him a free

will offering in proportion to the blessing he has given. You.

Do this at the place of worship. So in the

original Thanksgiving day, they were to bring a gift of

thanksgiving to the place of thanksgiving, that's the temples where

they worshiped. Now, this thanksgi offering has been practiced by

God's people for thousands and thousands of years, and we've

practiced it here at saddleback since our church began forty

two years ago, So this week we're going to be

doing our angle Thanksgiving offering. It's mentioned many many times

in the Bible, such as in Psalm one sixteen seventeen,

where King David says, this, I will sacrifice a thanksgiving

offering to you. Now listen. This is God's second favorite

way of being thanked. He talks about it over and

over and over. The Thanksgiving offering is mentioned many times

in scripture. In Psalm fifty, verse twenty three, God says this,

those people who truly honor me are those who are

they who bring me offerings to show thanks. Those people

who truly honor me, God says, are those who bring

the offerings to show thanks. And I God save those

who do that. It's one of God's favorite love languages.

Singing back to God and giving back to God? Is it? Are?

You know? Examples and illustrations of gratitude. Anytime we give

an offering to God, it actually represents three kinds of gratitude.

It's a three D gratitude past, present in future. When

I give an offering to God, it represents I'm grateful

for God's blessing. In the past. I'm grateful for God's

blessing today, and I'm grateful in faith for God's continued

blessing in the future. I thank you for the past,

I thank him for today, and I thank him that

He's going to keep on taking care of me in

the future. Three kinds of gratitude. So what kind of

offering are we to bring to show our gratitude to God. Well,

the Bible says it over and over and over and over.

We are to give God the first part of our income,

not the leftovers. Not well, I pay all my bills

and whatever's left I'll give to God. We are to

put God first in our finances. Now. God knows this,

this skuy of faith putting him first, which is why

he tells us to do it. Because it's a step

of faith. God is more interested in your faith. He

certainly doesn't need your money. God doesn't need your money,

He owns it. All the money you got in really

yours it with somebody else. That's four years that yours

right now on loan is be loaned to somebody else later.

God just wants to know if you trust him. Now,

as I said, with every principle, God gives us that

God gives us. He also attaches a promise. There are

more promises in the Bible related to giving back to

God than any other promises in the scripture. Proverbs three

nine and ten is a good example. Proverbs three nine

and ten says, this, honor the Lord by giving him

circle this the first part, circle first part. By giving

him the first part of your income. And here's the

promise that was the premise. Here's the promise. He will

fill your barns and barrels to overflow with more. God says,

giving him an offering is not just an act of gratitude,

it's an act of faith. And God always honors faith,

so he promises to bless you back. That's why I

said there are more promises in the Bible attached to

giving and generosity than the other subject. What God wants

his children to be like him. God is a generous God.

Everything you have in life is a gift of God's love.

God is the number one giver. God so loved the

world that he gave. You can love. You can give

without loving, but you can't love without giving. God so

loved that he gave. And if you love God, you're

gonna give, and if you love others, you're gonna give. Now,

he says, here's the promise. Give me the first part,

and I'll overflow your barns and your barrels. In other words,

you're gonna get back more than you could possibly give

to me. God is that you give to me, and

I'll give to you, and we'll see who wins. Now,

Jesus expanded and extended the promise. We just read Proverbs

three by saying it this way. In Luke, chapter six,

verse thirty eight, look up here on the screen. This

is from the New Living Translation Luke six thirty eight.

If you give, this is Jesus talking. If you give,

you will receive, and your gift will return to you

in full measure. And then he says, press down, shaken

together to make room for more. Like you've got a

bag of beans. You keep shaking it so it can

hold more. Press down, press down, shaken together to make

room for more, and running over. Whatever measure you use

in giving larger from wall, Jesus is talking, it will

be used to measure what is given back to you.

Do you believe that verse? Do you believe that if

you give, God will give back? More to you? How

much do you trust God? Do you think Jesus is

a liar? You know what, I've never understood, friends, I've

never understood why do people trust Jesus to forgive their

sin and save their souls and take them to heaven,

but they don't trust the same Jesus with their finances

and the promises he makes about that. It makes no

sense at all. If you can't trust Jesus with your finances,

why do you trust him for your salvation? Really, this

is a faith issue. How much do you trust God?

What we're talking about, of course, giving the first part

back to God is called the principle of tithing. Tithing

is the old English word means ten percent. It's not

twelve percent, it's not twenty it's not one percent. Tithing

means the first ten percent. If I make ten dollars,

the first dollar goes back to God. If I make

one hundred dollars, first ten dollars go back to God.

First we give the first ten percent of our income

back to God in faith and gratitude, and then He

blesses the other ninety percent. Look at these last two

verses in this section Deuteronomy fourteen twenty three Living Bible.

Bring your tithe that's the first ten percent. Bring your

tithe to the Lord the first of all you earn.

The purpose of pything is to teach you to always

put God first in your lives. Now you may say, well,

God's first in my life. Well, let me see two things.

Let me see your calendar and let me see your checkbook,

because the way you spend your time and the way

you spend your money tells me what's really first in

your life. And then, one of the greatest promises of all,

it's the only promise in the Bible where God says

you can prove that I exist. It's a good verse

for atheist. You want to prove God's exist pithe here's

what God says. Malachi three to ten. Bring your whole

tithe that's ten percent to my storehouse, says the Lord,

so there will be food in my house. You bring

the first ten percent on the first day of the

week as an act that God is first. And what's

first day week Sunday is an act of worship. You

bring it to my storehouse, says the Lord. You don't

give your tithe to your sister or or to some

nice organization. After belongs to God, it goes to his temple,

it goes to his story. Ouse says that there will

be food in my house, and then he says this.

Test me in this, God, dare you try it? You

like it? Test me? Here's the Pepsi challenge verse. Test

me in this, and see if I won't throw open

the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing

you won't have enough room for it. Wow. God says,

this is the way you can prove God exists. Tithe

all right, Tithe put him first. And that is God's

second favorite way of being told you trust him, of

being told you're grateful. We sing songs of thanksgiving and

we give back to God in Thanksgiving. Now. Both last

week and this week, those of you who came to

worship at one of our campuses, you received the offering

envelope for our annual Thanksgiving offerings, our annual offering to go.

We do it every year. I told you last week

I didn't want you to give. Last week, I said,

take it home and pray about it, because you really

need to thank God and ask God about it. And

I told you take it home, pray about it, and

if you're ready, you can give your Thanksgiving offering when

we sing in just a minute. But if you haven't

really prayed about it, you can take your envelope home,

you can mail it in during a Thanksgiving weekend. You

can bring it next week. And of course, if you

set up online tithing like most of us have, that's

what Cay and I have, you can do that. You

can just tithe online. You know. Every single week, you guys,

I received the most amazing letters and testimonies from people

expressing their gratitude to God through generosity. One recently was

from a guy who a number of years ago was

down on his luck and he came to Saddlebacks Free

Clinic and he, you know, he we helped him in

his time and need. And a few years later he

sent a check and it was for one hundred dollars.

Let me read you just one letter that I received

this week, and then we're going to give our Thanksgiving offering.

Here's the letter. It says this, it's not addressed to me,

it's actually addressed to you. Dear Saddleback Church. Is from

a woman back in the Midwest. She says, Dear Saddleback Church, family,

I've been watching online services from my home in the

Midwest since the onset of COVID in March twenty twenty. Today,

your services have been a real blessing to me. I'm

often singing and crying alone as I have found inspiration

from the services of Saddleback from week to week. Now.

These twenty months have been trying in so many ways.

So the messages about hope and grace and even pain

today which was last week, have never been more real. Yes,

she writes, sometimes I ponder what my real purpose is,

but God has blessed me well financially, so it may

be that part of my purpose is to help you

continue to build your saddle Backed Church. She says, I'll

probably never get to worship in the new facility you're in,

although it looks incredible, but my heart will certainly be

with you and be with all of you there. So

continue your fabulous work. And she signed your name, and

she sent a check this week for fifty thousand dollars.

This is a woman who's never even been to our church,

but she says, I want to support the building of

Saddle Backed Church and all its campuses now right now,

as we begin to look at God's third favorite way

of us saying thanks tim expressing gratitude to God. I

want to ask the ushers at all of our campuses

to begin distributing the communion elements while I'm speaking. You

go ahead and get up right now and begin passing

out those elements. Now, we said that the first of

God's three favorite ways that he loves to be shown

gratitude is singing back to God. And the second favorite

way that God has is for us to give back

to God. And we've seen the Thanksgiving song, and we've

seen the power of the Thanksgiving offering. But now we

come to what's called the Thanksgiving cup, and what we're

talking about is taking the Lord's Supper together as an

act of gratitude. God's third favorite way of being told

that we love him is through communion through the Lord's Supper.

The third habit of gratitude is this, write it down

communion with God. First Corinthians, chapter eleven, verses twenty three

to twenty seven. Up here on the screen, it's not

on your outline. It says this. On the night that

he was betrayed, Jesus took bread, and when he had

given thanks, he broke it, and he broke the bread,

and he said, this is my body, which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me. Then in the same way,

Jesus took the cup, and he said, this cup is

the new covenant in my blood. And whenever you drink it,

do this and remembrance of me. And he says it twice.

Do this in remembrance of me. Communion is to help

us remember what's remembering for, so we can be grateful.

Whatever you remember, you can be grateful for. He says,

I've given you this memory tool, communion. The bread and

the wine, the juice and the wafer. I've given you

this communion tool to remember the good thing that I

did for you, the suffering that I did for you,

what it cost me to pay for yourself, Jesus. The

Bible says this, for whenever you eat the bread and

you drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death. It's

a remember remembering of God's great gift on Calvary, Jesus'

death on the cross. You proclaim the Lord's death until

he comes again. He didn't stay dead. He's coming back again.

That's what Easter is all about. And then the Bible says, therefore,

whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the

Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning

against the body and the blood of the Lord. What

does that phrase mean? An unworthy manner? You know, as

a young Christian, I often wondered and was even a

little worried what that meant, to take the Lord's supper,

to take communion in an unworthy manner. But I now

believe that taking the Lord's supper in an unworthy manner

includes taking communion without truly being grateful for all Jesus

paid for with his death on the cross. To take

it in an unworthy manner is to reject the power

of the cross. It is to take communion without fully

understanding and fully accepting and fully being grateful for Jesus'

sacrifice for me. This is Jesus's third favorite way of

us expressing our thanks to him. He gave us the

memory tool of communion. Now you've probably heard that another

name for the Lord's Supper, or another name for communion

is the Eucharist. Have you heard that word the Eucharist.

That's a Bible term. It's in the Bible. You know,

the New Testament was written in Greek. Eucharist is a

Greek word. You know what it means, thanksgiving. Eucharist is

the Greek word for the thanksgiving. The communion is to

be a model of thanksgiving. It's a way we give

thanks back to God, first through the thanksgiving song, second

through the thanksgiving offering, and third through the thanksgiving cup.

One Corinthians ten sixteen says, this is not the cup

of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in

the blood of Christ, and it's not the bread that

we break participation in the body of Christ. When we

drink from a communion cup and we eat the bread,

we are participating in one another of God's favorite ways

to be told, thank you God. By our eating, we

are saying Father, thank you, thank you, thank you for

sacrificing yourself to send your son to come and die

on the cross for our sins so that we can

be forgiven. And we remind ourselves of the high price

that Jesus paid to save us. And our only response

is gratitude. Colossians two thirteen and fourteen says this we

were spiritually dead because of our sins and our sinful nature.

We were dead separated from Christ. But God gave us

new life. We didn't turn over new leaf. He gave

us a whole new life. God gave us new life

with Christ. He forgave all our sins, and it counseled

the record that contained all the charges against us, and

he took it and he destroyed it by nailing it

to Christ's cross. That's what the Bible says. What is

our response to such overwhelming love? It is First Corinthians

fifteen fifty seven, which says that how we thank God

who gives us victory over sin and over death through

Jesus Christ, our Lord. This is the Eucharist, This is

the cup of Thanksgiving. Now, I now want us to

take the elements together, if they've all been served to

everybody by now, as an expression of our gratitude to God.

We have saying sung together. We've sung together in thanksgiving.

We have given back to God in thanksgiving. And now

we're going to drink the cup together in thanksgiving. But

we have to do it in a worthy manner. That

means you've accepted the gift of salvation in your heart.

Communion means nothing if you haven't already accepted the gift

by faith in your life. And if you've forgotten how

grateful you ought to be be for the death of Christ.

That's why we're to take commune to remind ourselves of

the sacrifice. So I want you to bow your heads

right now, and with your head bowed, I want to

ask you, have you ever completely fully accepted the gift

of God's salvation by faith? Have you accepted the grace

of God in your life? Have you accepted His forgiveness

realizing that you can't earn it, pay forward, or deserve it.

It's just a gift. And have you expressed your gratitude

back to God. If you haven't, say so right now

in your heart, say Dear God, thank you, Thank you,

Thank you for dying for me. Say that thank you

for paying for my sins. Say that thank you for

dying on the cross so that I could be forgiven

and that I could go to heaven and so that

I could have a purpose for Livingjesus Christ, I opened

my life to you, and I give myself completely to you.

And I want to develop these habits of singing with gratitude,

giving back in song, of giving back financially, and of

taking communion to remember your sacrifice. I ask you to

accept me into your family in Jesus' name. Amen. At

the end of this message, I'm going to ask you

to let me know about your decision if you did.

But here's my challenge to you, all of you this weekend.

My challenge is that you'll begin to develop the mindset

and lifestyle and gratitude to God in every aspect of

your life. Now, I want you to take the little

way for right now. The Bible says that on the

night Jesus was betrayed, he took bread and he broke

it and he blessed it. He said, this is my

body which is given for you. Do this to remember me.

As you eat this bread right now, I want you

to say, Jesus, I am so grateful that you died

for me. Eat it and say that in your mind, Jesus,

I am so grateful that you died for me. Tell

him how grateful you are that he did what you

can't do for yourself. The Bible says them the same

way that Jesus took the cup of the New Covenant,

he so, this is the cup of the New Company,

representing my blood, and he said, I want you to

do this to remember me, he said, as often as

you drink it. Do this to remember me as you

drink this little cup. Right now, I want you, in

your own words to express your gratitude to God for

Jesus saving you. Just say it in any way in

your heart that you want to say it. Just say

thank you God for saving me when I could not

save myself, and drink that cop I hope you're going

to make these three habits, the habit of singing back

to God, giving back to God our tithe and communion

with God to the elements a regular part of your

Christian life. Colossians three seventeen sums up everything I've been

trying to teach you this weekend. It says this. So

now everything you do circle word everything, everything you do

or say, should be done in the name of our

Lord Jesus with thanksgiving. Circle back with thanksgiving to God

the Father. So take out the garbage with thanksgiving, wash

the dishes with thanksgiving, pick up the kids with thanksgiving,

go to bed with thanksgiving, do everything, take a shower

with everything God wants Thanksgiving to be the habit of living.

It is a mindset, not simply saying thank you every

once in a while. Now, since that's what that scripture says,

let me ask you, will you commit? Will you personally

commit from this day forward for the rest of your life,

since you know that God wants everything to be done

with gratitude, will you commit to regularly expressing your gratitude

to God by singing back to Him, by giving back

to Him through tithing, and by taking communion. If so,

I want you to drive a steak in the ground

today that you never forget it. I want you to

let me know of your decision. I want you to

pull out a card in your program and I want

you to write your name and your address on it. Okay,

these are going to come directly me. And I want

you to write two words, I'm thankful. Write your name

and your address and the phray our email and the

phrase I'm thankful. As you're committing to these habits for

the rest of your life. Now, if you're not thankful,

do nothing, Do nothing. If you're not thankful. But if

you are thankful and you want to thank God in

the ways he likes to be thanked the most in

his love language, he did everything for you. You owe

him everything, your own life, your salvation, all those things

we looked at. If you, if you are thankful, get

out a card, write your name and uh, you know,

contact information on it, and write the phrase I'm thank

That's it, the phrase I'm thankful. Now, as we close,

I just have to mention one more way to show

God's gratitude, and here it is by telling other people

the good news. By telling other people the good news,

when you witness, when you invite people to church, when

you share a book, when you tell other people about

the Lord, you share a testimony, that is the representation

of gratitude. Isaiah twelve, verse four says this, thank the Lord,

praise his name, and tell the world what he's done.

They all go together. You thank the Lord, and you

praise his name by telling the world he has done.

Who have you told about Jesus? Who have you told

about the good news? When was the last time you

talked to anybody about the good news? Second Christians four

point fifteen says this, This is a verse that's been

a theme verse of Saddleback for forty two years. In

Corinthians four point fifteen, the grace that is reaching more

and more people will cause thanksgiving to overflow to the

glory of God. Why do we keep growing, why do

we keep reaching out? Why do all our campus keep

moving and getting in bigger buildings and better locations. Because

as more and more people experience the grace of God,

it will cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God.

And anytime you invite somebody to come with you to church,

it is an expression of gratitude to God. We're getting

ready to start Christmas season. Next week, we start Christmas

season together. More people are likely to come at Christmas

than any other time. Why don't you plan to bring

somebody with you next weekend? For the next part in

our series. I love you, I'm praying for you, and

I thank God for you. I'll see you next weekend.