A Spirit of Thankfulness – 4: Thankfulness Comes Before Fruits!

All for you are the center of it all My heart belongs to you, my Savior all in

all You're the one I hold on to for the beauty of your name

My soul will live to save Jesus, I love you My soul will live to save Jesus, I love you My soul will live to save Jesus, I love you

I thank you so much for the opportunity to be in your house today and

Lord I just

Pray that you'd remind us that we're only able to say how much we love you because of the love that you first showed us

Father as we

Go into the week of Thanksgiving and we've been talking about thankfulness Lord. We

Pray that you just remind us of how thankful we should be for

The price that you paid on the cross for our sins

And father if there's anybody in this room now who just thinks that's a weird thing or that's hard to understand Lord it's

Pray that you would reveal to our hearts and open up our eyes to see the simplicity of it that

The beautiful thing about Christianity is is that we don't have to do anything

Other than to open up our hearts and to let you in

To just say God, I'm willing

I'm willing to let you in I'm willing to let you work. I'm going to let you move

I'm willing to give you these situations and these things in my life that I

Obviously can't do on my own

I'm willing to turn over my

My sins and my shame and my pain to you

Because I'm failing at it

Every other religion in the world calls us to do something but Lord you call us

To just kneel before your throne and let you in

And father we just humbly come to you this morning

And even if we've been a believer for a long time, we're still called to

Humble ourselves before your feet this morning and to let you in

and

If we've never allowed you into our life, we're just simply called to humble ourselves before you

And to let you come in

To just surrender

Because we can't do this

So father we come to you humbly this morning we pray that you would come in to our hearts come into our lives

And even if we're already saved that you would again do a brand new work within us

It would bring joy and excitement like we have not felt in a long time

Father we invite your Holy Spirit into this place

Pray that you would work and move in a powerful way

We pray for our brothers and sisters who aren't able to be here

Well, we lift up. Mr. Leonard Wilson to you this morning pray that you would touch him and his family

And father we just we give this time to you

Lord if it's not yours, then we've gathered for nothing

So we just humbly ask that you would be in this place be in our hearts and help us

To open up everything to you to allow you to do only the things that you can do

Father we love you this morning

We thank you so much for everything

But we also thank you for what you're going to do

And we ask all this in Jesus precious and holy name

All God's people said

In Philippians chapter 4 verses 4 through 7

Philippians 4:4–7

It says always be full of joy in the Lord

Say it again rejoice

Let everyone see that you are considerate and all that you do. Remember the Lord is coming soon

Don't worry about anything instead pray about everything

Tell God what you need and thank him for all he has done and then you will experience God's peace

Which exceeds anything we can understand his peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live

Jesus

So far we've been talking about having a spirit of thankfulness in our lives as we approach God

We've talked about how thankfulness is a tool. We've talked about how it's an attitude

We talked about how it should eventually become an expression of who we are. I'm not gonna

Belabor those things. I've already talked about them. If you missed it catch it on Facebook youtubers podcast

so we're just moving forward this morning and

One of the things we talked about early on is that it's kind of interesting that thankfulness is not a fruit of the spirit

It's not like you you you get saved and God fills your life and you feel the spirit of God come within you

And he's working and moving in your life and all of a sudden thankfulness just becomes a part of who you are

Thankfulness is something that we kind of have to exercise, you know

There's not a lot of things that God calls us to do as Christians to kind of do underneath our own strength

But thankfulness is one of those things that we're called as believers to begin exercising in faith. We talked about how

Thankfulness is an aspect of faith. Like we have to be thankful before

Things come our way and not thankful as a result of things

But talking about those fruits of the spirit. I want to list those

So there's nine fruits of the spirit if you're not familiar with it. You have love

Joy peace patience kindness goodness gentleness faithfulness self-control

Those are the nine fruits of the spirit. Those are the things and the qualities that if you claim to be a believer in Jesus Christ

You probably will not be excelling at all of these things

But these should be things that God is working with you in as his Holy Spirit comes in your life

And you are inviting God to to be in you every day and you're praying and you're seeking his face in your

Rendering to him as his Holy Spirit comes within you. These are nine qualities that you should have

Does it mean you're gonna be perfect at them? These things will take time

some of them will come more naturally for some of you than others, but those are the nine qualities of the fruits of the spirit and

thankfulness is not in that and

I think it's really important for us to understand this morning that thankfulness comes before the fruits do

And that's that's really important

We've said that but I said again, that's the title of the message. Thankfulness comes before fruits

Thankfulness is such an enormous part of our life and

It will define who we are as believers. It will define our relationship with the Lord

It will define how other people see us as

followers of Jesus Christ

And so point number one this morning as we get started. I'm gonna focus on the first three fruits of the spirit

Our focus passes actually talks about two and they're two of the first three

But we're gonna talk about love to begin with so point number one is thankfulness comes before love

Now we would all like to say that we know what love is we have experienced love and we know how to show love

But truthfully this morning just from a practical perspective very simplistic

Perspective you cannot love someone if you're not thankful for them

Now we've said it before you can't you can't worship a God you're not thankful for you can't love a God that you're not thankful for

You can't love a husband or a wife that you're not thankful for

You can't love a mom or a dad that you're not thankful for you

can't love your own child if you are not thankful for them and

On and on and on there is something about the thankfulness and appreciation

Even for a human being or even for your own God that you have to have in your life for you to be able to truly

Love them and this is why you can see people there are people in the world and you might know of people

You know of someone who does not love their spouse

You know of someone who does not love their parents you and as hard as it is believe you probably know of someone who does

not love their kids and

Those people exist and it's hard for us to imagine that but truthfully there has to be this this

understanding of

Thankfulness that we have within ourselves to truly love someone now now

Let's let's deepen this this morning to the understanding of what Christ has truly called us to as believers

because you're not just called to love your mom and your dad and your brothers and sisters and

spouses and children and all those people who are nice to you

But Jesus goes even further to say love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you

So there's a deeper calling on our lives to love people who are not easy to love to love people who have never done

Anything for you other than hurt you or offend you or aggravate you because those people are out there and they exist

even for me

We are called to love but we're also called to be thankful

And so we have this really cool passage of 1st Corinthians chapter 1 verses 4 through 7 where Paul

Exercises this this tool of thankfulness as he is approaching this group of people

That he's trying to display great love and concern for so in 1st Corinthians

He says and this is the beginning of the book as he's writing them

He says I always think my God for you and for the gracious gifts. He has given you

So immediately Paul is expressing thanks for these people as he's writing this letter to them now that you belong to Christ Jesus

Through him God has enriched your church in every way with all of your eloquent words and all of your knowledge

This confirms that what I told you about Christ is true

Now you have every spiritual gift you need as you eagerly wait for the return of our Lord Jesus Christ

Now this sounds like a very positive passage in a positive letter

But let me give you an insight as to what's going on

So Paul visits Corinth during his second missionary journey

And basically as he leaves Corinth and he's heading on the Ephesus and he's doing this

The church in Corinth quickly begins to just kind of fall apart

I mean they are like

It's a mess. And so when Paul writes this letter, this is not hey guys, how you doing?

I'm really proud of you. Even though that's what it sounds like in the beginning all is

Exercising this this tool of thankfulness

I thank God for you because you are human beings and you're valuable and God saved you and he worked and moved in your life

And God filled them with the spirit and they had spiritual gifts Paul's identifying what God's doing in their life

And he's thanking God for them

You cannot love or care about someone that you are not thankful for

This is what Paul's doing from the very beginning

Because what's happening in the church in Corinth is is that they by this point they are divided

Not just in half but in many different factions

there was

People who were beginning to question the deity of Christ

So they had gotten saved the Holy Spirit had came on them

They had received gifts of the spirit that we see in the New Testament

Very powerful very genuine moment of salvation for many of these people and this church is birthed in Corinth

But then there's people who begin to doubt they begin to doubt teachings in the deity of Christ

Then there was people who was experiencing this temptation of spiritual pride. They were trying to elevate themselves above one another

inside those church meetings

They were making a mockery of the Lord's Supper. They were doing that with great disrespect and they were not handling that the correct way

They were suing one another

in secular courts

Can you imagine being here this morning?

And sitting with multiple people around you and you're all suing one another and you're having these legal battles that you're fighting over different things

And you're squabbling over stuff and you can't resolve it

So therefore you're suing one another in secular courts because as brothers and sisters in Christ

You can't come to terms with what should be done in God's eyes

They were disrespecting their church leaders

They had allowed pagan practices to creep into the congregation. So when they were meeting for worship

There was pagan things that were kind of infiltrating the worship circumstances

They were becoming mired in sexual sin and to keep it on appropriate terms like

significant sexual sin

They were completely mired in that

They were botching their marriages on purpose

There were people who were actually trying to divorce their husbands and wives so that they could be more spiritual in the eyes of other people

They were arguing over what foods they could and couldn't eat

They were arguing over what days they should and shouldn't worship on and they were fighting over money within the church

I think that's enough to say like

It's a mess

I don't know if you guys know how difficult it is to deal with people who are just like squabbling and fighting over stuff

I had about an hour and a half in a truck

With uh three boys yesterday like seven six and five and it was a disaster

Um, they squabbled and fought and yelled and screamed and giggled and laughed and hit and punched and cried

It was a great time

And you can imagine what it's like to deal with a group of grown-ups who are

Doing these very same things and it's it's it's a mess

And I can tell you just from a human perspective

You know when people make mistakes and people do stuff. It's frustrating, right?

Like you're just looking it's like how could you do that? How could you say that? How could you?

It's very easy for us to just be like what were you thinking?

But paul doesn't open up this letter with being like hey idiots

I told you what you're supposed to be doing. Why are you not doing it?

He says no, I thank god for you

There's a need in our lives

To remind ourselves as we walk through this world

That we have to be very careful

To have a spirit of thankfulness in our lives, especially for the people around us, but it's also for god

That that as we express thankfulness

It gives us the ability

To have the fruit of the spirit of love in our lives to truly love them the way that god has called us to

Because chances are and I don't know if you've ever done this before but if you've ever tried to show someone love before

And they have not received the love that you're trying to give them because you're not giving it to them

The way that they want to receive it

That's difficult, right?

One of the things that we talk about in premarital counseling is is understanding each other's love language

So that even though like you may be trying to show like I want to show love for you in this way

You know, I don't care about that like what you're doing doesn't mean anything to me that can be really painful

So so to have this spirit of thankfulness

Gives us the ability to really love and appreciate and express love to other people

But more importantly gives you the ability to express love to your father in heaven

So when you talk about being filled with the holy spirit

When you talk about wanting to love god wanting to serve him wanting to sacrifice for him

You're not going to be able to do that without thankfulness

You're not going to be able to do that without understanding that I have something to be thankful for

And therefore it's worth giving this thing up so I can receive that at a later time

We have to be thankful beforehand

Before we get it

point number two

Thankfulness comes before joy

Now we see this in our focus passage a little bit and this is probably one of the biggest hiccups

We have as believers is that we think that

If god will do this for me if he will bless me with this if he will give me this if I

Experience this then I will give him thanks then I will worship him then I will believe in him and the truth is

Nothing could be further from that truth

That's completely false

Thankfulness brings joy joy does not bring thankfulness

That's a very worldly view of things because here's the truth

We as people are completely unsatisfiable

How many of you had a good meal this weekend?

How many of you woke up hungry this morning

How many of you like to collect stuff

How many of you are completely satisfied with your collection

A few of you

But most of the time our desire is I want more

I won't like you you see that's why you see people with car collections. They'll have hundreds of cars

There'll be people who just buy how I like houses, so they'll just buy houses

That's why there's people out there who have more money than entire countries in the world do

And they still want more they're still doing business deals because there's never enough

We as people will never be satisfied with what the world can give us with what we can receive

From a physical perspective there needs to be an attitude in our hearts that we are

thankful for what god has done in us and what god is going to do for us

And it's not based off of situation

in circumstances

And that sounds really weird coming

If you're listening and viewing this from a worldly perspective

But this is why there's passages of scriptures and we use this a couple weeks ago first thessalonians 5 16 through 18

Where it says always be joyful never stop praying be thankful in all circumstances for this is god's will for you who belong to crash

Jesus that is not a natural thing

It's not natural

to to to live in the situations of the world and be thankful in all these circumstances because there's a lot of things in the world

it's just

That we don't want to be thankful for right

Like we're not excited about a lot of things that happen in our life

But we're called to be thankful in all circumstances and that's what christ's will is for us

And it's not god's will for us to just sit back and to wait on him because a lot of people will sit back and they'll say

God if you'll do this

Show yourself to me and then i'll believe in you

Prove yourself to me and then i'll put my faith in you then i'll serve you then i'll surrender do this

And then i'll be thankful

And that's the worst attitude that we can have we've been in the book of mark on wednesday night

So we've had some really good discussions the past few weeks

And one of the things that we got to see is is that every time the religious leaders came up and they demanded a miraculous sign

From jesus give us a sign

Prove to us who you are. You know what jesus did

Walked away

He would not give it to them. He refused

And he said I will not entertain

the demands

of petty people

But what you find is is you have the sick the broken the uneducated the poor

The rich the powerful anybody who came to jesus and said jesus son of david messiah

christ

Have mercy on me. Will you do this? Please do this for me

He healed and performed miracles and fed and did everything for these people who already believed in him

That's the type of god that we serve

And it's not a matter of us coming to christ this morning say well god if you do this then i'll thank you

Then i'll praise you then i'll worship you know, it's a matter of god. I love you

I'm going to praise you i'm going to thank you in all circumstances

And I believe and trust in you that you'll bring things into my life that i'll be thankful for it's through faith

thanksgiving

is a

aspect of faith

And we are called to give thanks first

And then the thankfulness and all the things that come with it come through faith

It's very counter to what we can accept as believers because it doesn't make sense, but thankfulness comes before joy

And the last one is is that thankfulness comes before peace

Peace is uh kind of a funny thing

You know

We all want peace

In fact, you don't even have to be spiritual to want peace

Like you can you can ask a lot of people around the world if they claim no faith in anything at all

And they'll tell you like one of the most valuable things one thing they would really like in their life is just to have peace

And we don't really know what that is. We just want it, right?

Like it's nice and so it's kind of like we don't know what peace is but on a day we find it

Like we'll just find it randomly

I don't know if you've ever been doing something and then all of a sudden it's like everything works perfectly

And it just falls into place like that was so easy

That was great. That was nice. I wish every single day was like that. I wish every job was like that

I wish everything just worked the way it's supposed to right

Because you know 99 percent of time like it's like if anything goes wrong

It's going to go wrong

And it's a headache and it's frustrating and like you get up to come to church on sunday morning

It's supposed to be a good day. You're supposed to be worshiping you end up fighting

Morning

We did that this morning at our house we did it was good good time

Peace is something we all want

but I think our perception of what peace is is

skewed

It's misunderstood of the peace that god gives

And in our focused passage in philippians 4 verses 6 through 7

Philippians 4:6–7

When he says don't worry about anything instead pray about everything tell god what you need tell god what you need

Thank him for all he has done

and then

Notice that word then you will experience god's peace

Which exceeds anything we can understand

His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus

And the peace that god's all offers us

What he is able to give us is so much better than anything we can comprehend or understand

That's why no matter what happens in the world no matter how bad it may be

We can still have peace and we can still have joy in the worst situations of the world

When everybody else is just miserable

And that's why you can look at somebody else in the world

It looks like they have everything like it's just been given to them like

They have everything they need. They have plenty of money. They have plenty of this they have plenty of that and they're miserable

Because it's not an attitude of what you have or what you don't have or what you've been blessed with what you haven't been blessed with

Peace comes from god alone

It does not come from stuff. It does not come from the world

You know one of the things that we talk about is in staff meeting we meet every tuesday

And we have these discussions like okay, how's ministry going? How's how's this going anything that?

That we should be aware of what's going on. What's good? What's bad and like the church has seasons

Like it just does

And there there are seasons of calmness and peace and it's like everything's going smooth

And we're very thankful for those moments and we say okay things are going good. Keep your eyes open because something's coming

There's a season that's coming

And then the rough season comes

And when the rough season comes you have to be prepared for that rough season you have to be prayed up

thankful ready

praying to god and then understanding in those moments during those rough times that

God is working and moving especially during the bad times

During the worst and hardest times. That's when god's working and moving the most

And that's typically what leads back into the good seasons

the smooth things

when god works and moves

And guys this morning as we talk about having a spirit of thankfulness

You cannot neglect how important it is

To be thankful to god

Before you're expecting all of these other things to come into your life

Thankfulness is an aspect of faith

That we have to step out into and to begin to thank god

Begin to surrender to him so that we can experience all the other wonderful things that god has for us

And it's not about things of the world

It's not about what you can accomplish what you can acquire what you can do inside the world. It's about what god is going to do for you

spiritually and in eternity

Now I want to finish up today's

sermon with a passage from 2nd Corinthians chapter 4 verses 14 to 18 because

Corinth was so bad paul had to do two letters

And

The second book they were worse off than they were in the first book

and

Look at what paul says to him

He says we know that god

Who raised the lord jesus will also raise us with jesus and present us to himself together with you

So paul is including them

In this eternal reward this eternal goal. This is what they're shooting for

In verse 15 says all of this is for your

benefit

And as god's grace reaches more and more people

There will be great thanksgiving and god will receive more and more glory

There should be

great thanksgiving in our hearts

For god to receive more and more glory

And in verse 16 he continues on says this is why we never give up

We cannot give up

Because life is going to be hard

The lord is going to test you

People are going to test you the lord is going to test you

Have you noticed my servant jobe the most righteous man in all the earth?

Satan says yeah, but you give him everything he wants you take it away. He'll curse your name god says, okay

Take it away

See what he does

The lord will test you

He will allow things in life to get hard because god wants to see and more importantly god god wants you to see where your heart is

God wants you to see the things that need to be worked on and improved god wants us to see

The things that we need to grow in

And paul says that's why we never give up

Though our bodies are dying and our spirits are renewed every single day for our present troubles are small and they won't last very long

Think about this man

Think about this for a second

Think about the the things in life that you one time thought were a really big deal

That you look back on you say oh that wasn't that big of a deal

I thought it was it wasn't that big of a deal

Like I can tell one of my kids. No, you can't have that cook now

You need to drink water first and they'll fall on the floor and die

And as you hit in your 30s and 40s like yeah, I probably need to drink water

And you still don't

But you know you should

As a teenager, there's so many things that you're going through in life that seem like such a big deal and they are because that's your life

And then you look back as an adult in your psych

That wasn't as big as what I thought it was going to be

And the same thing your 20s and 30s and 40s

And I know I'll look back in my 50s and and look back at right now and think

Things that I thought were a big deal now won't be that big of a deal then

It's the same exact thing

from a spiritual perspective

everything that looks so big and so

intimidating and so

Terrorizing in this world when we get

Do that threshold on that other side in eternity? We'll look back and say that was nothing. It was absolutely worth it

Everything over there was so small and minuscule

Before our present troubles are small and they don't last very long

You sing that song a while ago

and it said

Let your time here be a testimony. Let your time be a story. You're only allotted so much time on this earth

Everything here is temporary

yet

those

troubles

That are temporary

And they don't last very long they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever

So we don't look at the troubles that we can see now rather

We fix our gaze on the things that cannot be seen for the things we now

We see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever

And that's what the heart of thankfulness is from

It's not a matter of the things that you can put your eyes on don't get me wrong because

When you gather this week and you get to hang out with family and you get to eat which by the way ladies

Thank you

If you're a man this morning, I encourage you to do this. Thank thanksgiving is awesome

I look forward to thanksgiving because I probably don't have to do anything

It's great

Going to something that you don't have to do anything for is wonderful

Thank the women

Take care of them do something special for them. Tell them how much you appreciate them for preparing for thanksgiving day

But as you celebrate thanksgiving

um

Be thankful for what god has done

We do have a lot of things in this world to be thankful for

But man true thankfulness does not come from the physical things that we have because they can be gone like that

You know one of the amazing things about job is is that when god did test him

And he allowed everything to be ripped from job not just his stuff not just his finances

Not a service even his own children. He tore his robes. He sent a pile of edges

He said the lord is given and lord taketh away. Thanks be to the lord

That's an attitude

That is eternally

significant

Because everything in this life could be gone like that. It's it's temporary

The troubles the frustrations even the good things. It's all temporary. It's all going to fade true

Thanksgiving comes when we look forward to what is to come

And we know that no matter what happens

It's all worth what's

going to come

That we can be thankful even if we have nothing and it's the worst thing ever in this life

We have something to be thankful for on the other side and that's really difficult

It's really difficult to rationalize that from a human perspective

That's something only guy can help us to do but that's the attitude that we're called to have as believers

We must fix our eyes on eternity when you look at paul and the other apostles

They were not thankful for what they were receiving in this life

They were rotting

And they were suffering

And they were literally dying for what they believed that was to come

And that's what they were thankful for

That's why they said I can be thankful in all circumstances here because this is temporary and I know what's to come is eternal

And it's worth it

That's why we can be thankful

That's going to be the difference maker and the attitude for you as a believer and me as a believer

Is the attitude of focusing on the eternity to come

And not what's on here in this world to truly be thankful to god

Let's pray

Father thank you so much for the opportunity to be here today

Thank you for your love and mercy

Thank you for your grace

And father I pray this morning that you would help us to

Have spirits of thankfulness in our hearts

Obviously we want to be thankful for the worldly blessings you give us but god help us more importantly to be thankful for what is to come

If our focus and her eyes

If our life our goals our dreams our ambitions lie within you and the eternity that you offer

Lord we can be thankful and excited and have joy and peace in the midst of any of those things

That's why we can love people who don't deserve to be loved

Because we know we have something so much better on the other side

Help us to put our hope and faith and thankfulness in that

And in that it will translate into being thankful in this life as well

Lord, we love you today and we give you this time. We ask all this in jesus name. Amen