The Gift of Thanksgiving

So good to jump in this morning as we're going to talk about Thanksgiving.

So I studied up a little bit on gratitude this week.

Back in June, Modern Health, they studied the mental health of well-being of Americans in year 2020.

Okay, so mental health of us in 2020.

That's an interesting study.

As you would guess it, not all great news.

Stress is higher than ever in 2020.

Makes sense.

And yet, this is what's so interesting, and yet we're more thankful than we used to be.

Isn't that interesting?

Isn't that interesting?

So stress is up, but 75% of the people that were polled said they have had an increase of gratitude for health, relationships, or the lives they've built.

Here's what we also know, we've learned this before.

The Cebral Cortex Journal.

I know that's your light reading before you watch The Bachelor at Night or whatever.

I'm into The Crown, season four came out, thankful for that.

But some light reading, the Cebral Cortex journal, and what we learn from them is that expressing gratitude actually makes us happier.

So, like just the practice of expressing gratitude.

So whether you say it to someone or you speak it aloud or you journal that, the act, the act of gratitude actually has power in and of itself, and that's because of how God built us.

Because gratitude stimulates the hypothalamus, which is the part of the brain that regulates stress.

So when you're grateful, like just when you practice gratitude, right?

Like maybe you're not like 100% full of gratitude, but just practicing gratitude actually regulates stress.

And then it also ties into the ventral tegmental area, which is the reward circuitry in our brain.

And so the act of practicing gratitude not only regulates stress, but it actually produces a sensation of pleasure.

So as we are practicing gratitude, the act itself, our brains rewire and produce pleasure and regulate stress for us.

So we're not only, not only is God like guiding us toward Thanksgiving and a life of thanksgiving, but He created us, He created our bodies to reap great reward for being thankful, for practicing being thankful.

There's a story in Luke chapter 17, it's about a group of lepers.

Luke 17 · chapter mention

It's one of the great stories in the scriptures about thankfulness.

Leprosy was this horrible disease.

It was awful.

Leprosy attacks nerve cells, so the cells don't work properly together, and the body parts they go numb, and so people overuse body parts without realizing it, hurting themselves, they don't heal properly, or the body parts just actually rot, fingers rot, noses, ears.

So it disfigures the body.

So back in biblical times, the way that they dealt with this is they isolated the people, right?

So the biblical context was lepers were socially isolated, right?

Anybody have to isolate themselves for COVID for 10 days or 14 days, and you thought that was bad, right?

Like you weren't even disfigured.

I mean, this is a physical disfigurement where you are in pain perpetually.

And then you're socially isolated.

It creates a lot of self-hatred.

You live outside the city in these different leper camps, and then it was so bad.

If you came near healthy people, the healthy people would start yelling out, unclean, to let all the healthy people know an unhealthy, unclean person was nearby.

So that's the context when we jump into Luke 17 and we read the story about Jesus interacting with people who are hurting.

Verse 11 says this.

On the way to Jerusalem, he was passing, so as Jesus was passing along between Samaria and Galilee.

As he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices, saying, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.

When he saw them, he said to them, Go and show yourselves to the priests.

And as they went, they were cleansed.

Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, he turned back, praising God with a loud voice.

And he fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks.

Now he was a Samaritan.

Then Jesus answered, We're not ten cleansed.

Where are the nine?

Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?

And he said to him, Rise and go your way.

Your faith has made you well.

So ten are healed.

Right?

Maybe you know the story.

Ten are healed, fingers grow back, noses grow back, ears come back, disfigurement goes away.

The point for us is that we've had a healing.

We've had a healing.

They don't have to be isolated anymore.

They can return to their families.

They can come out of that isolation.

Ten are healed, nine take off.

So where where'd they go?

Well back to their families, right?

I mean, I mean they're free, right?

Like they go to the market, they can buy stuff, right?

I mean, they can hug people and kiss people.

I mean, they can they can do so much, like all of a sudden they've been set free.

And isn't that easy?

And that's the point Jesus is making here, is isn't that easy?

It's so easy to just receive the gifts that we receive from God.

Now, whether that be just your right standing with God, the forgiveness of sins because our sins put upon the cross, and we don't have to live in guilt, the guilt trip we talked about, or shame, and that we're given Jesus his righteousness, so we don't have to be on a performance or merit-based spirituality, how freeing that is.

How easy it is to receive all of this grace and just not practice pausing and praising and thanking God.

And that's point number one.

I only have one point.

So maybe your life's a wreck this morning.

I mean, that's very possible.

I mean, I know that.

I realize that perhaps the last six months, eight months, one year, one month has just been awful, and you showed up here.

You're like, the last thing I want to hear is a sermon on Thanksgiving.

Well, you can be thankful that's a one-point sermon.

I mean, that's what you can be thankful for this morning.

Point number one is this Thanksgiving is the life bolstering spiritual practice.

And it is, it is all of that.

It is life bolstering.

That's what we know.

Spiritual practice to remember, praise, and thank God.

I love G.K.

Chesterson's quote.

I always remember it this time of year.

You say grace before meals, all right.

But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and the pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing, and grace before I dip the pen and the ink.

And that's just a way to say that thankfulness doesn't have to be isolated into, you know, a five-minute devotional in the morning.

Thankfulness can be just a way of life.

A spiritual practice that just becomes a way of life of being thankful for little things and big things, amidst while circumstances are not always great.

And so for us, I know maybe that could mean, perhaps that could mean writing a letter of gratitude to somebody you haven't ever thanked before.

Or maybe this means to start a gratitude journal to God where you write out, God, thank you for this and this and this and this, and just practice that gratitude, right?

Maybe it just means to use your drive time, which is usually filled with stress.

Let's just regulate that stress with some gratitude.

Right?

It's a turning of your heart from everything that we tend to focus on that's wrong and what I don't have and I want.

To being grateful for the goodness of what is already present in our hearts and our lives.

Psalm 100.

Shout for joy to the Lord all the earth, worship the Lord with gladness, come before him with joyful songs, know that the Lord is God.

It is he who made us and we are his.

We are his people, the sheep of his pasture.

Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise, give thanks to him and praise his name.

For the Lord is good and his love endures forever.

His faithfulness continues through all generations.

So now to the people hearing this, uh, that psalm, they would hear it, they would sing it.

The people singing this, these were an ancient agricultural people.

So to them, there was always a connection between a pasture and being okay.

Because a pasture was the provision for their lives.

It was the image of safety and provision.

So a pasture for us is the image of God's heart of care and sufficient supply for us.

This is the time of year I love to go to the pastures out at Kinesaw Park.

Here's a picture of me and my dog brother out at the park.

And this is one of those mini fields, one of these mini fields.

It's actually the field right behind Al's house that leads right up to his backyard.

A beautiful pasture field.

And I go there to walk, right?

And this time of year is perfect, leaves are changing, there's no humidity, right?

And I go there to walk, to remember, right?

To remember that I am cared for and supplied for.

And I need that practice, trust me, because I can focus on everything that's wrong, and I can focus on everything I want and I don't have yet.

I'm very good at that.

I need the spiritual practice to remember I am already cared for, already supplied for, already have the forgiveness of sins, already have my righteousness.

This week my mentor texted me this.

For every one inquiry about the election or the virus today, I mean you're doing that.

You're doing that?

Overwatching the news, overchecking, like there's gonna be some update you didn't realize, you know.

For every one inquiry about the election or the virus today, preach the gospel to your heart five times and sing three Christmas songs.

On second thought, forget about inquiring about the election and the virus, just robustly enjoy the other two.

So, more gospel, more belovedness, more Christmas songs.

That's my that's pastoral advice.

More Christmas songs.

Like we can get our news in about five to eight minutes a day, and then preach the gospel to yourself, rest in it, more Christmas songs.

Christy's gonna come and flesh out, it's my wife Christy, she's gonna come and flesh out some implications and applications of thankfulness into our lives.

Well, of course, my lead-in is gonna have to be about brother as well.

Um, when I read that verse with it Russ just shared in Psalms 100, and it says, We are his people.

And I think as a mom, my people are people that stay in my house.

Whenever I talk about my house, I'm like, these are my people, my little people, my big people, and then I have my furry people.

And we all have those furry people, a lot of us do.

And I think um I love to read there's some kid counselors in Nashville that have helped me a ton in parenting.

They're called Raising Boys and Girls, and it's Daystar Ministry, and they are huge advocates for parents having pets for their kids, and I was so curious about this because they hit home about it over and over again.

And I grew up with a cat, but it was not the best cat, and so I didn't really understand what these counselors were talking about because it wasn't a pleasant experience for me.

And but Russ is a dog person, we got a dog, and I began to realize what it is, and that it's actually not just for kids, and there is an unconditional love that comes from a pet, of welcome, and what they look at when they're talking about for kids and with counselors is they talk about like the kinesthetic of actually the touching of the pet, which I see with my girls a lot, the responsibility, which I don't see so much with my girls being fostered, and just even just the empathy that's evoked of taking care of something, and I've seen that.

Um, but I think more than anything for me as an adult, and as I talk to just other adults with pets, is you know, we wake up with bad breath, um, we walk in the door from a day where our behavior wasn't awesome at work, and I have an hour-long commute to and from work, and um, sometimes that's me shaking it off, but there is nothing like the unconditional love of a furry person coming to you right when you walk in the door, and um I just can't help but relate that to the unconditional love of God for us, and it's just this really small, probably not awesome example of how He is consistently pursuing us and loving us despite ourselves, just like that furry person can do.

And um, five years ago, I was in grief counseling on a regular basis.

I lost my mentor suddenly, and then my grandparents who I love dearly, and one of my huge takeaways from the grief counseling is and I would go in and I'd say, I can't stop thinking about them all day long because so much of my relationship with my grandparents was in the kitchen.

And my granddaddy always had chicken salad every time I came to his house, even if I called him and we lived an hour away, it was always there, it was in a yellow bowl, and there was paprika on top.

And I so I I now own that yellow bowl, and I make his chicken salad.

And then the curtains that hang in our window were the curtains that hung in their kitchen window, and it was just a welcoming place.

But as I was going through the grief with them and my friend who had given us our Christmas stockings, you know, I was high- I was feeling flooded by this grief and these tiny memories all day long of them, and it just felt like this huge cloud and burden that I would carry every day.

I just lived in a cloud of grief.

And my counselor helped me work through to welcome those memories rather than to push them away, to be grateful for the remembering of that when I see my grandmother's curtains, that I would embrace that memory of the love of her kitchen.

And when I mix brownies in my granddaddy's bowl, that it would be a treasure that we had a type of relationship to share recipes.

So instead of me pushing it away, that it would be like an act of remembrance.

And that's just something I've taken with me and going back to just Thanksgiving and us, I think, you know, in Scripture, I looked it up and the word remember is in Scripture over 160 times.

And there's a little bit of relief in that for me of he didn't expect us to hear it one time and for it to completely soak in.

And that he knew that we would forget, that we would forget the sweetness of that our sins are fully covered and we are fully forgiven, and that we would forget to sit in the beauty of the grace of the gospel on a daily basis.

And so through Scripture, he's teaching us how to remember over and over and over again, and and teaching us that we need to remember.

And so I think for me on a practical side is that shows me I need to set up all these safeguards to remember.

And that might look like worship music in the morning, and it might look like getting up before my girls and just sitting in the quiet with my coffee.

That might look like a walk, that might look like just friendships that are that I have to be intentional about, that that friend I know is gonna encourage and remind me of the gospel and the things that I'm thankful for.

But I feel like scripture talking over and over and over again about remembering and giving us the Holy Spirit to help us remember is just another sign for us that we are gonna forget the good news of the gospel.

And so it we need to set up these different guards in order to help ourselves remember.

You know, I say all the time to my girls, like, I'm prone to wonder, Lord, I feel it, you know, and so because I'm prone to wonder, I need help to remember.

I'm not gonna do that on my own.

And just to finish up, um, so as I said, I have my hour commute to work in back, I work for a family, my family business.

And um, one of my favorite parts as a mom with three little kids is that it's an hour in the car by myself.

And um, so if you know me, I am a podcast lover.

I love a podcast, people send me podcasts, I'm ready to listen to it.

And so um Russ's cousin actually sent him and I a podcast with Tim Ferris, which if you've ever listened to the Tim Ferris podcast, they're like incredibly long.

And so I was excited to listen to it.

But one thing that I got that I think is fascinating that he was using in regards to business was a quote where he said, peace does not come through understanding, but it comes through acceptance.

And I really, as I began to think about that, I was like, that applies hugely spiritually within our lives.

Of we can fight for understanding, and this can be applied to grief, it can be applied to just even our current situation, but we so often, you know, kind of pull our bows up to fight for understanding about something, about why that person did that or whatever.

But that actually true peace comes from us accepting and accepting what's happened, accepting what the Lord's done for us, and just remembering is that practice of us accepting that goodness of what He has poured out on us.

So I'm gonna pray and then we'll have our time of communion.

Dear God, we thank you for your kindness to us in Jesus, that you call us your people, Lord, and that you would, in your kindness with your Holy Spirit, continue just to open up our ears, that we would have a greater awareness that we are your people and that you are for us and that you are pursuing us and that we are not alone.

We thank you for the community that you've given us, the church that you've given us, the people surrounding us.

Would we would you allow us just to be great stewards of the remembering that you're putting before us?

In Jesus' name I pray.

Amen.