The Life Of Gratitude

Wave those Bibles around, make Jesus glad and the devil mad.

Even though we can't be together tonight, personally I just believe that God sees all those Bibles and let's say this together Say Heavenly Father, I indeed am grateful for all you have done for me and for all that I have been able to gain through prayer.

You are truly a faithful God.

Tonight, I'll be taught the Word of God.

Holy Spirit, shine your light on the Word and give me understanding, so this Word becomes food for my faith and nourishment for my spirit.

In Jesus' name.

Amen, amen, praise God and let's.

I've got several verses.

We'll start with the Hebrews, chapter 13 and verse 15.

Hebrews 13 · chapter mention

And it says by him, that is, by Jesus.

Therefore, let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually.

That is the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to his name, or, you know really, the word fruit there means the calves of our lips.

In other words, it's like a sacrifice in the Old Testament, when they would.

They would slaughter a calf and offered as a praise offering and a thank offering to God.

Well, we don't have to kill animals.

We can.

You know our lips.

Giving thanks to his name is the same.

There's a wonderful aroma that rises to heaven when we give thanks to his name, all right.

And then in Colossians, chapter three, verse 15.

And let the peace of God, god, rule in your hearts to the which also you're called in one body, and be ye thankful, verse 17.

And whatsoever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the father by him.

And um, and so be ye thankful.

That word be means continually and habitually be thankful, be being thankful.

It literally means be be thankful.

It literally means be being thankful.

It's something that we ought to be continually thanking God.

And then, of course, ephesians, chapter five.

It says essentially the same thing, but I want to read it to you because we want to emphasize verse 18.

If Ephesians five, 18, and be not drunk with wine where's an excess?

But be filled, or be being filled, with the spirit, speaking to yourselves and Psalms and hymns, and singing and making melody in your hearts to Lord, verse 20.

Giving thanks always for all things under God and the father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And so tonight I wanted to share a message entitled the life of gratitude.

The life of gratitude, you know, we're all consider ourselves people of faith, the household of faith, the just shall live by their faith, and faith without gratitude is empty.

I mean faith and gratitude always go together.

I mean because if you believe God, then you must be grateful, you must give thanks, it's, it's not even a question.

And so, uh, if our life is a life of faith, it has to be a life of gratitude and, uh, being grateful, being thankful versus doing, being versus doing.

It's a theme in the Bible quite a bit, especially in the New Testament, that we are grateful.

That's who we are, our name is grateful, our name is thankful, and that's just part of our DNA, it's, it's something we are not just simply we, something that we do when we think about it.

Uh, because it is who we are, it's something that's just in integral with our being and, uh, being full of gratitude.

So you continually and habitually thankful, uh, full of gratitude.

That's our life, and I think you know from what we've been through in this year.

I mean, I know there have been victories, great victories, but there's also been huge challenges.

I think, really historic challenges in our nation and in our world that we have faced the COVID pandemic and then the election fraud, I mean there's no question about it.

I don't think there's any question that we've had a fraudulent election.

We're believing God to correct it.

I mean, now's the time to correct these criminal acts that have been perpetrated all over our nation and criminal acts by news media and social network platforms to put their finger on the scale and to prevent people from doing a genuine search and finding out information they need to make a decision on the election.

And, pastor, this is all negative.

Know, in the middle of all, that we ought to be grateful to God, that we know it, that we haven't had the wool pulled over our eyes, that we are not some people that are uninformed.

No, thank God, we have the Holy Ghost living on the inside and God is moving on our behalf.

Amen.

We have so much to be thankful for, not just on Thanksgiving, but every day.

A life of gratitude.

It's our default position.

I mean, you know, like if somebody touches you, you know, I don't know my granddaughter Anna.

She went out and she her job is to pick the oranges off her orange tree, so she picked a grahamen pop and orange and that thing was so soft and then when I peeled it, I mean it was so juicy.

I mean, you know, when you're just peeling that orange and taking it apart, well, juice just runs everywhere.

You know, and that's kind of the way praise is.

We ought to be so filled with praise that when somebody just touches us, we just we ooze gratitude and thanksgiving and praise, you know, and what that does is it gets our perspective and a higher perspective.

You know, when you're always on goal to praise God, your perspective is with God.

You have a God perspective in everything.

In other words, you're never hopeless, you're never at a loss.

When you have that default position of praise, you're at the top of perspective.

You're looking at things the way God does.

He's never intimidated by trouble.

He's never, he's never nervous about anything that happens.

He always has the answer.

That's the way we ought to be with praise.

We may not know the answer, but we know who the answer is and we can praise him no matter what.

And of course then that lets us into more power, because when God can trust us to thank him in all circumstances, he's gonna give us more power to deal with these situations that arise.

And then the last one is that then God can trust us with greater prominence.

He's gonna use us on the cutting edge, out there, where people are seeing us for who we are and we're examples to them.

And I think more and more, when Christians are filled with the Holy Spirit and filled with gratitude and filled with a positive outlook on life, people are run to you to find out what it is that you're seeing in today's day.

So you know, I was looking at some synonyms and Rosay's Thesaurus synonyms, you know, of the word grateful, and grateful synonym is thankful, appreciative, indebted, see that's.

You know you wouldn't think indebted, exactly, but that's exactly.

It's a synonym of grateful, indebted, obliged, obligated.

Again, you wouldn't necessarily put those words together, but this is English, the English language.

Beholding, that's kind of an old term, beholding In someone's debt, say.

In other words, in someone's debt.

I think about the Godfather when he was talking to the undertaker at the beginning of the movie and he said you were afraid to be in my debt, you didn't want anything to do with me, you were afraid to be in my debt.

And he said but you should have come to me with you know, and then you're my friend and then people will fear you.

You know, when you're full of gratitude toward God, I mean, people start to look at you differently, because they realize you're on speaking terms with the most high amen.

And so you know, we talk a lot about being free, yet we ought to bind ourselves to the Father and our Lord and master and savior, jesus Christ.

We ought to be beholden to them, we ought to be obligated to them, and we could never pay them back, or we should never quit trying.

I mean, it ought to be something that's in a soul richly our gratitude, our indebtedness, our obligation.

No, we can't pay them back, but that doesn't mean we don't try, it doesn't mean that we're not thinking about it all the time.

And so let's look at the antonyms.

Antonyms are the opposites, and these are kind of can shed some light too on our life of gratitude.

That's what I'm talking about tonight, the life of gratitude, not just Thanksgiving Day, but it ought to be our default position.

And to them for grateful, ungrateful, unappreciative, uh, here's one entitlement have you ever known anybody that just was entitled?

See, they're ungrateful, they're not Grat, they don't have a gratitude, they don't have a sense of gratitude about anything, they just think they deserve it all.

And that's, that's the opposite of great, grateful, uh, demanding, dissatisfied, fault, finding forgetful.

Ooh, forgetful, that's.

You know, that happens sometimes.

Yeah, you ever forget to write it, write a thank you note.

You know, let's, let's always remember.

Um, nobody writes notes anymore.

I write notes every week.

I like to write notes to some of our members when I know that they give an unusual gift.

I mean, it's just part of my, you know.

You know where I got that from Dotyosting.

Dotyosting taught me to write a personal thank you note.

I remember when I first got saved, we started going to Lakewood and back in those years, uh, the giving envelopes had four boxes.

You had pastor, and Doty was one box and she, and then you had missions, you had building fun and general funds.

You had four boxes.

You could divide your tithes any way that you chose.

Well, you know, I, I Gladys and I thought about it and we always wanted brother Osteen to never worry about money.

We wanted to bless him personally.

We wanted to make sure that all that he would never have to think about money.

And we knew he was a wealthy man already.

We knew that.

But I mean, we didn't know him personally, but we knew he was.

But we weren't begrudging that, we just want our part.

We wanted to bless him and so we'd check his box.

We'd give a lot of our time and, and I mean I had a post office box in spring in those years and so one of my my things that I did every day was that I drive from my house and drive over to old town spring, go to the post office, walk over to my peel box and on about Tuesday I would open that box after Sunday service and I mean there would be a thank you note handwritten, signed by Doty, thanking us for our gift.

And you know, I've just carried on that tradition here and I like to write notes, but people don't do that anymore, hardly.

I mean we ought to be, we ought to write thank you notes when people bless us.

We ought to, we ought to express it in a note.

But at any rate, forgetful is opposite of grateful.

Grumbling, oblivious, self-centered, selfish, thankless All of those words sounds exactly like Israel in the wilderness.

It sounds just like them.

I'm in that part of the Bible right now.

I'm in Exodus, and so it's kind of fresh on my mind reading about all of the things they griped about, Talk about ungrateful and so the life of gratitude.

I wanted to give you three things here tonight to check your gratitude gauge.

If you got a gratitude gauge, maybe it would be a check engine light.

Remember check engine lights.

You know, if you got a check engine, modern cars have a check engine light on, and so when that light comes on, you pay attention and you think, uh-oh, what's wrong?

Well, we ought to have some kind of a light that comes on when we're lacking in gratitude and so we can go over some things.

Just three things.

There's probably many more, but I just want to emphasize these three things for you tonight, on Thanksgiving Eve.

Maybe you can think about those tomorrow when you're with your family or who you're ever going to celebrate Thanksgiving with.

So check your gratitude gauge.

Number one when bad news comes, when bad news comes, what is your immediate response?

And again, most people, they don't have a default position of praise, they have a default position of fear or they have a default position of, you know, aggravation.

Bad news comes and, uh, you know we, you know some things that happen to us are just life.

It's not.

It's not the devil.

The devil can't.

You know, the devil didn't give you a flat tire.

Do you really think he's standing out on the freeway with a nail in his hand, he's going to stick a nail in your tire.

I mean, it's just life.

A couple of weeks ago, gladys came back in the house.

She was going to go run an errand and she said a car won't start.

I went and uh, and so I got out there and and sure enough, it was dead, or a mackerel, her car and I got to thinking her car is three years old almost to the day.

That battery lasted three years and then it died, and it wasn't the devil, it just wore out.

And so I wasn't planning on taking care of that that particular day.

But that's what I had to do.

I'd pop the hood, you know, and I, you know, undid the, the bolts holding it in the strap and pulled it out of there and got skinned my knuckles and got grease all over my hands and put it in the back of my pickup tow rope, went down to the battery stored and changed it.

All.

That the whole thing took about two and a half hours.

I wasn't planning on doing that, but I was.

You know what.

I praised God that it didn't happen to her at the store or didn't strand her somewhere where it was going to be a whole lot harder to take care of and say things like that happened and a flat tire, a battery, a roof leak.

I mean these things happen to everybody.

I mean you know there's.

What is your response?

Is your response?

Gratitude?

And usually that's not until you renew your mind to how important praise is, and how important it is to praise God, not for the trouble, but in the trouble, because God is still worthy of our praise and he always gives us a way out.

I mean that's the way to praise him, to thank him, and so, and of course, even when the devil does attack us and the devil does attack us from time to time and you know my wife some of you might know that she fell last week and a week ago yesterday and broke her shoulder and she had been having some balance issues I consider that an attack from the enemy.

I believe the enemy attacked her balance again and it's been something that we've battled for a number of years, and so it wasn't good news.

When she fell, I heard her fall and I ran to her aid and certainly I was concerned, but I began to praise God when I realized that it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

There was no compound fracture and then later on, hours and hours later, it took for us to find out what the break was, where it was broken.

It happened to be the top of her left arm, right where it goes into the shoulder, and so it's called a broken shoulder.

But there was no displacement of bone and so there's no surgery needed.

And, oh, I tell you, I was so grateful.

But before that, before we got that, I knew that she had been spared a major, major injury.

I mean, she was conscious, she didn't hurt her head.

We've had two men in the hospital recently with brain bleeds because of falls and accidents, and so it could have been like that, it could have been worse for her, but so I praised God.

You know what I tell you we need to praise God when trouble comes.

We need to praise God during the trouble I think about.

One of the greatest examples is Acts, chapter 16, where Paul and Silas.

Acts 16 · chapter mention

You know, they were on their missionary journey, their first missionary journey together, and they, they have said, to go into Bathenian.

The spirit suffered them not, wouldn't allow them, and they were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia Minor.

And and so then they didn't move, they didn't go forward.

They waited for God's plan and then one night, paul had a dream and there was a Macedonian man come over here and help us.

And so they immediately started their journey toward Macedonia.

When they got there, they preached and many people were saved.

And and then they caused a controversy.

People got angry and many stripes were laid upon them.

They were thrown in the inner prison, their feet held in stocks, and, and the Bible says that midnight Paul and Silas prayed and sang praises, and it was so loud.

The prisoners heard them and the devil heard them and sent an earthquake to try to kill them.

And God invaded the earthquake and broke them out of jail, broke their feet out of the stocks, broke the cell doors open.

I mean, man talk about.

So praise is powerful, and so you have prayer and praise.

You know they prayed and they sang praises.

Let's not forget to always praise God when we pray.

We don't ever just ask God and then don't say thank you, and let's train ourselves to be filled with praise.

So check your gratitude meter, your gratitude gauge, when trouble comes.

All right, now here's a translation of our classmate Dr€bre 눈á treat you wrong when people treat you wrong.

I heard about a story and some of our own and some of our own members can testify to this fact.

But I heard of the story of a person who went to one of the states that's having a recount and they're witnesses of the recount.

You have to have one Republican, one Democrat and you have a judge and you go through the whole thing and then the judge looks at it and decides whether to, you know, throw the ballot out, and but there's a lot of confrontation and I heard the story today of a person that went to one of the I won't say name, the state, but she was confronted and ill treated and and so and she stood her ground because she was right.

It was wrong what they were doing.

They had they were trying to approve an illegal ballot and she wouldn't let it happen and she kept protesting and they kept bullying her to the point.

This is a good Christian woman.

She is not a confrontational person.

Most Christians aren't and the enemy knows it.

We're gonna have to get some thick skin and some tender hearts developed here the next while.

But anyway, she had to go to the restroom and cry and get herself pulled back together and she went back and held her ground again and then she went to one of the attorneys that was there and that was for working for the Republican Party and he said I'll take it from here in a couple hours.

He came back to her and said this was a key and this was the key, what you testified to.

We're gonna get you affidavit from you, but this is gonna help the lawsuit that we filed in this particular state.

Listen, folks, sometimes people treat you badly, especially right now if you're a Christian.

This is unprecedented in American history, because this is a Christian nation had channel 13 call and wanted to talk about that subject today.

Or people protesting Christmas well, we haven't heard it yet, but they, they probably will.

I mean, you know they've been throwing, you know burning and looting and pulling down statues and you know we're gonna be watching our church, we're gonna have our Christmas decorations up and nobody has the right to touch those.

Nobody has the right to take anything down.

They can differ with it, they can speak against it all they want, but they can't touch it because that's lawlessness and we will pursue whatever has to be pursued to stop it.

I'm just saying that out loud.

Let's get tougher and let's stand up on our hind legs and not allow these kind of things to keep going on.

But one people do treat you wrong.

Bible does have some things to say about it.

What can we do about it?

And we can still be people of praise, because God is not behind that ill treatment and he deserves to be praised no matter what's going on.

Amen, first Peter, chapter 2, verse 17.

1 Peter 2:17

Bible says honor all men.

That's one of the.

That's a challenge.

I have to confess it's one of my biggest challenges.

Honor all men, didn't say some men.

Honor all men, love the brotherhood.

I don't have any problem with that.

Fear God, that's check that one.

Honor the king?

Well, look, we don't have King, so we have elected officials, servants.

Be subject to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the forward.

For this is thank worthy.

Listen to this one.

There's a.

Here it is.

This is thank worry or the if a man for conscience toward God and there's grief suffering wrongfully.

For what glory is it if, when we were buffeted for our faults, you take it patiently.

But if, when you do well and suffer for you take it patiently, this is acceptable with God.

And now that's just talking about a one-on-one situation we can be patient doesn't mean that we have to be roadkill.

It doesn't mean that we need to lay down on the freeway and let the 18-wheeler run over us okay.

It just means on a personal basis, we don't have to enter into the ugliness, we don't have to treat someone with the same ugliness as we're being treated.

Why?

Because we honor all men.

We honor them because God made them, and we can separate that out doesn't mean we have to give in.

Are you with me now?

So, and then first Peter.

Chapter four talks about something similar in verse twelve, beloved.

Think it not strange, concerning the fiery trial which is to try you as though some strange thing happened to you.

But be sad, have some tears.

No, it says rejoice, but rejoice in as much as your partakers of Christ's suffering that when his glory shall be revealed, you may be glad also with exceeding joy.

If you be reproached for the name of Christ, happy or blessed are you, for the spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.

On their part he is evil, spoken of, but on your part he is glorified.

Isn't that good?

And see, these are not just normal ways to react.

I mean, I don't think anybody just starts off in their Christian walk by acting this way.

It's something that the Bible says to mature us and to get us the proper attitude.

And you know, if we have a attitude of gratitude, we can actually turn it all into gladitude.

I mean, that's what really?

Because the joy of the Lord is your strength.

When you let people get under your skin, you get all down and you get all intimidated by them and you start clenching your teeth where you're gonna miss the blessing.

Oh, I tell you, when you're reproached for the name of Christ, the Bible says you're blessed, happy are you.

The glory of God rests upon you.

Praise God.

I'd rather have the glory of God than the glory of man.

Amen.

So you know along, when people treat you wrong, there's a response.

Doesn't mean that we have to be victims, doesn't mean that we don't do anything about it, but it just means that we keep our attitude, an attitude of gratitude toward God and even gladitude, that we are blessed and nobody can say anything different about it.

And along these lines we need to give thanks also for those in authority in 1 Peter, chapter two, excuse me, 1 Timothy, chapter two.

And I bring this up because I believe we, you know, this election is not over and our president, trump, is still the president of this country and he's in office all the way through January, the 20th.

No matter what, he's still the president.

And so, 1 Timothy, chapter two, verse one, I exhort therefore that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions and giving of thanks giving of thanks See there, it is right there Giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all that are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceful life and all godliness and honesty.

And so I know that many of you are praying for our president, but let's add being thankful for him, let's praise God for him.

I know of no president in our history that has fought harder for us, and by himself, almost by himself.

I mean, he has had so little help from these politicians that are in Washington.

There's just a handful that have done very much at all.

And he has been betrayed.

He's been lied about.

He's had books written about him tell all, books that were filled with lies.

I mean, I can't even.

It's amazing what he's been able to accomplish.

And then now his attorneys have told him to be quiet.

I know it's gotta be hard for him to not say anything.

He's tweeting a little bit, but his attorney said look, we've got lawsuits being filed, you cannot get out there.

I know he wants to have a rally.

I know he wants to get out there and get people encouraged, but he is having to take a certain pathway and we have prayed for that pathway here at this church.

But one thing that maybe we haven't done enough of is praise God for our president and for all the elected officials.

Praise God for our governor.

You know I don't always agree with our governor, but we ought to praise God for him.

He said there's not gonna be any more shutdowns in this state.

You know, I thank God for that.

Let's thank God for our governor.

We're not like New York.

Can you imagine living in New York City and having people tell you that you can't have a Thanksgiving out in California?

If you have more than a few people, they're gonna shut your power off and your neighbors might call, and it's just ridiculous.

These people are gone, wacko.

Let's give thanks for the ones that we have over our part of the country, because we are blessed.

Check your gratitude gauge.

Amen.

Ha, ha, ha, ha ha.

Check your gratitude gauge.

And then the last one, oh, by the way, being a lax in these first two.

If your lax in praising God when bad news comes, if your lax in praising God when people treat you wrong, then you are gonna tend toward being a person of entitlement.

I mean, it's just automatic, you know, it's just a spiritual law.

When you air on the side of praise, then that's what you are, that's who you are.

But when you don't praise, then you become forgetful, you become entitled.

And don't we have enough people in America that feel entitled?

I mean, if there's ever been any kind of an epidemic or a pandemic, it's a pandemic of entitlement.

Ha ha, ha ha.

I mean, people feel entitled, you know, and really they ought to be glad they live in America.

So all I can say All right.

The last one about checking your gratitude gauge.

Check your gratitude gauge when you receive a blessing.

How are you when you receive a blessing?

And most of you say, oh, I'm good at that.

Well, how long are you?

Are you good at it for 10 minutes, one minute, 30 minutes, a few days?

I think about the 10 lepers that came to Jesus.

All of them had leprosy and he just simply said go show yourself to the priests.

In other words, act like you're healed.

And as they went, they were healed.

But then one came back and he happened to be a Samaritan and he fell on his feet and with a loud voice he praised Jesus.

He thanked him and Jesus said a curious thing.

He said well, weren't 10 cleansed?

But where are the nine?

Is there just this stranger to come back?

Just this stranger came back to praise me.

Where are the nine?

He was looking for the nine.

I mean, you know he was upset that they were ungrateful.

And only the Samaritan, which is another Bible instance where God begins to rebuke the Jewish people because he was their Messiah.

He came to seeking to save those that were lost, the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and they rejected him on just about every way that they could.

And so when you receive a blessing, let's not act like it was deserved.

Let's praise God.

Let's get a little crazy.

Praising God.

I mean, my goodness, I was listening to Jesse the planet.

So one time he came to Lakewood to give his testimony about being in heaven.

One time he just left his body and he went to heaven.

And you know how Jesse is.

He's talking about his foyer.

He said he went into his mansion.

He said, man, that thing had a foyer, that's an entry hall.

For those of you that maybe never heard of the word foyer, but anyway, he's from Louisiana.

So and he was talking about people that would you know he would come up to people in heaven, somebody he knew on earth, and he'd say, oh, praise God, and they praise God.

And he couldn't say praise God like he normally does on earth, because when he said it in heaven, whoever he said praise God to, would just I have a connection.

I mean, they would fall on the ground rolling and screaming, oh my God, howling, and they would just go wild, just wild up there, totally uninhibited.

That's the way we ought to be.

I mean, come on, let's be uninhibited in our praise.

And you know, colossians 3.15 says you know, be your thankful, be.

It ends that whole verse with be your thankful, be continually and habitually thankful.

We ought to be on ready to be thankful all the time, not just when good things happen, but especially when good things happen, and we, it ought to last a while.

I mean, we ought to think about that weeks later.

And, oh, I remember that, lord, you did that for me, thank you, thank you, you know, the more you're able to thank him, the more often things like that will happen I mean, I believe it just is a spiritual law the more isn't that the way it is with your own children.

When you see that they're grateful about something and they're not embarrassed to express their gratitude, doesn't it make you want to bless them even more?

And our heavenly father is better parents than we are.

So you know, thankful is my name and praising is my game, amen.

So the bottom line of this message is live a life of gratitude.

Be continually and habitually filled with praise.