The Mentality of the Thankful

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Happy Thanksgiving weekend.

Did y'all get enough to eat?

Good.

If you look around, we got our kids in here with us this morning.

All my kids.

Would you give me a wave?

All the kids in here, we all in, we're all over.

Very good.

Look, I tell the kids whenever I teach them, I need you to sit up nice and tall.

I need to see your big bug eyes.

And I need to see your lip going like this.

Come on.

Because the word of God is gonna teach this morning.

Philippians chapter 4.

Philippians 4 · chapter mention

Philippians chapter 4.

Philippians 4 · chapter mention

As we open, I wanted to read to you this uh letter I opened up again.

There was a girl who wrote her mother from college.

She said, Dear mom, sorry I haven't written any sooner.

My arm was broken.

I broke it, and my left leg too.

I jumped from the second floor of my dorm when we had a fire.

A gas attendant across the street saw the blaze and called the fire department.

I was in the hospital a few days.

Paul, the attendant, came to see me every day.

Paul and I plan to get married soon, mom.

As soon as Paul can get a divorce.

I'm doing fine and will write again as soon as I get a chance.

Love your daughter, Susie.

P.S.

Mom.

None of the above is true, but I did get an F in chemistry, and I just wanted you to receive the news with proper perspective.

We have much, church, to be thankful for this morning.

Let's get our perspective there.

I want to start and we'll read Philippians 4 4 and then we'll pray.

The first point as we start this morning is the mentality of praise.

Philippians 4, verse 4.

Philippians 4:4

It says, Rejoice in the Lord always.

Again, I say, rejoice.

Lord, we love you.

And God, we are thankful that this place is holy ground, that your word is a holy book.

Lord, and we reverence and respect that in this moment.

And God asked that you would speak and that you would get me and anyone else out of the way.

Lord, keep us free, God, from the enemy, from our thoughts, from distraction.

And God, we ask that your word would go forth with perfect peace.

God, draw our hearts to exactly what you would have us not to just take in this moment, but what to leave with.

And God, I pray that we would all leave here, making the choice to be mentally thankful.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Letter A this morning is this Praise begins in the mind.

Proverbs 23:7 says, As a man thinketh, so is he.

Proverbs 23:7

As a man thinks, how important that mentality must be, because it says, as you think, you are.

Shakespeare said, I think, therefore I am.

And so our thinking is very important.

In Philippians, in this book of the Bible, 16 times Paul writes or pens the word joy or rejoice.

You think something's important if the theme shows up that many times?

The word for rejoice is sharit, and it is plural, and it means getting caught up in the Lord.

He says, as if to say, we can rejoice in the Lord.

Rejoice in the Lord always.

And again I say rejoice.

He says, in the Lord we can rejoice.

And he repeats it one more time.

Right?

Have you ever yelled at your kids and then said it again, be quiet, I said, quiet.

He said, rejoice, and again I say, rejoice.

And it's, listen, the word is in the imperative.

That makes it obedience, to listen to it.

Hear me?

Rejoicing is not a mood.

It's an imperative.

He says, rejoice.

He commands that we rejoice.

It's a choice tying joy to a mental decision.

He's not just saying you can rejoice in the Lord always.

In the end of verse 2, look at what it says.

I implore Eodia and implore Syntach to be of the same mind in the Lord.

He's saying, he writes these names and he says, those who are in the Lord can rejoice.

If you're a Christian, a marker of your Christianity is your capacity for joy, is your capacity for thanks.

Whatever the conflict that Syntac and Yodia had here, they're Christians, they're leaders, and they labored with Paul, and he says, Let your joy be known.

When people meet up with you, they should know that you're joyful.

They should know that you're a Christian.

He says, Rejoice.

Well, how do we do that?

It's important that you don't miss verse 5.

He says, Let your gentleness be known to all man.

The Lord is at hand.

How, Pastor, can I do anything always?

That's interesting, right?

There's a couple of different verses like that in the scripture in Thessalonians.

You see, pray without ceasing.

And it says, Rejoice evermore.

Here it says, rejoice in the Lord always.

Well, how can I do anything always?

I heard a speaker one time say that thoughts are things, and as long as you are thinking, you can be doing, so I can be thinking, and therefore I can be praying.

So as long as I'm thinking, I can pray for Rebecca.

I can pray for Robert as I'm speaking to you because I can think.

She says, as long as I'm thinking, I can do something.

She says, rejoice always.

Well, how do I do something?

Not just that I can do something always, but how do I do that thing always?

Well, I wanted to give you a little visual, okay?

You see these?

Y'all got them.

This was at one desk.

Okay?

This is one desk in my study at home.

I just pulled them out, okay?

What do I got here?

I'm plugged in, right?

What are you plugged into?

Okay, how do you do something always is determined by what you're plugged into.

This is one, this is a good one, boy.

I got this is a three-piece, right?

Only things missing is the fries and the drink.

But there's the three-piece.

I got this cord, I got this cord.

Everything that I have is plugged into something for power.

I've got a laptop, I've got a phone, I've got music, I've got all of these things that I'm plugged into.

I want you to think about what you're plugged into.

Where's your power coming from?

What are these things that you're plugging into?

Where are they going?

They go into your senses, right?

You're listening to things, you're watching things, you're viewing things, you're using your senses with things.

He, God, is joy.

And to live right outwardly, consistently, you have to input the right data.

You have to have the right power cord.

Romans 12 2.

Okay, so as you think about what you're plugged into, Romans 12.2 says, be not conformed to this world, right?

What is your plug from this world?

You have a lot of opportunities to be plugged into things of the world.

What you put in your ears, listen to me, it does have an outcome with your feet and your hands and your actions.

What you plug into with your eyes, you have a lot of opportunity in this world to be conformed, right?

It says, be not conformed to this world, but instead be transformed.

Now, a lot of people aren't going to be transformed.

A lot of the world is going to be going on that broad path that the Bible talks about, that many are going.

And so he says, Don't be conformed like the rest of the world, but be transformed by the renewing of the spirit of your mind.

So this thanks, what we're plugged into, this power from thanks, comes from not conforming.

And there's lots, I said there's lots of opportunities to conform, right?

In this world, do we have the opportunity to conform to grumbling?

Anybody say amen, Pastor?

I got the opportunity.

I got the opportunity to complain in this world.

I've got the opportunity to be lustful.

I've got the opportunity to be prideful.

I've got the opportunity to joke crestfully.

I have all of these opportunities plugged into this world.

The way that my mouth speaks is a result of the things that I'm plugged into.

But Paul says, you want power, it depends on your power source.

Paul said, transformed.

And he said, how?

By the renewing, it's interesting, of the spirit of your mind.

John Piper said, your mind has what we call a mindset.

It doesn't just have the power to perceive, it also has a lean.

Your mind has a bent.

Your mind has a direction.

And so Paul said, be renewed in the spirit of your lean.

Y'all know that the things that are all around your mindset, what you're thinking about now, is a part of a bend that you've been bending.

You've been working at it.

Like Plato, you've been leaning into it and forming it and shaping all based on the things that are in your outlets.

And so your mind has a direction.

If you came in and you were complaining of this morning, it's because you've been working at it.

If you came in and you were joyful this morning, it's because you've been working at that.

What you've been working at and what you've been plugged into have an impact on how you're bent.

You have a lot of opportunities in the world to grumble, to complain.

You have a lean.

But he says, be renewed.

Well, what do we do about it, Pastor?

Help me there.

He says, be renewed in the spirit of your mind.

Titus 3.5 is the only other time in Scripture that this word renewal is used.

And it says, not by works of righteousness, but according to his mercy, he saved us through washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit.

Your lean, if you're leaning in a wrong direction, it's not been spiritual.

So your lean has to change into the spiritual so that physically things will change.

If your lean is off, it's because you need the Holy Spirit this morning.

You need to be washed in the Holy Spirit.

Well, how do we do that?

Well, let's continue.

Letter B.

Positivity is worthy of meditation.

Look at verse 8.

Anyone has a problem, and you've talked to me, and it's been a mentality thing, I've probably taken you to this scripture.

Okay, here's the gut check.

It says, as the heading in my Bible, meditate on these things.

It tells me, preacher, you're not smart enough to figure out what we need to do here, so I'm gonna tell you.

It says, Finally, brethren, let's take this slow.

Whatever things are true, whatever things are true, somebody say amen.

Whatever things are true, do you not review and view a situation over and over and get anxious and worried without really realizing or or defining what the truth was?

Well, I don't know what why did they look at me like that?

Well, they've probably been saying this to other people.

Well, you know what?

And we think and think about all the scenarios of why somebody's mad or this and that, and you know what?

What matters?

What is true?

What do you know that is true about the situation?

He goes on.

Whatever things are noble, whatever things are just.

What is right?

Okay, what do you know biblically is right about the situation?

It says what is just.

We don't have to think about all the what ifs, but what is just, whatever things are pure, okay?

When I talked about those gates, those outlets that you're let your mind come accustomed to, what you're viewing on screens, are they pure?

Are the words that you're listening to through music?

Okay, are those things pure?

Whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely.

Okay, you start getting down and you tell your thought, your pattern of thought, you know what?

That's not real lovely.

Whatever things are of a good report, whatsoever things are praiseworthy.

He says, think on those things.

So positivity is worthy of your meditation.

Understand that to meditate on the positive, you've got to bypass negative.

That's difficult, right?

It's difficult.

I knew a few Thanksgivings ago that it was gonna be real difficult for me to bypass all the desserts.

How many of you?

You raised your hand, you did too much.

You just you're here, you're confessing.

It's okay, you did too much.

Okay.

A few Thanksgivings ago, Heather made homemade yeast cinnamon rolls.

And um I knew in the positive, I could pa I could be positive and eat one, maybe eat two.

But after three days, I ate ten.

And that had a negative effect on this body.

Okay, it had a great effect on my tongue.

Our flesh can be drawn towards negativity.

Okay, so we have to bypass that.

It's real, it's real rare that somebody's in a corner being negative to their self.

Sometimes our thoughts go there, but we have to be drawn to the positive.

I thought about this.

Okay.

Our thought patterns are like a filter.

All right, our mind.

This is a clean filter, okay?

And for this filter to work, it's gonna trap all of the dirt, it's gonna trap everything in the air and keep it from getting into my breathing space.

If I got this overhead, it's gonna trap everything.

And you know what happens if I don't regularly keep this thing up to date?

Eventually, it's gonna get clogged up.

And if it gets clogged up, you know what happens when it gets clogged?

It affects the temperature in my house.

The filter affects the temperature.

If you're not careful, you'll get clogged up because your filter, you're not saying what is true, what is right, what is just.

Things get trapped, and then you're like, why am I a cold Christian?

I don't understand why I'm so cold.

Because the filter got clogged with negativity, criticism, complaint.

The stuff on the music, the stuff on the TV, people, whatever captures your meditation will control your mentality.

I'm gonna say that one more time.

Whatever captures your meditation will control your mentality.

Look at verse 4 and 5 again.

He gets into this, he says, Rejoice in the Lord always again.

I say, rejoice, but let your gentleness be made known to all men.

The Lord is faithful.

So, how do we do this?

That word gentleness is used.

That's an interesting word here.

The word is eugenia, and it means fragile.

When I was growing up, y'all, there was nothing manly associated with being fragile.

You never heard anyone say, you know, no men were like, you know what I want to be one day when I grow up?

I hope to be real fragile.

I've never heard Heather once say, you know what I love about Rick?

Bless him.

He's he's so fragile.

That's what I love about him.

But this scripture says thankfulness leads to a fragility of spirit, a gentle spirit.

Let me explain.

Paul, pre-Christian.

Anybody remember what Paul was like pre-Christian?

He was brash.

He knew when he describes his pre-Christian life, he almost sounds arrogant about it.

He was the top dog.

He was probably inflexible.

He was all about Paul, and all of a sudden, a changed man writing, hear me in Philippians written from a prison cell.

Now a changed man, patient.

He's not outraged to be in prison.

Why?

His lens has changed.

He's become a gentle person, he's become a gentle man, and so he can choose joy even though the circumstances don't feel real joyful.

That takes us to the second point, the mentality of prayer.

How can we be mentally thankful?

Number letter 2.2, a mentality of prayer.

What he says.

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.

And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will guard your hearts and mind through Christ Jesus.

Letter A is guard your head from stress.

How do we guard our heads from stress?

He says, pray.

He says, pray.

How many here you know stress is real?

Oh, yeah.

How many of you have had some stress?

Some of them just went home, didn't they?

Walter Kelly said, stress is faith in the negative, trust in the unpleasant, assurance of disaster, and belief in defeat.

Worry is wasting today's time to clutter up tomorrow's opportunity with yesterday's troubles.

Worry.

Stress.

Okay?

Have you ever had a little pebble in your shoe when you're walking?

Just a little tiny, just a little, just a little tiny pebble in there.

And you're walking, you were like, you're walking just a little thing, and it was rattling around, and finally it got to be enough, and you had to take your shoe off, right?

Just a little pebble.

Imagine a handful.

You're walking today, and a handful, I don't know how it happens, but a handful gets in your shoe.

What are you gonna do?

You're gonna stop.

It's gonna stop you from walking altogether.

Well, listen, worry is like a pebble for your soul.

Come on.

Okay.

One anxious thought, one little pebble is annoying.

One is irritating, one is enough to kind of slow you down, but dozens will stop your walk forward.

Matthew 6, Jesus takes the entirety, most of the chapter to tell us, don't worry.

He says, Don't worry.

He says, Don't worry, don't worry for this, don't worry for that, don't worry for tomorrow.

And the only biblical replacement for worry, church, is worship.

I want you to turn to Luke chapter 10.

Luke 10 · chapter mention

You know this little passage, but I want you to see it this morning.

Luke 10, it keeps coming up.

I think I've used it in sermons about five times this year, so evidently we need to hear it, or maybe I need to hear it and get it.

Luke 10, 39 through 42.

And she had a sister called Mary who also sat at Jesus' feet and heard his word.

But Martha was distracted with much serving.

And she approached him and said, Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone?

Therefore, tell her to help me.

And Jesus answered and said to her, Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things, but one thing is needed.

And Mary has chosen that good part which will not be taken away from her.

We have a lot of things to be worried about.

You have many things that your mind space can be leaned towards, bent towards, inclined to.

And what Jesus says to Martha, who is busy and burning out, he says, Your sister, who's sitting at my feet, your sister, who's hearing from me, who slowed herself down, and is willing to listen, is the one who's gaining the right thing.

What's modern day Martha look like?

Let me tell you.

Modern day Martha wakes up already behind.

She checks emails before her feet hit the floor.

Mentally, she begins sorting kids' lunches while scrolling the news, worrying if the package will arrive in time, if the boss noticed her mistake, if she remembered to switch to laundry.

Her mind runs three.

Conversations ahead of every moment she's in, and convinced that if she stops moving, something important will fail.

She's surrounded by blessings, but her spirit is always somewhere else because she's busy, she's burdened, and she is burning up.

I mean, smoke is coming out of her ears.

That's modern day Martha.

And Jesus said, Martha, Mary is doing what's right.

She's doing what makes sense.

Let me tell you what makes sense.

Prayer.

Sitting.

Stopping.

Slowing.

You know what the opposite of all those things are?

Stress.

Letter be.

You have to guard your heart, your head from stress.

Letter B, you gotta guard your heart from sorrow.

In sorrow.

The answer again, how?

Prayer.

I want you to see a passage in Ephesians.

Ephesians 4, verse 17.

Ephesians 4:17

Guard your heart in so sorrow.

This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, who of the blindness of their heart, who being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness and work, all uncleanness with greediness.

Couple of things I want you to notice there in Ephesians 4.

Okay, there's sorrow happening because there's futile minds, darkened understanding, and willful ignorance.

It's all rooted in one thing: the hardness of their hearts.

Here is the deepest disease, church, infecting everything else.

When we suppress the liberating truth that Jesus Christ gives us, when we hold that down mentally, we find the root being a hard heart.

Hard hearts will not submit to the supremacy of Jesus Christ.

And when we won't submit that God is supreme, he is able, he is sovereign, it eliminates our view of his goodness.

It blinds us.

We're not seeking sight.

So we have to guard our hearts.

Now listen, it doesn't say peace that passes all understanding will guard your heart from sorrow.

It says peace that passes all understanding, okay, will guard your heart in.

How do you get not from it, but through it?

How do you get from, or how do you get through cancer?

How do you get through death?

How do you get through family pain, financial strain?

How do you get through dark days when you can't even figure out why, but you're sad, those kind of days?

How do you get through days like that?

Well, he says that we have to enter into his courts by prayer and supplication.

That's how you get through.

Because it's in the prayer closet.

You have to transport yourself from physical to the spiritual through the mind.

And that is what God settles in the spiritual.

In the spiritual, things that happen between you and God can be accomplished in the physical.

He says, whatever is bound in heaven can be bound in this earth.

And so he says, wherever two or three are gathered together, there I am in their midst.

So we have to go to God in the spiritual and pray.

Verse 7.

It says, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your heart and minds through Christ.

If you pray, don't miss this.

He says, with thanksgiving.

That you pray, let your request be made known with thanksgiving.

That takes us to the third thing this morning: the mentality of peace.

Look at verse 7 through 9.

And the peace that passes all understanding will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

And then we talked about the things we should meditate on, whatever things are true, right, just lovely, a good report.

And then verse 9, it says, The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you.

If you do these things, the God of peace.

Letter A, consistency brings God's presence.

Heather and I are pretty consistent about being together.

When we started in ministry, we had a lot of discussions about how our family and ministry would look.

And just as God has allowed it, it's been a sweet 20-year season where Heather has been by my side most of the time in ministry.

And anyhow, so I take that to heart.

A few weeks ago, I think we got a picture.

Uh, there was a snake in the church.

So when I saw that snake in the church, okay, my first thought was, I gotta get to that snake.

Because if Heather sees that snake, Heather's gonna scream.

Heather's gonna be scared.

I gotta get to that snake.

And you know, I don't know who who's here from PETA today, but I got the snake.

Just say I got the snake.

We'll say I trashed the snake.

Anybody who knows what happens happened to the snake will appreciate that.

But I trashed the snake.

Who here knows that if a snake gets in the church, Pastor got to get the snake out of the church?

You know what I'm saying?

Amen.

And so I got the snake out of church because it was a threat to peace.

Come on now.

It was a threat to my wife's peace.

My wife will tell you this.

This is probably the greatest compliment I think that she gives me.

She says that the longer we've been together, that as long as I'm near, she feels stable.

She feels at ease.

Why is that important?

Because this passage says that in verse 9, and the God of peace will be with you.

Not just peace, but even better than peace is the presence of the one who gives peace.

Weekly, daily, hourly, practicing right thinking, rejoicing, consistency.

You know, if you do anything consistently, it starts to become a part of who you are.

I don't know.

John 14, 21 says, This church, he who has my commandments and keeps them, I will manifest myself unto.

If you continue to keep the commandments of God, you'll find the presence of God.

Psalms 91, verse 1 says, He who dwells in the secret place shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

Psalms 91:1

He who dwells, that's important.

Not someone who stops by, but someone who stays.

If you dwell in the presence of God.

John 15, 3, he says, if you will abide in me, then I will abide in you.

Hebrews 11:6 says, He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

Hebrews 11:6

We'll find the presence of God, we'll find the peace of God when we seek him.

See, if you'll show up consistency, consistently the presence of God will be in your life.

The opposite is true.

In James 4.8, it says, a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.

If you go through that chapters of James, it talks about what comes with inconsistency.

It says wars and tensions and trials and strife and stress come from double-mindedness.

Double-minded means no peace.

You can't be dangling mid-fense.

He says, consistently, constantly.

Isaiah 26, 3 says, He whose mind is stayed on thee has perfect peace.

If you're persistent, you will get what you're looking for.

If you're consistent, you'll keep it.

If you're persistent, you will get it.

If you're consistent, you'll keep it.

Letter be.

Contentment brings God's power.

Look at verse 10 through 13.

Look at verse 10 through 13.

But I rejoice in the Lord greatly that now at last your care for me has flourished again.

Though you surely did care, but you lacked opportunity.

Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am to be content.

I know how to be abased and I know how to abound.

Everywhere in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need.

I can do all things through Christ who strengthened me.

We'll come back to verse 19.

But the problem of this passage that's presented is discontentment.

Right?

We get to verse 13, and everybody knows verse 13, but we don't realize that the problem is discontentment, and we're discontented everywhere.

We're discontented with money, we're discontented wanting to get to the next thing, the next purchase, the next vacation, next, next, next, whatever is next, or more, more, more.

And you have to be right with God to be content.

Discontentment, we have the right to be discontent with all these things because they all fade.

The Bible tells us in Matthew 6 that it's all earthly treasures, that it rusts and that it can be taken away.

All of these trophies on this earth expire.

So you have a right not to be happy with them because they can't make you happy.

But Paul is in shackles, and he says, It's okay to be low.

He says, I'm good.

Listen to me, not because of what I G-O-T, but because of G-O-D.

He says, it's not because of what I got, it's because of God.

It's because of God.

The presence of God in a place like this.

But listen, he says, it's important to note this.

It says, I have learned.

Look down there, midway through verse 12.

Everywhere in all things I have learned.

That word is autarkis, and it means learned.

It's not the natural man.

Okay?

The natural man is not content.

It is not in your nature to be content.

You're born this human body in discontentment.

And he says, I've learned.

Paul writes about joy in Philippians more than any other letter, and he wrote it because he found it in confinement.

He was shackled, and he found that place where he could say, I don't have to be sad, I don't have to be bent toward complaint.

I don't have to be bent in criticism.

I don't have to be bent this way.

He says, I have learned.

That means Paul's saying, I know how, not I feel like.

Listen to me, I'm gonna say that again.

You need that.

I know how to be content, not I feel like, I know how.

And so he says, I've learned this.

Well, where is my supply?

Again, the power.

Look at verse 19.

And my God shall supply all your need according to his riches and glory in Christ Jesus.

See, he takes us back there and he says, God is the great supplier.

Y'all notice that in uh the beginning of this year there was a big shortage on eggs.

Right?

And all the reasons that came with the shortage of eggs, like the bird flu.

Well, I never heard of this my whole life.

The bird flew.

We got the bird flu, transportation problems, chicken feed.

We got egg problems because it's expensive to feed the chickens.

And in 2020, I looked this up$1.55 for a dozen of eggs.

How many know what a dozen of eggs cost today?

The last one I bought was$4.75.

I don't know what Heather's sending me out for.

But this is what I'm seeing.

The impact of the supply is affected.

In Philippians 4.19, it says, according to God's riches means God's supply.

Church, God is not run out.

God is not run low.

God doesn't get the flu.

And God doesn't sometimes feel like not supplying.

Ephesians 1 3 says, He has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing.

Listen, every spiritual blessing, not one day, not some blessings, but every resource needed for spiritual growth is yours.

And Paul says, I've been low and I've been high.

I can do it.

Not I feel like it, but I can do it.

Somebody here today, you didn't feel like it, but you can.

You know, I thought about this as I was studying.

It's hard to be like Paul.

I want you all to listen, I'm gonna wrap this here.

I want you to take this in your hearts.

It's hard to be like Paul.

You and I, being like Paul is difficult.

Paul was the world's greatest missionary.

Not because he had no fears, not because he had no weaknesses, but I believe Paul knew exactly where to turn.

His strength was rooted in his Lord.

And the same is true for you and me.

And he said to be thankful, to rejoice, to be praising.

What was he telling us?

Imagine the coach at the gym.

He's trying to build some mental muscle, some spiritual muscle.

He says, You have to do this, you have to praise, you have to praise, you have to rejoice, you have to rejoice, you have to praise, you have to be thankful.

And he says, if you do this, you're gonna build up spiritual muscle for difficult times.

He's not saying don't ever get stressed.

He's not saying don't feel down, he's not saying don't ever go through hardship.

But he's saying build through the power of God through these times.

So what I'm asking you today, listen, I'm not saying I can be like Paul.

But I want to be.

Can you be better?

Anybody here ever watch the television show Hoarders?

Ooh.

It makes me physically feel nauseous when it comes on.

I'm just being real.

As soon as it comes on, I start feeling I'm like, Heather, please, oh the stuff on there.

But I will say this when it gets close to the end, I start feeling that joy again.

And I'm like, any second, we're gonna see what happened.

Did they clean a room?

And when I see that clean room, my heart feels full again.

I go, Oh, there's hope.

And some of them, that's all that gets clean, and I'm like, praise God.

I don't know what else they got.

She's laying over there in a pile of newspapers and cats, but she got a clean room.

This is what I'm telling you.

You may not get the whole house clean today, but can you get a room better?

Can we get an area organized?

Can we begin to throw out the trash?

It'll make you feel better.

Listen, you're human, but if you get an area clean, you know what happens?

You'll be able to gaze on the good.

And when all around you is just bad, it's hard to feel good.

But if you get a clean area, doesn't it feel good to see that man when I when he when we get all the chores and heathers like that?

I pick a place and nobody's taking my place.

I'm gonna tell you that right now.

Nobody's clean to my area.

You're not gonna step into my bathroom because I'm gonna know that I did it and I made it clean, and I'll go in and I'll smell, smells good.

Clean mirror, everything's ready.

I did that.

You know what?

It makes me feel good.

When we look at what's clean, we feel better.

Paul tells us in Philippians 4 what to look at.

Man, he tells us all through it.

How do we be thankful?

He says, pray, praise, think on the good that God has done.

Get an area right, clean it up.

So today I want to ask you, can you focus on a bright side?

If you're here, you say, Pastor Man, I don't.

The bright side is so dim.

I'm gonna ask you to do this.

Will you take a step?

Will you pick an area and begin to work on getting it clean?

Will you make just that area, just that room, just that shelf, will you start today getting something set right?

Because if we'll be able to focus on that, it'll be like focusing on him.

If we can focus on him when things are dark, when things are stressful, if we'll be able to focus on what is good, I believe we'll be able to get out of those things.

We can be like the psalmist who said this about life, and I'm finished.

My night feels long, yet the Lord sustains me.

My enemies they increase, yet the Lord lifts my head.

The world shakes, yet the Lord remains faithful.

My plans fall through, yet the Lord holds up my steps.

My fail, my failings shout, yet the Lord speaks mercy.

I need guidance, yet the Lord is my shepherd.

I need comfort, yet the Lord is near to the broken heart.

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