The Heart of Thanksgiving - November 10, 2024

It is my privilege to invite you to today's sermon podcast.

I have made the Apostle Paul's prayer request my own.

When he states in Ephesians 6.19, Pray also for me, that whenever I open my

mouth, the words may be given to me, so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel.

May today's sermon come alive to you and aid you in your understanding of God's plan for your life.

Well, I did not know exactly what to prepare for this morning.

I mean, I didn't know how this week was going to be. It was kind of stressful at times.

I mean, not just for election day, but did you watch the Boise State football game last night?

Wow. At the same time, the NASCAR Xfinity race, their season was winded down,

and my guy was leading the race most of the race, and then he ended up getting second.

But my other guy won the race, but he wasn't in the championship.

Are you confused yet? Yeah.

It's complicated sports sometimes, these things that we watch,

these things we invest our time and our energy in.

And so this morning, as we do enter into another season.

A season as we look toward Thanksgiving, as we consider not just the historical

implications of Thanksgiving in the nation's history, but Thanksgiving in practice

in our lives as believers in Jesus Christ.

I just want us to get back to the heart of Thanksgiving. And looking at the

time, I made an executive decision that this is going to have to be split into two sermons.

So you'll hear part one today.

Next week, you'll hear from Brian. And then part two will be in two weeks here

to finish up this sermon.

So you have to come back if you want to hear the conclusion.

I'm just going to be getting started here this morning. But when we think about

elections, people always say elections have consequences.

And I just could not believe the amount of people that came out to vote when

they started lining up down here by the children's wing outside.

I think it was 730 or 745, somewhere in there.

You knew something big was going to happen that day. And then when we went to

Parma and we stood in line to vote and it was 645, I believe,

and we were still outside. And then we had to wind through our precinct to vote.

You knew something big was happening. And so it's like, wow,

there's going to be a lot of people happy and a lot of people sad.

And so that always happens. And even with football games, sporting competitions,

Way to Go, Homedale, I must say, beating Buell.

Good job. Now you've just got to beat Weezer, please.

Pastor Hunter is my friend at Weezer Church of the Nazarene.

But I would love if you guys could beat him.

Just be nice to a son who plays for the team. He's a senior.

But man, sporting competitions, not just sporting competitions, but life in general.

We have these great things that happen to us, and we just can't believe they're happening to us.

And then we have these awful things that happen to us, and we just can't believe

these awful things are happening to us.

And it just seems like we vacillate between the highs and the lows in life.

And what I want to call you to today is just really get back to the heart of

what it means to be thankful.

Get back to the heart of what God says when he calls you to rejoice,

when he calls you to give thanks, when he calls you to pray.

And all these three are interwoven together.

And so this morning, I want to read for you the simple passage,

only a few verses here, only a small paragraph.

But hear the word of the Lord this morning for your life from 1 Thessalonians

1 Thessalonians 5:16

5, verses 16 and verse 17.

Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances,

for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.

God, thank you for your word. Thank you for the simplicity of it this morning.

Thank you, Lord, for how this applies to us today. All of us who are gathered

in this building, God, we thank you.

Lord, may your Word have free reign in our heart. May it be applied by your

Holy Spirit, God, and may we leave transformed more and more into the image of your Son, Jesus.

We ask this in his name. Amen.

Thank you for honoring the Word this morning, and please be seated.

It seems bizarre to me that I can have a two-part sermon on And two verses that

really give three commands and an encouragement.

But that's what preachers do, I guess. You know, it's so simple,

the message this morning, but it's so simple.

Sometimes we think we got to make it more complicated.

Have you ever put together a piece of furniture like from Ikea?

And all they give you to put it together are pictures?

And if you're more verbally oriented, maybe a little visually too,

you want to have the explanation.

And sometimes the things that I've purchased, sometimes they have these little stickers, A, B, C.

Maybe they have Roman numerals, I, I, I, I, I, I.

And you're wondering, how does all this go together?

How do I take this big piece of whatever it is and make it happen?

And those projects can be so frustrating when they give you one little screw

that goes into this round thing and you have to turn it and it tightens it and

you do that and it's particle board and it busts the particle board,

you know you've gone too far? That could be so frustrating.

And even in the midst of making something like that, you can have highs and then you can have lows.

And if you have parts left over, you're wondering, where do those go? And in all of that...

Sometimes it's hard to be thankful until you're done. Sometimes it's hard to

look at your work until you know, okay, I'm finished.

Even in the midst of the different pictures and the different squiggly languages

that are there that you can't read.

But there's a command given here in this verse, and it just starts out with it. Rejoice always.

At this point, you say, in some of the circumstances you've been in,

that's easy for you to say.

But when we think about what joy is, I think it helps us to understand a little

bit more how to really express joy, to rejoice.

I looked up a great source this morning. I don't know if I could recommend it or not.

I just thought it was kind of good from the website Theology for the Rest of

Us. Doesn't that sound credible?

It might or might not be. I'm not giving you a recommendation.

But I like this definition of joy.

Joy is a feeling of good pleasure and happiness that is dependent upon who Jesus

is rather than on who we are or what is happening around us.

I like that definition because it places the focus of your joy not in yourself.

You can be happy. You can be happy because of someone that won the election that you voted for.

You can be happy because of a team that won that you were cheering on.

You could be happy because you got your favorite meal for lunch or breakfast or dinner or snack.

You could be happy based on yourself in a lot of circumstances.

But in the next moment, you can also be very sad.

When you watch the news and your candidate is winning and all of a sudden they're

losing and it's this back and forth when all of a sudden your team is ahead

and then they're behind and then they're neck and neck and then what's the result going to be?

We think about what it means to have joy, to rejoice evermore, to rejoice always.

We've got to understand that joy comes not just from within us, but it comes from Jesus.

It comes from the Holy Spirit of God, his abiding presence in us,

and from the hope that we have by studying, by reading the Word of God.

That's where true joy comes.

Because that is the case, we ask ourselves, joy in all circumstances? I mean, everything?

When I'm at the dentist having my tooth pulled, I'm supposed to have joy?

Hallelujah! Out! Hallelujah! I'm supposed to be cheering and having this joy

in my heart. when I'm having a heated discussion with someone about something.

We get confused by that. But at the same time, I do think it does mean in all

circumstances, because joy is not a feeling or just a sense of happiness.

It's that long-term focus on what Jesus is doing in our heart and in our life,

what the Holy Spirit is doing in us.

And so I'm reminded of Paul and Silas, who were thrown in jail for preaching

the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, who are saying to men and women, repent,

turn away from your sin, turn away from your meaningless religious acts and turn to Jesus.

Have faith, true faith in Christ.

They got thrown in jail. So what are they doing? Wrongly accused,

sitting in a jail cell with other people that perhaps were rightly accused and deserved to be there.

What did Paul and Silas do?

Well, Acts 16.25 tells us about midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God.

And the other prisoners were listening to them.

I don't know if it's midnight and I'm in jail. I'm sleeping. him.

I'm going to be bummed out. Why am I here? I didn't do anything wrong.

Paul and Silas, what are they doing? They're praying. They're singing praises to God.

They're in there and they're just worshiping the Lord.

And the other prisoners, of course, if you're singing and praying,

they're not going to be able to sleep. And so they're wondering what's going on.

And God does something great in there.

Reminded that's something that Paul writes in Philippians 4 verse 4,

Philippians 4:4

where he says, rejoice in the Lord always.

Again, I say rejoice.

Have that joy in your heart, that peace, that calm that's there even in the

midst of unfavorable circumstances.

And so I think for us, we need to really seek out, how do we have joy in our own lives?

If the scripture says in Philippians and here in Thessalonians,

to rejoice always, to find joy in every situation, in every circumstance that we're in.

We need to remember this verse from Romans.

Romans 8, 28. And we know that in all things, God works for the good of those

who love him and have been called according to his purpose.

I love this. In all things, it says. Well, we're supposed to rejoice always.

Paul says in Philippians, Rejoice in the Lord always.

And here the scripture says, We know that God works in all things.

And everything that we go through, God is present with us. I want you to hear that this morning.

In the joys, when you praise God for the winners of the competitions that you're

cheering on, touchdown, checkered flag, whatever it might be,

I want you to know that God is with you in those moments.

He's with you in the celebratory moments.

Boy, yesterday, these kids that went to the quiz meet, they were so excited.

They were so happy with the ribbons they got, with the medals they got.

Some got trophies that have perfect scores, perfect answers on everything.

It was exciting just to see the joy that exuded from them, to know that their

hard work had paid off in studying the scriptures and spending all the time

that they did studying the Word of God.

And I want you to know that even in those moments of celebration,

God's with you. You're not alone.

But in those moments of defeat, those moments when you don't feel like celebrating.

Man, you don't even want to talk about it. I want you to know God's right there too.

God's right there with you as you're walking, as we've said,

through the valley of the shadow of death. You're not alone in that.

The God of the universe that's with you when you're celebrating and you feel

like celebrating, he's with you when you're down in the dumps.

And he's reminding you, I hope that you can still have joy. You might not feel happy.

Joy is not just a happy feeling, but I think it's the confident assurance that

God's will is still unfolding in your life.

I mean, if you've ever had to discipline your children physically,

or if you have ever been physically disciplined, there is not joy in that moment,

or at least there's not happiness.

Maybe the joy comes afterward realizing that, well, your parents probably saved

you from some stupid mistakes you were going to make, from some choices that

perhaps later on would have cost you dearly.

I remember when I was a kid, my grandparents lived on this vineyard.

They didn't own the vineyard. They just had a trailer on the vineyard.

But there's these two good-looking tractors that my cousin and I thought,

oh, let's go pretend like we're driving those things. And so we did.

We knew we weren't supposed to. We knew it was like not a push-button start, but it was easy to start.

I don't know if it was me or my cousin that started that thing,

but as soon as that engine kicked up and we got these wide eyes saying,

oh, that's not supposed to happen.

Here came, I can't remember exactly if it was my uncle or my dad,

but there was a weeping willow switch that he had in his hand coming our way.

And we knew, oh, it was game over.

Fun time. The joy that we had, not really joy, we were in trouble.

But through that discipline, I've never stepped foot on the tractor again.

That's probably why I haven't been over to your To your house to ride in the

tractor with you man No There's some history there.

But you know, even in the dumps, even in the hard times, we can still have joy.

We can have joy in the assurance of knowing that God is working something out.

As the Scripture said, God works in all things for the good of those who love

Him and who have been called according to His purpose.

So let's find our own joy in the midst of the challenges that we face. Let's look.

There's going to be reasons. There's going to be indicators out there if we

can just seek that out. So a practical way to do this, it goes back to a hymn

that we sing, Count Your Blessings. You remember that song?

Count your blessings, name them one by one. Develop a habit of gratitude by

keeping a journal, keep a list.

If you've got a whiteboard or you've got something that you can write on,

every time you notice something that happens that you should have joy in that

brings you gratitude, man, write it down.

Boy, I'm very grateful. We've got a lot of potatoes at our house that people

have given us. We're not going to have to buy potatoes all winter, I think.

You know, we've been blessed in this way. And that's something we would write

down as something gratitude. We like potatoes in our house.

I grew up in Idaho, man. That's a staple, right?

There's other people that have given us things that have done things for us

that we just write down and say, God, we're so grateful.

There's ways in which we've seen God move in the lives of people here in this

church and other churches that we write down because we're grateful to God for

how he's moved in the lives of people.

Answers to prayer, saving people, healing people, restoring people.

We see all these things in it.

It wells up within us. There's such a great gratitude that we have.

So keep in a journal, writing it down.

But I also want to encourage you to do what you've already done this morning

as you've engaged in worship and praise with God's people, as you've come together.

And we sang these great songs this morning of what God has done,

what God will do, and what God is doing right now within you.

When you come together, it's just not, okay, we're just going to sing,

but it has an effect on you.

I got to tell you, yesterday at the men's breakfast, it was great because David

Ferdinand broke out his guitar and we sang the battle hymn of the Republic.

And that's a great song, just that in itself. But just to hear men singing together,

that resonates deeply within my heart.

To hear people praising God together in song, whether you could sing or not.

Which I can't sing very well, but I don't think any of us could except David yesterday, maybe.

But we were all lifting our voices, singing, singing out.

Well, that blesses the heart of God, and it develops within our own heart this

sense of gratitude. Look what God has done.

Look what God is capable of doing, even if my situation looks dire.

So I just want to tell you, Keep on rejoicing. Keep on praising.

Secondly, this morning, the scripture tells us to pray continually,

really to pray without ceasing.

You know, prayer is so vitally important because what prayer does when you are

praying to God, it stirs fellowship and communion with God.

You're praying in faith and it brings about a greater knowledge and understanding

of him, of who he is, it causes a person to learn more about God.

And it stirs within our hearts more and more trust as we have those silent moments

with God, as maybe we have those verbal moments with God, and maybe we pair

it with the word as we're reading the Bible.

And as we come to a passage that just hits us right where we're living,

and as we're thinking about this passage of Scripture, we say,

Lord, I don't get it. I don't understand.

I see life this way, but I see what your Word says here.

Help me reconcile the two. And it's in prayer that that reconciliation happens,

that our understanding is formed and we catch up to what the Word of God is saying to us,

that we learn how to apply this Word that we're reading, that we're trying to understand.

Prayer is so vital.

As we worship and praise God, as a lot of the songs we sing,

even the psalm that we read this morning, Psalm 92, there's a song that has been made.

I mean, psalms is a song, but there's a song.

It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to praise His name on high.

I mean, I won't sing it, but when we sing to the Lord when we're praying these

prayers, when we're praying these psalms, God changes us.

It stirs us again in our hearts, and it causes every good thing to be made possible between us and God.

We really believe that God is moving, and God has made prayer the primary way

in which we communicate with Him.

Because guess what? I don't have to go to your house to communicate to you what God is saying to you.

Boy, my schedule will be full. Look how many of you are here this morning.

If you said, Pastor Mike, we need a schedule because we need to hear what God's

saying, okay, I can give you 15 minutes. Here we go.

You're sitting on your couch and Pastor Mike comes to preach at you.

No, that's not the primary way that God has made for us to communicate with

him. It's through personal prayer.

It's through prayer together with your spouse, prayer together with your family,

even the corporate prayer that we do when we come together, the group prayer that we do.

As we leave this morning, we'll say another prayer together to help us focus

as we go out on mission for God.

You see, we think about persistent prayer and why that's important,

not just these one-offs, but I'm talking about prayer that continues on and on in our lives.

We think about Hannah, and I know I preached about her earlier in this year,

but she continued to pray for a son, continued, and God finally heard her,

or answered her, not heard her. He had heard her the whole time.

God answered her prayer. We think about Daniel, how he consistently prayed a

certain time in a certain place, so much so that they made a law against him

praying at that certain time, but he continued to pray nonetheless.

Folks, when we think about prayer in this way, it's prayer as a lifestyle.

Pray without ceasing is to live your life where you're in constant communication with God.

You ever been to the store and someone is on their cell phone and you don't

know that they're on their cell phone because they have these earpieces in?

I was at JCPenney two weeks ago And I was looking in the clearance men's section,

And there was a lady there She was talking my ear off I thought And I'm like I don't know you lady,

And she asked this question What do you think about this color And I was ready to answer her,

But then she turned her head a little bit And there was an earpiece in And then

I saw her other hand kind of had a phone Showing someone.

Technology's great but it can drive you crazy too when we

think about prayer as a lifestyle it's kind

of like that crazy lady well i don't know if she was crazy i apologize i should

not say that i was a crazy one because i almost answered her our communication

should be ongoing i don't know we need to ask the lord if he likes this color

of shirt or not i'm sure he's given us the free will to choose if we like it or not,

or at least our wives to tell us if it's a good color or not.

But when we think about prayer as a lifestyle, I think that's what God wants

us, to have this open line of communication to him.

We think about what Jesus said in John 16, 24, until now you have not asked for anything in my name.

Ask and you will receive and your joy will be complete.

See, Jesus ties our prayer life back to what we started with,

to rejoice always. and we could ask the Lord, whatever it is in our life,

according to his will, if that's his plan for us, boy, it brings us joy when God answers us.

It brings us that joy that we need.

Ephesians 6, 18 says, and pray in the spirit on all occasions with all kinds

of prayers and requests.

With this in mind, be alert and always keep praying for the saints.

I love that Ephesians passage because he says, you're never going to run out

of prayer requests or prayers that you can pray.

There's the Lord save me prayer.

Anyone have that except for me? I know you have. Amen.

There's the prayer where you're just intently one-on-one with God.

And it's just you and God, even if there's other people in the room,

you just know you're dealing with something.

Maybe that's happened with you at an altar of prayer before.

There's the kind of prayer that's just, Lord, thank you. Oh,

I can't help but say thank you.

Like in the Bible, someone that was healed from leprosy and was no longer ill,

was no longer infirmed, was no longer broken, but made whole again.

There's all these different kinds of prayers that we can pray,

and what Paul told the church at Ephesus was, don't forget to keep on praying for the saints.

We pray for one another. I know I have a list in my office that was left,

and I used that, and we had people sign up, and I'm praying for people every

single day, And the encouragement when I do that is I know that those people are praying for me.

And we'll have another one of those lists after the first of the year, I believe.

Sign up on there so I can be praying for you every day by name.

You know, it's this powerful, powerful time of prayer together,

whether we're gathered together or separate, that moves God,

that moves the heart of God, that changes our heart.

You know, we think about how people's lives have been impacted by answered prayer.

I think of a lady in McCall Who found out she was diagnosed with cancer again.

And I don't remember how it came about, but I announced from the pulpit,

at this certain time, I want you to take your cell phones out and I want you to program it.

And every time this alarm goes off, this is the time we're going to pray for Betty.

We're going to pray for Betty and that cancer to go away.

God answered that prayer and he healed her of that.

Time and time again, this consistent prayer over and over again.

I don't know how many people in this room have been saved by Jesus because of

the prayers of a grandparent,

because the prayer of an aunt or an uncle that was consistent,

because of the prayers of the saints over and over and over again.

But God answers prayer. And I want you to see the connection here,

and I'll close with this.

The connection that we go to the Lord in prayer.

God answers our prayer. It stirs up joy within our hearts, and it's easy for

us when someone has a need again that we pray for them, and God answers that prayer.

It stirs up joy, and it's like this beautiful cycle that goes around.

The cycle's not quite complete because there's one more element that I want

to share with you in two weeks that the Scripture says is thanksgiving.

Not just the meal, although we're very thankful for that, I think,

but giving thanks to God because the cycle's not quite complete until you do

give thanks to God, till you turn that back and you honor him with what he has done.

I know that there's obstacles and there's distractions.

There's these things called cell phones and games, which I won't name,

that people play that will distract us from our prayer life.

Every time, maybe, I don't know, you've had this experience or not,

you really say, okay, God, me and you gotta talk.

There's something going on in my life and I need to talk to you right now.

And so we get ready, we get our Bible, when we crack our knuckles,

we're getting our prayer posture.

Dear Lord, all of a sudden we get a text. Your phone probably don't sound like that.

Imagine what your phone sounds like. You get a notification,

you get a ding, or you get the phone beginning to ring.

All these distractions that come against us, the busyness that comes against us.

What I wanna encourage you to do is find a place of regular and consistent prayer.

If it's just on your commute back and forth to work, hey, start there.

If it's a time where you're out working in the yard, probably not too much longer.

But take that time and just dedicate that time to God and have that communication with Him.

I hope you have a personal worship time or personal devotion time to where you

can spend time in the Word and prayer at the same time.

God works mightily through that. In all this.

Don't neglect to pray. Don't neglect because that prayer leads to rejoicing.

That thanksgiving is in there. And what the scripture says again,

and I'll remind you of this in two weeks too, it says, this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.

People say, I'm looking for God's will in my life. I say, start here. Start right here.

Rejoice evermore. Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing and give thanks to God

in all circumstances, because this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.

We'll conclude this with a Thanksgiving message here in a few weeks.

So I'm going to hit the pause button right now, and we're going to return to this.

But in those two weeks, can I ask you to do this?

Find that joy that you've been looking for in your life that comes through Jesus.

And secondly, pray to God. Check your prayer life and just continue to pray

as God would want you to pray.

I know we're going to close with the song now, and then we're going to say the

Lord's prayer together as our benediction.

But I just want to say thank you. Thank you for taking the time to come out today to worship God.

Thank you for making it a point to come and to praise Him, whether it was a

beautiful sound from your mouth or a joyful noise or some kind of screeching that God understands.

Thank you, because we're going to exercise that one more time as a practical application.

Would you stand and let's sing together. It is my privilege to invite you to

today's sermon podcast.

I have made the Apostle Paul's prayer request my own.

When he states in Ephesians 6, 19, pray also for me that whenever I open my

mouth, the words may be given to me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel.

May today's sermon come alive to you and aid you in your understanding of God's plan for your life.