Thank You

I want to start out with something that I introduced a few weeks ago.

And you know, we've we've been in this series, we're talking about how words create worlds, right?

So in the beginning, God created, and he created with a word.

And, you know, we create worlds.

We create worlds in our minds, we create worlds in our environments, our culture, our families, uh, with the things we say.

The way you talk to one another in your marriage absolutely creates a world.

The way you talk in your car and your family, the way that you do it, that absolutely creates a world.

Um, I would encourage you if you're married and you don't pray together, start praying together.

Just simply praying together, hearing one another uh speak to God and speaking to God together.

It creates a world.

So words create worlds.

We've been talking about that.

I've been referencing some excerpts from a book, Please Sorry, Thanks, by Mark Batterson.

I thought it was a really good book.

Encourage you to take a look at it if uh if you're looking for something to read.

But what I want to do is I want to introduce something that that I threw out a couple weeks ago, but come back to it as a foundation for this conversation.

Um, when you think about growth, development, personal growth, spiritual growth, okay, think of these three things.

It's in, out, and up.

Okay, in, out, up.

In is is is me, right?

It's intra-personal.

It's what's going on in your head, it's your self-awareness and your self-consciousness.

Um, out, out is uh is us, it's community.

Some of what you uh the way you develop is just in your own head.

You're thinking about things.

Some of it is in solitude, and you're you're wrestling through your feelings and you're wrestling through your thoughts.

Um, that is uh a huge part of your development.

But there's a lot that happens and manifests in community, right?

We even we open up the Bible and we look at great principles from God's word and we look at scriptures and what does this stuff mean and how does it apply?

A lot of it, okay, does it is me inside my head, but a lot of it manifests in community.

You you you take these things that we learn and it comes to life.

Otherwise, it's just rhetoric, it's just content.

At some point, it's got to become community.

So this is a big piece.

And then up, of course, is is our relationship with God.

And there are some things that you know we lift up praises and we worship and bless his name, and and then there's some things that God will download into our minds and hearts, so it's in, out, and up.

The title of this message, as we head into Thanksgiving, is thank you.

And you is thank you.

Thank you.

And thank you.

Thank you, thank you, and thank you.

Uh I want to start with actually a term in psychology that's describes a phenomenon called inattentional blindness.

Inattentional blindness.

Inattentional blindness is essentially the technical term for things that are hidden in plain sight.

Something that's right in front of you.

It's what a magician uses when they're doing sleight of hand, right?

They try to get your attention over here and they're doing something over here.

So it's, but it's happening literally right in front of your face.

You just don't see it.

Uh, every so often, you know, they'll find some something in a movie that doesn't make sense, right?

It's like some movie about uh, you know, ancient history, and yet they didn't, nobody caught the fact that there was like an airplane flying through the sky or something like that, right?

We we find these imperfections in these movies, no one saw them for decades.

Why?

Because you were paying attention to something, you were focused on something, and then there was something that was happening that you didn't see, even though it was right in front of you.

Um then there's another term, inattentional blindness, and then inattentional amnesia.

Inattentional amnesia.

You can look these up uh on your own time if you want to, but inattentional amnesia is basically the way your brain edits things that it perceives to be irrelevant.

So if you think about your survival, psychological, biological survival mechanisms, part of how you survive, like when you think and focus, okay, you're burning calories, you you are, you know, it really takes like energy to focus.

And so, especially if you're you have a lot on your mind, you have a lot on your plate, you have serious deadlines, you have high stakes, you are hyper-focused, and often things right in front of your face, things that are happening, you're either blind to them, you don't see them, or you see them, you record them and you delete them because they're irrelevant to your survival.

They're not relevant to your lives.

And we've all had this experience, okay?

You've had somebody go, remember, you were there, you saw that, and you're like, I didn't see anything.

You know, you're like, you know, I do this all the time.

I it's crazy.

My brain will just delete stuff.

And my wife will be like, Greg, you were there, you responded.

I'm like, I'm I wasn't.

My brain was elsewhere, dude.

I was focused on something outside the room.

I was focused on something in the room, but not in front of my face.

So these psychological mechanisms are not bad.

They're actually quite helpful in the right context, but we have to be aware of them, and I would say intentional about being a step ahead of them.

Because if you're not careful, inattentional blindness and inattentional amnesia will cause you to not notice things and forget about things that in a moment may not seem like a priority, but through hindsight, when you look back at your life, you go, I wish I would have paid attention.

I wish I would have focused on that.

I wish I could have those moments back.

I wish I could have that scenario back.

If I could, I would change my focus.

I I did a funeral one time for uh, it was a young girl who died, and um, I was at the casket in the visiting hours with her father, and they someone had put together a slideshow, and their the slideshow was going, and I was standing next to him watching the slideshow and watching him react to her.

And I'll never forget there was one picture that came up in the slideshow where he was totally focused on, frankly, it was like a game he was playing.

He was totally focused on that, and his daughter is perched on his shoulder looking at him, and he's focused on like a video game.

I I say this today not to make you feel guilty about video games.

If you play them, God bless you, that's fine.

Uh, it's not about that.

But but I could, as I watched that picture impact him, you could feel it.

He didn't even have to say it.

I could feel it.

He wished he could go back in time and put the controller down and square away.

Because now, because again, that's what happens.

Usually, it's when someone's lost or something's lost and gone, and now all of a sudden you start to realize that my inattentional blindness caused me to not see the thing that now I see as a priority in the moment.

It didn't seem like it was.

And so when we think about thankfulness, thanking God, thanking each other, thanking ourselves, we have to contend with inattentional blindness and even inattentional amnesia, things that happen that we've forgotten about.

So this is why you gotta create, um you gotta create occasions to do this.

So I'm gonna give you uh three words.

Start with the first one here is uh rituals.

So if we're gonna, if we're not gonna fall and let inattentional blindness and inattentional amnesia run our lives, part of what is is having a ritual, right?

This week, Thanksgiving, is technically a uh a national holiday.

It's a ritual that we come together, and you know, it's not like we should be thankful one day a year.

Uh we know that, but it's making sure we put something on the calendar that that is labeled Thanksgiving.

Thankfulness.

Take some time.

You got a lot going on, you got a lot of pressure on you, you're working through stuff, life is life, but let's stop.

Let's not work this day, let's focus, and let's be thankful.

So, rituals.

The second are rhythms.

And rhythms are like, how are you gonna do this consistently?

Part of the reason why we, you know, every seven days we come together and we lift up uh worship and praise and we and we look into God's word and we slow ourselves down is to rest, and it's also to have a ritual or a rhythm, more of a rhythm of gratitude and thankfulness to God.

Okay, and and to build this into our lives.

But I want you to think about your rhythms when it comes to gratitude and when it comes to our propensity toward inattentional blindness, the things that are right in front of us that we should be thankful for, that we miss all the time.

What are your rhythms, your personal rhythms of thankfulness?

I'm I'm gonna give you a good one here.

This is Psalm 136.

Psalm 136, uh, on your own time, I would encourage you maybe this week to go read through it.

But I'm gonna I'm gonna sort of show you the template, because I think Psalm 136 is a really good template for how to prioritize and intentionally be thankful, and you'll see actually inattentional blindness and inattentional amnesia sort of embedded in this.

Okay, here we go.

Psalm 136, one.

Here's the construction of the Psalm.

It says, Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, his faithful love endures forever.

Okay, Psalm 136 has 26 verses, and every verse he's expressing worship or thankfulness to God for something, and he always ends with, his faithful love endures forever.

So 26 times, 26 verses, the writer of Psalm says, His faithful love endures forever.

It's really important because he's putting that as a filter on every other thing he says.

So he's gonna talk about God's power and how grand he is, but he's also saying, his love endures forever.

Why?

Because a powerful being is scary until I know it loves me.

And so he just keeps saying, his love endures forever, his love endures forever.

So he starts out talking about how great God is, and he says, you know, he's he's good.

Give thanks to the Lord for he's good.

Verse 3 says, give thanks to the Lord of Lords.

So again, he's talking about his grandeur.

He's saying he's the God of gods, he's the Lord of Lords.

And then in verse 5, okay, in the in a few verses there, four verses or so, it talks about how God created the world.

So it's talking, it says in verse five, give thanks to him who made the heavens so skillfully.

When it says heavens, he's talking about the sky, right?

So in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

That means look up and look down, right?

Everything that you see.

And so when you read this, okay, this is his way of making sure that throughout the course of our lives we don't fall into inattentional blindness.

He says, Thank you, God, for making the sky so skillfully.

Thank you for making the seas.

Thank you for making the earth.

He goes and he's describing what he knows of the ecosystem, and and he's bringing it up as noteworthy as a it's a liturgy.

It's a it's a communal thanksgiving liturgy of reminding himself of the sky.

Because think about this.

Every day you look at the sky, but we don't really, we're not like, whoa.

We're not in awe anymore.

It's inattentional blindness.

You're driving, it's in your windshield.

When you drive, you can see the sky in front of you, and very rarely, very rarely do we think about the magnitude of the sky.

Very rarely do we think about the earth God created.

And I would say we are in a better position now than ever to understanding the ecosystem and the world that God created, and the you know, the micro and the macro, how huge it is, the you know, hundreds of millions of light years, and then the microscopic.

And it's amazing.

We are in a better position for one Psalm 136 than the psalmist was to be in awe of God, and it's right in front of us.

One of the things um he wrote about in the book, he quoted from uh uh Caesar's Last Breath, which was a book, and it was actually talking about the science of your physical breath.

So think of this: you you breathe, it takes about four seconds, right, to take a breath.

And a normal breath, um, you inhale about a half a liter of air.

About a half a liter.

In that half a liter of air, you have 12.5 sextillion molecules.

12.5 sextillion.

How much is that?

That's more molecules than all the sands on all the seashores in the world.

That's how many molecules are in your breath.

And you take about 21,000 of them a day.

I think this is probably why Albert Einstein said, you know, there's two ways to look at the world.

One, as if nothing's a miracle, or two, as if everything's a miracle.

And so in Psalm 136, he's looking at the sky, he's looking at the earth, and he's like, you know, these things, I look at them every day, and I'm falling into inattentional blindness.

I'm gonna start looking again.

I'm gonna think in my awareness.

I can't believe that throughout the course of my life, I'll take hundreds of millions of breaths, and every one of those has more molecules than all the sands of the seashore.

It's a miracle, it's amazing, it's what God created.

And so I was thinking about this, like and I'm I don't like to give you know homework assignments or whatever, but I want to give you one that you might want to do.

Uh, Psalm 136.5, right?

He mentions that God made the heavens so skillfully.

But what if you sat down as part of your devotions or something, and you filled in this sentence?

You made your own Psalm 136.5.

Give thanks to him who made.

And fill in the blank.

Give thanks to him who made.

And why don't you look again?

Why don't you look again at the world that God created?

What's right in front of your face that because you haven't been paying attention to, you're blind to.

Um, Shaylin and I are on a board for a it's like a church planting organization.

And so once a year we'll go to a meeting and we'll pray and plan on how to plant more churches across the country.

And so we went one time and and um we flew into this place and it was really beautiful.

There were mountains and and through the desert, it was in uh California actually, and so we took um an Uber from the airport to our hotel, and as we're driving, we're looking out the window.

And my wife is a huge nature person, to be honest with you.

I really wasn't near as much a nature person now that I've met her, and I've just seen through her lens, and and and she's taught me a lot, and so I I love to learn, and but I I love to actually uh I love to watch her watch nature, to be honest.

I know this is kind of weird, but she'll be watching nature, I'm watching her.

You know, it's like uh I enjoy that.

But, anyways, we're driving to to the uh hotel, and she's just staring out the window, and she's uh talking science and and uh nature.

We get there and they give us our itinerary, they're like, hey, three o'clock, we've got this important meeting.

Okay, everybody go to ballroom B.

So we like whatever it was, I'm making that.

I don't know if it was ballroom B, but it was a ballroom.

So we go to the ballroom, and if you've been to a ballroom in a hotel, there's no windows.

None.

So we go in there and they gather a group of Christian leaders, and they're like, hey guys, we're gonna start with some worship.

And so they bring out uh, you know, a man and a woman were singing together, playing the guitar and singing, and they they'd written a song, it was a beautiful song about looking at God's face and gazing at his beauty and all this.

And I look over and Shaylin's like this.

And I was so curious.

I'm like, what is she thinking?

Like, what's going on in her head?

So after we left, you know, I was like, hey, you know, what'd you think of everything?

So yeah, it was cool, it was good, it was good.

I was like, hey, I noticed like when they were singing, you were your eyes were closed.

Like, what was going on in your head?

It's like, I don't want to tell you, you know.

I was like, no, come on, tell me what.

She goes, I was just thinking about the Uber ride.

She's like, I was thinking about the mountains, you know, I was thinking about the nature, you know.

She's like, I uh last thing I'd ever want to do is disrespect these folks.

But she's like, I just wanted to leave.

Like, I wanted to run out of the room.

I wanted to go climb up a mountain and look at God's face, you know.

I wanted to go, I wanted to go see the sand, you know.

I I wanted to go and experience, and she's and it's funny because for years she felt almost guilty, like, I feel like I should like these things better, these other things better.

But in nature, I'm looking and I'm seeing his fingerprints.

It's Romans 1.

In Romans 1, it says, we are without excuse because you look at the world that God created and it's right in front of our face.

Sitting right there, in attentional blindness.

And so the the author he goes and he starts to name it.

I what why don't you take some time and fill that in?

Thanks, give thanks to him who made what?

Then if if you read from in Psalm 136 from verse 10 to verse 22, 13 verses, he mentions key moments in the nation of Israel and their history.

So verse 11 it says, He brought Israel out of Egypt, his faithful love endures forever.

Verse 16, give thanks to him who led his people through the wilderness, his faithful love endures forever.

I wonder if if you took some time and you fought inattentional amnesia, that's what he's doing.

He he, of course, we have things we need, of course we have places we're going, but he said, I'm not going to forget about key landmark moments.

And so he mentions 13 of them.

I wonder if you sat down and you created your own Psalm 136, 11.

Give thanks to him who what has he done for you?

What doors has he opened for you?

When has he showed up faithfully for you?

What has he provided for you?

What has he brought you through?

What has he saved you from?

Come on, seriously, take some time.

Write your own liturgy, write your own 13 different things that God has done for you.

And so you see the writer of Psalm 136 creating a mechanism, creating a template to make sure that his life is not controlled by inattentional blindness, inattentional amnesia, forgetting things he wants to remember, or looking over things that are right in front of his face.

It ends with this, verse 23 through 26.

He said, Remember us.

His faithful love endures forever.

He saved us from our enemies, his faithful love endures forever.

He gives food to every living thing, his faithful love endures forever.

Give thanks to the God of heaven, his faithful love endures forever.

Okay?

So that's thank you.

Let's talk about thank you and thank you.

I want to look at Philippians 1.

So let's jump from Psalm 136 to Philippians 1.

Philippians 1, written by the Apostle Paul, it's one of the letters that he wrote to these churches that he helped to start all over the Mediterranean rim.

And he writes to the Philippians and he writes to them.

These are people, many of whom he met while he was in prison in Philippi.

When he writes to them, he's in a new prison now.

He's in Rome.

He's in a Roman prison.

And so he writes back to these people, the Philippians, and think about this now.

He's been there, done that, but here he is, he's back in prison.

And you know, it's one thing you go to prison the first time and the second time.

We don't know exactly how many times Paul had been in prison at this point, but it is multiple times.

And when you look at this letter, he writes, look, look what he says, Philippians 1 3.

He says, Every time I think of you, I give thanks to my God.

Okay?

So he's writing to the Philippians.

He himself is incarcerated, they are all not in prison, and he's going, here's the words that are creating the world that I'm living in.

He said, When I'm in here, I think about you.

And I think about how thankful I am, and I give thanks to God.

I think about out, and I and so I'm thankful for you, and I thank God for you.

And in so doing, my mood, which wouldn't be good in prison, I'd just be wanting to do my time and get me out of here.

I might actually be quite disillusioned by the fact that I'm serving God and I keep ending up behind bars.

My words create worlds.

So now I my whole mood is lifted, my whole attitude is lifted, my countenance is lifted.

I'm able to go beyond my environment.

I don't let this environment shackle me.

I'm free in this environment.

And part of how I do that is he said, I think about you guys.

It's like I'm thinking about the Philippians, I think about how good these folks are.

These are good friends.

I think about the nice things you've said to me.

I think about the way that you treated me.

I'm thankful that even though I've had people come and go, you guys have been faithful and steadfast.

And I'm just grateful for my for my out, for my friends.

And so he said, when I do that, I thank God for you.

And then look at this, verse six.

This is the world that that type of thinking creates for a person.

It says in verse 6, I'm certain that God who began a good work within you will carry his work until it's fully finished on the day of Christ when Christ Jesus returns.

Verse 7.

So it's right that I should feel as I do about you, for you have a special place in my heart.

So here you have Paul, who, if we just look at it from the surface, this is the guy who needs encouragement.

This is the one who needs somebody to build him up and pep him up.

And you have Paul who's there, and because of his gratitude for the people he loves, he finds himself like naturally going, listen, you guys hang in there.

I know it's a tough world out there, but you guys stick with it.

Because he who began a good work is going to carry it all the way through to completion.

He becomes the encourager when he's the inmate.

Why?

Because words create worlds.

And a grateful heart and grateful words, it encourages him, it builds him up, it lifts him up, and now he's building others up in a scenario you wouldn't think that type of thing would happen.

Now look at this.

He goes on to say, in verse 12, he said, I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that everything that's happened to me here has helped to spread the good news.

For everyone here, including the whole palace guard, knows that I'm in chains because of Christ.

And because of my imprisonment, most of the believers here have gained confidence and boldly speak God's message without fear.

So you have Paul, by the way, who is he's not a superhuman, this is a human being.

He goes into prison where you would just think you would just try to turn your brain off and do your time, but he starts making choices to be fruitful.

He makes choices to be productive, he makes choices to be on mission, he makes choices to be a blessing, to bloom where he's planted.

He doesn't like where he's planted.

Who wants to be in prison?

Nobody, certainly not Paul, who had been in and out all of his life.

But instead of wallowing in self-pity, instead of being, you know, mad at God or staying mad at God, instead of, you know, being upset with what everybody did to him, he focuses on the people that he's thankful for.

Somebody did something to put me here.

I'm not gonna focus on that.

I'm gonna focus on the people that have done right by me.

And so that gratitude starts to lift my spirit, and then he makes decisions, he makes choices.

And look what's happening.

I mean, this guy's in prison.

You can't keep this guy down.

You can't keep him down.

You put him in prison, he converts the guards.

You know, he's like, he's like, yeah, I'll tell you what, man, I'm really building a bond, you know, with these corrections officers.

You know, we're like, I mean, it's like this, you know, and I got a few of them, they're right there, you know.

And then some of these inmates, they were really down.

It's a good thing God sent me here.

You know, it's a good thing God sent me here, because their their confidence is building.

He said, I'm I'm building the con God's using me to build the confidence.

And some of them are becoming bold.

They were shrinking down, they were in a dark place, and now, you know, this place is really starting to, it's really starting to take off.

Okay?

And so now look at this.

He says, verse 20, I'll continue to be bold for Christ as I have been in the past.

And I trust that my life will bring honor to Christ, whether I live or die.

Verse 26, don't miss this.

He said, When I come to you again, when I get out, you'll have even more reason to take pride in Christ Jesus because of what he's doing.

Look at this.

Through me.

Look, I'm not talking about thumping your chest, I'm not talking about getting a big ego, I'm not talking about having your head swell to an inappropriate size.

I'm talking about an appropriate amount of thank you to yourself for the decisions you made.

This guy went to prison, he could have hunkered down, he could have gone and spiraled down, but he went in and he made good choices.

He went in and he served the God and served the people around him, and he did really good things.

And it's okay to go like, good job, self.

You made decisions.

You made choices.

You could have gone this way, you are a free will human being.

You have God gave you a free will, and in your free will, you don't always make the right decisions.

And of course, there's a time to evaluate the bad decisions we made, but there's also a time to be grateful to yourself for the choices you've made.

And so you see Paul quite proud of himself, you know.

I came in here and I made the most out of prison, and I made the most out of this situation.

He said, next time you see me, we'll we'll have a good worship fest together to glorify God because of the things God has done through me.

And I want you to think about that for yourself.

To take some time to have good rhythms, rituals where you look up to heaven and you thank God.

Thank you, and you thank you, and you thank you.

So we have rituals, we have rhythms, and then what we learn from Paul is gratitude is ritual rhythm, and it's also responses.

It's the way that you respond.

I wonder if you started to train yourself, and I started to train myself around situations that would provoke the opposite of thankfulness.

If we started to train ourselves, we started to develop the discipline to respond to environments and situations that would normally make us not grateful, but to do the exact opposite, to flip it on its head and to be thankful.

Alright, I'm gonna give you two more things real quick.

Okay?

Cool, Greg.

Up, out, in, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Rituals, rhythms, responses.

Let's evaluate this on our own time.

The things that we do consistently, what do you do daily?

What do you do when life hits you?

How do you respond?

Think about all that.

One more thing.

How?

How do I do this?

What are the ingredients of doing this well?

I'll give you two real quick.

One is intentional.

So you make time for it.

You don't just hope it happens.

You have to think, you don't naturally respond the way Paul did.

That's an intentional response.

These thank you rhythms won't happen naturally.

You gotta put them in.

So you gotta be intentional.

But the other thing is, and this is where I think it gets really powerful, is specific.

Specificity.

Psalm 136, he goes detail by detail.

Um I have something here I think will kind of help us see this the right way.

So this is uh, you know, we have our Thanksgiving meal.

Some of you will gather, you know, with friends and family, and you'll you'll eat food, and at some point you might pray and thank God for the food.

Um you remember how you prayed when you were little?

You ever hear your kids thank God for stuff?

It's different.

Like my my son Miles, I put him to bed, we put him to bed at night, uh, he'll go, we'll say, okay, bud, good time to pray.

Before bed, say our prayers.

He'll go, thank you, Jesus.

Thank you for tortilla chips.

I'm am I telling the truth?

Thank you for tortilla chips.

Thank you for my toothbrush.

Thank you for blocks.

Thank you for Mimi.

Thank you for Papa.

Thank you for mommy.

Thank you for Ella.

Thank you for Hudson.

I'm always worried he's gonna leave me out.

Like, keep going, man.

Like, thank you for daddy.

And then he'll go and he'll just name like tons of specifics from his dad.

What the heck happened to those prayers?

Because we grow up, we get older, everybody gathers around the meal, and we go, all right, everybody, hold hands.

God, thank you for this food and this family.

Jesus' name, amen.

Let's eat.

And I understand not every nobody likes a big long prayer when everybody's hungry.

I get it.

I get it, I get it.

You know, there's actually a thing in Orthodox Judaism where they pray for the meal before the meal and after the meal.

And and and they consider the specifics of the aromas and the ingredients.

I mean, think about this.

If you're standing at a meal with multiple dishes and you have multiple people, I can say food and family, and I can put it into one category.

Or I really can get specific about the details of what's here.

All right.

I've got right here, holiday herb stuffing.

Here I've got green bean casserole.

Here I've got sweet potato casserole that does not have marshmallows on it.

Praise God.

It's foul.

I don't know who ever came up with that.

It's not supposed to have it, okay?

I know there's some controversy around that.

It's just we'll clear it up.

The Bible says you're not supposed to do it.

Trust me, it's in the Old Testament.

All right, you gotta dig deep into the footnotes, but it's there.

Intentionality and specificity.

You can say, God, thank you for the food, and I'm not even talking about the moment you eat, because again, whatever.

At some point, at some point, go back to a childlike prayer that breaks down the details.

And it's not even about the food, it's about it's about the mindset, it's about words creating worlds.

Uh God, I thank you for the one pound of crusty bread.

Cut the bite-sized cubes and dry bread crumbs, about 10 cups.

Lord, thank you for the two medium onions chopped.

Thank you, Lord, for the four celery ribs chopped and the one tablespoon of poultry seasoning blend.

The one stick of unsalted butter, Lord, the one and a half cups of chicken broth, God, we give you thanks, Lord, the half cup of water, the one egg that was beaten for us to enjoy, Lord.

We thank you for the salt and pepper to taste.

God, we thank you for the one can of cream of mushroom soup, God, the half cup of milk, one teaspoon, Lord, of soy sauce.

In Jesus' name, I thank you for the dash of black pepper, God, the four cups of green beans, God, cooked.

One and one-third cup of French onions, God, thank you for the stirred the soup and the milk and the soy sauce and the black pepper and beans and the hands that prepared it, Lord.

And we thank you for the sweet potato casserole, the three cups of cooked, mashed sweet potatoes, the one cup of sugar, Lord.

We ask you to forgive us for that cup of sugar, but Lord, we thank you that you're faithful.

Half a cup of margarine melted, Lord, two eggs well beaten, God, well beaten.

One teaspoon of vanilla and a third cup of sweet milk.

I mean, imagine, imagine.

I know I'm saying this tongue in cheek, and your family would kill you if you did that, you know, because everybody's hungry.

But you understand the point.

You're standing around.

It's yes, it's your family and your friends, these are individuals with individual traits and characteristics.

And, you know, I wonder what would happen to your whole point of view, your whole mood, uh, your whole countenance.

If we had rituals, rhythms, and responses.

You know, it'd be pretty hard to stay in the mindset I'm in when I'm thinking about the details of what I'm thankful for.

It just does something, it just pulls you up, it pulls you out of it.

I'll say this last thing and then we'll be done.

Uh, I don't know if you can smell this on the front row, but we have a pumpkin pie that's baking.

Shout out to Emily McInerney, who made four of these.

Um right now, this thing said it takes 40 minutes for this to cook.

We're on uh 2730, is where we are.

2730.

I can smell it really good.

Can you guys?

Can you smell this?

You can't?

Sucks to be you.

It smells great.

Let me see.

Let me open this up and see if it'll just waft in the room.

Okay.

What this represents is not just the things that are finished, but the things that are still baking.

The things.

Keep an eye on this guy.

These guys.

I want you to think about, all jokes aside, I want you to think about the things that are in process.

The works in progress.

And don't wait to be thankful till it's ready to eat.

Be thankful that I can smell it.

I can smell it.

It's not ready for me to eat it.

But just because I'm not ready to eat it yet doesn't mean I can't smell it.

It's on its way.

And for some of you, yeah, thank God for what he's done.

Thank God for the people around you and what they've done, and thank yourself for what you've done.

But don't miss thanking God for what's still in the oven.

God, you're still working.

Our marriage isn't healthy yet, but it's healing.

I can smell it.

It's on its way.

We're not tasting it yet, but we can we can smell it.

The work is happening.

I'm not out of debt yet, but I paid off one of my cards.

I still got work to do, but but I'm moving in the right direction.

I'm fighting my way through anxiety.

I still have some anxious moments.

I still have some anxious thoughts, but I'm getting large quantities of peace.

There, there's there's things that are happening.

I'm not there.

We haven't declared victory, but it's in process.

Don't just thank God for what is done.

Thank God for what he's doing, for what he's in the middle of, for what's making progress.

We thank you, Lord, for the work in progress.