GOD, WE'RE JUST GRATEFUL

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

Fourteen years ago, my wife and I stepped out on this journey to start a new movement with one purpose, one mission.

Now we exist to awaken this generation to new life in Christ.

A church that's for this generation.

The way we've said it is that we're actually a four-generation church that's for this generation.

Here's actually a picture of the very first service.

And I'm sorry it's not too easy to see, but we just had this protege commissioning, but our very first service was actually the commissioning of Westgate elders of Jenny and I to pastor and lead this new movement called Awakening Church.

We had no idea if it would work.

Didn't know if anybody would show up.

We had three young kids, two, five, and seven.

We weren't even sure if we were going to be able to cover our rent as we went along.

All we knew is we knew if one person came to know Jesus, it would all be worth it.

Looking back over 14 years, there's one emotion that overwhelms all the others.

And it's simply gratitude.

It's just gratitude.

I know many of you know our story that uh for my wife and I, and we'll, if you don't, I can we can grab coffee and I can share more another time.

But we never wanted to plan a church, we never really wanted to lead a church.

And good grief, we never actually wanted to be at a high school campus either.

And looking back 14 years later, I never would have wanted to miss this.

We want this service to be one big resounding thank you to God.

A celebration for the way he has worked over these 14 years.

Now, when it comes to gratitude, there's one story that has uh shaped and formed me more than any other story.

Um it often serves as the compass of my life when it comes to gratitude.

It's been my prayer for us as a church, and it perfectly sets the table for our time together.

And if you got your Bibles, would you open them up to Luke chapter 17, verse 31?

Luke 17:31

Luke chapter 17.

Luke 17 · chapter mention

If not, it's in your notes, or actually, you don't have notes today, it's on the slide.

It begins this way.

Now Jesus, on his way to Jerusalem, traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee.

As he's going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him.

They stood at a distance socially, they were not allowed to get, as some scholars believe, within even 50 yards.

So they stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, Jesus, master, have pity on us.

That word pity is mercy, have mercy on us.

Jesus, have mercy, have pity.

And I just want to begin here today for us, Silicon Valley.

We're all about how do we optimize our lives, how do we upgrade our lives.

What we need to know and must remember as humans, we need saving far more than we need upgrading.

These lepers understood it undisputably.

Jesus, we are hopeless without you.

Save us.

Have mercy on us.

We need saving more than we need upgrading.

That changes our entire posture of gratitude, by the way.

If you only think you need an upgrade, a minor adjustment, a little help, then you'll be a little grateful.

But if you realize Jesus didn't just help you get across the finish line, he saved you completely.

I'm desperate.

Gratitude, when it moves from recognizing that these ten cry, Jesus, have mercy on us, is our cry.

We don't need upgrading, we need saving.

It moves us from a polite response to this posture of our entire life.

Goes on.

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

And as they went, they were cleansed.

One of them, when he saw, he was healed.

One of them, just say that with me, one.

One.

How many were there?

One.

One, just one.

How many total were there?

Ten.

Okay, we got 10% going on here.

One of them.

When he saw, he's on the way, he's walking, and he looks down, he notices that the deformations and the spots and the like he is healed.

He is cleansed.

His skin is clean.

When he saw he was healed, he stopped in his tracks.

He came back praising God with a loud voice.

He threw himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him.

And he was a Samaritan.

Jesus asked, Were not all ten clean?

Where are the other nine?

Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?

Then he said to them, Rise and go.

Your faith has made you well.

This story has always stood out to me.

Because I want to be the type of person that is the one that comes back and thanks Jesus.

And I long for us to be the type of church that we're the one that comes back to thank Jesus.

How easy it is to take grace for granted.

I mean, let it sink in for the first time or a reminder.

Jesus saved my life.

He rescued me.

When I turned 17, I had a life-changing encounter with Jesus that changed the course of my life.

And because of that moment, I am forever grateful.

And so life.

From that point on.

Gosh.

May it just be one big thank you back to him.

Because as I experience life moving forward, everything's grace.

It's all his grace poured out.

And you know something about grateful people?

Grateful people are beautiful people, aren't they?

They're beautiful people.

Like you love being around them, they're amazing, they're just winsome.

Like grateful people are beautiful people, and the opposite is true.

I couldn't even put this on a slide.

I came so close to doing it.

Entitled people.

I don't have it up there.

I don't have it up there.

But you know it.

You know it.

Entitled people are ugly people.

Aren't they?

Oh my goodness.

Have you ever, have you ever done something for someone and they don't thank you?

So good.

Yeah, every parent knows that one.

So let me ask you this.

Okay, I was gonna go down that road.

We don't have enough time.

We get the point.

If grateful people are beautiful people, how do we become a grateful people?

How do we become the one?

We live in an entitled world, don't we?

Everything is orchestrated in our world and designed to orient your life around you.

Social media has you fixated on you, self-realization.

Like, how do you make self-promotion, self-self-self instead of whoa, it's all about you, Jesus, and what you did for me.

And instead of my life somehow trying to get from others, my life is simply a gratitude back to you because you've given everything already to me.

How do we become a grateful people?

Instead of looks maxing or protein maxing, let's do gratitude maxing, okay?

Let me give you just three things that grateful people do.

You ready?

Come on, you ready?

All right, grateful people do three things.

You ready?

Grateful people see it.

Grateful people see it.

Did you notice that when he saw that he was healed?

He noticed, he saw, he recognized that he was healed.

Grateful people see it.

Gratitude begins with grace.

That's what we were just talking about.

The grace of Jesus stepping into our lives, saving us, redeeming us, forgiving us, bringing us purpose and peace and life and hope.

Gratitude begins with grace, and so we have to recognize what Jesus has done for us.

You know, there's sometimes um oh yeah, I'll share that story too.

I have a pocket of Queen X, not just because of um I'm gonna cry.

I'll cry.

I always cry at our birthdays.

Sometimes we become so like we understand it.

Oh, John 3, like John 3.16.

Let's just take John 3.16.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever puts their faith, believes in him, might not perish but have eternal life.

May that always move us to tears.

May that never become something that is commonplace or ordinary.

This arrival syndrome, oh I know that.

No, no, no, no, no.

But you get to live it, you get to walk in it.

We begin to recognize what Jesus has done for us.

Let me ask you: do you know what Jesus has done for you?

How he's worked, how he's moved in your life, the stories that he's shown up.

Because the the truth of the matter is simply this.

If you look for it, you tend to find it.

If you look for it, you tend to find it.

And we live in a world uh that is chronically dissatisfied.

It is so popular to be critical, apathetic, and cynical.

And if you look for it, you'll tend to find it.

Uh this morning I woke up and I had terrible allergies.

I'm sitting prepping, and this is why I have a pocket full of um, oh there that goes, uh, tissue.

Uh I'm sneezing, the nose is running.

By the way, this happens every big event we do.

Easter, Christmas, you can count on it every single time.

I have terrible allergies.

I take allergy pills every single day.

Uh I have terrible, it just hits me afresh.

Now, here's the way I can look at it.

I hate my allergies.

This is the worst.

Why?

Jenny comes in this morning.

I have terrible allergies, and you know what she said?

Guess God's gonna do some big stuff this morning.

Right?

Because how you see it changes how you approach it.

If you look for it, you tend to find it, you go like, oh, I got I got this going on, but this going on shows that God's act working and he's moving, and I begin to see life differently.

That we wake up and we begin to look at life as grace, look at it as a gift, look at how he is showing up in your life, in the little, in the big, in the everyday.

Uh leading, he's actually world-leading gratitude expert, Dr.

Robert English says, a grateful person is one who accepts all of life, the good and the bad, as a gift.

In fact, I want to share one story.

Angie shared her story, and she shares walking through a difficult moment, and you get to hear how she sees the gift in that.

Take a look.

Hello, awakening.

My name is Angie, and I have been coming to this church since 2024.

Um, this is my God and so grateful study.

I grew up in a small country called Zimbabwe, and I think managed to grace when I was still in high school.

And I have made that work with God's teaching, and this is always more often to know.

Um since coming to awakening, God is teaching my feet.

Not just to come to church, I'm sure you can see everything.

And also to be part of the community.

This is just a church for team.

This is change family.

I could see the love of Jesus through the way people thought for me.

So I'm so grateful for our weakening.

I'm grateful for a church family that has helped me to go closer to you and has shown me um your love in such a real impractical way.

Thank you.

Yeah, isn't that good?

Grateful people, you first gotta see it.

Gotta see it.

Second, is then you gotta savor it.

Say that with me.

Savor it.

We're not good at savoring.

It says one of them, he came back.

Ten were healed, one came back.

Nine, I assume, were in a rush to get on with the lives they had just gotten back.

Only one stop, turn around, and came back to the one who gave his life back.

Here's what savoring does.

This is, we need this in our culture.

Savoring refuses to rush past the goodness of God.

Savoring refuses to rush past.

We are in such a rush, we were in such a hurry.

It's all about progress, it's all about next, it's all about bigger and better, and we hurry.

Savoring refuses to rush past the goodness of God.

That's why we celebrate a birthday.

Celebration is an important way that we savor.

Did you know that?

God, all throughout the Old Testament, called the people of Israel.

They had different festivals to remember and celebrations and days and months to celebrate, to remember his goodness, to remember his faithfulness, to remember how he worked and moved.

Why?

Because we're a forgetful species.

How quickly we forget the goodness of God.

And it was just yesterday or last week or last year because we're caught up in the hurry of today.

And so at awakening, we anchor our year around three strategic celebrations.

They're built within the church calendar.

Obviously, Christmas, we celebrate that God is with us, God for us, God who came for us.

Easter, that God saved us, he gave his life for us, he took our place.

And our birthday, we celebrate God is faithful to us.

Because if we don't intentionally savor, we can unintentionally fall victim to what psychologists call hedonic adaptation.

Hedonic adaptation is our tendency to get used to the good in our lives until what once felt extraordinary feels ordinary.

Four years ago, my wife and I we had the privilege, it's an amazing gift and a miracle in an answer to prayer to purchase our first home.

We'd been saving for two decades and uh God opened up some doors.

We purchased this home four years ago.

Now it was a contractor special.

You couldn't move into it.

Uh the bathrooms were unlike didn't work at all.

We had to demo it all.

Uh, my wife, who's a real estate agent and designer, she designed everything.

It's like beautiful, it's so cool.

It's like we gotta build a bathroom.

This bathroom, just like the way we wanted it.

And you know, one of the exciting parts is instead of one shower, we moved up to two showers.

That's a big deal.

Family of five, is like, oh, that's so exciting.

The other day we were hanging out, and I overheard someone talking about the glass in their shower, you know, and they talked about this glass, and they're like, ah, I just hate cleaning the glass.

Now, I'd never had glass in the shower before this house, you know.

Um and so um I was realized, you know what, I really don't like cleaning that glass either.

A couple weeks ago later, that little idea planted a seed in my mind, and I didn't even notice it, but I started to clean the glass, and my first response, uh, my first response for four years, by the way, every time I step into this uh like this bathroom, it's like, God, I'm just so grateful.

God, I'm just so grateful.

Like, wow, look at your blessing, look at oh my goodness, it's amazing.

We have two sinks, it's amazing.

And then I'm cleaning the glass.

And there was this little thought, I hate cleaning glass.

And the Spirit of God in that moment convicted me.

It was like, boom, instant.

Really?

And I was like, oh, how quickly our tendency to get used to the good in our lives until what once felt extraordinary feels ordinary.

What we once prayed for can slowly become what we now complain about.

That job, that relationship, that home, that new location and space that you moved to.

And Spirit God's like, really?

And so this morning I took my shower and I squeegied, and I'm allowing that squeegee.

Moment to be a grateful moment.

Because you get the choice, by the way.

That can be a griping moment, or it can be a grateful moment.

You get the choice.

How you determine to see that moment will determine how you approach it, and then it will send you down a path of how you live, and it subtly and slowly will always want to be the one that comes back, but all of a sudden we're part of the nine that are walking away.

And we didn't even notice it.

Grateful people.

In fact, on your um chair is this little rooted sticker.

It's a sticker, just so you know.

It's a season that we're stepping into as a church October 4th.

It's massive.

Both my wife and I feel like 2026 has the same uh feeling of excitement and intrepidation that it had 14 years ago because God is doing a new thing.

We're excited for what He's doing.

And we're going to talk about what it means to be a rooted people in a transient world?

And God, what do you have for us as a church to be a place of rootedness in a transient world?

And how do you lead us and take us into a long-term location?

Would you join us six weeks?

This is a big deal.

Our small groups are going through curriculum together.

Get in a small group.

If you're not in a small group, rooted.

Say rooted with me.

Rooted.

Grateful people, see it.

Grateful people, savor it.

And finally, yeah, I went all S's, okay.

I'm I'm I'm a pastor, whatever.

You'll remember it.

See it.

Savor it.

Speak it.

Speak it.

Notice that he came back praising God, and I got it highlighted.

Would you say it with me?

Praising God in a loud voice.

Well, you could have at least done a loud voice.

It was loud up there.

Come on.

Praising God in a yeah, that was so good.

He threw himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him.

It's not just enough to feel grateful.

We have to express gratitude.

And here's why, you know it.

Unexpressed gratitude is experienced as ingratitude, isn't it?

Remember that grateful people are beautiful people, entitled people are, well, you know.

We have to say it.

We have to speak it.

He came back.

Thank you, God, for the truth is I think even the people that we think are entitled, they're probably pretty grateful.

They just didn't say it.

They felt it.

We're in a hurry, we're forgetful species, we run past things.

We live off of good intentions.

I intended to do it.

There's something so powerful that God does in you and for the other.

Part of the discipline for me in my life that I just started to do daily because I am naturally what I like to call a realist.

My wife called it a pessimist, but I was like, I'm a realist.

I see things as they really are.

But my natural bent can go towards criticalness.

If you're a leader, you naturally see what's wrong in the room and you want to fix it.

And so I began to just have this simple practice.

And I start every morning this way.

And I've shared it many times, so if it's old news to you, be reminded again.

Good morning, my heavenly father.

That's how I start my journal.

And I just write my prayers.

Thank you, God, for every single day.

You have something to be grateful for no matter what you're going through.

Some days it's just thank you for a new day.

I wasn't guaranteed this day.

Thank you for breath in my lungs.

Thank you for a body that works.

I woke up to new morning mercies.

Thank you for your mercy today.

Thank you, God, for and we just begin to thank God.

It reorients our entire way we see the rest of the day.

In fact, one of the practices I want you to do is we gave you thank you cards.

This is your thank you card.

Write a thank you card to someone who's invested in your life.

Maybe someone that you thought of years ago.

I should really thank them.

Oh, it's too late.

Go back and thank them.

Write a thank you card.

Grateful people see it.

Grateful people savor it.

Grateful people speak it.

And so I just want to tell a couple more stories of gratitude before we shift in our service.

Fourteen years ago, when we started awakening, our kids were two, five, and seven.

And you can just put the birthday slide back up.

I don't know if everybody needs to feel that the rest of the way.

Thank you.

Today they're 16, 19, and 21.

Because of college life.

This is the first awakening birthday in four years that we've gotten to be together as a family.

It's so special.

My daughter drove up from college.

My son flew in to be a part of the worship team.

Like, what a gift after 14 years, and this is like I've been a whole family deal, and we've been doing it with lots of you over these years, and so grateful for that.

That my kids love Jesus and want to be here and be a part of it, and that we get to be all together.

This morning I woke up and found a note from my daughter on my coffee maker.

I'm a terrible photographer, so it's a little blurry.

I apologize.

But she just wrote this on the coffee maker.

I love you, Dad.

You've got this.

Like, how proud my 21-year-old daughter's encouraging me.

Like, what a gift, God, I'm so grateful for.

And we said this as a church that we long to be a church, and as parents, we long that our kids love Jesus for a lifetime, not just a time in their life.

And how do we help them grow in this?

And one of the things I'm so grateful for are the young men and women who've invested in my kids' life.

That's why, as a parent, like this is an incredible place to come to church.

As your kids grow from every age, there's people that are investing in your kids that are just ahead of them that love Jesus.

In fact, I want to highlight two unsung heroes that are incredible, that junior hires and high schoolers know their names, but you probably do not know their names.

And it's Corbin and Marty.

Both of you guys, some of them, I just want them to see your face.

Come on, come on, you're athletic.

Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on.

Come on up.

I know, they didn't know this.

They didn't I clearly didn't know this.

I know.

Hey.

Good to see you.

Both of these young men, and they're getting older, but they're young to me.

Not only do they love Jesus in a really profound and beautiful way that I just so appreciate.

They both are married, have full-time jobs.

Corbin serves in our junior high ministry.

Martin serves in our high school ministry.

That commitment level is like next level.

Because it's not like, oh, I'm gonna serve on a Sunday hit or miss here and there.

Corbin serves in our 11 o'clock.

They attend the first service, he serves in our 11 o'clock, then there's a Tuesday night uh service uh gathering for a junior high.

Similar for Martin here, he comes here, Sunday night serves.

They take vacation time for retreats and camps and missions trips.

They go out of their way and spend just time with students investing in them.

It's unbelievable.

And we are a better church, and our students and my kids are following Jesus because of your investment and deserve a great thank you.

Can we thank them?

And that's two among many.

I I don't have enough time to go through everybody.

All the people that set up chairs for you to have a life-changing encounter with God, the people that are right now missing out on this moment to serve your kids and minister to them so that you can be there and they can awaken to the wonder of Jesus.

Oh God, I'm so grateful for.

Poor Kano.

Okay, let's go.

Um, I have two more grateful things.

I want to share an email I got of gratitude, and then I want to share a video, and then we're gonna we're gonna go.

I'm over time.

I apologize.

Uh I got an email from a guy named Matteo.

I want uh Matteo is originally from Italy.

Uh he uh is going to Harvard, a little school on the East Coast, you may have heard of it.

Here for the summer, two and a half months.

He was just here for two and a half months, thinking of joining this tech startup, and he was a part of Awakening.

This 20-year-old sends me this thank you note.

But it's a thank you to our church, so you gotta hear it.

Ryan, I just want to send over a thank you note for everything that you and the awakening church community have meant to me over the past two and a half months.

When I arrived in San Jose, I was immediately blown away by how little focus this place seemed to put on human and spiritual growth, trading instead for the more superficial, addictive, and easy alternative of status and money.

I call the latter easy because their attainment does not require what the former does, which is humility and selflessness.

I remember being in the office on a Tuesday, my soul tired for some unknown reason, and feeling a part of me desperate for Sunday to come around, because Sunday meant that I would get to hear one of Awakening's sermons, meet new churchgoers, and get a chance to feel that addictive yet productive feeling that I soon realized being loved for God.

I quickly realized how much in an anchor you and awakening community have been for me throughout what I can confidently call the most turbultuous two months of my life.

That is, months in which I had the blessing of tasting and truly living with all the flavors that life has to offer, whether excitement about joining a new, fast-growing company, fear of missing out on life back home, anxiety about making decisions whose outcome is unknown, and the occasional sadness and joy.

If it wasn't for the gratitude for life that awakening still in me, these feelings would have pulled me in all sorts of directions in an exhausting manner.

I'm grateful to Awakening for giving me green pastures to lie on every Sunday, for giving me my first Bible, which has become the armor I put on at the start of every day, and finally for giving me the chance to grow in my faith in ways I hadn't thought possible.

As you know, I came to San Jose expecting to drop out of school for this startup.

My parents were against it, but for some reason I was incredibly bought into the idea, which I thought was a green flag.

And I was confident my decision was right.

However, during church one Sunday, while praying for clarity, I got completely overwhelmed by what I can only describe as the feeling you get when a parent is disappointed in you.

The weird discomfort you feel when you hear them say, Really, Mateo, this is what you want to sacrifice a year of Harvard for?

This is what you think the purpose of your life is?

That's when I knew I was meant to go back to school.

I called my mom, told her what I thought, and though extremely happy I wasn't dropping out, she didn't react, she did react a bit shocked by this unexplainable U-turn that I was so peaceful with.

I had no better way to describe it to her than this.

This is not what I'm meant to do.

She's not religious, but I'm sure and hopeful that she also felt something inexplicable in her day, in her that day.

I've used many words, but the two I want to get across are thank you.

Awakening, you always have a special place in my heart, and hopefully I get to come back soon.

I just want to share one more video and then we'll close and we're gonna celebrate with baptisms to close out our service.

Take a look.

Hi, Awakening.

My name is Nina Komkai.

I have been attending Awakening for the past six years, and this is my God I'm grateful story.

I am originally from Thailand and I moved to New Zealand for a bit, and I was really moved around a lot as a kid.

Um, I never really felt like I really belong anywhere because when I would feel like settled in, I would be moved to the next place.

And so I also never grew up um in a church environment.

My entire family is Buddhist, so I would say I felt pretty displaced and different in all the areas of my life that one truly feels grounded in.

Um I started attending awakening um around like the age of 25.

And God was really working through his people and bringing me to awakening, and I had joined my first small group, and that was really when I got to be plugged in and really truly understood what it meant to have people that really led you towards Jesus.

I for a long time didn't really feel like I deserved God's love.

I saw it for other people, and I knew that he loved me, but I couldn't accept it for myself.

And it was really I think it took me about three years after I joined um my small group and being a part of awakening that I finally made the decision to get baptized.

And that was probably one of the most beautiful days of my life and giving my life to him.

And something that I always say is that I always found a home in him and that he is my truest friend.

I think for many years in my entire life, I always felt like a fish out of water, and I've come to realize that my identity is rooted in him, and that I've always belonged, and home is not a place, but it is that we look to him.

Um God, I'm just so grateful that you've shown me that I already do belong.

Amen.

Would you stand with me as we're gonna worship together?

Two things before we do.

Um, one, that we're gonna celebrate baptism in a moment is those stepping into the waters, declaring their gratitude for God, his grace and their life, that the old life is gone and the new life has begun.

Um, and we practice something called spontaneous baptisms because every person who's placed their faith in Jesus is called to be baptized.

If you've never been baptized and you go, like, gosh man, maybe today's the day.

Uh during worship or maybe even during baptisms, Dave's gonna stand right over there by that prayer sign.

Just walk over to him and talk with him.

We have shirts and towels and all the rest.

We'd love to have you join a part of that.

The other is for some, you've never said yes to Jesus.

And said, Hey, may you be like those lepers of Jesus.

Have mercy on me.

Jesus, just have mercy.

He answers that prayer.

Gotta realize I don't need upgrading, I need saving.

Jesus, would you have mercy on me?

And you right now, in the prayer of your heart, call on him.

All who call upon the name of the Lord Jesus will be saved.

And I just plead with you.

If that's where you're at, and you've never, never said yes to Jesus, may today be that day.

Please don't leave here without.

Maybe we all just bow our heads and pray together.

Prayer is just a conversation with God.

Jesus, I need you.

I need saving.

Have mercy on me.

I believe you came for me.

You took my place and died for me.

And you rose again to new life that I might have true everlasting life now forevermore.

So, Jesus, would you please forgive me?

Come into my life and make me new.

Today, I make you the Lord, the rescuer, the leader of my life.

Thank you for saving me.

Thank you for forgiving me.

Thank you for giving me new life.

In Jesus' name.

We hope you are blessed by this message.

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