Getting Over Overwhelmed – Overwhelmed with Gratitude

This podcast is presented to you by Pastor Jason Burns and Access Church in Lakeland, Florida.

For more information, visit Access.tv.

Well, today, today I'm excited.

We're wrapping up our little mini-series, little two-part series that we have affectionately entitled Getting Over Overwhelmed.

And if you missed last weekend, one of the things we talked about was how so many of us deal with crippling things like anxiety, depression, fear, and worry.

And we looked at God's word and we said, what does God's word say about how we can get over the stuff that has the tendency of overwhelming us?

And last week I talked about kind of a negative thing like fear and anxiety.

Today I want to talk to you about what it means to be overwhelmed by something that is positive and life-giving and beautiful.

To get us started today, everybody's got something that's irrational, but it just ticks them off.

And everybody's got something in their life, and it's not that big of a deal to everybody, but to you, it just grates on you.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

Like maybe immediately something hits your mind.

I asked some friends this week, what are some things that are irrational, but they just drive you crazy?

I had a friend tell me that that for her, when people say, hey, how's it going?

How are you?

When they say that, but they're not asking and they want to know, it's just kind of a passing thought, drives her crazy.

It's funny.

I have another friend who told me that uh it drives him absolutely bonkers when he has a conversation with someone and asks them all kinds of questions.

And every time he asks a question, they answer, but they never ask a question back.

Does anybody have someone in your life like don't elbow them right now?

But anybody have this person in your life?

We had a person on our staff many years ago, and someone else pointed out to me that they're that person.

Like they don't ever answer back with the question.

And so one day I took them to lunch and I've sat with my hands under the table and I asked question after question after question.

I wanted to see how many questions could I get before they ask a question back.

I got to 39, everybody.

That's a lot of questions.

Okay.

Now, if we were to go around the room, we could spend all day in a group counseling session just getting some stuff off of our chest, right?

There's some things that just irrationally annoy us.

I for anybody?

Come on, like just it it's irrational.

Doesn't it drive you up the wall when you're stuck in traffic for 30 minutes and then you get to where the traffic lets out and there's nothing there?

Can anyone have that?

Drives me absolutely crazy.

Um, here's a couple others that drive me personally crazy, okay?

None of them are huge deals, they just grate on me, okay?

Here's one.

Um we live in this interesting world full of inflation right now.

Anyone know like it's everything's been more expensive these days?

And things are more expensive, and one of the ways you know is because prices get larger, but one of the ways that's kind of sneaky that they'll use to sneak in inflation on you is what what I would call and what other people have termed shrinkflation.

Have you heard of shrinkflation?

Shrinkflation is when things cost the same or more, but you're giving less for it.

Okay, um, I've had a personal issue lately with Chick-fil-A sandwiches.

I'm like, I'm a grown man and it's getting smaller, okay?

And like Liz knows this, like she's like, don't ever get him started on it.

Well, a couple days ago, my kids were off of school.

I woke up early and I made some of these.

I made some Pillsbury grand cinnamon rolls with Cinnabon icing.

Come on, somebody.

And I made two cans of this for my family, but as I pulled them out and set them on the pan to cook them, I'm like, these are smaller.

And and it was just driving me crazy.

I'm like, they're definitely smaller.

So, anyways, so I cook them and then we we eat them, and I'm like, they're just smaller.

I probably said they're just smaller a dozen times.

And at one point, Liz goes, okay, we get it, they're smaller.

And I'm like, I it just it's burrowing a hole in my mind.

So later I went online and I looked up.

These Pillsbury uh cinnamon rolls had 320 calories each.

But I looked online and I started searching.

They used to have 360 calories each.

They have robbed me of 40 calories of joy and peace.

I'm like, that's an 11% decrease.

That's unacceptable.

Drives me crazy.

Okay.

Okay, I gotta get through this.

All right.

Here's one more that drives me crazy, ready?

It drives me crazy.

When I live open-handed, when I give, when I'm a blessing to people, it drives me crazy when I'm a giver and I do my part and they don't just say thank you.

It's not a huge deal.

I mean, all of us have done this before.

But like, I want to be the most generous person I know.

But isn't it the worst when you're generous?

You give freely to someone and they take you for granted.

Isn't that like the worst feeling ever?

And I've got a thousand examples of this.

And here's something I've learned about myself.

I've learned that if I do something for someone and they just express the smallest amount of gratitude, it blesses me, and I'll be so generous.

I'll live so open-handed.

But the moment they don't, I never want to bless them, I never want to give.

And that's it, that's my issue.

That's something I need to work on.

But it reminds me of a story many, many, many years ago.

I was in the process of upgrading a car.

I just needed a bigger car as my family was getting bigger.

And I went to buy a car and I bought a car on the last day of the year, December 31st.

And when I went to the dealership, the guy who was the salesperson goes, Look, here's the truth.

We we're at the end of the year, we need to sell four cars today to meet our quota.

If you will help me, you can honestly make an offer that feels disrespectful.

Like just give me like the most disrespectful offer you can.

And I offered$20,000 under the sticker price, and they said yes.

And I thought, I should have been more disrespectful.

That's what I should have done.

And I was so, so grateful for this deal.

And I had a car that was still good, it was still had lots of life in it.

I could I would have been happy to keep driving it, but as my family got bigger, I just needed a bigger car.

So I called Liz and I was like, babe, how about instead of trading it in or selling it to someone else, what if we just bless someone and we gave it to them?

And she said, Yeah, let's do that.

So I was so excited about this.

This was the first time I've done this.

I've done it a few times since then.

This is the first time I've done it.

And so we pick someone that's a friend that we were know we knew were struggling.

And so we we give them this car, and I'm feeling like a million bucks.

I'm feeling like I've never lived more generous, I've never lived more open-handedly than this in this moment.

And when I gave, what at that point was one of the largest things I had ever given, I was met with almost radio silence.

So I decided to up the ante, and I knew that the car, it had some possible issues, not huge deals, but maybe it had like a thousand or twelve hundred dollars of work that was needed to be done.

So I called the husband and I was like, look, I want to be a blessing.

I want to, I want this to, I don't want this to be a strain on you.

So like, why don't you take it in, figure out how much it's gonna cost, and I'll listen, I'll pay it, we'll pay it.

So we do all this, and he takes it to the the mechanic, the mechanic gives him a bill.

I want to say the bill was like a thousand or twelve hundred dollars, and he texts me, it's gonna be this amount of money.

I said, No problem, I'll drop a check in the mail.

We didn't have to do that, we didn't have we weren't responsible for that.

We just felt out of the kindness of our heart to be open-handed, and I said, fine, just I'll just I'll just mail you a check for and he wrote back two words.

Okay, great.

And I'm gonna be honest, something happened in my heart that I'm not proud of.

I'm admitting in front of all these people that I've got all kinds of issues, but something happened in my heart, and instead of wanting to bless this guy, I wanted to go find the car, shove a potato in the tailpipe, and put firecrackers in the engine.

That's what I wanted to do.

Now, here's the funny thing.

I bet you if I could go to those people, knock on their door, and say to them, hey, check this out.

Someone just blessed you with a good car, and they were willing to pay for more of the maintenance than was ever required of them.

How do you feel?

Here's my guess.

They would say, I feel thankful.

But here's the funny thing: thankfulness and gratitude was never meant to be a feeling, it was meant to be something that is expressed.

Okay, I want you to think back.

If you have a kid, think about birthdays that they've had.

If you haven't had a kid, I want you to think back to when you were a child.

Whenever a kid opens a present, oh, look at this.

It's a toy, it's from your grandma, what is the next thing that the mom or dad say to the kid?

What do you say?

You say, thank you.

Why are we teaching our kids that?

It's because whenever there's an act of kindness or love or generosity, and it's not followed by a thank you, all of a sudden in the relationship there is a gap.

It's a gap.

And the problem is that many of us we've experienced this.

We've been on that end of it where it's like we've given, and then there's a gap, and there's no response, there's no gratitude, there's no thanks.

And the problem is, is that the person might feel thankful, but if they don't express it, how it's felt to the giver is not gratitude, it is in gratitude.

And this is a big deal.

And I want you to understand this the recipient is always aware, the culprit is rarely aware.

And I know this is true.

Like, in fact, I know that I've probably done this to people.

Someone has blessed me or given something to me, and and not on purpose, but my intention was to be grateful, but I didn't say anything, and to me, it's like I moved past it, didn't think about it, and all of a sudden there is this massive gap in the relationship.

Let me try to explain to you what gratitude is.

Gratitude is not feeling something, it is expressing something.

Gratitude is not just a feeling you get when someone blesses you, it is an action required of you to express what's happening in your heart.

Here's the reason Unexpressed gratitude is experienced as ingratitude.

Unexpressed gratitude when you feel something but you don't say something, when you feel something but you never share it with someone, it is received on the giver's end as ingratitude, as ungrateful, as unthankful.

Now, all of us probably have a story like this, where we gave generously, we were very kind in our giving and our generosity, and no one closed the gap.

The person we blessed, they kept quiet, they didn't say anything, they never took the time to express any level of thanks.

And so we can we can all come up with examples of that.

We know how that feels.

All of us are definitely guilty, and I'll I'll assume the best about all of us.

We didn't do it on purpose, we felt it, we just didn't express it.

But this last week, we did a what we call an all-staff meeting for our church staff, and this is for everybody who works on the church staff.

We all get together, and I usually bring some sort of a teaching, and I taught what I'm going to teach in a moment.

And what I said to our church staff was all of us know the feeling of ingratitude in our relationships with people, but may it never be said about us that we showed any ingratitude towards God.

And I think it's easy for us, with all of God's goodness, with all of his grace, with the way he lavishes us with love and generosity and blessing.

It is easy for us to turn our gratitude into a feeling instead of expressing it to the one that deserves it most.

Now, I want to show it to you like this.

In the book of Luke, chapter 17, there's this interesting moment where Jesus is traveling, and he's traveling in this really remote region, and he comes across some people who are struggling.

Luke 17 · chapter mention

In fact, let's look at it together.

Luke chapter 17, verse 11.

Luke 17:11

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

Let's just pause here for a moment.

If you had a Bible map, this area where Jesus was traveling is very remote.

Not lots of cities, not lots of people, not lots of life and activity.

And what you need to know is Samaria and Galilee backed up next to each other, but even though geographically they were close, their people were a million miles apart socially.

Now I'm gonna be honest with you, we still deal with issues in our country of racism and bigotry and prejudice, we do.

In Jesus' day, these two countries, it wasn't like a secret thing, it was an outspoken thing.

People looked down on each other, they hated each other.

Jews and Samaritans never wanted to interact with each other.

And Jesus is walking through this region that literally is a physical divide between two groups of people who had a massive heart and social divide.

And it says, as he was going into the village, ten men who had leprosy met him.

Let's pause here for just a moment.

These ten men are outside of the little city that they're in, and there's a reason for it.

They have this devastating, debilitating disease called leprosy.

Let me point something out to you that we're gonna discover in a moment.

We discover in a moment that while these ten different men have leprosy, we know that some of them are Jewish and some of them are Samaritan.

People that socially have nothing in common are now joined together.

Have you ever noticed that pain seems to tear down the walls that divide us?

Okay, like if you're old enough to remember September 11th when it happened in our country, I mean that was devastating.

And on that day when it happened, President George W.

Bush stood up with a megaphone and he cheered on all these workers who were, you know, courageously trying to dig people out of the rubble.

And in that moment, nobody cared anymore about politics.

In that moment, there was no like digging people out of the rubble saying, hey, who'd you vote for?

There was none of that.

Like it's because pain, pain has this way of bringing us together.

And so there's these ten men, and in Jesus' day, when a person had the disease of leprosy, it was thought as highly contagious.

We're gonna talk about it more in a minute, but it was highly contagious, and because it was highly contagious, if you got diagnosed with leprosy, you were excommunicated from your whole life.

Excommunicated from your family, excommunicated from your job, excommunicated from your city.

And often these people with leprosy would sit on the outskirts of the city together, waiting on the disease to eventually slowly, maliciously take their life.

So these ten men.

Now, this is an important number too.

I want you to notice there's ten men on the outskirts of the city.

Jesus comes walking by and they have leprosy.

So the next line says, they stood at a distance because again, because of their leprosy, they knew they were never to get close to people.

This was social distancing before it was cool.

They were like outside of the city.

And I want you to notice it says they called out to him, Jesus, in a loud voice.

Why?

They wanted to get his attention.

Jesus, master, have pity on us.

This word master in the original language of Greek means one to whom I submit to your authority.

Kind of an interesting point of language from these people who were Jewish and Samaritan.

And they yell to Jesus, and Jesus sees them and it says, when he saw them, he said, Go.

Now I need you to understand, in Jesus' day, this would have been common.

If you were healthy, you didn't have this disease of leprosy.

If you saw someone with leprosy, you would say, Go away.

Like I want nothing to do with you.

They were conditioned because of their disease.

Anytime they came near someone who didn't have the disease, they would yell, unclean, unclean.

But these men see Jesus, and instead of yelling unclean, they say, Master, I have pity on us.

Like we need you, help us, and Jesus sees them.

But instead of saying go away, he says, Go, here's what I want you to do: show yourselves to the priest.

Now, this is an important detail.

Because in Jesus' day, if you had some sort of a skin disease like leprosy or whatever, it was common if somehow your body healed itself, if somehow you had a miracle and you were healed.

The way back into community, the way back into your life, the way back into society was to go show yourself to the pastor or the priest.

Now, just so we're clear, I don't want to see any of your rashes, I don't want to see any of your, don't you text me, don't Facebook message me, I will report you immediately to Grady Jud himself.

Like, don't mess with me.

But in those days, the priest was the one who gave you the all clear to enter back into society.

And I want you to notice a few things are happening in this moment.

Jesus says to ten men, I want you to go show yourself to the priest.

Now, at this point, number one, none of them were healed.

Like they were gonna have to go take this walk saying, like, Jesus, we trust you, but we still don't see what you promised.

That's number one.

Number number two, no good priest would allow ten people all at the same time.

Like, this would have been weird.

No priest would want to see all ten of them, much less clear all ten of them at the same time.

But number three, Jesus' reputation was squarely on the line.

Jesus' reputation, if he's telling you you're healed and you go show the priest and you're not really healed, all this rumor about Jesus is gonna spread.

So Jesus' reputation is on the line, and Jesus says, I want you to go, even though you're still dealing with this the issue, the leprosy, I want you to go show yourself to the priest, and I want you to see three key words here.

It says, and as they went.

Translation.

As they obeyed.

Like church people like to say things like, we walk by faith.

Right?

You've heard this phrase before.

We walk by we don't walk based on what we see, we walk by faith.

These men literally had to gather up all of their courage, they had to walk through the city that had excommunicated them.

Certainly they would lock eyes with people who would be grossed out or who would yell at them to keep their distance, and they had to walk, not based on what they could see, they had to walk based on the trust in Jesus.

He says, as they went, as they obeyed, as they did what Jesus told them, they were cleansed, they were healed.

Now pause here for a moment.

Do you remember how many there were?

Ten.

Okay.

Now, math has always come really easy to me.

Some people struggle with math.

Math always just works in my brain.

And I'm gonna take you on a little bit of math journey.

We're gonna journey back to, I don't know, like third grade together, okay?

There were ten of them.

Okay, everybody, write this down, ten, okay?

And I want you to notice the next word.

Ready?

One of them.

One.

Okay.

Third grade math, ready?

One out of ten, you could write it as a fraction one over ten.

You could write it as point one, right?

There's a lot of ways to understand it.

It's 10%.

But out of ten, only one.

Out of ten who were healed, only one returned.

Nine didn't.

If this is like blowing your mind, if this math is like too much for you, like I'm giving you math lessons tomorrow.

It's like nine had the opportunity to join the one, but nine stayed back and one.

Only one, when he saw that he was healed, came back praising God in a loud voice.

I want you to notice this.

He threw himself at Jesus' feet and he thanked him.

What is happening in this moment?

He, the one out of ten, he, the ten percent, the one out of ten, he, the one, went back to thank the one who enabled him to move forward.

One out of ten.

Now, I don't know how you roll, but I've told you earlier that I'm like a gratitude person.

I'm like a we should express it, not just feel it, kind of a person.

And I want you to see this.

It goes on.

Luke adds this interesting detail.

Remember, it says he threw himself at Jesus' feet and he thanked him.

And then he adds this little phrase, these little five words, and he was a Samaritan.

Ooh.

That's kind of juicy.

It's kind of spicy.

Why is it juicy and spicy?

It's because this person who socially was nothing like Jesus came back to say thank you.

The fact that he adds this detail is what indicates that it was more than just Samaritans, it was Samaritans and Galileans or Jewish people who were all there.

There was this interesting mix of people, but only one came back, and the one who came back was really nothing like Jesus.

Jesus asked this question.

We're not all ten cleansed.

Like I'm doing the math.

Okay, let me count how many came back.

I see.

One.

It's like weren't there nine others?

Where are the other nine?

The way this would be written in Greek, the interrogative word would be at the end of the sentence.

It would read like Jesus said it like this the nine?

Where?

Like, where are they?

There were ten of you.

Where are the other nine?

Jesus goes on.

He says, Has no one returned to give praise to God?

Except this foreigner, this person who's nothing like me.

Then he said to him, Rise and go.

Remember earlier Jesus said, Go show yourself to the priest.

This word goes kind of a different word.

It literally is like, go ingrain yourself back into your life.

Go back to your family.

Go back to your kids.

Go back to your job.

Go back to the way things were before this leprosy got you.

Go.

Your faith has made you well.

Your faith has made you whole.

Something profound happens because one out of the ten was willing to come back.

Now here's my guess.

If we could channel our inner, you know, back to the future time travel, and if we could get in a DeLorean and go back, and if we could round up the other nine guys who were healed, and we were to say, guys, wait, weren't you just yesterday on the outskirts of the city?

Weren't you just yesterday dealing with this terrible disease of leprosy?

They would say, Yeah, we are.

And we would say to them, okay, what happened?

Oh, Jesus healed me.

Tell me about it.

Oh, I'm so thankful, they might say.

And we would understand this that the other nine, they felt it, but they didn't express it.

And here's what I want you to understand: unexpressed gratitude communicates ingratitude.

And I never want this to happen in your friendships, I never want this to happen in your marriage, but I specifically never want this to happen in your relationship with God.

Here's why.

Because gratitude to God is worship.

Gratitude towards God is a way we worship Him.

This is the reason that you need to learn how to use your words to offer God thanksgiving and praise.

This is the reason you should use your energy to show God thanksgiving and praise.

This is the reason we tithe and we give.

It's because, God, you've given everything to me.

So of course I'll worship you through my giving.

Gratitude towards God is worship.

So what I want to do is I want to challenge all of us to never let ourselves get into a negative cycle where we feel gratitude but we don't express it.

Today I want to challenge you as we approach Thanksgiving and the holidays and all that's coming up.

I want to challenge all of us to live a lifestyle of gratitude.

That in a world full of people who are overwhelmed by all kinds of things, may we live a life that is overwhelmed with gratitude towards God.

I'm gonna give you three thoughts and then we're done.

Number one, you need to know that gratitude produces worship.

For this man who was healed, this was one of the greatest moments, if not the greatest moment of his life.

This man couldn't believe that Jesus had healed him.

Of course he, it says that he threw himself at Jesus' feet.

And other people in the city might see that and be like, what in the world is wrong with that guy?

I was trying to think, how could I explain this to all of us in a way that might make sense to us?

I want you to imagine this with us, okay?

Imagine that tomorrow you're at work, you're doing your job, doing your thing, and all of a sudden you hear sirens, and all of a sudden, six police officers come in, they they ask you if you you are what your name is, and you say yes, and they immediately put you in handcuffs and they lead you to prison.

And imagine you're like, what is going on?

I haven't done anything.

They take you to prison, they take you to court, and the court finds you guilty of some heinous act, some murder, some despicable thing you've done that they claim you've done and you've never done it.

And no one will listen to you, no one will hear you, they don't look at the truth, they don't look for facts, they just throw you in prison with a lifetime sentence.

And imagine you spend a week or two or three, and it turns into a year or two or three, and then all of a sudden some lawyer comes along and he looks into your case and he says, wait a minute, there's no evidence of this, and he finally listens to you.

And when he listens to you, you say, I don't, I was framed, I didn't do this at all, and he goes back to the evidence, and one thing leads to the next, and pretty soon the judge declares that not only have you not done anything wrong, but you were to be freed immediately.

Wouldn't you hug that lawyer who believed you?

Wouldn't you cry tears of joy?

Now imagine this.

Imagine that that happens, that lawyer helps to save you and give you your freedom back, and then five or ten years go by.

And you find yourself in the produce section of the grocery store, and you're picking your apples, you're picking your celery, and all of a sudden you look up and there's that guy.

And you haven't seen him in five years or ten years, but you see him, and immediately you feel the wave of gratitude run over you again.

What would you do?

Would it be weird or wrong or inappropriate for you to throw yourself at this person and hug them and to offer your gratitude again?

Of course not.

Because they saved your life.

To this man who Jesus heals of leprosy, it makes sense that he would do it.

What doesn't make sense to me is how Jesus has saved all of our lives.

And at some point along the line, we move from being people of gratitude to people who feel indifferent.

Like we sing songs, I once was lost, but now I'm found, was blind, but now I see.

And somewhere along the way we forget that we were once lost.

I think this is the reason that as you read the Bible, especially the Old Testament, there's 11 different words that are used for praise and for worship.

These are things that God desires of us.

Let me show you the top seven very quickly.

Here they are.

Number one, Todah, means a thanksgiving choir.

Number two, Barak, which is like our 44th, never mind.

It's to kneel in thanksgiving.

Number three is tahilah, not to be confused with tequila, which would also be a song of thanksgiving.

Number four, halal, which is the root of the word hallelujah, which means to give thanks by being clamorously foolish.

Number five is the word yad ha, which means to give thanks with hands that are extended.

Number six is the word zaymar, which means to give thanks with musical instruments.

That's what our worship team did today.

They weren't playing songs, they were worshiping God with instruments.

And number seven is the word Shabbat, which means to give thanks in a loud tone or to shout.

Okay.

Would any of these things be inappropriate for you to offer to God?

Absolutely not, because he saved you.

The funny thing is, my observation is many believers, many Christians, they've gotten so far away from the moment when God saved them that all those things just feel silly to them.

When you start to remember that he saved you, he healed you from the inside out, he made you right with God.

Of course you'll offer to God worship the way he wants it.

Like, look at this.

In the book of Psalm, there's a verse that has those four of those seven words in the same verse.

Psalm 100, verse 4, enter his gates with thanksgiving.

Psalms 100:4

That's the word Todah, which is a thanksgiving choir, and into his courts with praise, to heal, to sing a song of thanksgiving.

Be thankful, Yadha, which means to give thanks with extended hands to him, and bless Barak, or to kneel in thanksgiving, bless his name.

If I were to take this, and this is just a paraphrase of the verse, but if I were to use those words a little bit more directly, it would read like this paraphrase.

Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, a Thanksgiving choir, and into his courts with singing praises.

Be thankful by extending your hands to him and bless him by bowing before his name.

A part of living a life that is a lifestyle of gratitude is we learn that our gratitude is what produces worship.

Because we're thankful, of course we're gonna worship God, not the way we want, but the way he wants.

Number two, you need to understand this that miracles produce gratitude.

This man is healed of this atrocious disease.

Let me kind of tease it out for you for just a moment.

If you grew up going to church or Sunday school, you probably heard that leprosy was a skin disorder, and that's kind of right.

The truth is leprosy is deeper than that.

Leprosy is a nerve disorder.

What will happen is your nerves stop firing and your body begins to not feel the capacity to feel pain.

Pain, when you understand it properly, is actually a gift because it lets you know something is wrong.

So even today, there's places around the world where people still deal with leprosy, and we still see the same issues today that they'll do something and they'll like break a foot and they don't even know it, and they break it because they can't feel the pain, so they put their foot down harder, they step down harder and the foot is broken, but they have no capacity to feel pain.

That they will cut themselves and they can't feel the pain from it.

So what would happen?

This is kind of gross, and forgive me in advance, but in Jesus' day, because these people were excommunicated, they would get cuts or sores or blisters, and then they would never properly heal.

That's why people thought it was exclusively a skin thing.

And it was so bad that because they were unable to feel pain and they're on sleeping on the dirt floor on the outside of the city, wild animals like rats and others would come up and would chew at them, and they would wouldn't even wake up because of the pain that they felt.

And imagine Jesus heals you.

Look what it says about the man, Luke 17, verse 16.

Luke 17:16

The one who was healed threw himself at Jesus' feet, and he thanked him.

Why?

Of course he did.

Because our miracles produce gratitude.

And here's the final thing you need to understand.

Ultimately, number three, it is obedience that produces the miracles.

This is something that a lot of Christians get tripped up on.

We'll say, I'll do something for God when he does something for me.

Let me step on your toes if that's you.

If Jesus never did anything else for you, he's already done the ultimate for you.

Period.

If God was never kind to you, never did anything else to show you his love and his favor, he's already done the unimaginable for you by sending his son Jesus to die for you.

But he continues to lavish his love on you.

What does he ask back for you?

Obedience.

Obedience.

The verses go on and say this.

Remember earlier, Jesus said, Go to the priest.

So when he saw them, he said, Go show yourself to the priest.

And it says, and as they went, it was in their act of courageous obedience that the miracle happens.

I said it earlier, but we use phrases like you got to walk by faith.

And the funny thing is a lot of us say this, but we don't really know what it means.

What it actually means is if you're gonna be a follower of Jesus, whenever he asks something of you, your answer is yes immediately.

And we get weird about this, don't we?

We get weird, oh God, like you can have any part of my life, just don't touch my money.

You can have any part of my life, just don't ask me to go here.

You can have any part of my life, but God, I'm not really comfortable talking to people about my faith.

No, no.

Learning to walk by faith is literally the recipe.

It is obedience that leads to miracles.

So here's the thing I need you to understand.

If you want to learn to live a life that is characterized by the love of God and the miracles that only God can provide, if you want to learn to live in that cycle, you've got to learn how to trust God and obey what He asks you to do.

A lot of Christians get in what I call the negative cycle, which is well, I'll obey if I see something.

Well, I don't feel like I have much to be grateful for.

And so what happens is we spin negatively and we miss out on so much that God has for us.

Okay, let me make this practical for you for a moment.

As we approach Thanksgiving, I think it is imperative that we as a church make some decisions.

Number one, when it comes to our friendships, our relationships, our marriage, our kids, that we're gonna be the most expressive in our gratitude.

Let me talk to all you husbands for a second.

Don't you dare let your wife only hear positive things about that you say about her from other people?

Like that's great.

But say it to her too.

Parents, when you're proud of your kids, tell them.

When your kids do something good, thank them.

Kids, teenagers, do you want more freedom in your life?

Do you want more responsibility?

Learn to be grateful.

Gratitude is a relationally determinative behavior.

Here's what I want you to understand when it comes to God.

May you and I be the kinds of people who make this decision to show gratitude, thanksgiving, and honor all the time.

Every day you woke up is a gift.

Every beautiful sunset, it screams of his love for you.

Every moment you have, every time you feel joy, every moment you experience in this life is a gift from God.

And as he gives, our response should be gratitude and obedience.

So here's my challenge to everyone in the room.

When it comes to gratitude, when it comes to feeling thanks, don't let anyone outgrateful you, don't let anyone express their gratitude more than you do, because that is the recipe for miracles.

I'm gonna ask you to bow your head and close your eyes in this place.

We're gonna pray in a moment, but I want you to take a moment before we pray, and I just want you to take a moment in your own words and your own hearts to say thank you to God.

And we move that gratitude from our hearts to our mouths, from a feeling to an expression.

So, God, in this place, may we just declare from this point forward, we will never just feel grateful.

But we want to say thank you, God.

If you don't do anything else for us ever again, you've already done more than we ever deserve or could ever begin to rethink.

Thank you, Jesus, Jesus.

With our words, with our lives, with our hearts, with all that we are, may our lives, may our obedience, may our words all be a joint expression of how we feel for you.

We say thank you, Jesus.

We love you, Jesus.