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Turn with me, please, to the book of Colossians, Colossians chapter 2. Before we look to the Word of God once again, let us ask Him to bless our time together. Our gracious Heavenly Father, once again we come into Your presence and we ask that You would be with us now as we open Your Word, that Word which You have preserved for Your people down through the ages.
We would ask that You would help us to understand and that by Your Spirit You would impress upon our hearts and our minds Your truth, that we might be conformed ever closer to the image of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
It is in His name that we pray. Amen. Well, I don't know about you, but I am glad I wasn't at that particular Target store at 4 a .m. on Friday morning. Some of you know what I refer to. You have seen the video.
It went viral fairly quickly on YouTube. And it was the surveillance video of a Target store as they were opening for those Black Friday deals at 4 o 'clock in the morning. And it must have been very cold outside.
Most Target stores I've noticed look the same. I go to Target a lot. When I go there for cat food or something like that, that's Target. When I go there for clothes, it's Target. And they look pretty much the same wherever you go around the United States.
And there's the video shot and you see the doors opening up and one or two people get through and then somebody stumbles. And all of a sudden there's a bottleneck and you hear somebody screaming because you know that someone's getting trampled on in this video.
And it's interesting to watch human behavior. Some people just go flying through because they've got to get that television. They've seen the advertisement and they know there's only gonna be a few available.
And they just go flying through and whether somebody's back there screaming or not, it doesn't matter. But then there's some others that they go through and then you see this pained look on the face and they turn around and go back to see if they can help and pick somebody up.
And of course, the poor 18 and a half year old Target security guy goes running up there and he might weigh 123 pounds soaking wet. And he's trying to extricate people and get things going. And some reports said nobody was hurt.
Some reports said someone was taken to hospital. I don't know, but I just thought about that. And I thought about the fact that you know, it's the day after Thanksgiving. And on Thanksgiving, we're gonna be talking about how thankful we are.
And when you're thankful, there's just something about Thanksgiving that draws you out of yourself. It's hard to be self-centered and conceited while thankful. Because giving of thanks points to someone outside of yourself.
And if you're really focused upon yourself, and you're like a lot of professional athletes I see who spend a lot of time thanking themselves for being so wonderful. I'm so good. And aren't you all glad that I'm here?
But we went from Thanksgiving to trampling each other to try to get to that TV or that Wii or whatever else it was that people were trying to get to that morning at that Target store. And I'm sure that that story could be repeated a number of other times.
There is a Greek word in the Greek New Testament that should mark our everyday attitude. But to be honest with you, it's sort of been stolen from us. It's found here in Colossians chapter two. Look at verses six and seven.
Colossians chapter two, verses six and seven. Therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, having been firmly rooted and now being built up in him and established in your faith just as you were instructed and overflowing with Eucharistia.
Eucharistia, Thanksgiving, gratitude. Eucharistia, Eucharist, it's a beautiful word. We almost never use it because in later theology, it became associated almost solely with the Lord's Supper and a particular theology of the Lord's Supper.
But it's a word we need to reclaim. It is a word that we all were thinking about on Wednesday and Thursday of this week. At least I hope we were. I confess, I had to do a lot of the cooking this year.
And that can be very distracting from being focused upon Thanksgiving. Especially if it doesn't go well. It did, thankfully, but you've got a lot of things going on and for some reason, our wives, husbands, want us to make sure the place looks good if we've got folks coming over.
And it's amazing the things that they can find for you to do prior to folks showing up. I mean, it really can be distracting, but I did try to take some time to think about this concept of Thanksgiving, Eucharistia.
It is a New Testament word and it's a word that we're gonna be looking at this morning. Gratitude, the giving of thanks. Let's first look at the context that's found here in Colossians chapter two. The apostle is concerned about the church at Colossae and influences that were coming into the church.
And so he says, therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus, the Lord, the Kurios, as you have received the one who is the very creator, the sustainer of all things, never allow that word, Lord, to be diminished in your thinking and your thought.
The world uses the term Lord Jesus as if it's its first name. Lord, first name, Jesus, second name. So like Jesus Christ, Jesus, first name, Christ, second. No, Lord and Christ had meanings, they're titles.
And when Jesus is called the Lord, the people holding, remember, they didn't have a New Testament yet. It's still being written. The people in the congregation who had the Scriptures in their hands, they knew who the Kurios was.
Because all through their Scriptures, the only Scriptures they possessed, every time the name Yahweh, or as we slaughter it in English, Jehovah, appeared in their Greek translation of the Old Testament, it was Kurios, Lord.
And so they understood that when Jesus is identified as the Lord, when every knee bows, every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord, they understood this was not just a mere title. It transcended that.
This said something about the majesty of the one that they served. And therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus, the Lord, not merely the servant, not merely the one who is just so thankful that you've received Him, that this is something that you did.
To receive something, that's passive. A person who is a believer in Jesus Christ is a person who has received Jesus Christ as Lord. There are so many people today who have been deceived by a false gospel.
It is a gospel that is so utterly opposed to the New Testament that says, you can believe, you can simply tip your hat toward the bare facts that Jesus was who He was and that He died on the cross and He rose again.
And as long as you do that, you don't have to repent. You don't have to bow the knee. There doesn't need to be any lordship. You don't have to receive all of Jesus. Just believe these few little things and then you can just live your life as you please.
There are people who actually say that's the gospel. Let me tell you something, my friends. It is not. Never has been and never will be. The gospel is the message of what the triune God has done, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in and through Jesus Christ as Lord.
And you can only receive Jesus Christ the Lord. Therefore, as you have received passively Jesus Christ the Lord, that's not the end. So, walk in Him. If He truly is Lord, if He truly is Yeshua, Savior, Yahweh is salvation, Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One, Kurios, the Lord.
If He's all these things, then there will be a result in your life if you have truly received Him. I had a professor in college and I wish someday, someday I'm going to track down the video that he recorded as he was dying many years ago.
His name was Dr. Martin. D .C. Martin. And Dr. Martin had an illustration that he would use. He would say it's one thing to know about Jesus. It is another thing to be in Him, to know Him. And he would bring his hands together and he would clasp them like this.
You need to be in Him and it needs to be an intimate knowledge of who He is. His concern was, he was standing in front of a bunch of Baptist boys and girls who had been raised in church and they knew all about the story of Jesus, but they didn't know Jesus.
He was concerned about that. And that's what you have here. It doesn't say, therefore, as you have received the story of Jesus. Therefore, as you have come to know facts about Jesus. It says, therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord.
He's a whole package. You either know Him or you don't. And if you do, there's going to be a result. So walk in Him. That's not the normal terminology that we utilize. We don't talk about walking in something, but I think we understand it.
It means to live. I mean, the only way to get anywhere in that day was pretty much to walk. I mean, unless you were in the upper classes, you might have a horse, but most people did a lot of walking in those days.
Most measurements were based on how far can you walk in a certain period of time. And so walking was just how you got from one place to another. How you lived your life. And so what the Apostle is saying is walk in Him.
Not behind Him or in front of Him or next to Him. Walk in Him. In the way that He would have walked. He needs to define the entirety of your life. Walk in Him. That means every day. You didn't just walk to church.
It's one thing to act religious on a Sunday or maybe a Wednesday night. But you see, you had to walk on Monday and on Tuesday and on Thursday and on Friday and on Saturday. This is something you always did.
In other words, there is no optional time here. There's no vacation time. As you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him. His Lordship must be over all of life. Having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him.
Firmly rooted. It's funny, I'm sure Mr. Callahan can tell you about this. So can Mrs. Ricketts. Every time we have one of these big storms. Now I see Mr. Callahan, I saw Mrs. Ricketts just about a week or so ago.
I ride the canal. And the canal is a great place to ride because you don't have to play with cars in the canal. Well, generally, once in a while, some of those folks for SRP come going through the little underpasses in their trucks.
I'm not sure how they do that. But most of the time, I only have to worry about the runners who have their iPods stuck in their ears and can't hear me yelling, bike back. But it's better than the roads.
And so we'll be out there on the trail. And these thunderstorms come through. And as long as there's almost any wind, they'll tell you what you're gonna see after a thunderstorm along those trails. You're gonna see some of these trees that they've planted.
And they're gonna be, well, frequently in the middle of the path. They don't handle wind very well. They grow up and they get real big up top, but they don't get well rooted or they weren't planted real well.
The soil's not real compact. And after every big thunderstorm, you've just got trees down all over along there. And they come along and eventually they cut them up and cart them off. And then a little while later, here's a little tree in its place.
And two years later, it's laying in the path too, because they didn't quite get it right that time either. Not firmly rooted. And yet you have those other trees. And when they survive those storms, you can tell they've got a good root system.
It goes down deep. And they're the ones that last and last and last. Having been firmly rooted, now being built up in him. You can see the illustration the apostle is giving us. But notice we are rooted and built up only in Him.
Only in Christ. And we have been established in our faith. Established in your faith. When the apostles preached the Gospel, they preached the whole Gospel. They explained what it really meant to be a Christian.
They weren't just trying to get people to walk down an aisle, shake a hand, then say, well, we don't want to offend anybody now. Let's just let them go their way. They were established in the faith. They were instructed.
They knew what the faith was. They knew that the faith called us to be different than the world. To think differently than the world. To behave differently than the world. Established in your faith just as you were instructed.
There was instruction. There was teaching that took place. This was the apostolic way. And then we come to our key phrase. Overflowing with Eucharistia. Overflowing, abounding with Eucharistia. Gratitude, thanksgiving.
See, in all of this vitally important stuff, even as he's about to announce that in Jesus Christ, all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form, don't be shaken by the philosophies of the world. All these important things he wants to talk to the Colossians about before he gets there.
He lets them know there is an attitude. There is a mindset. There is a way that you as Christians must think that is absolutely central to being a healthy, true believer in Christ. Now, once a year in our nation, we actually have a holiday named after this word.
And we call it Thanksgiving. Isn't it funny? Thanksgiving for us is sort of two words. The giving of thanks. As I thought about that this week, I thought how easily it has been in our culture in ways to cheapen this word.
Because, you know, I imagine you may have been out over the past few days and let's say you're walking into a store and let's say somebody holds the door for you. It's rare enough these days. In fact, how many places even have doors that you have to hold anymore?
Most of them are electronic and stuff like that. But I was raised, old man that I am evidently, to hold the door for a lady for example. Any of you guys had ladies get upset with you for doing that? I have.
It's a very odd thing, but it reminds me of the senator who got angry at the general for calling her ma 'am. You know, I was like, well, that's what my daddy told me to do and I'm still doing it. Sometimes you'll just hold the door for somebody.
Maybe they've got a little kid with them. And as they go by, they'll say, thanks. We all do that. You know, sometimes it's almost under your breath. You're buying something that's a Circle K. You're paying for something.
Thanks, thanks. It's just a word we say. And so Thanksgiving, yeah, it's just the same things. There is so much more to what the Christian attitude of Eucardistia should be. Because you see, when you think of what Paul is saying here, overflowing with Eucardistia.
For what? Well, you didn't make Jesus the Christ. You didn't make Him the Lord. You received Him. It is the Spirit's work that firmly roots you and builds you up in Him. The faith didn't come from you.
The instruction didn't come from you. Everything good that you have came from somebody else. And when you think about that, when you think of all the good, you think of the redemption, the forgiveness of sins, the adoption as sons and daughters of God, eternal life, your possession.
And none of it came from me. I didn't earn it. I didn't merit it. I didn't go out and do the things that brought this to me. What other attitude should we have? What other attitude can we have? Because you see, if it's not Eucardistia, then it would have to be pride or arrogance.
And where would that come from? This term is used a number of times in Scripture. Paul said in Ephesians 5, Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children, and walk in love just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, and offering a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.
But immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints, holy ones. And there must be no filthiness and silly talk or coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather, Eucardistia.
For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person or covetous man who is an idolater has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Do you see where that's put? It's put right in the middle of this is how you should behave.
Immorality, impurity, greed, no. It shouldn't even be named amongst the saints. Filthiness, silly talk, coarse jesting. No, instead, there should be Eucardistia. Now, you and I think of Thanksgiving pretty much as a personal thing, right?
I mean, I give thanks to God. But filthiness and silly talk and coarse jesting, that's in our conversation with one another. And Paul's saying, no, there shouldn't be any of that. There should be Eucardistia.
That means it should be something that takes place amongst the saints. It should mark our words. It should be something we talk about. And we're not just sitting around talking about, well, you know, I thanked God today for this.
That may be proper and true. But you see, since we are all members of the body, if you have bowed the knee to Jesus Christ, if your hope is solely in Him, since we are joined together by that common confession, then we should be able to join together in the giving of thanks.
Join together in talking about the common ministry of the Spirit amongst us. When we talk about what God is doing in our lives, it should resonate with one another. We should go, you know, I've experienced that myself, you know.
The Lord's been working in my life in this area. Or in that area. He's brought trials and tribulations to bear, but you know, I see the purposes. I just wish I learned faster. Oh, yes, brother, sister, I understand.
Let me tell you what the Lord's done in my life. And isn't it wonderful we can join together and think about God's faithfulness that each one of us is testimony too. Each one of us. We can look at the other.
And I've mentioned this many times in this pulpit. How encouraging it is to stand here and to see you. And since we're Baptists, we always know exactly where you're supposed to be sitting. We don't even have to guess.
As long as there's someone sitting in a certain spot, well, that means Rick's there. That means Mr. Callahan's over there. The flocks are over there. You know, you just... And whenever anybody takes our seat, we're ruined for the day.
But, you know, we try to get over it. It's just the Reformed Baptist way, you know. And we joke about that because we should never let someone taking our seat bother us. But there's also something good about the fact that you see those faces and you are encouraged and you give thanks for the evidence of God's grace in the lives of others.
There is to be Eucharistia. And you know what? If we're really focused upon thanksgiving to God, there won't be any room for filthiness and silly talk. So much of the sin that we must confess is when with our tongues we demonstrate we're so much like the world.
And if our tongues had just been busy with Eucharistia, we wouldn't have had time for so many of the things we have to repent of and are sorry that we said. You all know the verse. As soon as I started talking about thanksgiving, many of you in your minds started quoting Philippians 4.
Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with Eucharistia, let your requests be made known to God in the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension. Remember the hymn just a few moments ago?
It will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. How many people this day are standing before groups talking about the power of prayer? You can get God to do this. You can get God to do that.
I have to listen to atheists all the time. I don't enjoy it. I don't enjoy it. But I have to listen to atheists all the time as part of my work. And one of the themes of the new atheists is to mock the idea of prayer.
And what they're really mocking is an abuse of prayer. They're mocking those people who say that basically prayer is a mechanism whereby you control God. Well, you know what? That's worthy of mocking because that's not what prayer is.
And Christian prayer is to be marked by Eucharistia. But in everything by prayer and supplication with something, the prayer, arrogance is ignored. The prayer of any believer that is not marked by thanksgiving does not fulfill the words of this text.
Well, what does that mean? How do you pray with thanksgiving? With Eucharistia? Well, the prayer that comes forth from a heart that sees that everything I possess, not just my physical need, my physical possessions, but my spiritual good, the heart that sees the long-suffering patience of God that has supported me and kept me in the faith and has held me up, the heart that is filled with thanksgiving, again, it's looking out from itself.
Thanksgiving causes us to look away from ourselves to the source of the giving. And in that heart, its prayer is always going to be a prayer that will never ever rebel against that important phrase from Jesus' lips, according to your heart.
The heart of Eucharistia is a heart that is protected from presumptuous... Ever prayed a presumptuous prayer? Every one of us has. Sometimes it's out of ignorance. Sometimes it's because we are immature in the faith.
But there's many people who teach a lifestyle of presumptuous prayer. Christian prayer is to be soaked and to find its origin in thanksgiving, Eucharistia. And if you don't have thanksgiving for what God has done for you, well, then the request that you make known to Him will not bring the peace of God which surpasses all comprehension.
I am convinced that one of the reasons that so many lack the peace of God that is mentioned here is because they skip over that one term. Well, if I'll just do this, I'll lay everything before God. Okay, I'm going to pray.
I'm going to pray with thanksgiving. With thanksgiving. Now, a few of you here many years ago went to the same church I went to. And a few of you, or at least, was in the singles department at that particular church.
I taught in a singles class there for a while. I was married, but I taught in that class for a while. And I sort of got the sense back then, and I'm sure nothing much has changed, that there were a lot of people running around talking about, I want to know God's will for my life.
Oh, that was big. Every couple months you had a seminar on finding God's will for your life. And you'd bring in special speakers and they'd be very entertaining. And I don't know how many books have been written on discovering God's will for your life.
And people who've made their living all on coming in. And they would do a spiritual diary. Or they'd sort of ask you questions. And you could find out what your spiritual strengths were. And all trying to find God's will for your life.
And most of it was actually trying to find God's mate for your life. But it sounded more spiritual to say God's will for your life. And that was a better way to put it. And yet, it's amazing how many texts there are in the New Testament that specifically talk about what God's will for you is.
And they're plain. And they're straightforward. And yet, they're not really what people are looking for. One of those is 1 Thessalonians 5 .18. It says, In everything, give thanks. Eucharisteo is the verbal form.
For this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. All those books wasted. Because there it was all the time. But it was in 1 Thessalonians. Whoever reads 1 Thessalonians anyways, right? You want to know what God's will for you in Christ Jesus is?
In everything, Eucharisteo, give thanks. Now, I think one of the reasons that this isn't the most favorite text in the world is because a lot of us will have to admit what does that mean? I mean, does that mean that you know, I get a phone call and my kid just got in trouble at school.
And so now I give thanks. And I have a flat tire. I just go, thank you, Lord. And just put a paint a silly grin on your face and just go through life. And when someone walks up and punches you in the nose, you go, thank you, Lord.
I mean, is that what Paul's really talking about? Well, if Thanksgiving is just simply saying, thank you, Lord. Well, then that's all we would have. But it's not, obviously. Because to give thanks in everything means you have to see the hand of God that guides in providence all things in your life.
And it is an act of Christian maturity. It is what the saints who have walked with the Lord for many years are able to do to be able to discern the hand of God and His purposes. And yes, that is a spiritual discipline.
And that is not easily done. And I'm not talking about sitting back and trying to discern the mind of God and everything. Because sometimes God doesn't tell us what His purpose is. But the person who has walked, walked in Him.
Remember Colossians 2? Who has walked in Him and the Lordship of Christ. Over time, you gain that heart of maturity, that heart of wisdom, so that you can see that the Lord is working in your life to conform you to the image of Christ.
And this results in an attitude of thanksgiving. Of seeing that these things have come from the hand of a loving God. You have died. Your life has been hidden together with Christ in God. And as a result, even when the trials and tribulations come, you don't have some kind of surface level giddiness, but you do have an abiding thanksgiving.
And in fact, a joy and a contentment in recognizing God is fulfilling His promises to work in my life. It's not giddiness. It's not a silly, thank you, thank you, thank you. But in everything, we are to give thanks.
In everything, we are to experience eucharistia. That's how the mature Christian is to be. Now, may I suggest that thanksgiving... I'm only going to mention three things. There are many more I could mention, but time is failing us.
Thanksgiving. Eucharistia causes us to increase in faith, in humility, and in love. Faith, humility, and in love. Because we live in a society that eschews thanksgiving. I mean, did it cross any of your minds?
It certainly crossed mine. What were secular humanists doing on Thursday? Even when they partook of the bounty of our land, what were they doing? They have no one to thank. So to give thanks, they have to thank other people.
Or maybe even thanking themselves. I mean, some people are just very perverted. I saw an article online that said, Angelina Jolie made sure that her and her family were not in the United States on Thursday because she detests Thanksgiving.
You know why? Because Thanksgiving is simply a celebration of the murderous Westerners coming over and killing Indians. That's what Thanksgiving is to Angelina Jolie. Don't think she's quite got the idea yet.
I'm not sure if there's anybody around her that could tell her what the idea is, but missed the point. Missed the point. But when you think about it, the attitude of Thanksgiving how does it increase someone's faith?
How does it increase your faith as a believer? Well, think about it. If you're giving thanks, what are you doing? When we truly live in an attitude of Eucharistia, we are confessing that we see the hand of God in our lives, in prayer, and in providence.
This society around us does everything it can to not foster the idea of Thanksgiving. Year number one, we pay millions of dollars to people who are filled with pride and arrogance about their physical capacities until somebody blows out their ACL and now they're just a regular old human being like the rest of us, but we pay millions of dollars to people to be prideful and arrogant.
We exalt them. There's almost nothing in our society that is specifically meant to engender an attitude of Thanksgiving. About the only exception I can think of is that it's still considered to be okay in our society to be thankful for our military personnel.
That's still okay, except in San Francisco. But God's going to just chop that off and ship it off to China anyways so we don't have to worry about it. But when you think about it, our society hates faith and it hates Thanksgiving because the two go hand in hand.
You have to believe that God is actually active in your life. You have to have faith that God is active in your life to have Thanksgiving for what He's doing in your life. And so when you experience Thanksgiving, it increases your faith.
It increases and strengthens the faith that you're to have in God. And a Christian who is not thankful is probably a Christian who really doesn't believe that God is actually active in your life. You may say it, but can anybody see it?
One of the clearest demonstrations of faith is a thankful heart. I said three things. Faith, humility, and love. Humility. When our attitude is soaked in Eucharistia, we see that all that we have received in everything, give thanks, all that we have received, it comes from the Lord.
It comes from His goodness. He's the one who causes us to be successful or to advance or to possess any good at all. And so if I'm truly expressing that gratitude outwardly toward another, how can I be arrogant?
How can I have pride? It is that very attitude of humility that is the means by which the church experiences peace. Remember Philippians 2? Have this attitude in yourselves which are also in Christ Jesus.
And what's the whole thing about? Humility of mind. Putting others before yourself. If you're not thankful, your humility is at best shallow. And it may simply be a sham. There is no humility without thanksgiving.
It also causes us to increase in love when our attitude toward God is one of Eucharistia rather than complaint. Complaint, whining. Then our hearts are tuned to love the One who has been so bountiful and kind to us.
Our passions follow our desires. We all know that. What we want is what we pursue. Our passions follow our desires. And Eucharistia, thanksgiving, turns us away from the lure of the world and toward God, even in the midst of our blessings.
The world, in general, recognizes. And this is a general observation. It is not in every single situation. But we look around the world and we see the saints who live in lands with significantly less physical prosperity than we have.
And there tends to be much more depth to their spirituality. Than there is amongst the saints who live in lands that are so constantly focused upon what we have and what we possess. There's no question of this.
That does not mean that there cannot be American Christians with a deep spirituality. But the fact is, when we are concerned about stuff all the time, it distracts us. It distracts us from sincerity and purity of worship and service to Christ.
And I think that one of the greatest sins of the American church, we can think of complacency and apathy. True. I think one of the greatest sins of the American church is complaint. God, why are you so mean to me?
What my neighbor has? I may have more than 9 tenths of the rest of humanity, but that's not enough for me if I don't get to be as tall as someone or as genetically blessed or as pretty or have a house as big or a car as big or whatever else it might be.
Lord, you're not being fair to me. Obviously, Thanksgiving, a true attitude of Thanksgiving must exist if we are going to be pleasing before God in our attitudes toward His blessings in our life. And if we are to avoid the sin of complaint, of discontentedness, it is the only antidote.
The only antidote. And it is a sin. Discontentedness with God's provision is a terrible sin. We see it in our own kids, in our own families. Every one of us has been to a mall and we've seen that spoiled, rotten brat that we all want to turn over our knee and spank.
And sometimes they were kids. You know who I'm talking about. You've seen them. You may have seen them just in the past 24 hours. And they reflect badly upon their parents, don't they? When Christians are discontented, we reflect badly.
We're not reflecting the glory of Christ. We're not showing that we are appreciative for what He has done. When we are a complaining people, didn't we read the Old Testament? What did Israel do over and over again?
The pillar of fire by night. The cloud by day. Not enough. Food dropping from heaven. Not enough. Discontentedness is a great sin. And its greatest antidote is thanksgiving. You want something really practical to take away today?
You may not appreciate this. But you want something practical to take away into your life during the week that will sort of help you deal with that Christian liberty issue. You know that issue of what's Christian liberty?
What am I really free to do? How much can I be like the world without being a legalist? I don't want to be a legalist now. Real simple. Can you be truly thankful for the activity you engage in before God?
For what you watch on television, on the internet, on a movie screen? The words that you speak, the clothing that you wear. Can you with sincerity say to God, I thank You for that. I thank You for bringing that into my life.
Sticks in your throat. Then maybe you realize it's not something that's a part of Christian liberty. What did Paul say to us? In everything, give thanks. This is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. And if you want to be a Christian who experiences the Lord's blessings, who is firmly rooted, built up in Him, established in your faith, then you need to be overflowing.
Not just in the third week of November. But in every day, in every hour of our lives, we as believers are to be overflowing with gratitude. And that gratitude finds its well-sourced spring first and foremost, not in the circumstances of our daily existence, but in the recognition that we arise each morning at peace with God because of what someone else has done for us.
We didn't earn it. We didn't buy it. We possess eternal life. Forgiveness of sins that no one can ever take from us. And the mere contemplation of that should be enough to cause us to overflow with gratitude, thanksgiving.
Indeed, our Heavenly Father, You are the fountainhead of all blessings. And You have blessed us so richly in Christ Jesus that we can only say thank You. But we want to live out our thanks. We want to live as the Word has told us to live this attitude of Eucharistia.
May it mark our lives. May it mark our prayers. May we truly give thanks in all things, for we know this is Your will for us in Christ Jesus. And so we do thank You for Christ. We thank You for the Gospel, for the Word of God, the Spirit of God, the church, and the fellowship of the saints.
For all the things You've poured into our lives, we are thankful. May our thanks be true. May it be lasting. To Your honor and glory, we pray in Christ's name.