Depths of Gratitude and Being Thankful — Roy Daniel

The Call to Understand Biblical Gratitude

I'd like us to open up our Bibles to 2 Timothy 3 verse 1 and 2. 2 Timothy 3 verse 1 and 2. Another thing that is very interesting is, I'm not going to preach a sermon I preached before you. Don't worry about that.

But there was a guy in South Africa, he died of cancer. His name was Bill Nemec. I don't know if you've ever heard of him. He was a godly, godly man. He woke up early in the morning to pray every morning for hours at about 3 o 'clock.

And he was an amazingly humble man. Started this little church many years back. He came to a meeting years back when my dad was preaching. And my dad preached a sermon on calling. And he got very cross.

Because he felt God was leading him to full-time ministry. I don't know if you've ever felt that in your life. But what is very interesting is that after getting extremely angry that someone could preach a sermon like that, he was not going to come to the next message.

But then he thought to himself, well, Brother Keith is preaching calling. He's not going to preach on calling again. So I might as well go to the second message because he's already preached on that topic.

So he came and he sat down. And my dad said, and I know this guy very well, it really did happen. My dad said for some strange reason he felt to preach exactly the same sermon. And a second time. And so he stood up and preached to the same people exactly the same sermon from start to finish.

And there was about four people who were called to full-time service. Nobody responded in the first message. And in the second message that man was called. And he became one of the most wonderfully used preachers in a certain part of South Africa.

And the stories were endless to prove that the God that we serve is real behind this word. Even if I have a comb in my Bible. He uses weak vessels. So we've opened up our Bibles to 2 Timothy 3 verse 1.

Gratitude as a Life of Thankfulness

And we're going to look today at a little topic, a little Bible topic. And we look in depth at it called gratitude and being thankful. Something that many people even sitting in church do not understand.

What it means from God's perspective to be thankful. So with that, let's go over to prayer and then we'll read those verses. Dear Father, thank you so much from the bottom of my heart. That we can be here together and we can read out of the word of God.

Thank you for every single person sitting here. And that you love every single one of them. And that that love does not make them Christians in and of itself. But it's precious to know that someone cares who's great.

Thank you for every person sitting here who is born again. And thank you that you want them to know. You gave 66 books for us to know your will. And who you are concerning every single part of our lives.

I pray this in Jesus Christ's name. Amen. Now we're going to read 2 Timothy 3 verse 1 and 2. Talking about the end times. But the topic today is the depths of gratitude or being thankful. And when I talk about being thankful, if I was just off the head, it would be quite fun, unless I was Amish, to go up to someone like Micah and give him a big smack in the face.

I don't know if you've ever tried that. But when we talk about thankfulness, there's many people when they talk about thankfulness, what they mean is they say thank you, but then with their life they are not thankful.

They don't show gratitude. If I was to go up to Micah and say, thank you Micah for allowing me in your father's house, thank you for the food that you've given me, thank you for driving me out here, thank you for the fact that you're my friend, that I can email you at times with a prayer request once a year, and I do sometimes answer your emails, but I say thank you for all those things, and I smack him in the face.

With my words I'm showing gratitude, but with my life I'm not showing gratitude. And there's many people. And that's not what we're talking about today when we talk about thankfulness. We're talking about a life that shows gratitude, not just words that show gratitude, just off the bat.

So let us read there in 2 Timothy 3 verse 1 and 2, concerning the end times. We talk a lot about the end times today. We know that we are obviously living in the end times. But 2 Timothy 3 verse 1 and 2 says, This know also, that in the last days, perilous times, that's very dangerous times spiritually, not just around us that we can die and things like that, shall come.

For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, and lastly, and then it says also, sorry, unthankful and unholy. The Bible says in the end times, a long string of things, there's even more, that we will see around us, more than ever before.

It's not that these things have never been before, but in the end times it will be everywhere, in a very dangerous way that can affect you as Christians and unsaved people. And one of the things that will be in the end times as never before across the world is that people will be unthankful.

They will not have gratitude for that which they should have gratitude for. In Romans chapter 1, it talks of the progression of sin of a nation until God brings His judgment on that nation. And one of the things we read in verse 21 is because that when they knew not God, they glorified Him not as God, being unthankful.

Neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations and their foolish heart, which was dark. And we find in Luke chapter 17 that thanksfulness, or thanking God, glorifies God. We'll get to that a little later.

But yeah, they did not glorify God, neither were they thankful. And when we look at this topic today, and I'd like to go a bit deeper, like I said, than just the average understanding of thankfulness and gratitude that most people have, but look at the Bible and what it says.

Self-Righteous Gratitude Compared With Others

If we had 1 to 6, you know 6 is the Antichrist, 666, and you had the lowest form of thankfulness up to the highest form of thankfulness outside of what God intends us to understand concerning thankfulness.

Then the lowest form of thankfulness out there across the whole world is the thankfulness that we find in Luke chapter 18, verse 1. And there, sorry, verse 11, where we read of a Pharisee and a publican, and we're not going to read the whole portion, but just verse 11.

The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, not with God. God, I thank thee that I am not as other men are. And then he listed them, extortionists, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. This is the lowest form of thankfulness that there can be out there, when you are thankful in a proud way compared to other people's morality.

Self-righteous thankfulness. Thank you, God, that I'm so special. I can imagine Michael one day, if he doesn't lose all his hair, going to the mirror, looking at himself and saying, oh, thank you, that I'm not as other men are, with my beautiful hair and my beautiful nose, and my beautiful teeth.

You can do this in so many different ways of morality, comparing yourself to others and saying, look, not just less fortunate people, but I am special because of who I am and being proud of it. This is the lowest form of thankfulness.

But going from this lowest form of thankfulness which you find in the Bible up to the highest form of thankfulness that you can have outside of Christianity. And the reason I say that is because this type of thankfulness that I'm going to tell you now, which all of you know about, you don't have to be a Christian to be thankful in this way.

It's not a wrong type of thankfulness, it's a good type of thankfulness, but you do not have to be a Christian to have this type of thankfulness. The highest form of thankfulness that we have outside of Christianity, in Christianity true, but you don't have to be a Christian to have it, and there is a far deeper understanding of thankfulness in the Bible, we'll get to soon, is that of which we are thankful compared to those that are less fortunate.

Not just thankful because I'm not morally as bad as that guy in my own eyes, but I'm thankful, you all know the saying, I was I didn't like the fact that I didn't have shoes on until I saw someone with no feet.

And this is the thankfulness you hear many preachers preach about, they'll stand up and they'll say we should be very thankful because there's a guy in India and he's dying, and you're not dying, and he doesn't have food, and you have food, and so on.

And it is the thankfulness you'll hear of the most, but the world preaches this thankfulness too, we should be thankful compared to those that are less fortunate than us. It's not something you need the Bible to have, it's not something you need to be a Christian to practice, in truth.

Gratitude for Family, Life, and Circumstances

And I'd just like to look at this for a while before we dig a little deeper and I'd just like to look at a few examples where you could say in Christianity we should be thankful compared to other people.

For instance, for having a Christian family, I don't know how many of you realize what a privilege it is just to have a father and mother. They might get irritated at times, but that they even try, or even friends, even if you don't have a father and mother that are saved, that you have a church family that try to reach out to you in any sort of love.

I don't know, I've been, some of you might have been to India, I remember going to India and going up in the mountains there, and even in England sometimes, in about 20 times that I went there, you meet people in the street and the only thing they know about Jesus Christ is that He's a swear word.

Up in the mountains in some places in India you'll find people who have never heard the name of Jesus Christ, as you will in South America and some other places. And then you realize, I grew up, I went to a church, I went to Christian camps, I had people that at times I could go out with and witness with them, and you realize what a precious, wonderful thing it was that your parents gave you those bankings from a Christian perspective in love.

It was so wonderful to have a Christian family. In South Africa about 30 years back there was a 38 year old woman, and this 38 year old woman was, her husband left her, she turned to heroin and drugs and a social worker came, and I don't like social workers but in this case a social worker took away her 9 year old child.

And this 9 year old child though taken away from her was allowed to see her. She could come in and see the child, and they left her alone with this child for a little while, and she brought in a syringe, and this syringe had in it ant poison and heroin.

And she put it under the cushion of this 9 year old child and said to that child, who was broken hearted to lose his mother, if I'm going to go home, and I'm going to take a syringe and I'm going to stab myself, and I'm going to die and I'm going to go to heaven.

And if you want to be with mommy in heaven then take that syringe and after I'm gone, stab yourself and you will be with mommy in heaven. And that little 9 year old child believed his mother so long to be with his mother that after his mother left, he took that syringe stabbed himself with that syringe and he died.

A horrible death. His mother in hospital survived, so we know the story. I didn't have a mother like that. I had a mother who was my tooth mouse. I had a mother that read me the bible. How precious compared to those less fortunate that we have anything with a church or family that is like that.

In South Africa I sometimes go to preach or minister at special homes and the one place I went to a lot apart from the other places the one place I really focus on in Utrecht, South Africa was a place where they had the worst children's child criminals of the whole of South Africa and these little kids in the school were terrifying but some of these children who are the worst child criminals in South Africa from the age of 2 months old were sold as prostitutes and that's how they landed up in the school from 2 months old money would be paid for adult women to french kiss them at 2 months old before they got old and did worse stuff.

Compared to people like that we say thank you God for a Christian family or anything like it or anything better than that there are multiple places in South Africa, not just one where I've gone to orphanages and I find a little child and the child's body is rubber.

Literally you can at 5 years old hold that child's hands up here, feet up here and it will hang like this. It has no almost muscles to move or strengthen itself be able to stand up upright. It can say only about 5 words and I've asked the people of that place what is wrong with this child.

Does it have a genetic disorder or is there some disease that did this and they will tell me that there's nothing wrong with this child. The only thing that is wrong with this child was nothing genetic, no disease that hit it but that the parents were so emotionally abusive that its body started to eat itself.

And compared to people like this I say that are less fortunate than us thank you God for a Christian family. One thing we can be thankful for is just to be alive and again we can compare ourselves to other people less fortunate.

Some people think well if there's a purpose in life for you to be alive then you'll be alive. In South Africa there was a preacher his name was Benny he was in our mission and Benny Benny was an amazing preacher he was married to a young woman and they called him an Israelite in whom is no girl.

He would go out and preach and God would use him mightily unto the salvation of souls and he was going around preaching and God was using him as a young man with a lovely wife and someone was let out of jail and when this person was let out of jail after about 20 years in jail the people who let him out of jail said to him we hope never to see you again and he said well you won't see me alive and what that person decided at that moment is I'm going to drive and I'm going to find someone to kill and I'm going to drive at high speed and kill that person that I find and he drove literally about 240 miles away from that prison in a country of over 60 million people nowadays and out of the 45 million people back in those days or whatever it was he found Benny and at high speed he smashed into him and killed him he had a wonderful ministry souls were getting saved he had a family and the question is if we come to the point where we think well I have the right to live because I have a family because I have children because I have a ministry because God can use me then why was he not alive and therefore we can say compared to him compared to him that is less fortunate than us we should be grateful that we are alive.

I knew a person, a friend of mine, many of my friends die. In fact when I was preaching at a young people's camp a young person came up to me and said I don't want to be your friend. I said why? He said because all your friends are dead I just happen to have a lot that I can preach about that died my one friend there I remember he was an amazing man but he he couldn't have children and eventually after many years of praying for God to give him a child he got a little child and he was amazed that God the wife's stomach would get big and he is now amazed he is going to have a little child for the first time for the first time ever and the child was born and it had down syndrome.

And when this child was born I remember him coming up to me and he was crying he was weeping and he said I prayed and waited so long for God to give me a baby and then he gave me this he was angry at this little child but then something wonderful happened he prayed and when he prayed and sought God God gave him love for that little child and I remember seeing him at Christian camps and so on and that little child was his pride and joy.

In the year after that he literally loved that little baby and his wife got pregnant again with a normal child and before that baby was born he was in an accident and he went into a coma and he died 9th of April 2016.

Two years back and I just asked myself the question why would God give him a child after all those years, he has hatred for the child God gives him love and after God giving him love for that little child that is his pride and joy, God kills him.

And I have a little thought in my heart just because I've got a family and I've got children does that mean I automatically have a right to live compared to him. I should be grateful that I'm alive compared to those who are less fortunate than me.

Three Weaknesses of Comparative Thankfulness

But remember I said there is the lowest form of thankfulness in the Bible and there is the highest form of thankfulness that man can attain but you don't have to be a Christian to have this form of thankfulness.

Many people talk of thankfulness like this and they've never been saved. And so I'd like to bring the first type of thankfulness is sinful. The second type of thankfulness is just the highest form of man's thankfulness outside of God and so I'd like to bring three weaknesses.

Three weaknesses in the highest form of man's thankfulness. Number one, if we are only supposed to be thankful compared to those less fortunate than ourselves then somewhere out there in the world, I don't know where it is is the person who is least fortunate maybe he's in cardboard city in India where they grow up and literally are born in the mud.

I don't know where he is but there's somebody out there in the world it has to be that is the least fortunate person on earth and there's nobody less than him that is less fortunate that he can compare himself to and so he doesn't have to be thankful.

Number two. Number two if we are only to be thankful compared to those that are less fortunate than ourselves this type of thankfulness is by degrees. So if I am more fortunate compared to someone less fortunate and someone is a little less fortunate than me then I should be more grateful than the person who is a little less fortunate compared to those less fortunate than him.

So you'll have different people who should be less and more thankful in life. And number three if we have this type of thankfulness the more we achieve in a certain instance or occurrence or part of life and the less obvious it is that God intervened the less thankful we will be in that particular area of life and this I see Christians everywhere in conservative churches liberal churches you name it, they have this thing and I like to give you an example if a little child your little child that you love got a disease and started to die and the doctors give it absolutely no hope of living and you go down on your knees and you cry and maybe it dies, maybe it doesn't but at that moment as you're crying out to God, God intervenes and that little child is healed and as obvious it was God then the inclination will be for a little bit of thankfulness to be there towards God because it was obvious God did something for you from the outside but when it's less likely that you will be thankful and God explains this in Scripture we'll come to this very soon, I'm not just taking my time of my own thoughts, it's in the Bible I will show you right through Scripture is when for instance you don't have a baby that's dying and you call out to God and a miracle happens but you put some effort into it for instance you buy a field and after buying this field in Africa or India or some other place you find that there's lots of stones in the ground and so you want to plant some crops and oh dear what do you have to do we have to take out the stones and so you take your pick and your spades and your whatever else you have, your wheelbarrows and you come there and you start to get the stones out of the ground and it takes days and days perhaps months and months and eventually you've got all those stones out of the ground as best you could so that you can plant nice crops and after all that work and seeds in the ground and water and fertilizer and whatever you have in the ground you see this crop growing up and the inclination is there to think well I did most of the work so it's not like a little baby dying and now I know that God intervened, I am a little less obviously thankful to God for what I did myself and we find this in the Bible, we find this right through the Bible but I'd like to start with Deuteronomy 8 verse 12 to 14 17 yeah we find that Moses, God knew that when the Israelites came into Canaan and they started actually putting their own effort into building houses, taking over houses that were given to them.

Yes but plowing fields and farming and doing things like that that they would become proud, Deuteronomy 8 verse 12 says lest when thou hast eaten a nut full and hast built goodly houses and dwelt in and when thy herds and thy flocks multiply and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied and all that thou hast is multiplied then thine heart be lifted up and thou forget the Lord thy God which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt and from the house of bondage.

And then verse 17 and thou sayest in thy heart my power and the might of my hand hath given me gotten me this. Well this attitude I was telling you about is right through scripture people were so thankful to God when miracles happened.

But in everyday life when they put effort in they took the glory to themselves. That's what the Bible warns against. That's what the Bible says. And so you find in Psalm 69 verse 30 that there is a verse there and it says I will praise the name of God with a song and then it says and I will magnify him with thanksgiving.

How do you make God. You know magnifying glass. How do you make God bigger by thanking him. When you make yourself smaller in what you take credit for God I might have taken these stones off the ground.

I might have done all the work to make this field right. I might have built that house with the sweat of my hands. But I'm not going to make myself big so I don't thank you. I'm going to make myself small and I'm going to magnify God by thanking him even for that house that he gave me even though I had to put an effort in.

We magnify God with thanksgiving. David understood this in 1 Samuel 30 verse 23 we find there he had come back to Ziklag and he found that his wife and the 600 or more men that were with him their wives and stuff was taken away and so he followed them.

And 200 people stood were too tired to go with them. So they stayed at the brook of Bezor and the 400 that went on they came there and I'd like you to note something. They took their own swords and their shields and they did work.

When you fight it actually takes effort. You have to use your arms and your legs and stuff. And they were fighting and God gave them a wonderful victory. But they fought. And some of them they were called children of Belial said we deserve all the credit.

We should get all the gold and all the wonderful stuff that came with this. And the 200 people who were too tired to go with they get nothing. But David said not so. And he said these words in 1 Samuel 30 verse 23 you shall not do so my brethren listen to these words with that which the Lord hath given unto us in spite of the fact that they took their swords their shields and fought with people it was still God that gave them the victory not them themselves.

And David said we're going to give to those 200 people who were too tired to come with because God gave it to us and we're going to give it to every single place that we ever had a house to stay in basically and to the leaders of Judah and we're going to send stuff to them all.

God Owns Every Gift, Including Human Effort

So in light of this in light of the fact that there are weaknesses in the highest form of man's thankfulness and the fact that we are to be thankful in spite of our own effort. I'd like to dig a little deeper.

This is not the depths of thankfulness yet this is just a little deeper and I'd like to bring up what some preachers do which is the fact that every single one of us deserve hell compared to a holy God without Jesus Christ.

And thus we should be thinking as people who are born sinners going our own way doing our own thing only born with a heart that does not love God does not know God lives outside of his life and outside of his authority.

But we have done sin by breaking God's law. And compared to other people we might look good. But compared to God we deserve hell for every moment of eternity. And therefore the fact that we are sitting in chairs right now and the fact that we are breathing every breath is a gift of God.

We should right now outside of Jesus Christ be in hell right now for eternity. Therefore everything we have in life is a gift and we should be thankful for it. Whether we can eat and not be burning in hell be thankful for that.

Whether we are drinking a drop of water and we are not in hell longing for a drop of water we should be thankful for that because that is what we deserve outside of Jesus Christ. Nothing in us can change the fact that we deserve hell for eternity.

And therefore we should be thankful because everything is a gift. But I would like to take this a little deeper. In fact I'd like to take it very deep right now because I'd like to ask a question Satan and Adam before the fall of man.

Before the fall of man and before the fall of Satan they were both ungrateful. Why did they have to be grateful. Well number one the reason I asked that is there was not anybody extremely less fortunate than them.

There might have been people who were less glorious than the angel that Satan was. There might have been animals that didn't look as amazing as Adam and Eve looked. But there was nobody with no shoes no feet to say well I've got no shoes but that person's got no feet.

There was no sin there was no disease there was no suffering. So Adam could not look around him and say well compared to that person who's filled with sores all over their body and hasn't eaten for 50 days.

I must be grateful. Adam at the same time was not deserving of hell so he could not say well outside of Jesus Christ I deserve hell. Therefore everything in life is a gift because I should be burning in hell right now.

Why did Adam have to be thankful. Why did Satan have to be thankful before sin, disease, suffering or even people deserved hell. And this is where we get a little deeper than man's concept of thankfulness in Ezekiel 28 verse 13 and so on we read number one that thou hast been in Eden, number two every precious stone was thy covering, talking of Satan tablets in thy pipe was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created thou art the anointed sheriff that covers Satan was beautiful.

But in spite of this we read in Isaiah 14 verse 14 I shall ascend above the hearts of the clouds. I will be like the most high. Instead of being grateful for what God gave him he was ungrateful for what he did not have.

The same thing we find in Adam. Instead of being grateful for this beautiful garden with all these amazing fruits that he could have and the amazing paradise he was in he was ungrateful for the one thing that God didn't give him to eat of the one tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

But why were they supposed to be grateful. Well before sin, before suffering, before there were people that were usually less fortunate than others. There's one concept that reaches out throughout eternity and that we need to understand that many of the prophets in the bible understood and the new testament was understood by Paul and others and that is because God is creator because he spoke and trees were created and fish were created and men were created and everything on earth was created.

Everything in life and in the universe is God's property and because it's God's property, he made it he created it, he can do with it as he wishes, he can send it to a lake of fire tomorrow and he would be righteous to do so because he owns it.

And this God who owns everything and because he owns everything, it is a gift and we should be grateful even before we have someone less fortunate than us to make us thankful for our fortitude and before we deserved hell.

The fact that God owns us makes everything a gift and therefore we are to be grateful. And we will find this in scripture. I will show you, the bible preaches this clearly God actually owns us twice. How many of you have heard of the whippoorwill song.

Well it's a sweet little song and one of the verses goes I don't know if I'm pronouncing whippoorwill wrong but perhaps Americans say it differently. I could demand your love, I own you twice but only winning love is worth the price.

Beautiful little song. God owns us twice, that we read through the bible, he owns us by right of creator as creator of the universe, you don't have to be slave for him to own you, he can send you to hell and judge you, he has that right as creator he owns you and owns every blade of grass on the ground every tree on the mountain, every river that flows and every bird in the sky he owns every star in the heavens he owns the moon he owns everything and therefore he owns us the first time but the second time he owns us, we find this in the old testament he owns us by right of redemption because the passover did not mean that you were now free from Egypt to be your own master.

No, the first born are mine and in the new testament in corinthians we read, you are bought with a price therefore glorify God in your body and your spirit which are God's, God owns it because you bought with a price and that is the beauty of redemption, one of the things that happened to Abraham in the bible in genesis chapter 14 is for the first time, I might be wrong but it seems like the first time after genesis 12 and 13 we had four different altars twice at Bethel, one at Hebron then this guy called Melchizedek comes and he blesses Abraham and he uses a term that we've never heard of before, remember God was revealing himself first as the almighty one, then as Jehovah later to Moses, but this time with Abraham, he reveals himself through the words that are said by Melchizedek when he says that God is the possessor of heaven and earth, he owns everything, and Abraham seems so shocked, for the first time we hear Abraham in his own prayer saying to the king of Sodom no I'm not going to take any of your basically the next verse, any of your gold and your silver in the previous verse he says because I serve the God who is possessor of heaven and earth, he copies Melchizedek, he realizes this great concept therefore I can't take your gold because you're going to say I made Abraham rich and I'm actually serving the God who owns everything, every last little blade of grass he owns and that's the one I serve, the beautiful thing is he can do with his creation as he wishes, Jeremiah 18 verse 6 talking of Israel he said am I not the potter and basically you're the clay and you're in my hand but I've got some questions now for normal people now this would not be me because I'm not normal but in some churches you have people who have nice voices, I'm not saying you don't have a nice voice, I'm sure there's some very beautiful voices here but if you do and you're born with that and you spend a lot of effort to get that voice nice after you're born with a nice voice and because of that effort, you know one of the biggest problems with thankfulness is just we compare ourselves not only to people less fortunate we compare ourselves to lazy people and the more effort we put in the less thankful we are because we say well he didn't, this is the American conservative way is hard work equals you deserve your pay, which is fine and lazy people should not get pay which is fine, but the problem is the lazy person doesn't deserve it and you also don't deserve it, it's a gift of God he just deserves, he less deserves it less, if you want to use very weird terminology but do you have a nice voice, well Psalm 12 verse 4 says these words we have said without tongue will we prevail, not talking about singing, but still the concept is there our lips are our own, who is lord of us, I own my lips that's what some people say and God says no, I own your lips.

Do you have a business well in Habakkuk 1 verse 16 we read of people who were thankful for what, they were thankful for their business not to God, therefore they sacrifice unto their net because by them their portion is fat and their meat plenteous.

In other words what God is saying here is there's people who instead of looking to God who gave the fish in the sea that went into the nets, they literally worship their nets and are thankful to their nets like many people worship their business as if that thing is something they did and they can be worshipped as a God later the work of their own hands.

You might have built the Suez Canal, what's the canal between America and South America Panama you guys are brilliant, you've got brains sometimes you use them but someone might have spent many years building the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal that many people died, thousands of engineers I think died down there, or at least over a thousand I think died, people building that from America, they weren't used to the diseases, and you might after all that work that you put in, think that well it wasn't a miracle that it happened, there was work that went into this, and therefore I deserve some of the credit and there's less credit to God almighty, but Ezekiel 29 verse 3 we read of a king a pharaoh, sorry king of Egypt, and pharaoh king of Egypt said something very interesting that God condemned he talked to the river Nile and he said these words my river is mine own I own this river.