The Guide To Gratitude
The Foundation of Gratitude – A Heart of Thanksgiving
SERMON TRANSCRIPT
Hey, it was fun. I had a chance to listen to Pastor Chris's sermon from last week, and I just wanted a real briefly just share three key points that I pulled from his sermon to remind us as we flow into today. And there were three things that I heard him say. First of all, gratitude is a spiritual practice. Practice means you work at it. Gratitude is a superpower, which is actually fantastic. And then gratitude is for any circumstances. And I loved his story about the saxophone because as I heard him share that, I thought I already had a gratitude, a thankfulness right there that I did not have to listen to him practice that saxophone. He shared about that. In fact, I confirmed it today that the saxophone that he initially started with, I believe is correct, that our son, Ryan, our oldest son, Ryan, who's a few years older than Pastor Chris, he basically had that saxophone. And then after hearing him practice, we paid the Snider’s to take it and give it to Chris as a gift. So that was a fun time. I have a friend, he's written this wonderful book, says, that wrote, he wrote this book that is titled, "If You're Not Dead, You're Not Done." And so in his story, in this book, he shares a story actually of his pastor's wife that he had when he was a little boy. And he talks about the fact how encouraging she was and how she mentored many, many, many young people over the years. As she got older, she contracted cancer. And so as towards the end of her life, they had to put her into a extended care home. And she was in her late 80s, and her son-in-law went to visit her in this situation. And he went to her and he said, again, remember, she was a very encouraging lady. And he went and he was visiting with her and he said to her, "Mom, how can I pray for you?" And she said, "Pray that I don't get grumpy." I thought it was fantastic. That was a wonderful statement. She had this prayer, she's suffering from cancer, she's getting the end of her life. And her thing is she just did not want to get grumpy.
And so as I share this morning, kind of building off what Pastor Chris shared last week, we're going to talk about the fact that gratitude needs to become ingrained in our lives. And I love the fact that you're doing this thing with this card to remind you every day of something to be grateful for. And so as we get into this, I'm going to go to Colossians chapter 3. If you have your Bible, go ahead and turn there or your phone, whatever you use to pull up your scripture. And we're going to take a look at Colossians chapter 3. And Colossians chapter 3, verse 17 says this, "And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him." In other words, he's saying we can have this lifestyle, this living out of our daily existence that we can be thankful and be able to represent God in every situation we find ourselves. And along the way, not get grumpy. All right? And so, but before we do that, it's funny when you read a verse, maybe when you've had this happen to you, it's happened to me. We record a lot of the TV shows that we like so that we can watch them on our own time. And so we were going in and one of the shows that we like is called FBI. And so we put the recording on and all of a sudden the FBI takes off and I felt like that we missed something. Something's going on that seems like we should know about. And it seems like it's getting to the end of this story. And I even said to Joni, my wife, I said, "Did we not record all of this? Did we miss part of it?" And as we're having this conversation, all of a sudden across the screen it says, "24 hours earlier." Ever had that kind of situation? You're in there and all of a sudden you think, "What in the heck is going on?" "Oh, well, let us catch you up." This is here we are now 24 hours earlier and they begin to catch you up to the story. And then Colossians chapter three, verse 17, that's kind of where we are. We kind of are at the end of what Paul is trying to say in this chapter. And so I want to kind of rewind back real quickly and I want to do an overview or a flyover or a summary of Colossians one through 14. And we talk about the fact that in this idea that Paul was laying out in Colossians, that we can have a new us. We can be new people. In fact, we are new people, just sometimes we forget that we're a new person. That's assuming you have a relationship with Jesus and you're living out that faith on a daily basis. As Paul says in Philippians, we need to work out our salvation. In other words, once we come into a relationship with Jesus, then it's a lifetime, not just a few weeks, a lifetime of living out and working out the salvation that he so graciously provided to us through faith in him. And so let's kind of just kind of walk real quickly through before we get down to where we started.
First of all, we learn in the first part of this chapter that we can have a new perspective. And he begins to lay out his, since then you have been raised with Christ. Set your hearts on things above when Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Verse two, set your mind on things above, not on earthly things. That's the new perspective that we can have, that we can set our mind on things above, not just on earthly things. Now you may or may not have heard this statement. It's been, when I was a kid, I heard it a lot. People would say, don't be so heavenly minded that you're no earthly good. And that's not what Paul is talking about here. He's just simply saying, we have this heaven, this reality that we have as a future hope. And we need to realize no matter what happens down here, we run that through the filter of our heavenly mind. We run it through the filter of our heavenly mind. And I don't know about you. We talk about gratitude and thankfulness, and I don't care how you voted. It makes no difference. I'm sure glad the election is over. Just glad that's all over. And so we have that idea that we have this heavenly mind and we run things through that, that this is not all there is in our life, what exists down here.
And then not only do we have this new perspective, but we have this new reality. He lays that out in verses five through 11, but in verses nine and 10, he really kind of, I believe, zeroes in on this new reality. He says, "Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its creator." See, we have this new reality. We no longer have this old self. And previous to that, he lays out a lot of the attitudes and actions that this old self had us wrapped up in. He says, "Now we have this new self." It isn't much different than the old self. You have a new reality and you need to live in that new reality. And as you discover that new reality and live firmly in it, yes, your lifestyle will change as far as how you look at things and you are grateful and thankful for.
And then he talks about our new identity. It's right there in verse 12, he says, "Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved." That's our new identity. In Jesus Christ, that is our new identity. We are a chosen people. God chose us. And we can be a holy and we can be a dearly loved people. And so as we have these three things that have built up to where we kicked in here, that with this idea of having a new perspective, a new reality, a new identity, as a result, you and I, we can have a new lifestyle.
And it's a lifestyle that says in all that we do, all that we say, all that we think can glorify God. Does it mean that we're perfect? It just means that God can take all that we do and all that we are and all that we say and redeem that for His glory. Verse 15 says this, "Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you recall to peace and be thankful. Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all the wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts." So the foundation of the new lifestyle that Paul talks about here in Colossians is thankfulness and gratitude. They're kind of, in a sense, two sides of the same coin. In reality, one of them informs the other. Thankfulness informs gratitude. Because even though they sound similar, and frankly, we interchange them all the time, it's not a bad thing, it's just what we do, they are a bit different. Thankfulness is typically a response to a specific act that benefits us. Something happens to us, and we just respond in that moment at that time. For example, you start to walk into a store and someone's ahead of you. You stop and they open the door and they let you through. Typically you say, "Thank you." Or you say, "What took you so long?" No, you don't do that. You say, "Thank you." You have thankfulness for that really kind gesture.
Maybe you get an unexpected gift. Thank you. Someone helps you, ready for this? Someone helps you move. Have you ever moved from one house to another? My wife, we've been married, well, this next year we'll be married 50 years. And I know, we were 12 when we got married. But anyway, no, I'm just kidding. That was not our background. But we had this orange Naugahyde couch. Did I mention orange? And it really wasn't, it was a pullout bed. And this is when they actually made furniture very strong. And this was orange, Naugahyde is kind of a leathery type stuff, but it was bright orange. And we, for whatever reason, early in our married life, we moved a lot. Maybe we ran out of money and we had to get, I don't know, that wasn't the case. I'm just saying that. But we moved a lot. And literally, and I am not embellishing this at all, I only had one friend that ever would help me move that more than once. He was a real friend. We were moving it from up into a second story apartment and it wasn't really a, one thing that was wrong with it, the latch was broken. You ever carry a heavy couch up a stairway and it starts to unfold? That's an experience. So when we lived in San Diego back in the day and we were getting ready to relocate up here to Sacramento, we had in our family room, this orange Naugahyde couch. And so the people that we sold it to, the house, not the couch, walked them out into our family room and I said, "You see this orange couch? It's part of the deal. It's yours. You can leave it here. You can move it. I just want you to know when you move in, that couch is going to be sitting right there." The last I ever saw that couch and I'm so thankful for that type of thing. So that's what thankfulness is. It's just this everyday, but yet here's the thing. As we learn to say thank you for things, unexpected things, everyday things, that begins to build a pattern in our life to begin to create, and again, you probably have heard this term before, it's not new, an attitude of gratitude. Because gratitude is more deeper and enduring feeling than just thankfulness. It goes deeper than that. It tends to encompass just our whole general being. We just have this sense of gratitude and that's good. And I'm discovering this. You know, we sing about faithfulness and many times as we understand the faithfulness of God, we begin to understand and be more grateful for that. And I think part of that comes frankly with maturity or with age. I used to think as a younger pastor that only old people talked about faithfulness. And then as I've gotten myself older, I realized part of the reason for that is you have this entire history of seeing God work in your life. Even at the time you may not even notice that. And then you look back and say, "Ah, God is so faithful. I am so grateful for His faithfulness." And young people here, you have that too. And sometimes we just don't take the time to look back and say, "Oh my goodness, look how God entered into our lives. Look where His faithfulness became evident. I am so grateful for that faithfulness." So when we begin to consistently be thankful, it will feed a lifestyle of gratitude.
However, there are some perspectives that can get in the way of being a thankful, grateful person. Here's one person, I'm only going to share three. There's probably more. I'm going to share three. First, I earned it. So if you have the perspective, "I earned it all. I worked it out on my own. I did it all." Very hard to be grateful or thankful for what you earned. And I'm all for earning stuff. I think we should work hard. Nothing wrong with that. But we miss sometimes when we have the perspective, it was I who earned it. We forget of all the people along the way that were gracious to us. Some of you may have heard this adage and it basically is about a turtle that is sitting on the fence post. And here's the adage. If you ever see a turtle sitting on a fence post, you know it had helped getting there. I don't see very many turtles that can climb up a fence and jump on that post. And that's what it is when we say, "I earned it. Oh yeah, I think you probably did. You did a lot of work, but you had help getting there." Be thankful and grateful for the people and the opportunities that allowed you along the way to have the opportunity to earn the things that you have.
A second perspective that tends to erode our ability to be thankful or grateful is simply I'm entitled to it. If I'm entitled to something, if I deserve something, then why would I be grateful for it because I'm entitled to it. And it keeps us from seeing the reality of the situation that helped us to have that quote unquote entitlement and to be able to be grateful for that. Jesus talks about that in a wonderful story he tells in the book of Matthew chapter 20 and verses 1 through 16. I'm going to give you the ex-Twitter version of that. And basically there's this landowner and he needs work done on his property. So he goes out and he sees some guy early in the morning. He said, "Hey, I have some work. Would you like to work for me today?" And they said, "Sure." And he says, "I'll pay you denarii," which basically in there probably would be, "I'll pay you a fair day's wage. That's what I'm going to pay you." You got it. They went to work. And then later that same morning, the landowner went out about nine o'clock in the morning, according to the story. He saw some other people, frankly, kind of standing around. He said, "Would you like some work?" And they said, "Yes." He said, "Okay, you come on and I'll pay you fairly." He didn't tell them what. He said, "I'll pay you fairly." And they went to work. Then about five o'clock in the evening, he sees some other folks and he says to them, "Would you like some work?" And they said, "Yes." He said, "You come on and work." At the end of the day, at the end of the shift, the landowner called his manager in and said, "Listen, I want you to pay everybody. And I want you to start with the people we hired last and go to the ones we hired first and pay them all a denarii, pay them all a full day's wage." I wouldn't be happy about either, by the way, if you're thinking about that. So the ones who were hired first saw what was happening. The people hired at five got a full day's wage. People hired at nine got a full day's wage. They're thinking, "We're going to get more. We work longer, we're going to get more." They got paid what they were promised to be paid, the denarii, their full day's wage. And they got angry. They got mad. And they basically went to the landowner and said, "What are you doing? We work longer than those guys." And the landowner says, "Did I not pay you what I agreed to pay you?" They said, "Well, yes." He said, "Well, then I'm not being unfair. I've given you exactly what I said I would do. If I want to be a hypocite, if I want to be generous, then that's up to me." But what that story tells us, there's these guys that have this sense of entitlement. The oxen were entitled to more because we worked more than those individuals. And so they grumbled and complained. And yet instead of saying, "Well, I probably would have not preferred it that way, but I'm thankful that I had the work. I'm thankful that I got paid what I was said I would be paid." See, sometimes we have that entitlement mindset is we can never be thankful or grateful for what we've received, we'll begin to compare ourselves with what other people have and say, "Well, that's what we should have.”
And the last perspective that I think can hinder our ability to be thankful is that simply it's all about us. It's all about us. Now all of us in this room at some level, I know we're aware of what happened with the hurricane damage in the Southeastern part of the United States with Helena and also Milton. Just devastation. I'm sure you saw the pictures. They're online or on TV or something. Well, my son, Ryan, who I've already mentioned, who was trying to play the saxophone back when he was a kid, he now is a supervisor for farmer's insurance. And when something like that happens, regardless of what part of the country, he lives here in Northern California, regardless of what happens where they live, it's all hands on deck. So they're sending people, obviously, as they can, get them into these hurricane devastated areas to begin to process claims. And he was telling me one morning, he said, "Dad, we processed 10,000 claims in one day." He said, "Let me give you the context for that. The typical adjuster, a home adjuster for claims, will maybe process 300 a year." He said, "So at the time that we're trying to process all these claims of these people who have lost homes or they're flooded in this devastation," he said, "Let me give you an example. Someone here in the Rocklin Roseville area might have a stain on their roof about the size of a paper plate." And so they submit the claim for that. And it's a sunny day. There's no rain coming, the whole thing. They submit a claim for that and we're overwhelmed, so we're not able to process it as quickly as we would prefer to. And they start to complain. He has to sometimes handle some of these complaints when his adjusters are busy. And their thing is, "Why are you not calling me? Why are you not taking care of this?" And he's trying to explain it. Do you not know there's all these people in the Southeastern part of the United States that have no home or their house is underwater? And they said, "Oh yeah, but then I got this stain on my roof." Instead of being grateful that they do have insurance, it will be processed. And that's in human nature. I get it. But sometimes this gets in the way of us being grateful for what we do have in our lives.
So we need to become grateful, thankful people. How might we do this? And this is going to feed right into what Pastor Chris has been sharing with you about that 30 days of gratefulness or thankfulness. And I want to put it this way. There are just three things I want to encourage you to do. In essence, I want you to put pep in your day, P-E-P, pep in your day. Okay? A little pep. All of us can have a little pep in our day. A little energy, a little excitement, a little enthusiasm. And we can do it ourselves. The first one is this. Just simply practice grateful daily, gratefulness daily. Just practice that. Remember Pastor Chris said that gratefulness is a practice? And it is. It's something you practice it doing. Whatever it is, whenever you're learning something new or wanting to gain a certain expertise, what do you do? You practice it. And that's what it's talking about here. I have a, I don't know if I call him a friend. He's an acquaintance. I think I met him. We crossed paths many, many, many years ago. His name is Heath Mulligan. And I noticed on Facebook that regularly he will put out this little thing. Well, actually almost every day. Today I am grateful for, and he'll list a few things. And I, again, I don't know him well. I know him well enough to reach out. He would know who I am, blah, blah, blah. And so I messaged him through Facebook. And I said, "Heath, when did you start doing that?" That fascinates me. "When did you start doing that?" And then I said, "And what motivated you to do that?" He's a younger guy, well, younger than me. Of course, everyone's younger than me. Well, maybe some of you aren't, but most of you are younger than me. And he came back and he said, "Well, I started this practice in 2020, 2021." And he said, "I did it because I was reading some books. And it seemed like the books I were reading, every one of those authors somewhere in that book said it needed to practice being grateful." So he said, "I just thought I would start doing that." And this was just this last week I reached out to him. And just let me give you an example. This is actually from Monday of this week. Heath Mulligan says, "Today, I am grateful for the signs of change, not all of them visible. I'm grateful for back to back to back to back to back meetings. I'm grateful for quad stretches." I don't know why, but there you go. What does he do? He's just practicing gratefulness. And it doesn't have to be something huge or significant, just what was he grateful for that day.
That's the P, Pep, P-E, E, express appreciation to others. Make a habit of openly thanking people. My oldest grandson who lives here in the area, he plays football for Wood Creek High School, and I love football. So he's on the team and I got connected with a guy associated with the Wood Creek football program. And basically he now leverages me onto the sideline, which is great. I love being down there on the sideline. But just again, this was just this last week I'm coming on. There's this young man and he basically, I don't know what they call him now. In our day, we call him the water boy. He's in charge of going out when there's time out or whatever, making sure the players have water. So he has this little satchel on one side, there's their Gatorade field on one side, their water, filled with water. And so I was walking out of the sideline this couple of, actually this last Friday night, I said to him, I just stopped and I said, I introduced myself and I said, "I want to thank you for what you're doing. You really do your job well." And he does. He's very shy. He smiled real big. And, but when there's time, he's right out there and he's giving the players what they need and the whole thing. He always is walking up and down the sidelines in case one of the high school players need to have some water, wherever it might be. He does his job very well. And I just took a moment to say, thank you. That's what we're talking about. Just opportunities to express gratitude or thankfulness or appreciate somebody for what they've done.
And the final P is simply this, pay attention. Practice being fully engaged in moments throughout your day and look for opportunities to be grateful or thankful. Now, I don't know about you, but when I go, I'm in a hurry someplace, which unfortunately is almost all the time. When the light, I'm going down the string of lights and they turn green, I will say in my heart, sometimes outside I'll go, thank you, Lord. Now do I think God changed the light? Absolutely not. But I'm sure grateful that it is changed to green because I had to get someplace. So that's just being aware of what's going on. Being grateful and thankful for friends that you have, for family, thankful for a church community that you have. Hiroko Sanda, I probably butchered that name. The gentleman's not here, so I don't have to worry about it. He is a Japanese actor and producer. And I read a quote that he said, I don't know when he said it, but he read this quote and he talked about certain things. He went on and said, you know, sometimes people want an indoor pool. And when someone has an indoor pool, they never use it. Some people want a new car and some people will have a new car, always looking for the next car they can get. And he went down and used some of those illustrations and he came back around and his final statement was this, the key is to be grateful. Look carefully at what we have and understand that somewhere, someone would give everything for what you already have and don't appreciate it. Just being appreciative of the things that we do have. Nothing wrong with that whatsoever, just to look and see and we go out there today, what can we be grateful and thankful for? So if you practice those three things, that pep, that will help you fill out the card that Pastor Chris has provided for you.
And as I wrap up, I want to invite all of us to stand, if you would. I'm going to read the last final scripture verse. Stand where you are, if you're able. Psalm 150. "Praise the Lord, praise God in his sanctuary, praise him in his mighty heavens, praise him for his acts of power, praise him for his surpassing greatness, praise him with the sounding of the trumpet, praise him with the harp and lyre, praise him with timbrel, timbrel and dancing, praise him with strings and pipe, praise him with the clash of cymbals, praise him with the responding cymbals, let everything that has breath praise the Lord, praise the Lord." Okay, here we go. Ready? We're all going to take just a real deep breath. You ready? Just ready. Okay, there you have it. We all can praise the Lord.