SPIRIT School of Ministry
Thanksgiving | SPIRIT School of Ministry Podcast #121
Welcome to the Spirit School of Ministry podcast, where we discuss discipleship in your everyday life. Hi everybody, welcome to this special solo edition. My gosh, I feel all alone without my friends, Pastor Bob and David with me. But here we are, and today we're gonna talk about thanksgiving, because why? It's thanksgiving. We wanna give thanks to the Lord and express to him our heart attitude, our heart gratitude, and really, as we talk about thanksgiving today, I want to bring your attention to the expression of your heart. It's gonna be really cool. So I was praying about this this morning in the Lord gave me three things, and so I wanna just share these with you today as we talk about thanksgiving. First, it is better to give than to receive. Now we've heard this a lot, and while we might think like, "Oh, that should be for a Christmas podcast." This actually is more appropriate for thanksgiving than it is for Christmas because of the nature of what giving does. So in Acts 20, verse 35, it says, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." Paul is expanding on a few things with the disciples, but as he's teaching, he's saying, "It is more blessed to give than receive." Now, yes, of course, it is a blessing to receive things from people, right? We receive things from God, we receive things from brothers and sisters in Christ, and that is a blessing. It's wonderful to receive, but it's better. It's of a greater blessing, a greater benefit to us to give. So I want you to keep that in mind as we talk about thanksgiving because it's the act of giving your thanks. Psalm 107, one through two says, "Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his loving kindness is everlasting. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom he has redeemed from the hand of the adversary." Right, so in Psalm 107, it says it so clearly to give thanks to the Lord for he is good. That is why we give him thanks. It's because he's good. But why do we call him good? Well, we call him good because his loving kindness is everlasting. Right, we can't talk about thanksgiving really without talking about God. Without talking about, you know, for the believer, it's the genesis for thanksgiving. It's the whole reason why we are thankful. First of all, our God, our Father in heaven, he models giving to us. He gave us the most precious, his only begotten son, right? The Father gave us his son. And in like fashion, Jesus, then he gave us his life, which is incredible. And then from there, the Father also gave us the Holy Spirit. All right, we learn about this in Acts. And then also, once we've received the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit gives us spiritual gifts. He gives us guidance. He gives us power. He gives us all that we need to walk in all that God has called us to. So the Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are constantly giving. Like they are giving to us every single day. And they have given us great and precious promises. They have given us eternal gifts, right? The eternal sacrifice of Jesus Christ. That is the loving kindness that is everlasting. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. That is the heart and the beginning. And I would say the daily remembrance of thanksgiving. I know there's a lot going on in the world. I know there's a lot going on in my life. There's probably a lot going on in your life. And even though there's a lot of things going on, both good and bad, the place that we always have to go and start in our thanksgiving is with that perfect sacrifice. The willingness of the Father to give His Son. The willingness of the Son to lay His life down for each and every one of us to pay that penalty for us that we were supposed to pay our lives. He ransomed us and He atoned for us. He gave Himself in our place. And now since He's done that and through the empowering of the Holy Spirit, we can walk as Christ walked here on the earth in not just an attitude of gratitude, in a lifestyle of thanksgiving that every part of our being, both body, soul and spirit is all filled with thanksgiving. Now, thanksgiving, second thing that the Lord wanted me to share is thanksgiving is the door to entering God's presence. If you want more of the presence of God, you have to enter through a door of thanksgiving. Psalm 100, four through five says, enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courtyards with praise. Give thanks to Him, bless His name for the Lord is good. There it is again, this goodness. His mercy is everlasting. Not only is His love everlasting, but this scripture says His mercy is everlasting and His faithfulness is to all generations. So He's merciful, loving, and faithful. Three things right there, once again, to be thankful to the Lord for every single day, despite what's going on, despite what's working, despite what's going off the rails, thankful to you, Lord, for your mercy, that's everlasting for your love, that's everlasting for your faithfulness, that's everlasting. Boy, I just want to submit this to you. Your day is going to start a little different or a lot different when you bring that before the Lord and you bring that praise, you worship Him, you lift up your heart with your hands in thanksgiving to Him and you start out, even just reading Psalm 100 and read it unto Him as if you're reciting His word back to Himself. He loves that. Now, what I want to highlight here is that thanksgiving is the door to entering God's presence. It's the way in through a thankful heart, right? Now, what's interesting is in the Old Testament time, as part of the Mosaic Covenant, when the children of Isrobi were being instructed on how to bring themselves before the Lord, essentially to prepare for their encounter with the Lord. See, we just come into church in our modern day, they would come near the temple and they would have to bring something. Like they were not to come empty-handed. They were required to always bring something. And well, I'm not gonna get into all the details of that. The essence of it is we can't come to God empty-handed. All right, now in the new covenant, the Lord is more concerned about what's in our heart. So let me say it to you this way today. We cannot come to the Lord empty-hearted, right? Old covenant was empty-handed. New covenant is the fruit of our heart, right? What is in our heart? And that's where thanksgiving is so key because thanksgiving, again, it's not just an attitude. It's an overall, it's a posture, it's a lifestyle. It's a way of being that thanksgiving is so, it's attractive to God. Like it brings us into Him. It's the thing that opens the gate into His courtyard, right? And then we can go deeper with Him into the holy place. But thanksgiving is essential. It's the door that, or excuse me, opens a gate to praise. And then when we praise the Lord, that opens us up to His presence, right? So thanksgiving is so essential and so critical. So we have to remember that when we worship or pray, or as we're navigating our day, that we always are coming to the Lord with a full heart, with the heart that is thankful, with the heart that is grateful, and I get it. I wish I had the picture for you today, but I wanna give you the idea of a picture and being filled by water. And when you fill that picture with nice crystal clear, clean water, and it starts to run over the outside of the picture, that's the picture of thanksgiving, is this purity that fills your heart because you're just thankful to the Lord. And again, it starts with who He is, His goodness, His love, His mercy, His faithfulness. That's where it always starts. I know it's hard. We just lost our newborn baby boy. We got to spend 27 hours with Him, my wife and I. And it was the most precious time, most miraculous, incredible time. And it was very challenging leading up to His birth to be thankful because there's so much to, like, what about this and what about that? And is God gonna perform a miracle? Or is He, what's, you know, there's so much uncertainty. There's so much opportunity to become anxious and worried and overburdened and overloaded and overwhelmed. And what we had to continually steer into is God's goodness. We had to continually go, okay, all this is going on. Our son is not with us. You know, whatever the circumstance may be for you. But Lord, you are faithful. Lord, you are good. Lord, you are merciful. Lord, you're loving and your loving kindness lasts forever. Thank you for your son. Thank you for the gift of eternal life. Thank you for the Holy Spirit who lives within me and empowers me. Gives me, he gives me power and love and the ability to be disciplined and actually perform what God has called you and I to do. Like, that's what He's given us. So it's so, so critical that Thanksgiving isn't just one day with a lot of great food and a lot of great fellowship. We should have that great food spiritually speaking and great fellowship spiritually speaking every day. That's our daily opportunity to be thankful and to share that gratitude with the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And I want to say one last thing here, something the Lord highlighted to me. Part of our bringing of Thanksgiving is bringing the Lord in offering. We have to do this. But I want to challenge you today and something the Lord challenged me with is that when we come to Him, God says, if you have anything against a brother, if you have anything against a sister, if you have any ought or offense or unforgiveness, He says, set your offering to the side and go and reconcile with your brother. Now, while God is accepting and can't wait to receive and commune with us and welcome us into His presence through that gate of Thanksgiving, it is essential that we also operate in forgiveness because if we don't forgive, then we actually quench the work of the spirit in us and we actually close the gate to entering before the Lord because He will not forgive us if we don't forgive. So we have to release, we have to, and it's a sacrifice, but we have to release those who have heard us. Some of that is the closest. I know what Thanksgiving and the holidays, it's all family members and we're very close to one another and we've got people on different sides of the aisle and different lifestyles and different opinions and all kinds of differences, right? And they all come together, we're supposed to have a wonderful, joyful jolly meal, but instead what happens is the clashing of opinions and ideas and so it's hard at times, it's a challenge to navigate with Thanksgiving, you're like, man, I was so thankful today until that person showed up, right? Like, I get it, we understand the reality of this. However, it is more critical, hear this from the Lord today. It's more critical to the Lord that we remain in a place of Thanksgiving by operating in a place of forgiveness. So I want to leave that with you, that little challenge, I have one more point for you, but the challenge is think good and hard and be open to the Lord leading you into a place of forgiving. Could be a spouse, could be a child, could be a parent, could be a friend, could be circumstances, could be the Lord that we need to forgive, we need to repent and then step into Thanksgiving, right? It's the act of humbling ourselves and letting go and then reattaching ourselves to the Lord through the gate of Thanksgiving and praise and then we go in to be with him in his presence, all right? So challenge relayed, hopefully challenge accepted. And now for our third point, thankfulness is the expression of the peace of God ruling in our hearts, wow. So when you are thankful, you're actually, and thankfulness really comes, it comes in our attitude, but it mostly comes out through what we say. It's pretty obvious if somebody has a thankful heart or they're operating in an attitude of gratitude or if they're not, right? Unthankfulness shows up in bitterness, it shows up in criticalness, it shows up in complaining, it shows up in why this, why that. So it's very easy to go in that direction and I would say 'cause that's the current, right? That's the current way the world works. The world has a current in which it operates and so it's easy to get swept up into it. Thanksgiving is going against the grain, it's going against the current of the world that we live in, right? We're in this world, but we're not of it. We are of a divine nature given to us by God, born of incorruptible seed, and so we have to operate from that nature. And that nature says, I forgive and thankful, and I'm thankful in every situation regardless of what's going on. We see this in 1 Thessalonians, chapter 5, 16 through 18, says rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks, for this is the will of God, for you in Christ Jesus. Okay, this scripture is incredibly powerful 'cause a lot of people wanna know what is the will of God for me? What's God's will for me? What is my calling? And it says it so plainly right here. And so this should be like, okay, thank you Lord. Now I know what I need to work on, right? Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks, that is God's will, right? And I know there's a little more to that what God's will is for you. There's the common things that he wants all his believers to do. And then there's the peculiar things, the specific things that he wants his individual believers to do or disciples to do. But for all of us in everything giving thanks is, is the will of God. So we must steer our life into the will of God regardless of circumstances, regardless of what's going on. We need to rejoice, we need to pray without stopping, and in everything give thanks. Lastly, Colossians 3 15 says, let the peace of God rule in your hearts in which indeed you were called in one body and be thankful. Once again, we are called to be people of peace, to allow the peace of God to rule in our hearts. Now that's peace is in the hearts, but the way that heart peace is expressed is through the mouth of thanksgiving. Peace in the heart is expressed through thanksgiving, right? If I'm discontent in my heart and my soul is all over the place, I'm worried, I'm anxious, I'm overwhelmed, what comes out of my mouth usually is an alignment with the heart, right? Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. So if our speech is not in a line with thanksgiving, our heart probably needs to get cleansed and refilled with the goodness of God, the peace of God, the mercy of God, the thankfulness of God, and you have to focus and receive his peace. He is Jesus Christ, our King, the prince of peace. And so he has peace for you in this season. I just wanted to declare the peace of God over you today because as his peace rules in your hearts, according to Colossians 3, as his peace rules, you will be able to express thanksgiving. You will be able to express your gratitude for all that he's done, all that he is, and everything else he's given us, right? He's given us all things that pertain to life and godliness. He's given us himself, he's given us Jesus Christ, he's given us the Holy Spirit, he's given us a family, whether that's blood family or the family of God, he's given us a place to live, to abide, to grow, to thrive, to grow up into all things the Bible would say. So he's given us everything we need, despite what we may not have materially, despite what our bank account might look like, despite what our health might look like, despite what relational things we might have. God has given us all things, and so today, as we wrap up and talking about thanksgiving, I just wanna encourage you and exhort you. Focus on the Lord, focus on what is good, what is right, what is his mercy, what is his loving kindness that lasts forever, and thank him, thank him every morning, thank him every night, thank him all day long, give to him what is actually do his name for all that he has done, never withhold your thanksgiving from him, always come to him with a heart full, a heart full of thanksgiving, thank you for everything. So on behalf of Spirit School of Ministry, we thank you for being part of our podcast, for those of you students, we're so thankful that you're part of our courses this year, our cohort training, we are just so blessed to be able to really just deliver our hearts and the Lord's heart to you on an ongoing basis. We thank you, we love you, and we bless you in the name of Jesus. We'll see you next time. Thank you for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to get the latest episode, and for more information, visit spiritschoolofministry.com. (upbeat music)