So what did you fill yourself up with this week? Too much. What was your favorite thing? You guys should talk back to me now.
What was your favorite thing this week? Turkey? Family? Family?
You know, being full of family works two ways. I remember my uncle Charlie when I was a kid. I might not come because I might not want to see him to be all this year. I don't eat turkey.
I don't eat turkey. I don't eat turkey. I want to eat turkeys. What else do I fill up with?
Is there a favorite family thing that's just yours that nobody else does? Dressing? My great grandmother would actually make squirrel gumbo on Thanksgiving at night. You have to go kill all the squirrels a couple days beforehand.
There's a story about a bag of Target, popcorn and plugs being out of a gun. I'm not going to tell you. It has to do with my grandmother's squirrel dressing. Meredith makes these cookies that are shortbread and she puts Reese's pieces in them.
They were right outside the door. I had a turkey, I was smoking, I had a brisket, I was doing. Every time I walked out the door, I grabbed two cookies and I put one on my mouse. I had three.
I'm pretty sure I made the biggest dent in that cookie tray. That's what I got in my fill up with those cookies. We get our fill of things during the holidays. We look forward to Thanksgiving.
It's like the big joke. I love the stretchy pants memes you see around the holidays. What does it mean to be full? What does it mean to be full?
We might define that as bursting at the seams or I can't have any more. Something like that. The description is to be full means that we're living into something and there are no spaces left hidden. I know some of you might have ate enough dressing or no spaces left hidden in your stomach this week.
We're talking about having a thankful heart and the language of Paul today in just a few verses. For many of us, we come together at Thanksgiving and we ask ourselves the Thanksgiving question. We all go around the table and say, what are we thankful for this year? We share those, we celebrate those.
What would happen if we ask ourselves that question every day? What would happen if we really put Thanksgiving that much on our mind? To where we're willing to live into what thankfulness really looks like. We're talking about thankfulness today.
We're talking about what thankfulness is in Scripture. We're talking about how thankfulness expands out a little bit more. We might first think it is. We're having this conversation day just from three verses in Colossians.
It's a letter Paul wrote to a church that he helped start. This is what it says. Colossians 3, 15 through 17. The scripture will be behind me.
Or you can use your phone. Just make sure you check in on Facebook if you're going to use your phone to read your Bible first. So. Let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts.
For his members of one body, you were called to live in peace. Always be thankful. With the message about Christ and all his richness fill your lives. Teach and counsel each other with all the wisdom he gives.
Sing Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to God with thankful hearts. And whatever you do or say, do as a representative of the Lord Jesus. Giving thanks to him through God the Father. So three things about being thankful and about being thankful all your long.
And how that has to be able to change things. And the first is this that we cannot be thankful for an old life. We can't be thankful for an old life. The very beginning of this chapter of Paul tells us this.
He says, since you've been raised a new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven where Christ sits the place of honor and God's right hand. And think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. We can't be thankful for an old life. To have a new life.
What Paul is talking about here, but also the way that we talk about when we become Christians. When we offer ourselves up for his salvation and for him to be the Lord over our lives. To truly Lord over our lives. This new life happens and this new life has to idea of like emerging from an inactive state.
You know, many of us emerged from an inactive state on Thursday night after a football nap. But to be revived completely carries in the connotations of literally raising someone from the dead. So much what baptism represents is the old life to a new life transition. That's the water where we're symbolically dying to our old life and being raised to our new life.
We can't be thankful for the old life because the new life that Jesus offers us is what matters. Another thing is we can't talk about thankfulness or thanksgiving or thanks or any of those things. We can't talk about those without talking about grace because literally the word thankful comes from the word grace. It is embedded into the word.
The same thing in many places going back and forth and back and forth and grace and thanks and grace and thanks. And their cousin is the idea of generosity. It's this whole sense of the new life of being a person who is full of grace, a person who is full of thanks and being a person who is generous. And all these ideas that show us we can't do this by ourselves.
We can't be thankful if we choose to live in isolation. We can't be gracious if we choose to live in isolation. We can't be generous if we choose to live in isolation. This concept does not work without us willingly being part of a community.
Being part of a family being part of a community. We cannot do this on our own. We're incapable of that. It's so weird.
It's funny because it's not really a noun. It's not really a verb. It can't just be something. It has to also be doing something in order to be something.
This concept in scripture is huge. It's overarching. I kind of got nervous and thought we bit off of it more than we could chew this morning. We cannot do this by ourselves.
And we cannot do it passively. There's just no way it works. We cannot be thankful for the old life. We're thankful for our new life that Jesus offers us.
The second thing is this. It's not just a mind concept. It's not just something that dwells in our heads. Verse 16 it says, to sing songs to God with thankful hearts to the Jewish people of the time.
The Greek people of the time as well. The heart was the center of the entire body. The center of the entire soul. The heart was seen as the great revealer.
If you wanted to see the character of someone's hearts, you looked at the way they directed themselves outwards towards people. So we cannot just let thankfulness or graciousness exist as a concept inside of our mind. It has to outflow. It has to affect us enough to affect other people.
It says this, whatever you do or whatever you say, do as a representative of the Lord Jesus giving thanks to him through God the Father. This isn't just a Sunday thing. Many to people that have issues with church, have issues with Christians. A lot of it can be summed up to they just see people who do this on Sunday morning.
They're willing for this to just live in their head. And what Jesus needs us to do is to be willing to be thankful people and to be gracious people and to be generous people on a random Wednesday afternoon. Because that's when real life happens. That's when real life is honored.
That's when real life needs responses. This sounds like an oxymoron, but the grace of Jesus Christ has to pervade our ordinary and our normal. Because that's when it has the most power. It's just not a mind concept.
We are allowing the message of Jesus to penetrate us to an absolute normal level. We have questions that we can ask ourselves. The third thing about thanksgiving is this. That's not a question for us to ask ourselves.
What are we filling ourselves up with? What are we filling ourselves up with? Now I fill myself up with peanut butter shortbread cookies this week. We all filled ourselves up with things.
But what are we truly letting? Our entire life is guided by what takes place inside of our heart. That's going to show everything to us. And somehow and sometimes we need to ask for tough truths that we deal with in our hearts so we can conquer those things and learn more of our own graciousness.
We think about the times where we might turn to grumps. Or we might turn to mean people. We might turn to folks that other people don't want to be around. Sometimes we don't want to be around anybody else because we know we're capable of.
Does anybody else like themselves in a small room at the Thanksgiving? Our own graciousness tells a story about our heart. And if we're never conflicted with the fact that we know we're not being gracious, we need to ask God for situations. We need to ask God for the realizations of what we need to do to be more gracious.
Because we can only thank God and thank others at the level to which we are thankful. We only have the ability to export thankfulness at the level we have imported thankfulness. That if we are not thankful for other people, if we are not thankful for other situations, if we're not thankful for Jesus, we're going to have a hard time being more thankful than that is the way that we direct ourselves towards others. We will thank at the level that we have in our hearts, that we have in our experience.
So our process and our thanksgiving and what are we filling up our hearts with? We can only respond and be thankful for what we truly realize has been gracious and thankful and understanding to us. There's a line that we cannot cross until we have processed what others have done for us. Colossians 3, 12 through 15, it tells us what thankful people actually look like.
It says this, since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tender hearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Make allowance for each other's faults and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember the Lord forgave you so you must forgive others. Does that freak anybody else out?
What a forgiveness work like that. What if we are only able to be forgiven at the level we forgive others? Above all, clothe yourselves with love which binds us together in perfect harmony. This is a picture of what thankful people look like.
Paul is imploring this church and colossa to do. The three things about being thankful that we can't be thankful for an old life. The thankfulness is not just a mind concept. We have to ask ourselves that question.
What are we filling ourselves up with? A couple of questions to think about and to reflect on as we finish up this season of Thanksgiving. As we go home, as we start smelling the Tupperware tubs and figuring out is it still good or not? Do we start freezing away?
Anybody else freeze a turkey neck? Okay, I really am that weird. A couple of questions. What are we giving space to in our life that makes us a thankful, integracious person?
What are the positive things that we put in our life to do that? Then also, what are the negative things that we realize make us a not thankful and a not generous person? I will tell you right now what I realized a couple of days ago. I have taken this out of my life at times and I have put it back into my life a little bit more than I am comfortable with right now.
It is best to be taken out of my life a lot more. We realize this week it makes me a non-gracious person and that is Facebook. And not in big ways, in little ways. Just in tiny little ways and our own insecurities are like, well, at least I am better than that person.
I have taken that out for the next month or so. That is making me a non-gracious person right now and I don't need that right now. Also, what makes us a thankful person? What makes us a gracious person?
What makes us a generous person? And you have those things in your life that you know. My prayer is for you to know that. I say one of the things in my life that makes me a lot more gracious is simply just being around people.
Because you realize everybody is in a different place. And everybody has a different story. And everybody's place and everybody's story matters equally. That is one of the things I have about this Christmas season where it is very, very tempting to just kind of get it done.
I know I am a much more gracious person when I am around other people. I am around them a lot. And so two things I realize this week if I ask myself that question. What makes me a more thankful person?
What makes me a more generous person? And I ask just for you to think about that. The second thing is this. To what level am I mirroring the grace that Jesus has offered me?
If we can't talk about thankfulness without talking about grace, we realize that those two are so related. So in what way am I mirroring the grace that Jesus has offered to me? Am I willing to forgive at an extra level? Are you willing to forgive more than you might naturally forgive?
That mirrors the grace of Jesus. Am I letting the gospel, that message, that good news and to Paul, the idea of graciousness and thankfulness just equal to the story of the gospel? You could not have the two without the other. You could not have the gospel without thankfulness.
You could not have the gospel without graciousness. Am I willing to let the gospel permeate my interactions with other people? Remember we can't be thankful or gracious on our own. It has to be done in relationships with others.
So two questions to reflect on is we finish out thankfulness, but hopefully is we instead just make the decision to continue with thankfulness. And ask ourselves that question not just one or two days a year, but 365 days a year. What are we giving space to in our life that makes us a more thankful and gracious person? And then to what level are we mirroring the gospel?
Mirroring the grace that Jesus has offered us. Let's pray together today, Lord. We thank you for coming to us honestly, for you coming to us as a real person. God, how you came to us with our faults.
Lord, how you still come to us with our faults. God, how you offer yourself to us fully and completely. Jesus, you don't hide any of yourself away. Lord, when you died the curtain that concealed that most holy place in the temple was split into two in the book of Hebrews.
It tells us that we now have a great high priest who has brought us into that most holy place. God, you're not hiding yourself from us. You've offered yourself up to us at the level which we are willing to go after. God, we can't be any more thankful on our own.
We can't be any more gracious on our own. Jesus, thank you for providing us a way to do things that we cannot do ourselves. So come in our arms and show us what that next thing is you're asking us to do. This is for me, pray.
Amen. Let's stand together.