Healthy Body 4

Imagine if our favorite things started disappearing if we took them for granted. If we were only allowed to keep the things we’re thankful for. Or if not being properly grateful slowly ruined everything God gives to us. That’s pretty much how it works.

Comparing what we have to what other people have.

Not being satisfied with what we’ve got, who we are, what we have to do.

Someone else always has more. Someone else is always more successful. We’d be happy if we had what they’ve got. If we were as tall as they are, or as pretty. Wouldn’t it be nice to have that kind of money, live in that nice of a house, drive that car. There’s always someone stronger, faster, richer, thinner waist, thicker hair, more popular—life just seems easier for them. Other people seem to have it all.

And then our joy burns up in the heat of our discontentment.

Like, I was perfectly happy with my iPhone until I saw the ad for the new one—with its three cameras and the ability to use the Apple Pencil as a stylus. Now mine might as well be a flip phone, or an Android. Practically a useless brick. 

It’s so dumb but most of the time I don’t even notice that I’m doing it. I spend my life walking around like Veruca Salt from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory—remember her? “Daddy, I want an Oompa Loompa. I want you to get me an Oompa Loompa right away!” “I want it all and I want it now.” That’s probably what my prayers sound like half the time.

Perpetual discontentment. It leads nowhere good. It ruins everything. It robs us of joy. It rots our relationships. Always looking for something better. It’s selfish and it’s the opposite of love. There’s only one solution, and this solution is the key to a happy and meaningful life. It’s the key to worshiping God and loving people. It’s the key to being able to praise God from whom all blessings flow.

It’s thankfulness. Being thankful. Everything good in life flows from being thankful.

“...be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ…”

Ephesians 5:18–20 This is the Word of the Lord—Thanks be to God.

Prayer: Father in heaven, soften our hearts. Help us to be truly thankful—always and for everything. AMEN

It’s great to be back with you all this morning. I spent the last week in Finland with Pastor Matt, helping him with the Finnish equivalent of the National Youth Gathering. Sometimes the perfect alignment of something you’d like to do and someone asking you to do it lines up and how can you say “no?” Go to Europe, help a friend with ministry—eat some of the best chocolate on the planet. I have a new favorite food, too. Finnish Salmon soup is magic. We also had time to tour a medieval castle and some really old churches.

Traveling in another country, even one as friendly as Finland, makes you realize how much we take for granted. Like, we went into a Starbucks to get some coffee and I ordered the same thing I always get—a double tall latte at 120 degrees. I’m used to being teased for ordering it at such a specific temperature but I don’t like it too hot and Starbucks serves their coffee at 200 degrees by default. The girl who took my order didn’t make fun of me, and I was standing there waiting for my drink. You know how it works, you just hang out at the counter watching them operate the espresso machine. The girl making the drinks seemed to be getting frustrated but I couldn’t understand what she was saying because she was speaking in Finnish. Then she looks at me and says, “Are you Frank? I can’t get the machine to do 120 degrees.” I said, “Oh, that’s okay. How low can you get it to go?” She kinda frowned in confusion and said, “low?” I realized what the problem was. “I’m sorry, I meant 120 degrees Fahrenheit, not Celsius. I said, “Hey Siri, what is 120 degrees Fahrenheit in Celsius?” The answer was 48. She was trying to get my poor little drink to be 250 degrees—you know, 30 degrees above boiling. She laughed and said, “I’m glad I said something, you were about to get something very different—you wanted kid’s temperate. Here’s your baby latte.” There it was, there’s the mocking I usually get for my order. Made me feel right at home.

So Celsius is smaller numbers than Fahrenheit, dollars are smaller than Euros too, that Starbucks usually costs me $3 but in Helsinki it was over five bucks.

It’s also eight hours ahead, so if I wanted to talk to Kim and the kids before they went to bed, I had to get up at 5:30am. Which was confusing because for me it was like Monday morning but for them it was Sunday night. I was calling from the future.

So, now I’m back from the future. No Delorian required. But I did see some things that were disturbing.

I’m very thankful for the opportunity to go and do what I could to be an encouragement to the leaders in the Lutheran church of Finland who are sharing the Gospel with the next generation of youth. I had a lot of great conversations with brothers and sisters who are fighting the kind of cultural battles in Northern Europe that we’re just starting to see in our country—attacks on Christianity and the church. We need to pray for them to be strong in their faith and that we’ll be able to stand up to all the demonic secular nonsense when it arrives here in full force.

Almost everyone we talked to brought up something that had just happened to one of their political leaders. Just like over here, there’s a lot of pressure to say what the politically correct police want them to say—stray from it and you’ll get accused of hate speech. Well, one of their politicians is an outspoken Christian lady and she posted a Bible verse on Twitter—just a direct quote of the Scriptures with nothing added—but it had the word “homosexual” in a list of other sins. She was arrested for hate speech and will probably see jail time. This is the equivalent of a senator.

Like I said, I just got back from the future. Going to jail for quoting the Bible. How long do you think it’s gonna be before something like that could happen here?

Do not take our freedom of speech for granted. If we do, it will disappear.

Whatever we’re not thankful for, we’re at risk of losing. And when we’re not properly thankful for the things God gives us, we’re gonna grow discontent, and it’ll ruin what we have. Everything good in life flows from being thankful.

The main sin throughout the whole Bible is unthankfulness. We all know what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah and we think we know why but the Bible says that the sin of Sodom wasn’t sodomy. In Ezekiel 16:49 it says “Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.” In other words, they had too much, they weren’t thankful and they didn’t share.

Over and over, God says if His people are going to worship Him, the only thing He really requires is that they start with a thankful heart. Psalm 100, the most basic instruction in the whole Bible about what it means to worship God says, “Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name!” Psalm 95, “Let us come before Him with thanksgiving and music and song.” Psalm 107 “Let them give thanks to the Lord.” Psalm 9, “I will give thanks to you, Lord with all my heart.” Psalm 7, “I will give thanks to the Lord because of His righteousness.” Thankfulness is all over the Psalms. New Testament: In Philippians 4:6 it says “Don’t be anxious about anything but in every situation, by prayer, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” Colossians 3:17 says “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.” 1 Thessalonians 5:18 says “give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” And of course our Ephesians text for today, “singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, and making music to the Lord in your hearts. And give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Clearly, God wants us to be thankful. It’s a big deal.

Because whatever we’re not thankful for, we’re at risk of losing. And when we’re not properly thankful for the things God gives us, we’re gonna grow discontent, and it’ll ruin what we have. Everything good flows from being thankful.

The opening chapter of Ephesians is all about being thankful. St Paul sets the tone for the whole letter by going on and on about what he’s thankful for. He says that never ceases to give thanks for the people in the church at Ephesus—a church he planted and stayed and helped grow for over three years—the longest time he spent at any of the churches he started. Just before that, though, is the longest run-on sentence in the whole Bible. In your English translation, verses 3 through 14 are probably broken up into a bunch of short sentences but in the original Greek it’s one long over-excited statement. 

“All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ. Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son. He is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his Son and forgave our sins. He has showered his kindness on us, along with all wisdom and understanding. God has now revealed to us his mysterious will regarding Christ—which is to fulfill his own good plan. And this is the plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ—everything in heaven and on earth. Furthermore, because we are united with Christ, we have received an inheritance from God, for he chose us in advance, and he makes everything work out according to his plan. God’s purpose was that we Jews who were the first to trust in Christ would bring praise and glory to God. And now you Gentiles have also heard the truth, the Good News that God saves you. And when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long ago. The Spirit is God’s guarantee that he will give us the inheritance he promised and that he has purchased us to be his own people. He did this so we would praise and glorify him.” Ephesians 1:3-14

This is based on a liturgical prayer called a Berakah. A prayer of thanksgiving that speaks about God in the third person, giving thanks for His mighty, saving deeds, without asking for anything. There are a lot of them in the Bible, they’re the foundation for all praise and worship. Giving thanks. It’s always a good idea to start our prayers with thanksgiving—remembering what we’re thankful for before we start asking for Oompa Loompas and iPhones.

So what does Paul give thanks for in this prayer? He thanks God for every spiritual blessing—he says you have every spiritual blessing because you have been united with Christ. He thanks God for loving us and choosing us before He even made the world—a trippy concept. You were chosen by God before He said “let there be light.” Before He said “In the beginning.” He decided to love you and save you before He created you. And it was all His idea—you aren’t tricking Him into loving you and saving you. St Paul says he’s thankful for God’s glorious grace, His rich kindness—that He purchased your freedom with the blood of His Son and forgives all your sins. He’s thankful for God’s wisdom and understanding, for revealing the mystery of Christ. He goes on and on, without taking a breath, thanking God for all the promises He made to us—all these things that are the foundation for why we praise and glorify Him. 

That’s where it all has to start. We have to be thankful for everything always, but we can only do that when we get these things right. If we don’t start by being thankful for what God has done for us in Christ, we can’t be thankful for anything. But if we start there—then everything else can just click into place.

Because whatever we’re not thankful for, we’re at risk of losing. That includes our salvation. Everything good flows from being thankful. That’s why we have to show up here every week and give thanks. That’s why the Bible is full of commands for thanksgiving. If we’re not properly thankful for the things God gives us, and everything He’s done for us, we’re gonna grow discontent, and it’ll ruin everything.

Once upon a time there was a child who wouldn’t eat anything green. Every mealtime was the same struggle. A plate of food was put on the table and the kid would start negotiating their way out of eating any vegetables. One day they went to visit grandma and she asked the child to help her in the garden. Together they picked some fresh broccoli and spinach, washed it, cut it, and cooked it as part of dinner. When the family sat down to eat, the child asked if she could say the prayer. They bowed their heads and folded their hands and the kid said, “Dear God, thank You for my grandma and for her teaching me how to make food out of vegetables.” Mom and dad watched in amazement as their little one cleaned her plate.

Sometimes the secret ingredient is a thankful heart.

I’d like to see the mealtime prayer make a big comeback. You know, that little nap some Christians take just before they eat. Saying grace. Bless this mess. Sometimes people will say something like, “Lord, please bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies.” Which is hilarious to me when Twinkies and a bag of Doritos are involved—”Lord, we know You still work miracles, turn these trans-fats and empty calories into something healthy and nutritious.” I like how Jesus did it better, “He took the bread, and when He had given thanks…” Give thanks. Acknowledge where all good things come from—give thanks to God for the miracle of food.

I wrote a little prayer and printed it out, I would love if the head of the household would read this prayer on Thursday at the Thanksgiving meal. The secret ingredient is a thankful heart—for green bean casserole and everything else in life. The turkey is gonna taste better if we’re thankful first. The company at the table and the conversation is going to be more sweet if we appreciate the people we’re sitting with first. And life in general is going to go better for all of us if we first learn to thank God with grateful hearts for all that He’s done for us.

Let me end this message series by reading this blessing from St Paul, it’s from chapter three. As I read it, remember what we’re doing here. We’re trying to be a healthy body, a healthy church. We’re the presence of Jesus in the world. He wants to love the people in your life through you. We want to be a place where God’s love and mercy and kindness and forgiveness are shown to as many people as He’ll bring to us. We’re only gonna be able to do what God has for us to do if we’re thankful for what He’s given us.

Thankful to live in a country that gives us the freedom to pray and gather around God’s Word. Thankful for a church where we can worship freely with our friends. Thankful for the people who are here, instead of being depressed about the people who are missing. Thankful for the resources we have instead of comparing our church to other churches and coveting what they have. Thankful for the ministry He’s trusted us to do and the mercy He has shown us. Listen to this and let it fill your heart with thankful praise, everything good in life flows from being thankful: 

“When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. Glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever! Amen.” Ephesians 3:14-21