Take your Bibles if you would. Let's open the Word of God to Psalm 100. Psalm 100. The book of Psalms is about in the middle of your Bible. And if you would find Psalm 100, very short chapter, just five verses, we're gonna read that this morning. Take our thought from there. Psalm 100. All right, and if you've found your place, you can stand with us for the reading of God's word. All right, I wanna pray. Actually, you know, I wanna, I would like to interject just another short Thanksgiving prayer right here. And so we'll do that. Just thanking the Lord once again for his goodness. I don't really think we could thank him enough, do you? I would think probably most of the time we don't thank Him enough. So maybe we can catch up a little bit today. All right, so let's have a short Thanksgiving prayer. I'll ask Brother Richard if you would lead us in that, and then we'll read our scripture. Amen. Psalm 100. Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lambs. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before His presence with singing. Know ye that the Lord, He is God, it is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves. We are His people, and the sheep of His pasture. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise. Be thankful unto Him, and bless His name. For the Lord is good, His mercy is everlasting, and His truth endureth to all generations. Look with me at verse four again, if you would. And the Bible says there, enter into his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise. Be thankful unto him and bless his name. I want you to think about that phrase in verse four, be thankful. And I want to preach on that thought this morning, the thought of be thankful. Thank you so much. You may be seated. The Bible has a lot to say about thanksgiving and praise. And as I looked up that topic in preparation for the message today, I couldn't help but think about the ways in which that idea was expressed. in Scripture. It kind of goes a little bit against the grain of the way we think about being thankful. For most of us, I think gratitude and thanksgiving is more really of a feeling than a purpose. And when we feel gratitude, then we express it. But that is opposite of what the Bible teaches about the way we are to praise the Lord. For example, if you would look in verse four, the Bible says that when we come into the presence of our God, the Bible says, enter into his gates with what? Thanksgiving. Hey, for us, that's a once in a year thing. We have Thanksgiving. We got a day set aside for that, Lord. But no, God says, come with thanksgiving every time we come. How often do you enter your time with God with thanksgiving. As I thought about this, I have to be honest and say I was rather convicted. And I said this morning, and I'll put it again here, I realize as I look at these scriptures today that we fall so short and we fail, we fail to thank God enough for who He is and what He does for us. What a thought. So the Bible says, enter into his court or to his gates with thanksgiving. And into his courts with what? Praise. The expression of that worthiness of God and the gratitude we have for what he's done. And then it says, be thankful. I think if we would have written it, we would have started with be thankful. Because why else would you enter into his courts with thanksgiving? Why else would you enter into his gates with praise without being first thankful? So isn't it a little curious that it's reversed in this passage? enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise. Be thankful unto Him, and bless His name." Wow. To close that verse, the very thought that we could bless God's name? How is that even possible? Well, God said we can. We can bless Him. Do we? We bless Him when we come with our praise and our thanksgiving. When we come to Him with gratitude, we bless Him. Oh, what a thought this morning. This should make our thanksgiving celebration exponentially good. That we can bless our God with our gratitude. What a thought this morning. How often has God blessed us? And don't we appreciate that? I think our testimonies this morning say we do. I think our Thanksgiving prayers this morning say that we do appreciate it when God blesses us. Hey, I want you to know that the same is true when we turn that around. God enjoys it when we bless Him. So then the reality of that Awareness is that we need to do it more. We need to bless our God by having the attitude of gratitude and bringing it to Him when we come. Bless His name. You know, it's a wonderful thought today that we can bless our God. That we can be a blessing to our Lord, the One who's done so much for us. You know, we can return a little bit of that by coming to Him. with thankfulness, with thanksgiving and gratitude. Romans 1.21, I found this very interesting. That while the Bible's talking about the perverse, the scoffers, those that have turned away from God, notice what the Bible says about them in Romans 1.21. If you know Romans 1, it's talking about the downward progression of those that turn away from God. There's a downward spiral there. And the Bible kind of describes how they get there. If you wonder how somebody could ever end up so destitute away from God, Romans chapter one describes that. Now that's another sermon, but I want you to catch this thought from verse 21. The Bible says, because that when they knew God, they glorified him not as God. Neither were thankful. but became vain in their imaginations and their foolish heart was what? Darkened. While Romans chapter 1 describes for us and explains how someone could get to such a dark place away from God, included in that description is their lack of thankfulness. Who would have thought that would have played a part in such a downward spiral as Romans chapter 1 describes? And yet we find it's one of those elements that leads them there. Hey, no wonder you and I have depression and dark days. No wonder we get discouraged so often. Because I think after looking at these verses in the way I have this week, we fail to thank God enough And that thankfulness is absent when God has instructed us to make it present, front and center. I don't know about you, I learned some things this week as I contemplated the thought, the instructions of God for us to simply be thankful. Have you ever thought about what it means to be thankful? Have you ever thought about gratitude? Have you ever considered how important your attitude is in your Christian life? Colossians 3 in verse 15 says this, and we love this verse, but it says, And let the peace of God rule in your hearts. Now we love that part. To the which also ye are called in one body. But then it says, and be ye thankful. Be thankful. So there's several occasions here where God is instructing us to be thankful. Be thankful. Think about that. I'm gonna say more about it in a moment. But before we get into the specifics of that, I want to read a quote by Chuck Swindoll. He's known for this quote. This is his little paragraph, his saying about attitude. And I want you to think this morning, not just about attitude in general, even though that's what he's speaking about. I want you to think specifically this morning about the attitude of gratitude. and how important it is in our lives. Listen to what Chuck Swindoll said. He said, the longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. He said, attitude to me is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances. than failures, than successes, than what other people think, say, or what they do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company, a church, a home. The remarkable thing is that we have a choice every day regarding the attitude that we embrace for that day. We cannot change our past. We cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one thing that we have, and that is our attitude. He said, I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you. We are in charge of our attitudes. As an older man, he would make this quote that would cause us to pause and think about the importance of not just our attitude in general, but especially today as we enter this season of the year, we're thinking about the attitude of gratitude. And if it's that important, then that explains why God said in his word over and over to be thankful. Be thankful. God wasn't saying, feel gratitude. He was saying, choose gratitude. What a powerful truth. It had never hit me before like it did this week. As I looked at these verses and I realized, first of all this morning, that thankfulness equals gratitude. That's the attitude we should have in all of our thanksgiving. And that gratitude first is a choice. And then it is a feeling. Hey, have you ever looked around? Have you ever wondered about this time of year? Have you ever said to yourself, I'm just not feeling it. I'm just not there yet. My mind immediately went to the giving principle. What did Jesus teach us about giving? You know, giving's not about money. Giving is about generosity. Giving has to do with our heart. And what did Jesus teach the disciples about giving? We learned this on Wednesday night. We learned that where your treasure is, There will your heart be also. What goes first there? First, your treasure goes there. Your investment goes there first. Your effort appears first. Then your feelings follow. Then your heart shows up there. And if that's true about giving, I'm telling you this morning, that is true about gratitude. If you've ever gone through a Thanksgiving and you just didn't feel it, if it all felt like a dud to you, I'm going to tell you why this morning. I'm pouring out the secret. The secret is this. You didn't make the choice to be gracious. You didn't make the choice to be thankful, to have gratitude, and that's why the feeling then did not follow, because the effort was not made, the investment was not made. I guess it's our flesh, but it's the way we're wired, and often if we don't do the action first, we don't get the reward. It's kind of like getting up for work on Monday morning. If everybody waited until they felt like it, Nobody would go to work on Monday. The problems of Monday would all dissolve because we wouldn't get them until Tuesday, right? We don't wait for the feeling to go to work. We put the effort in and come Monday about noon, two o'clock, hey, we're getting pretty good. Hey, then we're realizing, you know, this thing's almost over. I'm fixing to go home. A couple more hours, right? And after Monday evening, we're like, whew, I made it. But you put the effort in first. You started the work week off by getting up and getting going. You didn't wait till your feelings kicked in. Can I say to you this season, don't wait for your feelings to kick in to be thankful. Don't wait for the feeling, the warm fuzzies to come over you before you praise God and bless His name. Don't wait until you feel gratitude to express it. Think about all God's done for you and do what the songwriter said, count your many blessings, name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord hath done. The feelings will follow that. you'll find that Thanksgiving will start to get better, and it'll keep getting better. You'll go into the Christmas season with a spirit of thanksgiving and gratitude and appreciation for who God is, first of all, and then especially what He's done. But we have to choose. The Bible says in 2 Samuel 22, 50, therefore, I will give thanks unto thee, O Lord. Among the heathen I will sing praises unto thy name. You know, I was thinking about, I want to stop and say this, I didn't include them in my message this morning. It's probably a good thing because time is getting away pretty quick. But I noticed in the Old Testament, there are verses upon verses upon verses, where it talks about praise and thanksgiving in a way, in an organizational manner. You know, in the Old Testament, when they were organizing the worship and they were saying, okay, you folks are gonna do this and you folks are gonna do that, I noticed there was a designated responsibility for people to give praise, for people to thank God. And I thought, wait a minute, they included this in their worship regularly, like a regular element, you know, kind of like we know when we come to church, we're gonna sing. When they worshipped, they were going to give thanks and they were going to praise God. And I thought, how can that be? But they understood that it's first a choice and then a feeling. Hey, look, I know you don't always walk in here on Sunday morning feeling like singing. But you walk out feeling like singing. And that's an example of what we're talking about. This is a principle that we need to learn in the Christian life. Put the effort first and the feelings will follow. That's why, as believers, that's why we're taught to do right no matter what. Whether you feel like it or not, do the right thing. Because guess what? When you make the effort and the investment, the feelings will follow, the blessings will come. But we have to do it first. And so here, notice what the Bible says, 1 Chronicles 16, 8. It says, Give thanks unto the Lord. Call upon His name. Make known His deeds among the people. He didn't say anything about feeling it, but He said do it. The Bible says in 1 Chronicles 16, same chapter, verse 34, it says, O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good, for His mercy endureth forever. Now you might not have woke up this morning, you didn't get out of bed maybe, thinking about the mercy of God. But the Bible says to celebrate it. Thank God for it. Because it endures forever. The Bible says it's because of His mercies that we're not consumed. You know, we walk around sometimes thinking we deserve to be here. The opposite is true. And we just have to choose gratitude. We have to choose to be thankful. Notice what the Bible says in Psalms 79 verse 13. It says, "...so that we thy people and sheep of thy pasture will give thee thanks forever." The psalmist isn't saying he feels thankful. He's just saying, guess what? We're going to commit to this. We're going to do it. He's making the choice. And we know, if you've read the book of Psalms, He made the choice, and he did. Over and over in the Psalms, he praises God. And then you know, once in a while, the feeling breaks out, and he really gets into it. It's just like us. We come to church sometimes when we don't want to, right? And we're here, and then we're blessed, and then we're, hey, we leave saying, woo, I'm glad I came. The feelings come afterward, but we have to make the investment. Psalm 105 verse 1 says, O give thanks unto the Lord, call upon His name, make known His deeds among the people. Psalm 106 verse 1 says, Praise ye the Lord, O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good, for His mercy endueth forever. So the Bible is instructing us to just do it first. Praise God, be thankful, bless His name. Why? Because we have to make the choice first. We have to put in the effort first. And then the feelings will follow. Don't wait till you feel like praising God. Start praising Him. Start thanking Him. And you'll find that it'll help the feelings to come. Number two, gratitude is an important part of our worship. I noticed this as I read through the scriptures. I want to give you just a couple of verses for time's sake this morning. But in Daniel chapter 6, we're always praising Daniel because Daniel was faithful in his quiet time. He was faithful in his worship to God. And when the king passed a decree that said, you can't make a request of any other being except me. Well, that meant he outlawed prayer. That's what that meant. But Daniel, the Bible says, he went in and he prayed anyway. And we're always reading this chapter and this verse, and we're applauding the faithfulness of Daniel, and we should. But don't miss, don't miss the gratitude of Daniel. Don't miss the effort, the choice that Daniel makes to praise God, because I don't think he's feeling it at this moment. He's feeling persecution. He's feeling pressure. His faith is being threatened. The practice of his faith was just outlawed. But Daniel comes into the prayer closet in Daniel 6.10 and it says, Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house and his windows being opened in his chamber, that is his bedroom, toward Jerusalem, he kneeled down upon his knees three times a day, and prayed and gave thanks before his God." Notice what it says, "...as he did aforetime." So this verse says as much about the attitude of Daniel as it does about the faithfulness of Daniel. Yes, Daniel prayed a four-time and he kept up his habit of worship and prayer. But notice, in this tough moment, Daniel thanked God as he did a four-time. It was his regular practice to thank God, to be thankful. That tells me that he must have made a choice somewhere way back there. He made a choice to be thankful and to thank God and to bless His name because he knew that eventually the feelings would kick in. Hey, we don't wait for our feelings. We need to just commit. We need to make the choice to be thankful to God. Hebrews 13 verse 15 says this, By Him, therefore, let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually. That is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name. I don't know about you, but I never thought about giving thanks to God. I never thought of that as an offering. But that's what this verse says it is. We just gave some Thanksgiving prayers and some testimonies. Hey, do you know every one of those this morning? God counted every one of those an offering. The Hebrew writer called it the sacrifice of praise. That's important stuff to God. He's paying attention to that. Hey, no wonder the writers of Scripture had God's attention. They praised Him even when they didn't feel like it. They made a choice to be thankful. Do you know in Psalm 100, that's what the Lord's telling us to do. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise. Be thankful unto Him. So He tells us to do it first and feel it afterwards. and we will have the same blessing that they did. 1 Corinthians 14 verse 17 says this, for thou verily give us thanks well, but the other is not edified. In 1 Corinthians chapter 14, Paul's dealing with organizational things in the local church, and he talks about elements that should be present and elements that should not be present. That's another sermon, but buried right there in those instructions and those divisions, look what he says. For thou verily givest thanks well. That just stood out to me as I studied for this message. I was thinking, I've never thought about giving thanks well. I want to ask you this morning, is that something you do well? You know, I think we like to think of ourselves as good performers at home and at work, as a parent, right, as a friend, as a spouse. We like to think we're good at what we do. Hey, I wonder, in the Christian life, are we good at what we do? Do we worship well? Do we give thanks well? I just had to bow my head. Oh, help me, Lord, I'm afraid the answer for me is no. Can't claim any credit on that after studying for this message. No, I don't think I'm doing so well. And so I'm bringing the message to you because I thought this was so enlightening to me, so encouraging, opening my understanding, not only to the role, but to the practice of praise. Realizing I always knew it was important, but I didn't quite understand some of these elements. And I hope now you do as well. So that one day you and I can say yes. So that someone may say about us, thou give us thanks well. Our God is worthy of our thanks. And we do not well when we fail to return it. And we gotta make that a part of our practice. We have to work on that. Let me tell you this morning, number three, gratitude is our gift back to God. Well, I think we all understand this. This is kind of where my understanding was about thankfulness. God does something good for us. We say thank you back. That's our gift back. God blesses us financially. We say thank you with our offerings, our tithes. We give back. When we praise the Lord, when we're thankful to Him, when we thank Him, that's our gift back to Him. It's our gratitude. 2 Corinthians 9.15 says, Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift. He's talking about salvation there. God does also give other gifts spiritually. And not only that, He abounds us with blessing. Psalm 105 verse 1, I read a moment ago. It says, O give thanks unto the Lord, call upon His name. It says, make known His deeds among the people. We're giving God praise back. It's as a gift to make known His deeds. Hey listen, when was the last time you told somebody what God did for you? Not bragging, but being thankful. You said, this is what God did for me. Let me tell you what God did. Hey, can I tell you, we live in a day where people need to hear that. Not just to be reminded of the presence of God, but to give them hope in dire situation. They need to know that God blesses, He still hears and answers prayer today. Psalm 106 verse 1, Praise you the Lord, O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good, for His mercy endureth forever. When was the last time you told somebody, Boy, God's good. And had an example. God's good. He was good to me. I think we fall short so often, but our gratitude is our gift back to God. Number four, gratitude is our gift to others. This is so interesting. I want to share two things with you here. Our verse is Ephesians 1 16. I'm just going to share this one. The Bible says, cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers. Now, obviously, Paul is saying this about the Ephesian church. So he's writing to the Ephesians and he says, I cease not to give thanks for you. And I always took that to mean that Paul was saying, I'm thankful for you all. As he said in another passage, I'm thankful for you. But as I studied for this message, and I realized more the importance of the role of thanksgiving, not only in our Christian lives, but also in our worship, I wondered, Did Paul mean this a different way? Was he saying right here, not, I'm thankful for you, I'm thankful that I know you, but was Paul saying, I am offering a thanks to God that you should be offering. Let's read it again. Look what he says. Ephesians 1.16. Cease not to give thanks for you. Could Paul be saying, I'm doing this in your place? You remember Job. The Bible says Job was a righteous man. But what did he do? He gave offerings for his children. He said, I'm offering these sacrifices for my children in case they have sinned. He was sacrificing their offerings. He was doing it on their behalf. And I wondered, if Thanksgiving is such a vital part of our worship, was Paul perhaps saying, you guys are lacking, and so I'm gonna step in here, and I'm gonna offer some thanks on your behalf. I'm gonna do that for you. What a powerful thought. Well, I don't know. I don't have the exact answer. I guess it could go either way. Both applications are very powerful. And I guess our takeaway is this. Let's not leave room for someone else to have to give our thanks that we should be offering to God. Don't make somebody else do that for you. Step up. Make the choice to give that thanks to God, offer that praise, and then you'll see the more you do it. By the way, you know how it is, anything, when you put the effort forth first, you gotta prime the pump. It takes a little while, but eventually what happens? The water comes. And the same is true in our exercise of our faith. Thanksgiving, we do it a while and then eventually those feelings start to surface. We start to feel, we start to become thankful. We feel what we're expressing and sharing. Number five, gratitude is the will of God. You know, I think every believer is interested in doing the will of God. And we often pray, Lord, help me do your will. And we often think about the will of God in specific things like, you know, like where should I live? What house should I buy? Who should I marry? Where should I work? What location? Lord, I have an assignment. I can go here, I can go there. Which one should I choose? Right? We pray about major purchases and different things like that. And we're thinking specific, you know, the exact answer. We want to find the will of God. Hey, did you know, sometimes the will of God has more to do with our character than our location. You know, maybe God's not so interested if you buy the greenhouse or the blue one, but he's very interested. in whether or not you're thankful. Gratitude is the will of God. The Bible makes this plain. First Thessalonians 5.18, the Bible says, in everything, give thanks. I always quoted that verse before and said, hey, well, the Lord didn't say for everything. I should have put it on here. But there is a verse that says for everything, for all things. We may not be thankful for the circumstance. We may not be thankful for the tribulation or the problem or the difficulty, but we should always be thankful for the way God uses those things to help us become who we're supposed to be in Christ. And for that, we can be thankful. I shared a testimony on a Wednesday night, we were meeting in here, and I was talking about a situation that I went through in the past, and I never understood, God, why'd you take me through that? And a few years later, I got into a situation where I used that experience, and God helped me connect and help some people. And then I said, now I know, God, why you put me through that. Because you put me in a situation where I could help these people and other people could not see it. Thank you, Lord. Thank you for allowing me to be a blessing because I saw the difference it made in those people's lives. Oh, yeah, it was hard for me to go through that. It's not something I would have picked for myself. But God used it. That's the kind of thing he's talking about here. In everything, give thanks for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. God wants you to be thankful. Of course, He would like for you to have the feeling, but first He wants you to make the choice to be thankful, to practice the thanksgiving and the praise. Because He knows, just like in other areas of our life, the feelings will eventually follow. But we have to put forth the effort first. In Hebrews 13 verse 15, I read this a moment ago, But it says there, by him, therefore, let us offer the sacrifice of praise unto God. What's the next word? Continually. And I'm bringing that verse back in under this point, just to show us that this is the will of God. God wants us to be continually thankful. This is what we call the attitude of gratitude. Always, just walking around all the time, just being thankful. That's what Hebrews 13, 15 is telling us. That we should give this sacrifice of praise to God continually. And then he explains, that is the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name. So he directly says, giving thanks is something that we're to do continually. Not just on Thanksgiving Day. Hello? Hey, anybody else learn something right there? That helped me. That helped me. God wants us to be, you know, Thanksgiving to me is what lights the fuse for Christmas time. And if you wonder why everybody's so happy and cheerful and giving at Christmas, I think it starts with Thanksgiving. And the two are put in the right order. And because we're thankful, we can be gracious and give gifts. And you know, I've thought, Watch A Christmas Carol and some of these movies that remind us. Watch Scrooge and listen to the last things he says at the end of the movie. And we realize as believers, as Christians, we realize that we should be celebrating Christmas all year. The manner in which we interact with one another during Christmastime is the spirit that we ought to have with the brethren all year long. It's the spirit of Thanksgiving. This is exactly what Hebrews 13, 15 is teaching us. Let's be thankful continually. If you think Christmas is a happy time, hey, I'm gonna tell you what, your whole life can be happy then. But first, you gotta make the choice. And then you gotta put forth the effort. And then those feelings will follow. And they won't always be there, so don't quit when they leave. You gotta keep doing it so they'll come back around again. And when we get good at giving thanks to our God and others, then we will have that spirit that we recognize so well at Christmas. It's the spirit of thanksgiving. And it all starts with God saying, be thankful. That good? I hope that helped you this morning. Let's bow our heads in prayer. Our Father, we come to you this morning humbled by your word and by the wonderful message, the practical truths of scripture, teaching us to express thanks and to give praise so that we can then be thankful. Verse four is so insightful in Psalm 100, and Lord, all of these verses just add upon one another to teach us about that great spirit of thanksgiving that we should have in our hearts continually. And now we bow in prayer, Lord, to ask you to help us. Help us make the choice. Help us put in the effort. Help us to be mindful and aware and not to let life's happenings distract us from this important thing that we're supposed to be in practice of. Lord give us the spirit of thanksgiving and help us to do it well and we'll thank you for all you do in Jesus name. Amen.