Well, we're reading from Ephesians chapter 5, verses 15 through 21. Here are the word of God. See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is, and do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another in the fear of God. Amen. Father, we thank you for this, your word, and I pray that you would anoint my lips and enable me to faithfully preach it and each one of us to grow in their love for you and their appreciation for all that you have purchased for them. We commit this time to you in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, the reason Gary has been handing out the church's purpose statements and goals every week so that the whole church can unite in affirming these purpose statements. And you'll notice at the top right hand of one of the sides of the sheet, every year we change the theme. And the theme for this year, Gary and I have been really prayerful about that, is Thanksgiving. And the reason for this theme is because of how critically important it is that we teach our children from a young age to be grateful, to be thankful, and for the profound negative consequences of being unthankful. It actually takes a lot of thought and a lot of work before thanksgiving becomes such a habit that you could call it a discipline. Now, it's not actually one of the disciplines that is mentioned in in, what is it, Whitney's book, Spiritual Disciplines, I think it should be. But like prayer and exercise and journaling and any other discipline, it takes thought and effort to fulfill God's command here, giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. So that's the main verse I'm going to be focusing on this morning. Now of course, like the other disciplines, there are huge, huge benefits to developing this discipline. For example, Psalm 50 says, he who sacrifices thank offerings honors me and he prepares the way so that I may show him the salvation, or as some translate it, the deliverance of God. Thanksgiving is an action of faith that receives God's deliverance. And when you count the number of times that God came through in delivering people from disaster, from despair, from bitterness, from many other things. And he did so as soon as his people began to thank him in faith, you realize Psalm 50 is not alone. There are many, many scriptures that say the same thing. For example, Jehoshaphat gave thanks to God and sang praises as he marched his army out, which looked like he was going to be obliterated. And yet in the thanksgiving, God moved and he destroyed the armies of Ammon and Moab. Or you can think of Jonah. Jonah thanked God while he was still in the belly of the fish, before he had gotten any promise of deliverance. And then the scripture in verse 10 says, then, or some translate it, upon that, the Lord spoke to the fish and it vomited Jonah onto the dry land. Or you can think of Saul and Paul, you know, they're singing praises to God, thanking Him in the prison, even though they're sentenced to death. And God brings an earthquake and He releases them. And I know in my own life, the Lord has delivered me from bitterness, anxiety, many other negative emotions, as I, by faith, began to praise Him and to thank Him for His sovereignty. And Gary and I want to preach on this theme at least four times this year. He already preached one in January. This is the second one. And there'll be probably at least two more later on this year. Now, the reason I call this discipline is that Thanksgiving is hard. It is called a sacrifice because sometimes it feels like a sacrifice to be thanking God when you would rather be complaining to God. It's difficult. Instead of taking it for granted that our kids will naturally be grateful, The Apostle Paul actually assumes the exact opposite. They've got to be trained in God's grace to be thankful. And it's not enough to just have a heart that is grateful. That's wonderful, but we should also express that grateful heart in verbal thanks. William Arthur Ward said, feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it. Husbands need to be grateful to their wives for all of the different things that they minister and vice versa. Leslie Weatherford told about visiting a couple in northern England after World War II, and there was a big shortage of food, and it was pretty scarce, and yet the wife somehow had managed to put on quite a lovely meal from trout that they had caught from a local stream, some vegetables that they had cooked, and he was so blown away with his sacrificial hospitality, he just profusely thanked this wife, and she was very evidently, you know, embarrassed by all of his thanks. And Shiley insisted that he didn't need to give thanks, saying, oh, sir, my husband never thanks me when I prepare a fine meal for him. And rather than agreeing with the wife that she didn't need praise, Weatherford actually felt embarrassed for the husband. Now, the husband showed no embarrassment whatsoever. And Weatherford says, I still remember seeing the husband sitting there saying, hey, love, I would have told you if I didn't like it. That was his way of saying, I'm always grateful for what you do, and I don't need to express it. But I think that William Arthur Ward is correct when he says, feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it. God wants us expressing our gratefulness to each other and our gratefulness to God. And to see how important this is for defining a godly Christian, I want you to turn with me to 2 Timothy chapter 3. And this chapter describes the downhill progress of the last days of the old covenant. But obviously, if Paul is describing what the natural state of our hearts are, was back then, it's going to describe natural state of our hearts today. So I think we can learn from that. And I think the point of the passage is it takes grace to enter into supernatural thanksgiving, okay? Anyway, verse one begins, But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come. What is it that makes those times such perilous times? Was it the wars and the rumors of wars that he spoke about elsewhere? No. And I would ask, what is it that makes for perilous times today? Is it war? You know, you might expect the Apostle Paul to say, oh yeah, you guys are going to go through perilous times. There's the $34.6 trillion national debt that's going to bankrupt us. Think of all of the woke culture that is out there, the proposed central bank digital currency, which is pretty scary, you know, when the government, a tyrannical government, can control your purchases. or immigration crisis, a totally out of control civil government, war, bank failures. I mean, you could go on and on and say that's what's perilous, but it's none of those things. He goes to the heart problems which plague even Christians. So look at his explanation in verse two. For, so here comes the reasons why times will be perilous, for, Men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. having a form of godliness, but denying its power. So they had a form of godliness. Outwardly, they were Christians, but they were not living in the realm of the supernatural. And because they were lovers of themselves, they could see all of these sins and these problems in other people. They were utterly blind to the presence of those sins in themselves. Now I know people who are described by a lot of the words in those verses there, and Paul would say they are living in a perilous, a very dangerous condition. But I especially want you to notice the word unthankful. Unthankfulness was one of those perilous, dangerous things. Now in contrast, a truly thankful heart is a heart that is no longer wrapped up in itself. That is not natural. That is a discipline of grace. Yes, it involves effort on our part, but it requires God's grace. So first, thankfulness is not something that comes naturally, and we cannot assume it's gonna come naturally in our children. We constantly need to press them to appropriate supernatural grace. Second, thanks is a debt we owe. Now, that's the meaning of the word for giving thanks, a Greek word, eucharisto, as defined in the most used Greek dictionary this way, to show that one is under obligation, be thankful, feel obligated to thank. In other words, God has so richly blessed us that we are obligated to give him thanks. In fact, there's a stronger word for owe that is linked together with thanksgiving in 2 Thessalonians. Here's how Paul words it. We are bound to give thanks to God always. And that word bound is translated elsewhere, things we owe. You owe taxes, you owe money to somebody else. It's just, we owe it. And so the very word for giving thanks shows that we owe God big time. But most people, I think, tend to be oblivious to the incredible blessings that God has blessed us with. They don't sense that debt, and in the process, they insult God. And I think they make God feel bad. I think the Spirit feels bad on behalf of the Father. So let me just use a couple of illustrations. Imagine that you spent three years saving up money to buy a real special ring that you can bless your wife with on her anniversary. and you go out to an expensive restaurant, you express your love to her, you present the ring to her. And she complains about the food, she takes the ring without any thanks, and she interrupts the conversation saying, you know, we really need to get home so we don't miss that basketball game. I think you would feel real bad. You know, she's obviously not, you wanted to please her, but she's obviously, you failed. But that picture pales into insignificance when compared to everything that God has done for us. That means that our unthankfulness is millions of times worse than the unthankfulness in that picture. God says we were on a train headed toward hell, where we would burn for all of eternity, and he sent his Son to experience hell, as it were, on our behalf. He put us on a train headed toward heaven, built this gigantic mansion for us, Buddha bank account in heaven that every day we can write checks on through prayer and he feeds us and he clothes us and he gives us so many benefits on this train and yet 365 days out of the year we only occasionally give perfunctory Thanksgiving at a mealtime and of course at Thanksgiving Day and a few other times when we're at church we remember to thank God. But that is our old sin nature. We even complain on that train about the passengers' noise and about the food and all of the other things that we think we deserve more on. That's the old sin nature of unthankfulness. And we need to realize unthankfulness is a part of our sin nature that Christ died for. It's a debt we owe. So, we need to be putting on the disciplines of thankfulness. Well, Paul goes on to say, we should be able to thank God in every circumstance, not just the times when we receive these special rings from God, so to speak. Verse 20 says, giving thanks always. And I looked up the Greek word for always in the dictionary, and the only definition it gave, strangely, was always. yesterday, today, tomorrow, last minute, an hour from now, always. It includes when you accidentally drop the roast on the way to the table and you're exasperated, what are we going to serve for supper now? Or when you stub your toe. Are you able to thank God in those kinds of situations? I think naturally we are not. But when we appropriate God's grace, God enables us to see the silver lining around even the dark clouds that we face. When Robinson Crusoe was shipwrecked on a lonely island, he thought of both the good and the bad. He did not ignore the bad. He was not a Pollyanna who somehow tries to think there is no bad out there. No, there was plenty of bad that he recorded, his journal, but he lists the good things as well to make himself thankful. He said, first of all, yes, I've been cast onto a desolate island away from all humanity, but at least I survived and nobody else survived. And the second thing he put down is I'm separated from all mankind. But thankfully there's no cannibals on this island. So I'm separated from them too. So thank you, Lord. And thirdly, he had no clothes, but he said, you know, it's a hot climate. I really don't need any clothing. Third or fourth, he didn't have any weapons to defend himself. He said, well, there's no wild animals on this island. Fifth, he said he had nothing to speak of, but God had moved that ship close enough where he was able to get out of the ship and occasionally bring some things in for his survival. And so his conclusion was that there is not any condition in the world so miserable that there is not something positive for which we can be thankful. That was giving thanks to God in all circumstances or always. Now, if your tendency is to pout over what you don't have, I would encourage you to start listing all of the cool things that God has already bestowed upon you. At a bachelor party, was it yesterday? I think it was Sam was giving exactly this admonition. You know, we need to be thanking our wives for all of the things that God has blessed us through, through our wives. No matter how bad things are, you have a lot to thank God for. Don't make God have to take those things away before you learn to appreciate them. I read about an immigrant who came to the U.S. with virtually nothing in his pocket, but he somehow managed to scrimp and save enough money to put all of his kids through school. And one of his children became a CPA. He passed with flying colors and had a very good business. And he was somewhat embarrassed by how poorly his dad manages his finances. And he kind of exhorted his dad, saying, Dad, you don't even know how much profit you've made. Over here in this drawer are your accounts receivable. Over there are your receipts. And you keep all the money in the cash register. You don't have any idea how much you've made. And the father replied, son, when I came to this country, the only thing I owned was a pair of pants. Now your brother is a doctor, your sister is an art teacher, and you are a CPA. Your mother and I own our home. We have a car. We own this little business. Now add that up, subtract the pants, and all the rest is profit. So that was his simple way of saying, hey, given our circumstances, we have a lot to be thankful for. And yes, there was a lot he was doing just by the seat of his pants, because he didn't know how to do it any better. And he realized he probably had some things he could learn from his son. But he was thankful for what he had. I read a poem that illustrates this so well. It is called, Forgive Me When I Whine. Today upon a bus, I saw a lovely maid with golden hair. I envied her. She seemed so gay. That means happy, not modern idea. She seemed so happy. And how I wished I were so fair. When suddenly she rose to leave, I saw her hobble down the aisle. She had one foot and wore a crutch. But as she passed, a smile. Oh, God, forgive me when I whine. I have two feet. The world is mine. And when I stopped to buy some sweets, the lad who served me had such charm. He seemed to radiate good cheer. His manner was so kind and warm. I said, it's nice to deal with you, such courtesy I seldom find. He turned and said, oh, thank you, sir. And then I saw that he was blind. Oh, God forgive me. When I whine, I have two eyes. The world is mine. Now the reason I get emotional when I do this, Kathy will tell you, I tended to be negative. Looking at the negative side of life for so long, I got so disgusted that I wrote up this handout, was homework for myself. to rebuke myself with scripture every time I would have negative thoughts about myself, and I can share it with you. That wasn't in my notes, but anyway, continuing with this poem. Then when walking down the street, I saw a child with eyes of blue. He stood and watched the others play. It seemed he knew not what to do. I stopped a moment, then I said, why don't you join the others, dear? He looked ahead without a word. and then I knew he could not hear. Oh God forgive me when I whine, I have two ears. The world is mine. With feet to take me where I'd go, with eyes to see the sunsets glow, with ears to hear what I would know, I am blessed indeed. The world is mine. Oh God, forgive me when I whine. And I couldn't find the author of it. I have no idea where I got that. So that's thanking God in every circumstance. No matter how bad you have it, you could have it worse. We tend to forget the incredible blessings all around us. Like, for example, clean water out of the faucet that you can actually drink. When I was in China, they warned me, don't you dare drink water from the faucet or you're going to get sick. And the same is true in a lot of African countries, Middle East, and some South American countries. But the next phrase in our verse, I think, is the one that most Christians stumble over. They think, man, this is going way, way, way too far. Surely, we can't take this literally, can we? Look at the text again. Paul didn't just tell them to thank God in every circumstance, the word always, but to thank God for every circumstance. He says, giving thanks always for all things. Now I hope you noticed that there is a potential problem with that word for. How can we thank God for evil things? Because God himself says we can never delight in evil, right? We're supposed to be opposed to evil. We're not to agree with evil. We can never accuse God of being the author of evil. So how can we thank God for all things? I believe the only way that we can do it is if God works around, under, in, and overrules every evil thing in a way where He causes that evil thing to show forth His grace and His goodness in our lives. His providence overrules for good. Just to illustrate, though Joseph in the book of Genesis strongly disagreed with his brother's attempts to murder him, that was evil, and their treachery in selling him into Egypt, that too was evil. He said, you meant evil against me, so he calls a spade a spade. He does not try to make evil into something good, right? He calls a spade a spade. He says, you meant evil against me, but God meant it. What's the it referring to? The same circumstance, God meant it for good in order to bring it about as it is this day to save many people alive. And thus, in order to be able to thank God for all things, even while disagreeing with those things, we would have to be guaranteed that God works all things together for our good. Well, we've got exactly that guarantee in Romans 8, 28. In order to thank God for all things, we have to believe God is sovereign over all things, that His goodness is present in all of His providences, that His wisdom guides Him in such a way He can never make any mistakes in our lives, and that He's superintending all things for His glory. And of course, you can think of scriptures that say that's exactly what God promises. Now, let's try to get a little perspective of how a bad thing in itself can be something we can actually thank God for. If God offered you two choices, burn in hell for all of eternity, or your hand's going to be so badly burned, it's going to never fully recover. It's going to be painful for many, many weeks. That's exactly the option that Jesus holds out to people, right? And the Gospels. Well, we wouldn't say that the burning of the hand is good in itself. It is not. But compared to your whole being burning in hell, I think you would gladly take that choice. You'd say, yes, Lord, thank you. I'll take choice B, if that's what you're offering to me. But let's go further. Let's say that God orchestrated the situation where your hand was burned was a situation where you were able to rescue three of your children out of an upper story building. Then you would say, Lord, I am so thankful that I was able to sacrifice so that my children could be saved. Again, it's a painful thing. You don't like that, but you would do it in an instant again if it meant saving your children. Now let's expand that a bit. Let's say that A TV station got wind of what you had done and interviewed you, and you're able to give glory to God and say, yes, in a heartbeat, I would do this again to glorify God and to save my children. And there were some people who witnessed this on the TV station, and they got saved. And one of those people that got saved ended up marrying you because of what they saw, okay? You would see the more things that you realize, for the painful things we go through, the more you realize there is good coming out of that, the more you realize, yes, I have much to be thankful for, even for that burned hand. That doesn't make the hand burning itself a good thing, but God brings good out of it, see? It's sort of like a surgeon who cuts open your abdomen in order to remove a tumor. Most cuts to your belly you would not consider to be good, and yet this particular cut you are thankful for because it is actually healing you. Well, God is the master surgeon who turns all evils, turns all situations out there, even the painful ones, into surgeries, into scalpels that are helping you to grow in Christ and that ultimately bring glory to His name. But here is where faith comes in. Faith thanks God even before we know what God's purpose is. That's what makes it a sacrifice of praise. We, by faith, say, Lord, I have no idea what you're doing in this situation, but I thank you. I know you've got something good in it, and I refuse to grumble. I refuse to get negative on myself. Joseph may not have understood why his brothers resented him, why his father sent him on that seemingly fruitless search for his brothers, and why they threw him into the pit, took away his robe, sold him into Egypt. And then he's got a good job, and then he loses his job because Potiphar's wife, you know, lies about him. And then he gets forgotten in jail. But I believe that Joseph was able to thank God by faith even in the midst of those circumstances before he saw what would happen. And in hindsight, we can see that even the most meaningless of those situations had meaning in God's economy because it was going to use Joseph to save his family and to save many citizens from many different countries. Faith calls us to thank God for those things before we see what the purpose is. When I get a flat tire, I don't need to know the purpose before I thank God for giving me that flat tire. You know, maybe that it's a discipline, I don't know, but I thank you, Lord. Show me if there's something you're disciplining, or maybe there's somebody going to come alongside of me to help me out, and I'll get to be able to witness and talk with Him. But Romans 8, 28 gives me a theology that necessitates thanks. And when we thank God by faith before we know his purpose, Psalm 50 says, your thanksgiving prepares the way for God's deliverance. He says, OK, you're ready. I'm going to deliver you now. As long as we continue to grumble and be negative, God says, OK, I'll let you stay there until you're ready in faith to begin thanking me. And in my life, Thanksgiving has redeemed me from bitterness and anxiety and other things like that. By the way, you have to do it over and over again, many times. Okay, ultimately, we should give thanks because our goal is to glorify God. Verse 20 says, giving thanks always for all things to God the Father. There are times when there is no human that you can thank. In fact, there are times when it would be utterly inappropriate to thank a human. You might even take that human to a court of law to bring justice against that person. And yet, despite that, you know God is working through this situation, and He's doing it for your good. So God is the ultimate focus, and it should be our goal to please our Father. Shakespeare wrote in the play King Lear, how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child. It is really painful to parents' children. when they have poured out their lives for you, sacrificing day after day, and you are utterly ungrateful, unthankful to your parents. But imagine the pain that we bring to our Heavenly Father for our thanklessness for all of the things that He has done for us. And imagine the delight it brings to God when we finally get it and we begin to realize all that we have and we begin to thank Him. And so I would encourage you parents, don't wait. Teach your children from the earliest days to be having this discipline of Thanksgiving. You will be happy you did. And by the way, your children will be happy as well. When Max Lucado lived in Brazil, he taught at a university that he could walk to every day. And on the way to class one day, he felt a tug on his pants leg. And turning around, he saw a little boy about five or six years old who immediately looked up and said, bread, sir? Lucado said. There are always little beggar boys in the streets of Brazil. Usually I turn away from them because there are so many, you can't feed them all. But there was something so compelling about this little boy, I couldn't turn away. So taking his hand, I said, come with me, and took him into a coffee shop. Lucator then told the owner, I'll have a cup of coffee, give the boy a piece of pastry, whatever he wants. Since the coffee counter was on the other end of the store, he left. And he forgot about the boy, because usually You know, the boys just run off after they've gotten what they want. They're not thankful. But this boy was different. After getting his pastry, the bigger boy went over to Lucado and stood quietly until Lucado noticed him. And Lucado said, I turned and looked at him. Standing up, his eyes just about hit my belt buckle. Then slowly his eyes came up until they met mine, the little boy. holding his pastry in one hand, looked up and said, thank you, sir. Thank you very, very much. Lucado said, I was so touched by the boy's thanks. but I would have bought him the store. I sat there for another 30 minutes late for my class, just thinking about a little beggar boy who came back and said, thank you. Here's the point. If that thank you brought such joy to Max Lucado, I wonder if it would bring joy to God in a similar way. That little boy had very little to be thankful for. You know, considering his circumstances, very little to be thankful for. And yet he stuck around to say thank you. Luke 17 records the story of 10 lepers who begged Jesus to heal them from afar. They didn't even dare come near Jesus. They had at least learned some social etiquette and respect. And Jesus healed them with a word from afar. And then he told them to go to the priest to get checked. They went running to the priest, you know, so they could be freed from their exile. But verses 15 and following say that one of them returned to glorify God and to give thanks. And he was so overwhelmed with gratitude, he fell on his face at Christ's feet, thanking him. And Christ's words of response, I think, could be said to many people in modern churches. So Jesus answered and said, were there not 10 cleansed? But where are the nine? Were there not any found who returned to give glory to God except this foreigner? And the weird thing to Jesus is that the nine were believers. They were members of Israel. And this guy, a foreigner, was now probably a true, truly one of his sheep. But I think unthankfulness is the natural state of the sinful heart. It is thankfulness that shows God's grace at work. May 100% of the members of DCC be like that one leper, ever eager to give thanks to God. And each one of us can do so because of our union with Jesus. Verse 20 says, giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because we're all united to Jesus, we can use his name. Okay, that alone is an incredible privilege. That's worthy of thanks. But other scriptures indicate anything done in His name by faith receives all that we need from our bank account in heaven. If Christ has authorized us to use His name, we have an incredible privilege. It is saying that we should not just be living on a horizontal plane. We should be appropriating the grace that has been stored up for us, purchased for us in heaven. And since Colossians commands us to do everything in the name of Jesus, this reason for thanks applies to all of our circumstances. We approach that circumstance through our union with Christ. So just to illustrate, if you're persecuted, Jesus says he's being persecuted. Why? Because he's united to you. If you give somebody, a Christian, some food, Jesus treats it as if you are feeding him. He says, inasmuch as you have done it to one of the least of these, my brethren, you have done it to me. So he takes it personally. And his love and empathy is another reason for thanks. But there's more, this paragraph actually gives us a Trinitarian foundation for thanksgiving. Now we focus mostly on what the Father has done for us, and then we have everything we have in Christ and ability through His name and all that His name represents. Two verses earlier though, we have the beginning of the sentence. I cheated, I started right in the middle of the sentence, right? The sentence begins at verse 18. Do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit. And then the rest of the sentence gives evidences of what those who are filled with the Spirit are driven to do. Pagans are not filled with the Spirit, and so they cannot give thanks always for all things. There are many Christians who are not filled with the Spirit, and so they cannot give thanks always for all things. Right? But here's the cool thing, this Bible says you can ask daily to be filled with the Spirit, and you will immediately, when you are filled with the Spirit, be ushered into the miraculous. Look up every time that the Bible uses filled with the Spirit and you will see it is connected with the miraculous. Now here's the thing I would say, don't just think of the miraculous as people growing a foot longer or something like that. Yes, praise God, He can do those kinds of miracles. But I would say being thankful always for all things is a miracle of His grace that is performed in our hearts. And so every Christian has the privilege of daily asking to be filled with the Spirit. By the way, the difference between being filled with the Spirit, those are the occasions in which the Spirit comes into us. Full of the Spirit is a state of being where you're constantly being filled. So anyone who is united to Christ can ask in his name, be filled with the Spirit. And commentators point out that constant thanksgiving is one of the evidences that we are filled with the Spirit. I've known people who claim to be filled with the Spirit because they can do certain things, and yet they're utterly unthankful, and so I'm skeptical. This is one of the evidences of filling. Now in conclusion, let me say that it takes disciplined thinking to be able to express thanks more and more consistently. It's often been pointed out that thinking precedes thanking. You really can't feel thankful until you understand the significance of what has been done for you. And this is why studying theology is so important. It provides all kinds of reasons for thanksgiving. And the more unworthy we see ourselves, or the more significant the gift, or the more loved the giver, the more deeply we feel the thanksgiving. If we're not aware of how much sin we have been saved from, we're not going to be as thankful as the person who has been overwhelmed with the sense of his own unworthiness. I love Luke 7, verse 47, where Jesus forgives this prostitute, and she just is so grateful And he explained why the prostitute loved him more than the Pharisee did. He said, to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little. Now, it's not as if the Pharisee didn't have a ton of sins to be forgiven. He was just blind to those sins, right? But as our eyes are progressively opened, we realize we have been forgiven. We have an enormous debt. We've been forgiven of a debt, we have a debt of thanks. The more enormous we realize that debt really is, the more our hearts will thank him and thank him and thank him. And thank him in every circumstance and for every circumstance that he trusts us with. So he gives us some work to do and we say, thank you, Lord, it is a privilege to serve you. Or he allows us to be persecuted and we say, thank you, Lord, that I can share in Christ's afflictions. and receive persecution for your name. There is a sense in which all of the disciplines in Whitney's book, Spiritual Disciplines, are a prelude to the discipline of thankfulness. And what is humbling is that even the ability to be thankful to God was planned by the Father, was purchased by the Son, is enabled by the Spirit. I mean, that's another thing to thank Him for, that we can even thank Him. I mean, there is nothing that we have not received from Him that is of any value. It's very, very humbling. But it's the prayer of our session that we would more and more fully live out the command in Ephesians 5, verse 20. May it be so, Lord Jesus. Amen. Father, I thank you for the conviction that is brought by this word, but also I thank you for the faith that this scripture stirs up in our hearts. If you've commanded us, you will also enable us. And I pray that each one here would learn more and more what it means to be filled with your spirit and to evidence the supernatural, miraculous grace, the transformation. May we not just be outwardly Christians, as 1 Timothy 3 talks about, and inwardly full of all kinds of negative fruit. But may we more and more experience the fruit of your spirit growing supernaturally within us. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.