Live Free with Josh Howerton - Practicing Gratefulness Creates Joy | Ep. 209 | Thursday November 23, 2024

Episode Date: November 23, 2023

Are you looking for opportunities to be thankful? Gratitude can find opportunities in every circumstance. God is kind; our seed of gratefulness can grow into full fledged joy. The more we thank, the more we see to be thankful for. Pursue joy by looking for every chance to practice contentment. For more information, visit lakepointe.church/dailydrive

Thanks for tuning in to today's Daily Drive with Lake Point Church, a daily dose of God's word for your morning drive. When the word, not the world, becomes the majority of your week, your life will start to change. For that reason, our prayer is that God will speak to you through today's devotional. For more digital content to feed your faith, visit lakepoint.comit. And now let's dive in to today's devotional. Hey, happy Thanksgiving, everybody. Hope that you get to hang with some loved ones today and maybe eat some good food, maybe fall asleep watching football. And especially genuinely give thanks to God for the way he has blessed your life.

My name is Mike, and this is the Daily Drive podcast. And this entire week, we've been talking about the power of gratitude. And I want to quickly share a few more things today about gratitude. Gratitude, first of all, is aware. It's to look around and notice, to be alert and sit. sensitive and attentive and responsive to a piece of music on your playlist, or an encouraging text you got from a friend, or a newborn baby, or sunset,

or the laugh lines on an old woman's face, or the need in the desperate student's eyes. Just noticing. I've had this on my desk for a long time as by Frederick Beakner, and it says this, listen to your life. See it for the fathomous mystery that it is, in the boredom and the pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness.

Touch, taste, smell your, way to the holy and hidden heart of it. Because in the final analysis, all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace. Gratitude is aware, and gratitude is also contagious. You know, someone said it's not joy that makes us grateful. It's gratitude that makes us joyful. And grateful, joyful people are contagious in this world. They light up a room, they bring energy and hope. They just, they just see things differently. I love what Ellen, Vaughn writes in her book, Radical Gratitude. She says, radical gratitude is powerful, provocative, life-changing. It's like a pair of glasses that progressively gets sharper. The more we thank,

the more we see to be thankful for. Gratitude is the lens that reveals God's incredible grace at work. It is the key to tangible, everyday joy. Gratitude is not only contagious, it's also God-centered. It's God-centered. It centers our heart on the giver of all good gifts. G.K. Chesterton once said that the worst moment for an atheist is when he or she feels grateful and there's no one to thank. The heart of gratitude is just anchored in trust that there is someone to thank. The dominant theme of Jesus' inner life was directing his thankfulness to his father because gratitude

is God-centered. And one last thing. Gratitude is all-inclusive. All-inclusive. Paul, the guy that wrote from prison, I have learned to be content in every situation. He also wrote this in 1st Thessalonians chapter 5, verse 18, Be thankful in all circumstances. For this is God's will for you belong to Christ Jesus. You see, gratitude rises from an unconditional trust in the irreversible love and forgiveness of God,

and an acceptance of all of life as grace as an undeserved, unearned gift from our Father. I like what Henry now in once wrote. He said, to be grateful, for the good things that happen in our life is easy. But to be grateful for all of our lives, the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the moments of sorrow,

the successes as well as the failures, the rewards as well as the rejections, that requires hard spiritual work. Still, we are only grateful people when we can say thank you to all that has brought us to the present moment. As long as we keep dividing our lives between events and people we would like to forget, we cannot claim the fullness of our beings

is a gift from God to be grateful for. So let's not be afraid to look at everything that has brought us to where we are now and trust that we will soon see it in the guiding hand of a loving God. Y'all know when Thanksgiving became an official national holiday to be celebrated on this Thursday in November? During the most intense time of national suffering,

the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln gave a speech where he pointed to many reasons to thank God for his goodness and grace. He pointed out that farming, textiles, shipping, lumber, other aspects of the economy were flourishing, the iron and coal and precious metals were at all time high, and he said this. He said, these are the gracious gifts of the most high God, who while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully

acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. We will set us side and observe the last Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent father who dwells in the heavens. Incredible. Right in the middle of the darkest days of this country, he says, we need to pause and we need to thank God. I want to learn the secret of being content in any and every situation, so I'm going to practice gratitude until I learn it, and then I'm going to keep on practicing to keep my heart from being filled with pride, envy, lust, read cynicism and a complaining spirit. So on this Thanksgiving day, let me leave you with another song of David, Psalm 100. Shout for joy to the Lord all the earth. Worship the Lord with the gladness.

Come before him with joyful songs. Know that the Lord is God. It is he who has made us and we are his. We are his people, the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him and praise his name for the Lord is good, and his love endures forever. His faithfulness continues through all generations. Happy Thanksgiving. And come back here tomorrow before you go shopping on Black Friday. See you back tomorrow. Have a great day. Thanks for tuning in today. For more biblical teaching and worship, join us for our church online live weekend services on Saturdays at 6 p.m. and Sundays at 9.30 and 11 a.m. Central Standard Time. Also, if this podcast was helpful to you, would you be sure to rate, review,

and share this podcast to help get the word out. For more information about all digital ministries of Lake Point, visit lakepoint.compt.combe.com slash daily drive.