The Church of Eleven22 - Wk 4: Be Grateful

Episode Date: December 27, 2020

Many get to experience the works of Jesus, but GRATITUDE leads us to intimately encounter the person of Jesus. Don’t let missing gratitude lead to missing Jesus.

All right, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. It's good to see you. Today we're going to be finishing up the series we've been in the month of December called How to Christmas. And I hope that this Christmas has been one of, if not the best Christmas ever, for you and for your family and your loved ones. I hope it's been blessed. I hope you've had a good time, laughs. I hope you've got to start your fireplace, right? It's been chilly down here in Florida.

It's been chilly. I've been feeling good. I love a good fire. I love sitting by it. I love relaxing with the family. Hopefully you've had a ton of that going on. One of the things that I want to celebrate before we dive into our text, which we're going to be in Luke chapter 17 today, if you want to make your way there in the scriptures, is let's just celebrate what God did through our Christmas Eve services. It was an incredible time.

Hopefully you made it out to Christmas Eve service. We saw 50 people surrender their lives to the Lordship of Jesus Christ on Christmas Eve. It was awesome. We had people from 33 different states tune in and nine different countries tune in to join us, the Church of 1122, on Christmas Eve. And so it was an incredible time. Thanks for praying. thanks for being a part. We're going to dive into Luke chapter 17. Before we do, I want to share this quote with you that I think really sets up the context of what we're going to talk about

today. And to finish the how-to Christmas series, we're really just going to talk about attitude. And specifically, we're going to talk about the effect that gratefulness, having a thankful heart has on our attitudes every day and sets our perspective for God to be able to do miracles in our lives. And one of my favorite quotes is from a great pastor named Charles Swinney. And he said this, many years ago, he said this, the longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude to me is more important than facts. It's more important than the past, the education, the money, then circumstances, then failure, then successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a

company, a church, or a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will 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 string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. it is with you. We are in charge of our attitudes. So today we're going to talk about gratitude. We're going to talk about the impact, the compounding with interest impact that gratitude has on our homes, on our lives, on our relationships, on our coworkers, and we're going to do it via Jesus in

Luke 17. Luke 17 and then we're going to hop to Luke 18. This is a parable where Jesus really gets down at the heart of what it means to be thankful and to have gratitude for God. God and for all the things that God has done. Luke chapter 17 starting in verse 11. It says this. On the way to Jerusalem, he, Jesus, was passing along between Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers. Who stood at a distance? Now, we've all heard of leprosy. We know generally what it is, but in this day and time, leprosy was a nightmare. There was no cure for it. It created a situation where you were completely a social outcast.

It was physically debilitating. It was actually a flesh mutilating disease. You're welcome thinking about that this morning. It would eat your fingers off and your face and your feet. Your body parts would literally begin to fall off. And because of the way that it made people look and because of the reality that a lot of times it was contagious, they would cast people outside of society and make them live on the fringes or in the margins. of society, which is where Jesus is,

he's passing between Samaria and Galilee. This is very much like a borderland. It is a margin. It's important to note that oftentimes the geography of where things happen in the Bible tells us a lot about the theology of what's going on. Jesus often does his best work in the margins.

Jesus often does his best work in the borderlands and those times in our life where we feel stuck in between, we feel like we don't really belong, or we really haven't found our place, or we found ourselves in looking at what seems like an insurmountable situation, that Jesus is right here with us, and in the middle of the stuck is where Jesus often does his best work. And so we have these 10 lepers that are in a terrible situation. They have been completely cast out from their families. They have

been completely cast out from their loved ones. They have been completely cast out from their way of life. They're sick. This disease will eventually kill you. And because of the outcast nature of it, they formed these things called leper colonies. And so lepers only got to interact with other lepers. And so Jesus walks up into this village on the edge of this leper colony. And so we see these men, their entire condition, not just physically, but socially, you know emotionally and you know mentally that they are in bad, bad shape. It is a nightmare of a situation. In verse 13, these men lift up their voice. These ten lepers lift up their voice and say, Jesus, master, have mercy on us. Jesus, master, have mercy on us. Jesus, master, have.

mercy on us. It's interesting to me that they don't directly ask for healing. They ask for mercy. Grace, by definition, is when you are given something you don't deserve. Mercy by definition is when you are not given what you do deserve. And so it's really interesting that these lepers make a plea for mercy to Jesus. They acknowledge his authority. They call a master. Jesus' master have mercy on us. And I think there's something to this plea for mercy. If you turn with me over to Luke 18, Jesus helps us better understand the heart in which these lepers are coming to him. Luke chapter 18 starting in verse 9, Jesus tells a parable. And this parable is really going to dig down at the heart of what we're getting at. Starting in

verse 9, Jesus tells a parable. It says this, Jesus told a parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and they treated others with contempt. It's an important verse. Two men went up into the temple to pray. One, a Pharisee, and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed this. God, I thank you that I'm not like other men. Extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I get.

Now, if you've been around church for any amount of time, you know that the word Pharisee normally in studying the New Testament equals bad. But let's just imagine for a second that you didn't know that. Let's imagine that you weren't a Bible scholar. That wasn't a piece of information that you had. And let's just look at what the Pharisee is doing in this parable. Let's just take a look at it. The Pharisees, he is attending church.

Is that a good or bad thing? It's a good thing. The Pharisees attending church. He's praying to God. Right? That's a good. It's a God-centered thing. He's saying, God, I thank you that.

He's praying to God. He's praying alone. Jesus wore the Pharisees out about praying on street corners and announcing their righteousness before men, but not this guy. He's praying alone. That's good. He fast twice a week.

That's a great habit. That's a great discipline. It's actually a prescribed discipline from the Lord for the benefit of our life. So he's fasting twice a week. That's a good thing. And he tithes on all that he gets. Again, another prescriptive behavior from God. This is very, very good.

Attending church, praying to God, praying alone, fasting twice a week, ties on all that he gets. If we didn't know he was a Pharisee. And this person was our friend. And you and I were trying to measure the condition of his faithfulness from what we saw him doing, then he would score out very, very high. But Jesus is looking at this, and in this parable, he's going, no, he's missing it. He's missing it.

And he compares him to the tax collector, and he says this, but the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven. But he beat his breath saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. God have mercy on me. And I tell you that this man went down to his house justified rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled.

But the one who humbles himself will be exalted. Don't miss this. The parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee is not a parable about what words work in prayer. It's not a prayer lesson. It's a perspective lesson. It's a, is Jesus giving us a lesson on attitude? It's not about the words we say. perspective at which we come. You see, the Pharisee comes to God with his list of good works.

Here's all the boxes that I've checked. Here's all the things that I've done. Here, look, he looks around at culture around him. He surveys the landscape and he says, compared to all these people, I'm crushing it. He brings his good works, his merit, what he believes that he has earned in comparison to everybody else to God and he says, God. And what's crazy Jedi Mantric is that he actually gives God a measure of credit for his self-righteousness. You think about that. Compared to the tax collector, the Pharisees saying, look at all I've done. I am better than this person.

I am better than that person. The tax collector, he says this, however, he says, I have nothing. I have nothing. I bring nothing. I need you. I need you. As a parent, I have two little girls. 10 and 7. They're awesome. And as a pastor, one of my biggest worries and one of my biggest

concerns is that I know it is possible for us in the West, specifically in America. It is possible for us to go through life, our entire lives, with little to no awareness of what it means to really need. I mean, is there anything that you need in your life, really, that you need that you can't, that you don't have or that you can't get on your own? I mean, with the accessibility, just in material terms, the accessibility of Amazon right now, there's literally nothing that I can't get to in 48 hours. If we need it at my house, we can get it on demand.

This is one of the impacts that mission trips have on people, and I can't wait until we can start going back on mission trips again. Amen? Amen. And one of the impacts that you see mission trips have on people is that they travel around the world into a majority world context. They get outside of their North American bubble, and they begin to interact with people who,

from our perspective looking at their lives, we would say, man, a lot of these people are facing insurmountable needs, that they are literally depending on God for everything, every day, and yet they're doing it with joy and with gratitude. Their hearts are filled with joy, their homes are filled with joy, their lives are filled with gratitude, in the face of what seems like insurmountable needs. The impact of these relationships with our brothers and sisters from different parts of the world, the change that it brings in our lives and our perspectives is simply undeniable. I know this. I believe and I've seen it and I've experienced it that there is a one-to-one relationship between our awareness of how much we need God and how happy we are in God. There is a one-to-one

relationship between our awareness of how much we need God and how happy we are in God. You see, in order to rightly be in relationship with God, we have to come to and, live from appointed awareness that we need him. We need him. We need his mercy. We need his forgiveness. We need his love. We need his fathering of us. We need his grace. We need his presence. We need him. We need his freedom. We need his forgiveness. We need his acceptance and his unconditional and irresistible grace. We need God. And if we were to live thankful and we were to live thankful and we were to live grateful lives, so we have to live from the place where we realize we need him. And the good news of Jesus Christ is this, that by grace through faith, we have him. By grace through faith,

we have him, and in him we have all that we need. I heard it once said that Christianity is a crutch for the weak and needy. And I was in college when I heard this, and it was said as a criticism. Christianity is a crutch for the weak and the needy, and I immediately thought, yeah, yes, and amen, and so much more. The grace of God is not merely a crutch for the needy. It is life for the dead. It is sight to the blind. It turns the enemies of God into his family. It is cleansing for the center.

It is healing for the leper. We need God and we need his grace. Amen, church. So these lepers like the tax collector, they say, God have my mind. mercy on me, a sinner. When we find ourselves there, where we really realize how needy we are and how much we have been given in God, we're in a sacred place, and we're in a place where God will really start to do his work. Verse 14 of Luke 17, back to the 10 lepers. They cry out, Jesus, have mercy on us. And when Jesus saw them, let me just say this to you today. I don't

know what the holidays have been like for you. let's just, maybe they've been tough. Maybe you felt isolated. Maybe you felt alone. Maybe you felt outcast. Maybe there's broken relationships that have stacked up. I don't know the situation, but I know this. Whatever you're going through, Jesus, he sees you.

His eyes are on you. His love is set on you. He sees you. Just like he sees these people, he sees you. When Jesus saw them, he said to them, go and show yourselves to the priest, period. And as they went, they were cleansed. Now, it was a standard of practice in this time that if you were healed of a disease, you would go and present yourself to the priest.

And the priest would kind of give you the stamp of approval, and then you could make your way back into working society. And so Jesus says, go see the priest, and as you start walking, you will be healed. And so all 10 of them start to walk. All 10 of them listen to the master's voice. They say, have mercy on us. Jesus sees them. Jesus says, go to the priest, show yourself to him, and you will be cleansed.

And so they all take off believing what he has said. And they head toward the priest. Verse 15. So all of them are going toward the priest to be healed. And verse 15, then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. Don't miss this. Ten were completely healed from disease. They could live life.

They were accepted again. They were literally given a new lease on life. All 10 of them were healed, but only one returned to say thanks. Only one chose to be appreciative. All 10 of them had a level of faith. They stepped out on Jesus' word. They trusted him, at least some. All 10 had a level of faith because they went to see the priest,

but only one had gratitude. All were healed, one. was grateful. You see, having faith in God is not the same thing as being grateful to God. You can believe and not be grateful. We're all on a pendulum. Pastor Jobi teaches us this all the time, that every day we're on a pendulum swinging back and forth between entitlement and gratitude. Entitlement focuses on me, mine, and more. Gratitude sees everything in life as a gift, and because it sees everything in life as a gift, it is able to enjoy it. When you, When it's a gift, you can enjoy it more than if you feel like you, if you felt like you earned it,

then you've got to figure out how to try to keep it. So all day, we're on this pendulum between entitlement and gratitude. Gratitude recognizes all of life as a gift and is able to enjoy it. So the one, the grateful one, who has Thanksgiving in his heart. Verse 16, and the Samaritan came back and he fell at his face, at Jesus. He fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks. See, here's the thing about gratitude. Gratitude has to be expressed in order to be enjoyed.

You're going to want to write that down. Gratitude has to be expressed in order to be enjoyed. And I don't know if I'm right about this. I've been wrong about many things in my life. I may be wrong, but as I was thinking through this, I think that it's possible that unexpressed gratitude is selfish. That unexpressed gratitude is selfish. I mean, if you have gratitude in your life, but you don't share it, then is it gratitude?

Because ultimately, you just have this feeling of, I feel good about this thing, or I feel grateful for this thing, but I'm going to keep that all to myself. And so that gratitude terminates on you versus being shared and being enjoyed and being experienced in and through our relationships. I don't know if I'm right. You can think about that and you can email me. There's two practical ways I know to express gratitude. that I've been able to experience it in my life. Two practical ways. Number one is generosity. Certainly generosity of the Lord,

bringing back to God our first and our best through ties and offerings, believing that God has done great things for us and in us and through the cross of Jesus Christ and responding to that good news with our life by bringing back to him the gifts that he is so freely shared with us. Absolutely. Just this week, my wife and I were able to fulfill our pledge

the pledge we felt like God led us to make to the one initiative. And as we were doing it, we needed to give X amount of money to fulfill the pledge we made. And we were able to give Y about a money. And in this short interchange where we were talking about it, we were able to laugh together and to giggle. I don't know what other word you say it. I feel like a grown man up here saying the word giggle. But that's what we did. We had like a moment where we just giggled because there was a time where we were like really worried and stressed.

and God, are you going to come through and are you going to be able to do this? But at the end of it, seeing God's faithfulness through it in our lives and in and through this church, we were able to have this moment where sheer unadulterated gratitude was in our hearts for the fact that God would allow us to be a part of what he's done. We were just grateful for it. We were just grateful for it. So generosity. Generosity, absolutely. But also words.

Generosity is one way to express gratitude. Another is words. when it comes to God, whether it be generosity or words, you can apply this to any relationship, but specifically in the context of our relationship with God, I have experienced three types of gratitude in my relationship with God. And they're all right and they're all fitting and they all are appropriate at different times. But the three different types of gratitude I've experienced is kind of like a good, better, best situation in regards to the like satisfying joy that it produces down in your soul. And the first type of gratitude that I've experienced in my relationship with God

is to be grateful for his blessings, to be thankful for his gift. There's nothing wrong with looking around at your life. You should do it often. Look around at your life and say, God, thank you for this. Whatever the situation is, and I'm not saying there's not things in our lives that aren't hard. Of course there are. There are things in our life that are hard, but all of us have things to be grateful for, gifts that God has given us to be thankful for. So to be grateful for his blessings, that's to be thankful for the gift. Number two, to be grateful for his act of blessing. God doesn't owe us anything, amen. He doesn't owe us a thing, but the fact that he would be benevolent toward us, the fact that he would extend his hand out to us, the fact that he would draw near to us, that he would

make himself available to us, that he would lavish his love on us, that he would very practically meet and supply all of our needs. The act of his blessing, we should be grateful for him stepping toward us in any and every way. So we're thankful for the gifts. We're thankful that he is benevolent toward us. And then finally, and I believe that this is where the deepest, most satisfying joy can be found for the believer. It's to be grateful to God for God.

It's to be grateful to God for God. To be grateful for him as the blessing. Let me ask you this. What is the most important gift that God has ever given you? What's the most significant gift? that God has ever given you. Be careful. There is a right answer. The most significant gift that God has ever given you is himself. He is the greatest gift that he could ever give us. And he is fully and holy given himself to us through Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. We should never forget this, that gifts,

as good as they are, praise God, blessings, even miracles, the healings, the salvation. There's only one miracle that lasts for all of eternity, and that is our salvation, but gifts, blessings, and miracles, these are all just a means. They are a means, a fantastic means to a glorious point. The point is the glory of God. And it is the glory of God that we will enjoy forever and ever. And so Jesus sees the one man fall down at his feet and express gratitude. Give thanks. And then Jesus says, verse 17, we're not 10 cleansed? Where are the nine? If you took inventory of your life over this past season,

is your attitude that of the one or of the nine? If you just looked around at your relationships and you looked around and you dug through your prayers even, you looked through the closets of your life, would your attitude be that of the nine or that of the one? Jesus says, we're not 10 cleansed, where of the nine? And verse 18, was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner? And he said to him, rise and go your way. Your faith has made you well. I want to give you a few

encouragements as we as we wrap up our time and we head toward communion, which is how we're going to end our service. A few things that I think will help set your attitude and set your perspective and is a good practice in regards to the compounding effects that gratitude has on our life. One is something that Pastor Jobi encourages us to do every year, which is to write out a gratitude list. He didn't do it in 2020. I don't think he did it in 2020, so I'm taking his thing, making it my thing, now it's your thing. All right? Number one, ways to practically grow gratitude in your heart.

Write out a gratitude list. The way this works is that for every year you've been alive, you write down one thing that you're grateful for. So one thing per year that you're grateful for. I'm 39 years old. And so I wrote down 39 things, and I'm going to read them to you real fast. My hope is that by the end of our time here in about 10 minutes, you're going to be stirred up with some gratitude.

39 things that I am grateful to God for. These things are not, whether they be big or small, it's completely irrelevant. The point is, do these things stir up your affections for the Lord? Do these things, get you excited, remind you of how good that God's been to us. 39 things I'm grateful for you. Ready? I'm going to do it. Rapid fire.

Number one, salvation. Amen. Glory to God. Amen. Salvation. Number two, the Bible. My wife, Jennifer, she's the best. Anna Catherine.

Abigail, those are my daughters. Good health. This church, I'm thankful for you, church. Most of you. I am, man. I don't know how long you've been hanging around 1122. is special, praise God. What God's done in and through us and to us. It's not better or worse than any other church, but man, God is alive in this church and he's changing lives and I'm thankful for it.

This church, I'm thankful for my parents. They're with Jesus now, but man, I'm thankful that I was born to them. My brother, my in-laws who are here, Pastor Jobi, I'm thankful for you, man. We have a great pastor, amen. Amen, we do. The staff of 1122, golf trips with my bros, laughing. I know when y'all think about me, you think, Britt loves to laugh, you know? Laughing. I'm really thankful for my kids' teachers this year.

All the teachers that would spend their lives pouring into kids, living on the front lines, developing one more generation, I'm thankful for my kids' teachers. A lot of them go to church here. I'm thankful for you. I would say your name, but I don't want to put you on the spotlight. My kids' teachers, my house, I'm thankful for lasagna.

I love lasagna. Christmas. I'm thankful that I live in America. She's a mess, but man, I love her. Montana? Have you ever been to Montana? If you had, it's going to make your list if you've been there. I'll tell you.

I'm thankful for the one initiative. I'm thankful for short birdie putts, for great Bible teaching. I'm thankful for the hard stuff. I'm thankful for responsibility. I'm thankful for our global church planning partners who are advancing the kingdom all over the world, fighting back darkness and walking in the victory of Jesus as he's defeated the enemy.

I'm thankful for the ability to give back. I'm grateful for prayer. I'm grateful for good books, for quiet times with my family that are just ours. I'm grateful for air conditioning. I'm grateful for the person who put chocolate and peanut butter together for the first time. I think they should have won a Nobel Peace Prize.

You know, unbelievable. I'm thankful, I'm grateful for air travel. You remember, it wasn't too long ago that you had to get on a boat for months to cross the ocean. I'm grateful for air travel, especially when I get bumped up to first class. I'm grateful to hear my kids sing for new experiences, for Joel Bailey, for, I'm thankful for prayer warriors. I'm thankful for good customer service and long that. There are 39 things I'm thankful for blessings from God. So I'd encourage you to take the time to write a gratitude list.

But this year I want to add a twist to it. I want you to write two gratitude lists. One for the blessings and for the gifts that God's given you. And then I challenge you and I encourage you to write a list to God about things that you're thankful for about God. Not just what He's given you, but who He is. Who He is. who he is.

And so I wrote 39 things about God I'm grateful for. And I'm going to share him with you quickly. Number one, I am grateful for God's holiness, his sovereignty, his supremacy, his position outside of time. I'm grateful for his irresistible saving grace, for his common grace, that his mercies are new every day. I'm grateful for unconditional love, his steadfastness through the ages,

his faithfulness to his promises, his glory, his beauty, his justice, his nearness, which is our good. I'm grateful that his joy comes in the morning and that he sings over his children. I'm thankful, I'm grateful for his eternal creativity, his preeminence, his throne room of grace, his covenant nature, his still small voice, his name that is above every name.

I'm grateful that his ways are higher, that his word stands forever. I'm grateful for his Trinitarian reality, his benevolence, his future grace, his fathering, his patience, his kindness that leads us to repentance, his omniscience, his omnipresence, his intervening and redeeming work

inside his creation, his truth, his victory, his authenticity, his concern about every detail, his end game, and his absolute dominion. I'm grateful. I'm grateful. So take the time. Write down things that you're grateful to God for and that you're grateful for about God. Number one, that's number one.

Another encouragement I would give you is to be generous. Be generous. Share what you have with others. Share your time. Go out of your way to bless somebody else. share your talent. Use your talents to the glory of God. If you're good at doing something, you know, one of the biggest blessings of my life every Christmas is that there are people in our church who are just really good at baking. And I roll in here on whatever Christmas service is

and I walk out of here with like nine red velvet cakes. But here's the thing, it's small, but do you know how, what a blessing that is? That people would think of me and that they would spend their time baking a cake because we have a relationship. together that means something it's not nothing be generous with your time be generous with your money God has blessed us incredibly be generous lavish in response to God's goodness in your life write a gratitude list be generous number three write thank you letters sit down and take the time to write some thank you letters not emails letters mean more these days write thank you letters to people who have impacted your life. Maybe people you've never met, but maybe people you know very, very well,

write a thank you letter. And number four, remember, sit quietly, take time and remember who healed you. The 10 lepers, the nine walked away and they went on with whatever their life was going to look like. One came back and he said, you healed me. You changed me. You met me here at my deepest point of need and you have changed everything about me. Thank you. Remember who healed you. If you will, grab your communion pack. We're going to remember together. We're going to remember together. These communion packs are a little tricky. So little instructions first. On the very, very top, there is a clear plastic layer. You want to peel that one back to get to the bread. And then the second layer, we'll get to the juice. Communion is a gift that God

Jesus gave to his church right before he went to pay for our sins on the cross of Calvary. He sat down with his closest friends and he had a meal. It was the Passover meal. And if you remember Passover is a time, a significant time in the history of Israel where they were living inside the slavery under Pharaoh's rule. They were being oppressed by a tyrant. They were being abused and mistreated. And God came and intervened on behalf of the nation of Israel through Moses and he began and he set them free. And one of the ways that he did this was through the Passover where God told the nation of Israel to paint the doorpost of their house with the blood of the lamb. We know that this is a foreshadowing of Jesus who was to come. Paint the doorpost of your home

with the blood of the lamb and if your doorpost is painted with the blood of the lamb then the angel will pass over your home and your firstborn will live. If not, then the firstborn will live. If not, then the firstborn will die and through that intervention is how Pharaoh ended up setting God's people free. And every year the nation of Israel, they celebrate the Passover. And at this table, at this very familiar place and this very common mill with his closest of allies, Jesus sits down and he begins to take their eyes from looking back at what God has done and he begins to turn their towards what God is going to do. And he picks up a piece of bread. And he said, he said, this is, this bread is symbolic of my body. And my body is going to be broken for you.

That by the stripes across my back, you will be healed. That I am going to do a thing that is going to once and for all be the final bloodshed. It will be the final sacrifice. It will be finished. Every time you take the bread, remember that my body was broken for you. Let's take the bread and let's eat it together. And then Jesus grabs the cup and he says this really interesting, truly earth-shattering phrase. When he holds up the wine, he says, this is my blood, it will be poured out for you. This is the blood of the new covenant. And what he means is that there is a new day dawning. There's a new reality being made available to you. You no longer live under the law. You now live under grace. That I am going to make it so that God's enemies could become his family,

that we can be brothers and sisters in the kingdom of God and that through me, by faith in me, you will have a new lease on life. I am literally going to change everything. It is a new covenant. And it is a promise that God is going to bring to fruition. And we know that from that table to this day that all God's promises are yes and amen in Christ Jesus. That is the new covenant. So Jesus held up the cup and he said, this is my blood poured out for you. When you drink it, do so in remembrance of me. Let's take together.

So Father God, I thank you for this time. I'm grateful to you because you are near to us. you have made yourself available to us. Father, we pray that you would help us to be grateful in all things, that you would give us the convictions, the courage, the faithfulness, the awareness to battle against any entitlement

that would rise up in our lives. And that we would come to you knowing that we need you and knowing that through Jesus, we have you. We thank you, Jesus, that you have made and you have given us access to the Father, unrestricted, that we can boldly come. God to your throne room of grace, knowing that we are your kids and you love us. I pray for my brothers

and sisters as 2020 ends and as 2021 begins, I pray that God you would meet them right where they are. I pray that you would bless them with your presence. I pray that you would heal them if they need to be healed in Jesus' name. I pray that you would restore relationships where they're broken. I pray that the peace of the kingdom of God would rule and reign in all parts of their life. We pray these things by the power and the wonderful name of Jesus. God's people said, amen. Will you stand with me? We're going to respond to God with gratitude in our hearts, and we do this a couple of ways. One is that we pray.

If you want to come and pray at the altars, they're open. We sing. We declare God's truth through song, and we tell God how much he means to us. That's often what worship is, is us using words to express gratitude to God for who he is. And we bring, we respond to God by bringing back our ties and our offerings because he is so generously given. his first and best to us. So let us pray, let us sing, and let us bring. Let's respond.