Praying Church

[0:00] Colossians chapter 4 verse 2. The Bible is the word of God. Every single solitary word was breathed out by God through his Holy Spirit to men.

[0:20] They wrote as the Holy Spirit moved them. And as he did so, he did not take over their personality, but they kept their own personality.

[0:33] So you can tell the difference between when Paul writes something and when Moses writes something. But yet every single solitary word is God's word.

[0:46] And he wrote these words to be read and understood. And interpreting a passage from the Bible, you have to remember it has words.

[1:01] And words make sentences. And sentences make paragraphs or other units of thought. And if you were to get an alert on your phone right now from the water company that they were going to be doing repairs on Stringtown Road tomorrow afternoon between 2 and 4, you would read that alert, you would understand that alert, and you probably would never say to yourself, ah, that means unicorns are going to start eating clover.

[1:31] And the reason for that is because it's ordinary human language which God designed. And I mean that because so often when we come to the Bible, because the Bible is special, because it is the word of God, because it is a spiritual work, we often throw the rules of interpreting language out the window and look at a particular word, look at a particular phrase, divorce it from any other thing around it, and begin to just say all kinds of things that we feel in the moment because we think what we feel about what this says is the most important thing.

[2:13] But we are not supposed to do that at all. We are supposed to use the normal rules of interpretation of human language. The Lord spoke in verbs and nouns and pronouns and prepositions, and he put them together the way he wanted so that it means something.

[2:35] As I preach, I am not coming to you after having meditated for hours and hours and finally something pops into my head about what this verse means.

[2:47] I have gone back to the original languages. I have retranslated it. I have tried to understand it in its context, looking at all, I mean everything that I do, you can do.

[2:59] And probably better. But the point is this. What I'm going to say is based upon what God meant for the Colossians to understand.

[3:14] And the only way that this is not the word of God as we go to preach this is if I'm wrong. Not because we feel it, but because we can look at the text ourselves, we can trace out the meanings of these words, and we can say, but you missed this.

[3:33] You went too far here. You went too far there. I'm saying this because it's so vital that we come to grasp the word of God as he meant for us to understand it.

[3:43] And using a very short verse like this can kind of sometimes be a trouble. And so I want to put it in its context as we go forward.

[3:56] But let me read it, then pray for us, then give you a little bit more introduction, and then we'll jump right in. Colossians chapter 4, verse 2. The ESV reads this way.

[4:07] By the way, if you need a copy of the ESV, there are those Bibles there in the pewbacks, and it's page 1170. So if you don't want that, that's fine.

[4:17] You don't have to have it. Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.

[4:33] Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you that it is inspired, inerrant, infallible, sufficient. We thank you that it is clear, and it is powerful, and it is necessary for salvation.

[4:48] And we pray that you would help us to love and adore and treasure your word. Teach us now, we pray, in Christ's name.

[5:01] Amen. Amen. As Paul does in many of his letters, he has a whole section where he's been dealing with lots of theological lofty thoughts, and then he begins to make a turn.

[5:14] He makes a shift to kind of make application of those thoughts. And we've been in that section for a while. Chapter 3, really the beginning of chapter 3 was the beginning of this application section.

[5:25] And where we've been has been this whole, what you call household table. A lot of different ancient writers had things like this, but basically what he's doing is he's taking this theology about the supremacy of Christ and that Jesus is enough, and he's applied it to wives, to husbands, to children, to fathers, to slaves, to masters, and now he's going to apply it in two more ways.

[5:53] One is going to be prayer, which we're going to talk about half of that today, and the other has to do with how we live our lives out in the world. And then he'll come to his conclusion, which we will also preach through that as well, because there's some good things there for us.

[6:07] So what we have here is then, as Paul has said that Christ is the supreme one, Jesus is enough, it has an impact and effect on our prayers.

[6:19] And it's one of those things that I think maybe, if I translate this again, I'm going to go back to the Greek, and I want to read you my translation that I translated this into Texan, okay?

[6:33] Translated into Texan. Y'all, y'all pray constantly with a sharp eye to the sky and to the enemy.

[6:48] And don't forget to say thank you. Y'all pray together. Now here's the thing. I find that this verse gives us so many good things about prayer and some things that I hadn't really thought about before.

[7:05] And I've kind of couched this in the idea of three attitudes, but really you could think of these as things that we need to do to be able to pray. So some work done before.

[7:17] You could look at this as things we ought to be praying for. And so I just want to line it out in this way, that these three things about prayer that will help us in our prayer life.

[7:27] And I want you to understand that he's talking to the church as a whole. That's why it's y'all. This is not necessarily only about what is for you individually.

[7:38] It's about what's for us. And so with that, let's take a look then at these three things. We're going to look at the readiness, the watchfulness, and the thankfulness.

[7:49] The readiness is in the very first phrase, continue steadfastly. That's what the ESV says. Other translations will use the phrase, devote yourself to prayer.

[8:01] In the New Testament, this word, devote or continue steadfastly, is used in some other contexts, and it's used to talk about Christians being devoted to prayer.

[8:16] There's one in Acts. The Christians being devoted to the apostles' teaching. That's also there in Acts chapter 2. To the daily meeting in the temple together. Because, you know, the early church, they didn't have a building of their own.

[8:27] So when they gathered together, they would gather at the temple. The apostles were going to devote themselves to the ministry of word and prayer in Acts chapter 6 because they were needing to do that instead of serving tables.

[8:43] But there's one place where this word is used that is really strange because I think you can begin to think to yourself, I understand what it means to constantly be steadfast, right, in prayer, devote yourself to prayer.

[8:56] But there's a place where this word is used that's a little strange. It's in Mark's gospel, and it happens in the life and teaching of Jesus where he's standing on the shore of the Sea of Galilee and all these people have gathered up and he's been teaching them.

[9:10] He's been starting to do some healing of them. And as they begin to press around, the text tells us that he told his disciples to make a boat ready.

[9:22] That's the same Greek word. Make this boat ready. And the reason the boat needed to be ready is because as the crowd presses on him, he needs to get in the boat and kind of pull away from them.

[9:33] Now that's a really strange kind of a thing, but it brings up a story out of the Old Testament where the same word is used in the Septuagint. All right? Now let me just pause and tell you what the Septuagint is after this.

[9:48] Pause. Word from our sponsors. The Septuagint is the... Sorry about that. The Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Scriptures, right, Old Testament.

[10:01] So the Old Testament was written in Hebrew primarily. The New Testament was written in Greek. And somewhere before the time of Jesus, a bunch of Jewish scholars got together, translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek.

[10:14] And it's called the Septuagint. It is abbreviated LXX for 70. And in that, the story of the spies... Everybody remember the story of the spies?

[10:25] Anybody not know the story of the spies? Okay, you don't have to raise your hand. I don't want to embarrass you. The story of the spies, right? Moses, gone to Egypt, set God's people free. They get over to the Promised Land after they left Mount Sinai.

[10:37] They want to go into the Promised Land, but Moses says, we're going to send in how many spies? Twelve spies into the land. They want to know about the people there.

[10:48] What are these people like? And they want to know about the produce there. What's the produce like? And Moses knows it's going to be a difficult task for them, so he tells them to do this. Be of good cheer or be courageous.

[11:04] It's the same word. So what you have in this word of being devoted to prayer is you've got these threads that are coming together of this idea of devotion and steadfastness, of making ready, of having this courage, and really the idea is this idea of taking something like yourself and hardening yourself for a task.

[11:30] You know, when we were working our house in Port Lavaca, there was often at times a task because it was a pier and beam house that involved me having to go under part of the house where the plumbing was, and oftentimes it was the sewer line that needed work.

[11:48] And I'm just going to tell you that if you've never done anything like that, you have got to ready yourself for that. You've got to harden yourself and kind of go, okay, okay, okay, I can do this.

[12:02] I mean, like, I don't like getting dirty, so going to mess with the sewer pipe, oh man, that is the worst. But you have to steel yourself sometimes for certain tasks.

[12:13] And what he's saying here is that to be devoted to prayer is to have an attitude of being always ready, always at the ready, always hardened, always ready to just go right into prayer to the Lord, not having to work up some sort of, you know, psyching yourself up for it or anything like that, but just always be ready, always be right there on the cusp, ready to go to the Lord.

[12:41] And the thing is is that this is a commandment not to the leadership of the church, but to the church body. Every single Christian then, and this is in what's called the imperative mode, so that means it's a command.

[12:58] In other words, it's a command from God that carries as much weight as the Ten Commandments. It's not something you get to kind of go like, oh, you know, that's good for the pastor to do, but you know what? I'm just a normal Christian, you know?

[13:10] There is no such thing. We should all then be devoted. Paul is speaking to y'all. He is speaking to y'all and everyone who considers themselves a part of that Colossian church needed to get their lives ready to be in prayer at any moment.

[13:30] And it means that we should be praying always. You should always be ready to pray. You should always be ready to go to the Lord right then and pray.

[13:40] Because a strong church is a praying church. And if we aren't praying, I mean, I just think about this.

[13:55] I know that many of you pray for me. You tell me that. You tell me that you pray for me. And I treasure that so much because I need your prayers.

[14:06] And we're going to get into some other things here in a little bit, but I just want you to understand like being ready always that you hear something about me or somebody else in the church.

[14:20] You get a text message about somebody needing prayer. Your heart should be ready to go. Ready to pray. Ready to do that. And let me just suggest to you a couple of things you can do.

[14:31] Number one, just recognize that it is your duty to pray. It is your duty to pray. And I know a lot of people don't like to talk about commands and duty with God. But what else are you going to talk about with the king of the universe?

[14:44] I mean, yes, is he our father? Yes. Is he our friend? Yes. But he is also our king. And he has given us commands. And there's no other way to talk about it other than to say we have a duty before God to pray.

[15:00] We must. I mean, that's a good reason to know about the gospel because often we fail to uphold that duty. And so we don't beat ourselves up and take out whips and beat our backs because we failed to pray.

[15:13] But instead, we go to the cross and realize that he's already purchased the forgiveness for that. But we've got to recognize that it's our duty to pray. The second thing is that if we can remember that it honors God when we pray to him.

[15:26] It honors God when we pray to him because what we're doing is we are throwing ourselves upon him. We're depending upon him to make a change, to do something in somebody's life and in our own life that we can't do.

[15:41] And so we're asking him to do something awesome and great. And so we want him to get all of the glory. So it absolutely, it absolutely honors him.

[15:53] And then I think to be ready to pray always, you probably should have a daily prayer time. If you don't have a time where you pray every day, you should. Because that will help you to be ready to pray at other times.

[16:07] And that's the fourth thing I would say. We need to pray immediately as soon as the opportunity arises. How many of you have ever had the experience where someone says to you, and I'm the worst about this sometimes. Somebody tells you about something going on in your life, you know, in their life and you look at them and you're like, man, that's terrible.

[16:22] And you say to them, you know, I'll be praying for you. And then you forget. And you end up not praying for them. I mean, that happens. And a good way to just cut that off at the knees is that when someone tells you about something and you think to yourself, I'll be praying for you, go ahead right then and say, you know what?

[16:42] Let's just go ahead and pray right now. Because, listen, we're all human and you get 20 minutes away from a situation and I've already forgotten because something else has come across or I might have gotten a phone call about some sort of trauma in my life, you know, and so it's easy to forget.

[16:57] So strike while the iron is hot. As soon as somebody says, would you pray for me? Pray for them. As soon as you get a text message from the church that says pray for so-and-so, stop what you're doing. And if you're driving, keep your eyes open.

[17:09] You don't have to close your eyes to pray and for God to hear you, right? That's just the thing we do. But as soon as you get that, pray. Ask the Lord to be with them. We want to be people who are ready, ready to pray.

[17:24] The second thing is this idea of watchfulness. He says, being watchful in it. Being watchful in it. Now it's interesting because this word watchful actually has two big primary meanings in the rest of the New Testament.

[17:41] And one of those has to do with being watchful for the second coming of Christ. Let me show you a couple of passages. The first one is in Matthew 24, beginning of verse 42.

[17:53] It says, therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into.

[18:11] In both verse 42 and 43, the staying awake is this word watchful. You've got to be watching for it. The second coming of Christ is coming? Like, yeah, that's a real thing, right?

[18:22] He's going to return visibly, bodily. He's coming and we, as Christians, are supposed to stay awake. We're supposed to be watchful for that. We're supposed to be constantly looking for that second coming.

[18:35] There's another passage in Thessalonians, chapter 5, verse 1 through 6. It says this, Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you.

[18:47] For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying there is peace and security, then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman and they will not escape.

[19:01] But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief. For you are all children of the light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness.

[19:13] So then, let us not sleep as others do, but let us watch. Let us keep awake and be sober. We're supposed to be watching for the second coming of Christ.

[19:26] As a Christian, we know that Christ has ascended back to his Father and we are to have our eyes constantly looking to the sky, looking for the return of Christ.

[19:37] We should long for the day that Christ returns and we should prepare for the day that Christ returns. And our prayers are a part of that watching and waiting and preparing.

[19:50] As we think about his second coming, we should be praying that we're growing in godliness. We should be praying that we're growing in gospel ministry and we should be praying that we're growing in good works.

[20:04] All of those things are the ways that we get ready for that second coming. It's coming. Now maybe it doesn't happen in our lifetime. Maybe it's a thousand years from now. But we're still supposed to live with an attitude that says, at any moment, and I'm looking to this guy.

[20:19] I'm waiting for him. And in the meantime, I want to grow in godliness, gospel ministry, and good works. So to pray in a watchful way is to pray with a view to the second coming of Christ, praying as a church body.

[20:38] See, this is the thing that I love. We don't have to be together. Now, we could talk about praying together together physically, but right now, I just want to talk about if I know that you know that you should be praying with an eye to the second coming of Christ, and that's what we're all doing on every day of the week as we gather back together.

[20:57] What kind of impact does that have on the worship of God as we've been praying all week long for the second coming of Christ that we would grow in godliness, gospel work, and good works?

[21:09] Our mind has been tuned in all week long to think about my brothers and sisters that are coming in. And you know, I know that I've been praying for so-and-so that they would grow in godliness.

[21:21] I've been praying that they would grow in good works. I've been praying for them for something specific, and when we gather together on a Sunday morning, we see one another and it should go, man, I've been praying for you all week. How is that going?

[21:33] What's happening with that? We need to be praying with that watchful eye to the second coming. But the other way that this word watchful eye is used or this idea of being watchful is to watch out for the enemy.

[21:47] It's to watch out for the enemy. In Acts chapter 20, verse 29 through 31, Paul has gathered the elders of the church at Ephesus. Now, just as an aside note, there should be multiple elders in one church.

[22:00] That's the way the Bible lays it out. So he's called them to himself so that he can give them some training, right? And one of the things he says to them in verse 29, he says, I know that after my departure, fierce wolves will come in among you not sparing the flock and from among your own cells will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after them.

[22:25] Therefore, be alert, watchful, wake up, remembering that for three years I did not cease night or day to admonish everyone with tears. What he's saying is that there can be enemies that come into the church from among the people in the church who rise up and speak twisted things, false doctrine, and listen, you need to be watchful.

[22:49] You need to be watchful for that. You need to look out for that. You need to look out for the wolves that are in sheep clothing. He goes on and says in 1 Peter 5, Peter says something very similar except he shifts the image of the enemy he says be sober-minded, be watchful.

[23:11] Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith. Now, the your is not there. It should be firm in the faith knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.

[23:27] In other words, Christians, to be watchful in our prayers should be praying against the enemy. And what do I mean by that? Well, sometimes the enemy comes in the form of human beings who are false teachers and false leaders with false converts trying to fleece the flock of God in order to boast themselves up.

[23:49] And they usually rise up from within a congregation. It's usually not someone that comes from outside, but it's usually somebody who comes from within. And we are to pray that we could be watchful and that we're watchful in our prayers and we are to pray for one another that we have this strong discernment that can tell when someone is speaking false doctrine, when someone is misinterpreting a scripture.

[24:15] We need to pray that these false teachers do not convince our brothers and sisters in Christ. I'll give you an example. There's a gentleman who is very well spoken.

[24:26] He is gentle, kind, encouraging, yet he speaks lies about Jesus. He speaks lies about the gospel. He speaks lies about the truth of sin and the nature of sin.

[24:38] He speaks lies about what God has promised and how the promises of God work. And yet, people flock to him and listen to him all the time. And we as a congregation, as we are going to be praying and watchful against the enemy, need to pray that none of our beloved here are duped by men such as this, a charlatan indeed, Joel Osteen.

[25:06] He is a false teacher. He is a wolf in sheep's clothing. He does not teach the truth. He is a prosperity gospel. And he's teaching damnable heresies that will lead people straight to hell.

[25:19] And there are many others in his circle. And one of the things we have to do is pray for one another that the enemy, the devil himself, does not use such things to draw us away.

[25:31] You need to be praying that you would grow in your discernment so that you don't just, you know, I was pastoring a church one time. And listen, I'll just tell, I'll tell you this way. I'll just be as humble as I can.

[25:42] Could I be completely and entirely wrong about Joel Osteen? I could. I could. And if I'm wrong about him, then I'm lost and I'm dying and I'm going to hell.

[25:56] Like what he teaches and what I teach are not at all the same. Not at all. So I could be the one that's wrong. And if that's the case, then you need to be praying about me that I would not be the wolf in sheep's clothing.

[26:12] But you know, I have heard too many people who've actually even come to me and said, you know, you remind me of Joel Osteen. I'm going like, what are you talking about? And the reason for that is because we lack discernment to listen to what's being said to what's not being said so that we understand the truth of God.

[26:31] We're just not praying. We ought to pray that we are not devoured by these things. We ought to be praying. Let me just tell you this.

[26:41] Here's a couple of things that you can be praying for one another as a church, okay? Yes, you can pray these things for me, but you should be, look to your left. Look to your right. Think about who's behind you.

[26:52] Think about who's in front of you. These are people you should be praying for. You should be praying for them and you should pray these things. Number one, pray that they become spiritually stronger.

[27:05] Pray that they become spiritually stronger. Stronger in what they believe. Stronger in their endurance through trials. Stronger in their hope and love for Jesus Christ.

[27:21] Secondly, pray that they are ready for the second coming of Christ. Pray. I mean, you just look at these people around you.

[27:32] Pray that they're ready for the second coming of Christ. Pray that they grow in godliness. Pray that they grow in gospel ministry. Pray that they grow in good works. And then pray, thirdly, that they would not be duped by false teachers.

[27:50] Pray that they would not be duped by false teachers. We need to have a watchful attitude in our prayer.

[28:01] And third and final, we need to have an attitude of thankfulness. Now, it's really the last two words in this verse with thanksgiving.

[28:13] And so, the prayers that are made are supposed to be accompanied by thanksgiving. It's like two friends walking together. And we've talked about thankfulness before, because Paul talked about thankfulness in chapter 2, where he said that we should be abounding in thanksgiving.

[28:29] And there, he's saying that your whole life should just exude this thankful attitude, right? But here, he's saying, no, you need to say it.

[28:41] Like, you know, you can live grateful for things. You can feel that gratefulness. But he's saying here that our prayers ought to include thanksgiving. We ought to say thank you in our prayers.

[28:55] I don't know if you do that or not, but I have found, it seems to me, that a lot of Christians forget this part. They want to go to praise, or they want to talk about their sin, or they want to ask for their request.

[29:10] And I'm just kind of going like, yeah, but let's be thankful to the Lord. Spend some time thanking the Lord. And it's interesting to me how there's a couple of places in the New Testament where prayer and thanksgiving get bound together for specific things.

[29:26] Here's what I mean. Prayer with thanksgiving is actually a part of the antidote to anxiousness. Prayer with thanksgiving is actually a part of the antidote to anxiousness.

[29:38] In Philippians chapter 4, verse 6, he talks about that we should pray with thankfulness to let our requests be made known to God so that we are no longer anxious.

[29:48] He said, don't be anxious for anything, but by prayer and supplication, let your requests be made known to God with thanksgiving. So prayer and thanksgiving come together as a part of that antidote against anxiousness.

[30:01] Another place, prayer and thanksgiving is then made for all governing officials. Like we're supposed to be praying for the governing officials in our lives with both prayer, supplications, and thanksgiving.

[30:19] Now listen, the current president, his name is Joe Biden. President Joe Biden.

[30:31] And you should be praying for him. As a matter of fact, 1 Timothy 2, verse 1, where this comes from, he talks about praying for governing officials and he talks about because God wants to save them.

[30:47] And you should be praying for the salvation of your president. You should be praying that he sees his sin, he recognizes the wickedness of his own heart and life, and that he turns to Christ for salvation.

[31:00] And it's not just him, but there's a vice president, and there are people in the house, and there are people in the Senate, and there are people in this state, and there's people in this county, that you should be praying that God save them.

[31:14] And it's done with thanksgiving. Paul goes on to say in the letter to Timothy that prayer with thanksgiving is to be made for all that we eat. That seems kind of normal, right?

[31:27] But you know, this comes out of a place where there are some people who want you to have an energized spiritual life by making sure that you avoid either certain foods or all foods.

[31:42] It's this idea that fasting is all about energizing your spiritual life. and Paul takes that to task and says, listen, no, everything, everything can be eaten.

[31:56] Your food, your drink, you're supposed to take it with thanksgiving. I mean, think about that. I know that we have a tendency to say the blessing when we go to eat food, but do you understand why you're doing that?

[32:09] You're doing that because we're supposed to enjoy what it is that we have in front of us. I mean, when you have good food sitting in front of you and you know this has come from God because of the way he's designed this world and how he's given us all the things that we have to be able to figure out how to do this and you kind of eat this fast while you're looking at your phone or without a thankful heart just grudgingly because you don't really want to eat this or because, I don't know, why would you not want to eat a steak?

[32:41] That's what I'm just thinking. Like, some people are weird. But, you know, what I'm saying is that it gives God glory when we take a moment and we think about what we're eating and we think to ourselves, look what God did.

[32:54] I mean, we could all be eating gray little cube nutrients. Well, I can have a square on the side right here and you just stick it in and you don't need any more food. You don't ever have to eat anything that way.

[33:06] He could have made all the food just like that. How would you like that? Just grab your gray cube, everybody, stick it in. Okay, now I can preach for two more hours, right? Like, no, he's given us food that is good to look at.

[33:19] It's delicious to taste and it's supposed to be that way and when we eat it to the glory of God, that is what we're supposed to do in that thankfulness.

[33:30] And then finally, there's a place where prayer and thanksgiving is to be made while we are worshiping the Lord God. The book of Revelation chapter 4 has this scene of all of these people who are worshiping the Lord and there's lots of praise going to God, lots of different kinds of praise and worship going to God and in the middle of it, there's thanksgiving.

[33:51] You know what that would look like? You know, a while ago, I don't know if you liked the song or not, you know, Living He, what's the song? Glorious Day, Living He Loved Me. I love that song and I get real excited when I sing that song and when I'm in a place where somebody's singing a song and man, I really, man, it says something so awesome.

[34:13] Did you know it's quite alright for you to sit there or stand there, whatever, and you're singing that and it hits you and you see something great about God, it's quite alright for you to go, thank you, Lord.

[34:24] Just thank you for that. Thank you for that truth about who you are. Thank you for that beautiful truth about who you are. It's quite alright to pause and say thank you.

[34:36] Well now, this brings us then kind of to the end. I just want to wrap this all up but I want to, we need to talk a little bit about someone who's not a Christian for just a second because there's two things you need to know.

[34:50] First of all, God never promises to answer the prayer of a lost person unless that prayer is a prayer of faith. And a lot of lost people think that they're religious and they think that they're okay with God because they see good things and blessings happening in their lives but that's what scripture tells us is that God reigns on the unjust and the just and so God does bless the lives of lost people but that does not mean that you're saved just because you have blessings in your life.

[35:21] How you know you're saved is because of what you've done with Jesus Christ. and one of the things about lostness is that someone who's lost they lack this deep gratitude that we're supposed to have as Christians.

[35:38] We have a tendency to think that we made ourselves we're self-made people that we belong to ourselves that we own ourselves. There's no real genuine thanks to be given in a situation like that.

[35:52] I mean if you think that you're the one who's provided all the food in your life on your table because of your great strength why would you ever thank God at all? Real genuine thanks can never be given by a heart that has not been changed by the gospel.

[36:17] The essence of this sin has to do with this lack of gratitude. Let me show you a verse Romans chapter 1 verse 21 speaks of people who are under the wrath of God because of the rebellion against God and it says that for although they knew God they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him.

[36:38] They didn't honor Him as God or give thanks to Him but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. You see a lost person you have broken God's law and your response to God's display of Himself in creation is to think that you owe Him nothing.

[36:53] And even some seek to try to stay neutral as though you know that maybe God is on one side of the bank and somebody else is on the other maybe Satan and if I just ride the middle of the river maybe it'll be okay but no there is no such thing as neutrality with God.

[37:11] God is more worthy than neutrality. If you think neutrality is something that honors God then maybe negligence is something that honors your wife.

[37:29] No. Not at all. God is glorious and He is worthy of praise and because you have never trusted Christ you lack the deep gratitude that you need.

[37:45] But the good news is that Jesus died on the cross to take those who lack gratitude and turn them into worshipers who adore Him and so today you can be saved.

[37:59] Today you can turn to Him. Today you can become a person who's thankful to Him for all that He's done by admitting your sin turning to Christ for salvation making Him the boss of your life and if you're saying to yourself I don't know how to do that then I'd be glad to share that with you.

[38:19] Christians we need to grow in thankfulness and I think it starts with two things. number one it starts by saying the phrase Lord thank you for and fill in the blank.

[38:40] But the other thing is you got to get your eyes on Jesus. Too often we look at the circumstances of our life we see the chaos we see the destruction we see all the things that are happening in our life that that we don't want them to be there but yet He's called us to be thankful in everything and how do we do such a thing?

[39:09] We can't look at our circumstances we have to look at Him. Can you just imagine if Peter thought he could get out of the boat by looking at the water instead of looking at Christ and yet here we are so often with suffering and trials that are coming into our lives and we find ourselves unable to be thankful to the Lord because the heat of that is just so much that it just feels like it's melting us into a puddle of nothingness.

[39:36] Get your eyes off the circumstances put your eyes upon Christ and who He is and what He's done and it is there that you will find your heart growing in thankfulness to the Lord.

[39:50] Let's pray together. Let's pray