Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Thursday, November twenty-eighth.
Would you admit that you're not always as thankful as you should be? Today's podcast helps us refocus our attitude by looking at the many things every believer should be grateful for. The human body is an amazing part of God's creation. And today, the part of this human body that we hear about the most is a part that we cannot do without. And that is the human heart.
It's the seat, the physical seat of all that goes on in our life. And so, when you think about that, you ask yourself the question, Well, so what about this heart? That heart that the Bible talks about, which likewise is the seat of our emotion, of our passions, of our moral choices, of our attitudes, that is our thought life, every aspect of our life. And the Bible has a great deal to say about the heart. And we hear lots and lots about the heart, but oftentimes, nothing about that part of us that's going to last beyond this one. They may be able to replace a human heart, can't replace a person's spirit.
May be able to work on this heart, one of these days going to stop beating everybody's life. But you and I have a part of us, that part the Bible talks about, that's the seat of our emotions, our thinking, our conscience, our moral choices in life, our passions in life, our convictions in life. It's all about the heart. And so, when we think about that, we think about also how the Bible describes the heart. The Bible talks about an evil heart, a wicked heart. It talks about a rebellious heart. And it talks about a heart that's pure. A heart that's, shall we say, loving. And a heart that is unselfish, that's kind. We could just go all down this list of different kinds of hearts that are good, different kind of hearts that are not good.
And so, the issue is moral choices that we make in life. They come from the heart. And so, what I want us to think about this morning is that heart that the Bible talks about being a thankful heart. And so, I want you to turn, if you will, to the hundredth psalm.
Because the hundredth psalm is a beautiful expression of our love for God. And really, this is a psalm you and I could say, well, this is the way a person ought to go to church. This is the way a person ought to come to church, week after week.
And so, listen to what he says. Verse one of the hundredth psalm, Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before Him with joyful singing. Know that the Lord Himself is God. It is He who has made us and not we ourselves.
We are His people and the sheep of His pasture. Enter His gates with thanksgiving, and His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him, bless His name, for the Lord is good, His lovingkindness is everlasting, and His faithfulness is to all generations. And if you'll notice, this psalm is all about God. It's all about being grateful for who He is and what He does. And so, when we think about a thankful heart, and you ask yourself the question, would you be able to describe your heart as a thankful heart? I want us to think about, first of all, the motivations, for example, for being grateful, for being thankful.
Somebody says, well, here's what motivates me. I'm thankful that I have a good family. I have a fine automobile. I live in a nice place, a fine house. I have a good job, got a good income.
We're all healthy, and my children go to a private school. And on and on and on, people express what they're grateful for. Do you realize there's something missing in all of that? What is the motivation? What is the real motivation for being genuinely thankful?
I want you to think about the motivation for a thankful heart. Think about this for a moment. The first thing is this, that you and I serve the one true God, not gods. We don't serve many gods, so we don't have to, we don't have to try to count them. We don't have to try to keep up with all these gods, and we don't have to try to please all these gods. We have one God. His name is Jehovah. We're thankful.
That's motivating to me in lots of ways. One God, one person to whom I am responsible. And then, of course, that this God is the sovereign of the universe. That should make us thankful that He who is the one true God is the sovereign ruler over this universe. He knows all things about all things. And He is above all things and knows about all circumstances and times and situations in life, this awesome God that we're grateful for. And He is a God who loves us unconditionally. That means that His love for us never changes.
It's not conditioned upon anything. It's conditioned simply upon His character. That's who He is. That's the kind of God He is. He's the one true God, and He's the sovereign of the universe. He loves us unconditionally, and He loves us enough to have sent His Son, Jesus Christ, into this world for the primary purpose of going to the cross, dying on that cross, the Father crucifying Him in order to pay the sin debt of the entire world. Then I think about the fact that He is a God who forgives us of our sin. Not only does He save us and give us the gift of eternal life when we trust Him as our Savior, but He's continually forgiving us of our sins. And He is a God who saved us not on the basis of what we did or what we're going to do.
He chose to save you and me on the basis of one thing, what He did through His Son at the cross. And you and I simply receive the gift of eternal life. We simply receive Jesus Christ as our personal Savior.
We simply receive the gifts that God gives. One of those motivations is certainly the fact that you and I now have the presence of God. That is, you cannot go anywhere and escape from the presence of God.
And those of us who are His followers, we don't want to escape the presence of God. He says wherever we go, He's there. And to know that when you and I awaken in the morning, He's there. All through our daily work, He's there. In the evening, He's there. While we're asleep, He's there. Because the truth is, it's not so much that He's there as it is that we are in His presence because He's bigger and greater than all the things that exist in life.
Think about motivations to be grateful to God. Then I think about the fact that He has sealed every single one of His children with the Holy Spirit of promise. That is, when you and I trusted Him as our Savior, He says that He sealed us with the Holy Spirit of promise how long? Under the day of redemption.
That is, as long as you and I live. He says we are a child of God. He has adopted you and me into His family so that we are now the sons of God.
And therefore, He says we are inheritors of the blessings of God. You and I have the awesome privilege of praying to Him. We can talk to Him about the things that concern us.
We can make requests of Him. And He hears and answers our prayers. We have this most awesome opportunity to have a personal, intimate relationship with Almighty God.
When people talk about a relationship, they think about a distant relationship. Or they try to appease God and please God out yonder doing something and trying to help God or make God somehow love them. He already loves us. We don't have to do anything to appease anything because Christ paid our sin debt in full. We have the awesome promise of His presence in our life. He sealed you forever.
You may sin against God in this life and there is discipline for sin in the life of His children, but He doesn't cast us out. He doesn't throw us away. He doesn't break the seal.
There's not anything in the Bible about Him breaking the seal. We are forever a child of God. We have the awesome promise that you and I, no matter what happens in our life, we are forever His.
Once His, forever His. That we've been adopted into His kingdom. We have the Holy Spirit. We also should be grateful for the simple reason that He's gifted every single one of us. That is, God knowing your personality gifted you the skills and abilities and talents that you have. There's spiritual gifts that God has given you. Whether it is the gift of giving or administration or exhortation or whether it's prophecy or whatever, a gift of mercy. He's gifted every single one of us according to our personality that best fits what He has chosen to do in our life. What an awesome God He is.
And think about this. One of the motivations for our thanksgiving, having a thankful heart, is the fact He has a plan for your life. He has a plan for every single one of us. Somebody says, Well, I was an accident.
No, you weren't. God allowed it. He has a plan for your life. And listen to this carefully. His plan for every single one of His children is the best possible plan that an Almighty, omniscient, all-loving God could possibly in all of His wisdom come up with for you.
And so, you're not just out here floating around somewhere in space, maybe hoping things will work out somehow. He's a God of goodness and love and mercy. His mercy is always there. He's a God of goodness. He loves to be good to us. He loves to supply our needs. And He promises to supply all of our needs, listen, not according to what I can come up with, but according to His mercy and according to His goodness and according to His eternal resources.
That's who He is. And think about this. We have a reason to have a grateful heart, a heart of thanksgiving for the simple reason that He's given us the privilege, the awesome privilege of developing relationships, of having friends in this life who are part of our joy, part of our happiness, part of the good things that come our way. All of the things that you and I have as you think about them, the things that have been a real value to them, where do they come from?
What are they? And when I think about the fact that He says that He's gone to prepare a place for us, think about this. You and I have the promise of Jesus Christ that He has gone and He's sitting at the Father's right hand doing what?
He says He is doing two things. First of all, He is interceding in our behalf. So when you and I come to God, we come, listen, the way has already been paved.
We can come straight to the Father as a result of our relationship to Him. And not only that, He says He's prepared a place for us. That is, we have an eternal home in heaven. Think about that for a moment. We're living here on earth. One of these days He says He's going to call our name. And this whole heart of ours is going to stop beating. They're going to place us in a wooden box or a casket. It may be good looking. It may not be so hot.
It doesn't make any difference. You're not in there anyway. And He says that not only that, that He's not losing anything. He's going to resurrect these bodies of ours. And we're going to ascend. We're going to be in the presence of God forever and ever and ever. It's hard to describe what heaven's going to be like because remember this. You and I are earthbound. We can't think heavenly to a great degree. We can only think in light of the things that we've seen. Go back to the days of Jesus.
What would you think? How could they have conceived of a computer? What's, I mean, impossible.
Going to the moon, impossible. Think of all the simple things that you and I enjoy every day that five hundred years ago, a thousand years ago, or two or three thousand years ago would be absolutely, listen, not even in the mind of man, let alone the ability to be created, not even in the mind, never even conceived. And so, what's God doing?
He's demonstrating His awesome power. What do we have to be grateful for? When you begin to count up the reasons for having a thankful heart, do you notice something that's been absent about all the things that I've mentioned?
It doesn't mean that I've mentioned all the things you'd be responsible for or grateful for, but it simply means this. Think about this. I haven't mentioned a thing that you and I could do.
Not one. You can't save yourself. You can't forgive yourself. You can't give yourself a heavenly Father. You can't be sovereign. You can't give yourself spiritual gifts. And you can't do any of those things. Somebody says, well, I can forgive myself. Yes, you can, but even that's a little difficult sometimes, I think we have to admit. But the truth is, God's forgiveness is eternal. We can't create a home in heaven.
You can just go right down the list. And that's a few things that you and I should be thankful for, and we had nothing to do with any of it. The only thing we did is position ourselves by surrendering to Jesus Christ as our personal Savior.
And you know what? All of those things became a living reality in our lives. And think about the fact that God, in His grace and love and mercy, for some reason, somehow in His providential will, He's chosen for many of us to have a copy, an entire copy of the Word of God. When I think about all the things that God does for you and me every single day, He's the one who keeps your heart beating. He placed within you a subconscious mind. This awesome something inside of us that keeps the heart beating, the blood flowing, the eyes seeing and the ear hearing and the movements and all the things. Everything God has made this awesome, fantastic body of ours. And atop all that often is to be saved and have Him living on the inside of us in the promise of heaven, the promise of Your presence, promise of all the needs being met and our prayers being answered.
Wow! What kind of God is that? He is a God for which you and I should be absolutely eternally grateful. And so, when the Scripture says in our passage here, in this hundredth Psalm, Shout joyfully to the Lord all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before Him with joyful singing. The Lord Himself, He's God.
In other words, when people drag in the church, there's something wrong. When you think about coming into the Lord's house and with all this fantastic music and singing and praising the Lord God, is it any wonder that any of us can sit down while we sing? This awesome God of ours, what does it take to create a heart of thanksgiving?
And that's what I want us to think about. All of those things is what God is doing. Should you and I not be so grateful to Him? We couldn't even think about living a single day without praising Him in some fashion. Whether it's in prayer, whether it's singing.
How many of you sing in the shower? Because you wake up in the morning and you get in the shower and the water feels good. Then why not start singing and thanking God for the day and the fact that you could get up and the fact that you have a life to live and work to do and something to accomplish in life. There are too many people who are not very grateful in life. Well, let's think about something.
Let's think about the scope of that and how it ought to penetrate every single area of our life. And notice what he says, for example, here, first of all, that our thanksgiving, our heart of gratitude should certainly permeate our worship. So, what was he saying?
He was simply saying in this passage. He says, Shout joyfully to the Lord, serve the Lord with gladness, enter His courts with praise and what? Enter His courts with praise and thanksgiving.
It certainly should be a part of our worship. If you'll think about in your singing, gratitude and thanksgiving, somebody says, I can't sing. Well, make a joyful noise.
What's that? That's the best you can be, best you can do. That's what a joyful noise is. And so, what happens? Our gratitude, our thanksgiving, it spills over into our music and the way we try to sing. Then, of course, in our prayers. Look, if you will, and you know this part probably by heart in Philippians the fourth chapter. Notice when he's talking about prayer and anxiety and so forth, listen to what he says in this fourth chapter in the sixth verse. He says, Don't be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer, supplication, with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. That is, thanksgiving should be a part of our prayer life. That any time we are talking to Him, first of all, to be grateful, to show our gratitude and express our thanksgiving. The same thing is true in our giving in second Corinthians.
Look at that ninth chapter for a moment. And Paul was also always adding thanksgiving in almost everything he was discussing. And here he says in this ninth chapter, he says in verse at twelve, For the ministry of this service is not only fully supplying the needs of the saints, but it's also overflowing through many thanksgivings to God. People who are giving to others in need with a grateful heart. And I would simply ask you when you give, do you give out of gratitude? Do you give because you're thankful to God? And because you see, somebody says, Well, I'm grateful.
And you know, here's the thing you have to remember. Gratitude is not really fully expressed simply because you say it. It's easy to say I'm thankful. But if I'm really and truly grateful, I'm going to find some other way to express it. I'm either going to give something to someone or I'm going to have some act toward them that shows my appreciation, my gratitude. It's easy to say I'm thankful, I'm grateful, thank you very much. But I believe that God wants us to express it in other ways, whatever the situation, the circumstance allows.
But we should be grateful and express that gratitude in some way. Then I think about this whole idea of remembering our friends and it's interesting in Paul's Epistles, he's thanking somebody and almost all of them except Galatians, and he came after them pretty strong because of their attitude and what was happening in their lives. And, but if you'll notice so many of the Epistles, he's thanking God for certain people. For example, he says in Philippians chapter one, Paul and Timothy bond servants of Christ Jesus. To all the saints in Christ Jesus, or in Philippi, including the overseers, grace to you and peace from God our Father, the Lord Jesus Christ.
I thank my God in all my remembrance of you. And he's continually saying that in some fashion or the other, thanking God for His friends. How many friends do you have to be grateful for? Well, if you have just one true, genuine friend that you can share your whole life with, you have something to be grateful for. But when you have four or five or six or seven friends or whatever, I'm talking about, I don't mean those on the outer circle, I mean genuine, intimate friends with whom you can trust yourself, with whom you can trust your most confident information.
A person that you can rely upon, loyal, faithful, and devoted to you. Can you, how many of those kind of friends do you have? Well, certainly we should show gratitude and be grateful. And the truth is, if you go through here and see what Paul said, when he comes to that fourth chapter of Colossians, he just names a whole bunch of his friends.
Why? He was grateful for them. And you see, the truth is, in my relationships to others, my thankful heart is going to be expressing itself, whether it's in my worship, whether it's in my giving, or simply in my friendships.
Because true, genuine friends are going to show themselves in many, many ways, and they're going to show their gratitude for us oftentimes. Thank you for listening to A Thankful Heart. For more inspirational messages like this one, visit our online 24-7 station. And if you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by intouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.
