There's a common trait among those we consider to be spirit-filled. a quality that clearly exhibits God's work in their life. Is it evident in your life? Today, on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah continues his look at this quality.
and how to cultivate it in your heart.
so that others will know you're fully surrendered to God. To introduce the conclusion of his message, the best evidence of the Spirit, here's David. I remember as a young man. Thinking about the kind of man I would like to be when I would get to the age where I am now. And I remember thinking, I don't want to be a grumpy old man.
I want to be a gracious, godly man. And part of that formula is to have a spirit of gratitude for all that God has done for you. If you've walked with the Lord for very long, you know. He is good. And His bounties are amazing.
Every good gift and every perfect gift comes from Him. And to live your life in a way that reflects anything other than pure gratitude is to be wrong. I see it so often in my contemporaries, and I ask God to check it in my own life. I don't ever want to be ungrateful. And I am so thankful for his goodness.
I hope you share that same evidence of the Holy Spirit in your life. We're going to talk more about that today on the Friday edition of Turning Point. Hey, let me give you the little Friday speech up front instead of at the end. You've got to get to church this weekend. One of the ways you show gratitude to God is being obedient to His Word.
For He said, Don't forsake the assembling of yourselves together as the manner of some is. But so much the more as you see the day approaching. In other words, as you sense that God's purposes are being brought together toward the end of the age, you should go to church more than ever before. Be with God's people. Don't lose out on the fellowship of the church.
I say this to you almost every Friday.
Some of you listen and some of you don't. I'm going to keep saying it because I know how important it is. Today we finish up what we started yesterday on the subject of gratitude. born out of being filled with the Spirit, is the spirit of giving thanks. Let's look at it again, starting now.
Yeah. Mm. William Law, writing in the 18th century, made a very good point when he said. Would you like to know who is the greatest saint in the world? It isn't he who prays most or fasts most.
It isn't he who gives most, but it is he who is always thankful to God. who receives everything as an instrument of God's goodness. and has a heart always ready to praise God for it. Think of that, the greatest saint. is the one who is always thankful.
Ephesians 5 says that when you are controlled by the Spirit, Thanksgiving will be the result. You will have a spirit of thanksgiving. Always giving thanks, it says. Here's the second verse. A spirit-filled Christian is committed to the Word of God.
And gratitude is the result. If you go over to the book of Colossians, you will see a passage of scripture That looks very familiar to the one in Ephesians. It's almost word for word until you get to one place in it. Here's what it says. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.
And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus. Giving thanks to God the Father through him. You say, that sounds just like Ephesians.
Well, it's almost like Ephesians, except in Ephesians, we're told, if we're filled with the Spirit of God, we'll be thankful. In Colossians, we're told, if we're filled with the word of God, we'll be thankful. Did you notice the change? In Ephesians, it's one thing. In Colossians, it's another.
And what Paul is teaching us in Colossians is that when the Bible is a Special part of our lives when we read the scripture, when we listen to scriptural things, when we fill our hearts with scriptural truth. The result of that will ultimately be that we become thankful people. It's the instrument God uses to change us and conform us into the image of our Lord. Paul is saying that when you spend time as a spirit-filled Christian reading the Bible, You will come out of that experience grateful. Just like the passage we read in Psalm 103.
You can't read that passage without being thankful for all that God has done. I once heard a pastor say, you can often tell what part of the Bible a person has been reading by how they pray. He explained that when someone prays in an anxious and worried tone, They probably have not been reading God's promises. God's promises remind us that he will always take care of us like a good father. When someone sounds resentful and hard-hearted in prayer, He would say they probably skipped the Psalms.
Because the Psalms soften our hearts. and remind us to praise the Lord. But when a person prays with a warm and thankful spirit, He would smile and say, they must have been studying the gospel. The gospel shows us what Jesus has done for us. And when we see that clearly, our hearts are filled with thanksgiving.
So here's the first two. A spirit-filled Christian is controlled by the spirit. and gratitude is the result. A spirit-filled Christian is committed to the Bible. And gratitude is the result.
Here's the third one in Colossians chapter 3. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts. to which also you were called in one body, And be thankful. When a person is characterized by peace, the result is exactly the same as a person who's controlled by the Holy Spirit. and a person who's committed to the Word of God.
He will be filled with thanksgiving. Peace is one aspect of the fruit of the Spirit.
So if we are filled with the Spirit, peace will be part of the manifestation of His presence in our lives. And everywhere Paul talks about peace, He talks in the same context. about Thanksgiving, I haven't been able to find one place where that is not true. The Spirit plus the Word plus peace. all surrounded by an attitude of gratitude.
I have to laugh when I think back to my early days as a pastor. and some of my frustration with the Apostle Paul. I used to get frustrated with him. I would be studying my way through one of his epistles. caught up in what a clear, orderly, logical teacher he is.
Then all of a sudden he would seem to launch himself into an idea that was off the topic. And I would say to myself, Paul, I know a rabbit trail. When I see one, that's a rabbit trail. That's not on the subject at all. I finally realized something about these rabbit trails.
Whenever Paul did those quick turns in the text and seemed to head down a different track, it was always because he was overcome with a sense of gratitude to God. For what he had done for him. He would come to a place in his teaching and his reasoning where the reality of what the Spirit of God was leading him to say would suddenly overwhelm him. He couldn't go on to the next point until he had a little praise party, giving thanks to the Lord for His wisdom and long-suffering and mercy. Logic, I discovered, isn't everything.
It has to leave room for praise. Praise to God. for his peace. As you enjoy the peace that wells up in your heart and floods the landscape of your life. you will be filled with gratitude.
you will be filled with thanksgiving. Here's number four. A spirit-filled Christian is constantly in prayer. and gratitude is the result. Philippians 4, 6 says, Be anxious for nothing.
But in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. Let your requests be made known to God. A lot of people read this verse like this. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication and thanksgiving. But the word before thanksgiving isn't and.
It is the word with, and you say, Pastor, what difference does that make? Listen to me. Don't overlook that difference. It's so important. The with in this verse means that whether it is prayer or supplication or any other kind of praying to God, it is always to be mixed with.
Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving belongs to all the properties of prayer. When you are asking God for something, it's always with thanksgiving. When you are praising God for something, it is always with thanksgiving. When you are interceding for someone else, it is always with thanksgiving.
The Bible teaches and Paul teaches in Philippians, thanksgiving is the inevitable companion of every prayer you ever pray. You should never pray without thanksgiving. When you're a watchman on the wall for your church or for your family or for your nation, Don't forget that with all those requests, All of them should be mixed and blended generously with thanksgiving to God. For all he has done. Ruth Graham once wrote about waking at three in the morning.
while she was overseas. She was exhausted when all of a sudden the name of a loved one who was running from God hit her with fear. She began to pray, and her mind kept circling the problems. Then she said, I sense the Lord say to me, quit studying the problems and start studying the promises. She turned on the light, opened her Bible, and the first verse she saw was Philippians 4:6.
With thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God. She realized she'd been pleading without thanking, so she began to thank God for his faithfulness, his wisdom, and for the person she loved so much. And she said, you know what happened? It was as if suddenly someone turned on the lights in my mind, and heart, and soul. And the little fears and worries, which, like mice and cockroaches, had been nibbling away in the darkness.
suddenly scuttled for cover. In Philippians 4, 6, Paul seems to be mentioning several kinds of prayer, but he focuses in on one kind of response. And that is the response of gratitude. It is to be present in all of our prayers. No matter what the content may be.
Just make sure when you say, Dear Heavenly Father, The next words are thank you. That's how God teaches us to pray.
So there are four of the five. But this last one is so powerful that if all I had time to preach was one of them. This is the one I would preach. Because this is overwhelming and I'm telling you friends. It's a verse of scripture you can't deny.
And some of you are going to wish you hadn't heard this verse after you hear it. because it is so clear and so absolute. People ask me over the years, how do you know the will of God for your life? And it's a legitimate question, and we should always be pursuing a knowledge of God's will. But there are some things we already know that are the will of God.
How many of you know that if you read the Bible carefully, you will find passages of Scripture where the Bible just says, do this. No options, no opportunities to do anything else. This is God's will for your life. Don't forget it. Don't stop doing it.
If you're not doing it, start doing it, right? 1 Thessalonians 5.18. In everything, give thanks. For this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. What part of that don't we get?
One of the undeniable parts of God's will for every single Christian is in this verse. Giving thanks is the will of God in Christ Jesus. for you and for me. Could anything be any clearer than that? And the contrary aspect of God's will is just as clear.
And this is a little bit Touch ye and if this bothers you, good. If you're not grateful, You are out of the will of God. That means complaining, grumbling, pessimism, despair, these are all out of the will of God. If it is the will of God to give thanks, then we're out of the will of God if we don't do it. Let me show you how powerfully this is taught in God's Word.
Do you remember in Romans chapter 1 at the beginning of the book there's a pretty Awesome passage about the disintegration of the world. what's going on and Paul writes about this. Here in Scripture, he sets the scene. He adds these words. Because although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God.
nor were thankful. But became futile in their thoughts and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools. Paul told the Romans: Let me tell you what happens to a culture that rejects God. They had down, down, down, and one of the evidences of their decadence is the rebellion against God and their lack of gratitude.
We are living in a culture like that right now. Can I get a witness? That's at the beginning of the process of the disintegration of a culture. But let me tell you what it's going to be like at the end. Paul wrote to his young friend in the ministry, and he said, Timothy, Let me tell you what it's going to be like just before Jesus comes back.
Let me describe to you how decadent that society is going to be in those days before he returns, which many people think we're beginning to see even now. 2 Timothy 3 says, But know this, that in the last days, perilous times will come. For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money. boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, Unthankful, unholy. Ingratitude travels in some pretty bad company, doesn't it?
Ingratitude is comfortable with all the sins listed in these verses. But when you are controlled by the Spirit of God, gratitude will start to exude from your life. It may even catch you by surprise. It will certainly catch others by surprise when they notice your change in attitude. Let me tell you something that I discovered.
Being thankful is not natural. It's supernatural. You have to have God's help in that if you're going to live that way.
So it is the supernatural evidence of the Spirit of God at work in your life. Let me tell you something else. Gratitude is the will of God for everyone. but it is also the will of God in everything. Once again, 1 Thessalonians 5.18, in everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
Dr. Lee Sulk was a child psychologist and a professor of pediatrics. at New York's Cornell University. He often referred to his mother's experiences growing up in Russia. She said, as a girl, she was driven from her home by the Cossacks.
They burned the village to the ground and she fled for her life, hiding in hay wagons and huddling in ditches. Eventually, she crowded into a ship's hold and crossed the sea to America. Dr. Sulk wrote, Even after my mother married and her sons were born, it was still a struggle to keep food on the table. But my mother urged us to think about what we had.
Not what we didn't have. She taught us that in hardship you develop a capacity to appreciate the beauty that exists in the simplest elements of life. Paul was the same way. He was the kind of man who practiced what he preached in everything. He was grateful.
We know that because he reveals himself in the letters that he wrote. He abounds with the evidence of a grateful heart. In fact, I'm convinced that one of the keys to the greatness of Paul was the fact that he cultivated and evidenced a grateful heart. While the expressions of gratitude are found in all of his epistles, The mention of thanksgiving itself Is more profound in the four letters that Paul wrote while he was in prison. The prison epistles, we call them.
They are Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. Gratitude is mentioned twenty times in these little letters. We would expect the expression of gratitude from the palace, but not from the prison. The fact is, Paul was far more acquainted with prisons than he was with palaces. When he finally did get to the palace, he was there under the arrest of the Roman government.
Yet here he is giving thanks.
Sometimes people say to me, Dr. Jeremiah, I know I should be thankful. But you don't know what's going on in my life right now. This has been a killer of a year. And I'm just not in a grateful mood.
I want to remind you that the man who wrote these letters permeated with thanksgiving. and he had a killer of a life. He was stoned at Lystra, driven out of Thessalonica, rejected by the Athenians, jailed by the Philippians, apprehended by the Caesareans, taken to Rome as a prisoner, shipwrecked on the way, released from prison, sent back to prison, placed in a dungeon in Rome, and finally martyred for his faith. That's what you call a killer of a life. But he was thankful.
He was a thankful man. How can you have a spirit like that? How do you explain it? The only way you can explain it is the indwelling Holy Spirit who helps you to live in a way that's beyond your ability. That's the only explanation I have.
The Holy Spirit comes to create within you that which is inexplainable in any other terms. As we close. These thoughts about Thanksgiving. I want to remind you that gratitude is not just a feeling. Gratitude's a choice.
You don't have to wait for life to be perfect to start being thankful. You can start today. This week, I read about a woman named Barbara Ann Kipfer, who, as a very shy teenager, decided to make a list of all her favorite things. Before long, adding to the list became second nature, so she would write about it in the bus. She would write about it while she was eating breakfast.
Even in the middle of the night, she would get up and add one more item. Twenty years and dozens of spiral notes later, Her list became a major book title, 14,000 Things to Be Happy About. Senator Richard Neuberger once wrote about his experience with cancer and how it changed him. He said, A change came over me which I believe is irreversible. Questions about prestige or political success or financial status all at once became totally unimportant to me.
In their stead has come a new appreciation of things that I once took for granted: eating lunch with a friend, scratching Muffet's ears. listening for his purr. The company of my wife, reading a book or a magazine in the quiet cone of my bed late at night. rating the refrigerator for a glass of orange juice or a slice of coffee cake. For the first time.
He said, I think I am actually savoring life. I shudder when I remember all the occasions that I spoiled for myself, even when I was in the best of health, by false pride, synthetic values, and fancied slights. Henry Nguyen said it the same way. Where there is a reason for gratitude, he wrote, there can always be found a reason for bitterness. It is here that we are faced with the freedom to make a decision.
We can decide to be grateful. Or we can decide to be bitter. It's up to us. Nobody else can make that choice. We must make that choice.
Dale Carnegie used to recommend to people who came to his seminars. that they take on a pencil and paper. And take a few moments and make a list. of every good thing in their life. He said, Then in your mind, Imagine that each one of those things has been taken away.
and then imagine what life would be like without them. When they had fully realized the emptiness, They were to gradually give those things back to themselves one at a time. counting their blessings and being thankful. What an exercise. Make a list of everything that is good in your life and then one by one take them away.
Then give them back to yourself with a spirit of thanksgiving. The psalmist wrote these words: It is good to give thanks to the Lord. And to sing praises to His name, O Most High, to declare your lovingkindness in the morning and your faithfulness every night. The Bible says in the Old Testament that our days are morning and evening. and the morning and the evening were the first day.
And let me tell you what I know and what you all know. Those are the times when you need gratitude in your life the most. before you go to sleep at night. and the first thing when you wake up in the morning. You can cultivate the habit of always going to sleep with a grateful heart.
and waking up with a Bible verse or a thought. And being thankful from the beginning of the day, it will change everything about you, and you won't have to tell anybody about it because they'll say, What is wrong with that guy? What is the matter with him?
So I ask you today, will you make that choice? The Bible tells us very clearly that that is God's will for us. That's what He wants. He wants us to be grateful people. I shudder at the times when people have done things for me and I haven't said thank you.
In fact, there's no way I could ever say thank you to everybody who sent me cards and messages and said kind things to me. But for all of you who have done that, thank you for doing it. It meant so much to me. And for those who have had a personal relationship with me, I've said thank you over and over again. How grateful I am to be God's person, even in the midst of all of this, because it has helped me realize what an incredible people.
I have the privilege of serving. Let's be thankful. Let's don't turn to be mean-spirited and ugly. Let's look for ways to reach out to those who have touched us and touch them back with a thank you. And then most of all, let's give thanks to God.
who's given us so much. You know, one of the things that I worry about sometimes in the right way is that. I get so much mail from so many people from all over the world. I wish I could sit down and say thank you to everybody who writes me a note. I know I can't do that.
And sometimes I think, what do I do except to say to all of you who've been so good to us as a couple, to me as an individual, thank you for all your goodness. Thank you for your grace. Thank you for your gratitude. Thank you for your encouragement. Thank you for your prayers.
Thank you for your support. We are so grateful for all of you. And we can't always express it the way we'd like, but there is in our heart this spirit of gratitude for the many people who make Turning Point what it is today.
So Hear me, hear me well. We love you and we thank you and God bless you. We will see you again on Monday as we end up this series on Monday and Tuesday with when the Holy Spirit. controls your life. The message you've just heard originated from Shadow Mountain Community Church and senior pastor Dr.
David Jeremiah. Turning Point is also on radio and TV this weekend. To learn where you can find it, visit our website davidjeremiah.org/slash radio. That's davidjeremiah.org slash radio or call 800-947-1993. Ask for your copy of David's new book, The Holy Spirit You May Not Know, a valuable resource that's yours for a gift of any amount.
You can also purchase the Jeremiah Study Bible in the English Standard, New International and New King James Versions, complete with notes and articles from Dr. Jeremiah's decades of study. Let us know how God is using this ministry by dropping us a note to Turning Point, P.O. Box 3838, San Diego, California, 92163. This is David Michael Jeremiah.
Join us Monday as we continue the Holy Spirit You May Not Know on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah.
