A Heart of Gratitude

From the Salvation Army, you're listening to Wonderful Words of Life. Welcome back to Wonderful Words of Life, everybody.

I'm Bernie Dake. And I'm Sheryl Gillum. Sheryl, have I told you that I'm glad you're here?

You have, and thank you so much. We really try to make it a fun environment and if you ever get a chance to meet Sheryl, you'll know she's a lover of the Lord and she's fun to be around. This week, the Salvation Army officers, particularly in the Southern Territory, the candidate officers learn about their new appointments. How exciting. This will be the first time as pastors that they will go out into the field and practice what they've been learning the last two years, both at a seminary and sort of a vocational school to learn how to become a pastor and an administrator and a van driver and all of the things that you have to do as a Salvation Army officer.

Do you remember those days, Sheryl? I do remember those days and man, I remember feeling so overwhelmed, not knowing how it's all going to come together and thinking about not only picking up the kids and doing the programs but also the finances of the Salvation Army and how huge that is and just learning how to trust God day by day for everything that we needed. I cannot fathom how you go from just sort of maybe in some cases coming right out of college or just right out of practical life experience and taking over what could be a million dollar budget in a small community and having to learn to work with advisory organizations people and man, I commend all of you who have answered God's call in this way. It's a great moment but we have a good system in the Salvation Army of accountability and accounting and we have some of the best people on board.

Awesome. All right, so last week we started a new series on finance and we've been joined by Salvation Army officer Mike Harris. As we begin to discuss our finances last week, we started from the beginning. Where do our blessings come from in the first place? I think this is such a simple and crucial thing to remember and if we recognize that all we have is a gift as a result, then we can't help but have a heart of gratitude which leads us into today's discussion. I'm a grateful person. I'm the glasses half full person. I like to remember to thank God as often as I can for the blessings that he's bestowed upon us but when it comes to personal finances, I think sometimes we panic and you have that moment where you're not sure if everything's going to be okay.

I'm the same way. I feel like I'm full of gratitude as well but something about money, it's a need we have and yet God promises us in his word that everything that we need he will provide and so to have that attitude of gratitude is so important because somehow in the kingdom principle that releases God's hand of blessing upon us. Well earlier Mike and I were getting ready for this series and just talking through it as we were doing the recording and a great quote that I heard that Mike and I were discussing is how thankfulness goes a long way. Thankfulness leads to peace and peace is the enemy of stress.

So if when it comes to your finances you're feeling stressed out, the first piece of advice I'd like you to cling to is start from a place of gratitude and peace will come close behind. Colossians 3 15 says, let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts since as members of one body you were called to peace and be thankful. Remembering who God is first of all, right? He is our provider. He is all that we need. He has everything we need. So every provision that we have is from him and then remembering what he's done in the past. I mean has he ever really let us fall? No.

Not me. He hasn't. He says, will you will you do it again Lord? And the answer is yes, he will he will provide won't he do it.

We'd love to hear your thoughts on this topic. Whether you have a testimony to share or advice of your own to share with our listeners reach out to us. Send us an email at radio at uss.salvationarmy.org or call 1-800-229-9965. It really is a privilege in our second week to have a dear friend back major Mike Harris. You can call him Mike.

Please do. He is a father and he is a husband and I hope that we'll get to hear a little bit about your family not just in sermon illustrations, but perhaps our listeners would enjoy knowing a little bit more about who you have become but you're here over the series to share with us the idea of financial. I don't want to say freedom. We used the word peace last week and I think that's important for us to understand scripturally where that peace comes from, from the father above. Amen. Amen to that. Absolutely. So this week we want to focus on a heart of gratitude.

Help me understand where you want us to go with that Mike. Well I think as I think about gratitude I go back to 2 Corinthians chapter 9 where Paul says the Lord loves a cheerful giver. So what that says to me is that giving is an expression of what's in your heart. So I think that's really where I want to come from and being a Christian my giving and my heart is a response. It's a response to God and his provision to me and I think that's the avenue I want to take and at some point I'd like to talk about the story of Joseph. I think that's very helpful to illustrate the point I'm trying to make here.

Well I'll do my level best to remember that for our listeners of course. You use Psalm 107 8 and 9 in the notes that you sent us and for our listeners I just want to read that to them. Give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things. So in a sense what I'm hearing you maybe direct our thoughts towards is again with that peace that God will provide but it's not prosperity as we learned last week in the sense that we hear about becoming rich or having all of the things in life. When Jesus came to the earth in the form of man as God came in his son Jesus, he was basically a homeless carpenter, an itinerant preacher going around with 12 of his friends. Help me understand where you want us to go in the idea of the Psalm, the scripture that we've read from Psalms.

Well again it sort of talks about a sort of response doesn't it? Give thanks to God for his unfailing love and that word unfailing is a very significant word here because we can be guilty at tough times of questioning God but his love never fails, never fails and so if we have accepted Christ in our hearts we then become somewhat like him, we become people of love and so our giving is a response to that. I guess as I think back in my life and I'm thinking of a particular individual here, I remember this family that were cast upon hard times, things were very difficult and they were people of faith and it really was tough. They had to basically to get provisions to get food, they had to rely on wick and they had to rely on welfare and I remember them sort of talking about how they wanted to get out of this but what happened while they were in this period of time was they really prayed a lot, they got close to God and somehow God always provided, they got through this particular time.

Now fast forward, I'm talking about another 20 years later, they're actually doing quite well, things are going well, spiritually they're not where they were. What does that story tell me? It tells me God wants us to rely upon him, when we pray give us this day our daily bread, that implies to me that this is a daily conversation we have with God, we're not saying provide for my future, we're not saying provide for my retirement, we're saying Lord give me this day our daily bread and so by keeping close to him we can better respond to him and therefore every day we're recognizing that God has provided and therefore every day we acknowledge him with a cheerful heart. That's good Mike, I love it when a preacher breaks those types of things down for us because I think we take for granted sometimes the things that we do out of tradition, I don't mean that in a negative way, I think there's wonderful traditions as Christians that we observe, but the Lord's Prayer as an example, I don't think I've ever thought that when you say give us this day, that we're stopping, we're saying today, Lord give what I need today for today, I appreciate that, I'm grateful for that idea. Well thankfulness can go a long way, we want to be cheerful in our giving, but in some of the things that we want our listeners to hear, thankfulness leads to peace and peace is the enemy of stress.

This is where we bring Joseph in, so you know the story of Joseph, the favored son of Jacob who was cast into a position of servitude, first of all with Potiphar and yet his ability, his skills allowed Potiphar's house to flourish, why because Joseph was a great steward, not a lot of things, steward by nature is management of other people's resources, so Potiphar flourished because of Joseph, then when Joseph was very unfairly put into jail, the jail flourished if you read it because the jailer recognized you put Joseph in charge, and then of course through a series of miracles that pertain to dreams of Pharaoh, Joseph was then cast into this position of enormous power and of enormous responsibility, second only to Pharaoh in this powerful country, and so I want to jump ahead in the story of Joseph to a chapter we rarely look at and I've rarely heard preached on, and that's Genesis 47, because this is what happened in Egypt once Joseph had taken power, because you recall the story is that the dreams told Pharaoh he was going to have seven years of plenty, there will be so much food, it will be coming out their ears and that would be followed by seven years of awful famine, and Joseph's idea was let's take 20% of everything that we grow in the seven years of plenty, let's store it and store it and store it so that we have what we need in the seven years of famine, so the famine hits the world, it's Egypt, it's Canaan, and so people of course needed to survive, and they knew there was food in Egypt, so they came from all over to Egypt to buy food, simply to survive until all their money had gone, and Genesis 47 tells you this, they lost all their money, and the people said what do we do now, we've got no money left, and Joseph said well you have livestock, you have cattle, you have sheep, we'll swap food for that, we'll give you grain for that, so people brought all their livestock, and all the livestock was gone, and so the people said we've got no money, we've got no livestock, but we still need to live, Joseph said well you've got land, bring the deeds, bring the deeds to your land, we'll swap that for food, and so the people brought the deeds to their land, to Joseph, so the people had given up all of their money, I mean Pharaoh had all the money, had all the livestock, had all the land, you wonder how Egypt became so powerful, this is hell, and then when the famine was over, the people were now in servitude, Joseph said here's some seeds, go back to the land that you're living on, it belongs to Pharaoh, but go ahead and use it, plant the seed, give 20% back to Pharaoh, the rest of it for yours to live on, and the response of the people was this, thank you, thank you, they'd lost everything, but the response was thank you, why? Because you saved our lives, spiritualize that, what did Jesus do for us? He saved our lives, our eternity is in him, therefore we shouldn't care about anything that we lose down here, because our response to him should be gratitude, gratitude for saving our lives. Now we're not storing up our treasures in Egypt, we're storing up our treasures in heaven, amen?

Amen to that. I want to encourage our listeners to consider that very idea, to trust in God, and be thankful. The Salvation Army's mission, Doing the Most Good, means helping people with material and spiritual needs. You become a part of this mission every time you give to the Salvation Army. Visit salvationarmyusa.org to offer your support, and we would love to hear from you. Email us at radio at uss.salvationarmy.org. Call 1-800-229-9965, or write us at P.O.

Box 29972, Atlanta, Georgia, 30359. When you contact us, we'll send you our gift for this series. It's totally free for listeners like you, one per household, while supplies last. You can also subscribe to our show on iTunes or your favorite podcast store, and be sure to give us a rating. Just search for Wonderful Words of Life. Follow us on social media for the latest episodes, extended interviews, and more. And if you don't have a church home, we invite you to visit your local Salvation Army worship center. They'll be glad to see you. This is Bernie Dake, inviting you to join us next time for the Salvation Army's Wonderful Words of Life.