...together

Hello and Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I am so glad to be with you today. My name is Valerie. I'm one of the pastors on staff and I have missed seeing your faces. I've been able to see a few of you at our outdoor service and I love that. I've interacted with some of you online during a service and that's great and I absolutely love the virtual lobby at the end of the service. But you know what? Like you, I miss our normal. I miss seeing you in our actual lobby. I miss seeing you in your pew. I tell you I am so grateful for you. This church and that means you are a huge source of blessing in my life.

Well how was your Thanksgiving? If your Thanksgiving was anything like mine, it was slightly different than normal. I usually travel up to Oregon to see my sister but that didn't seem wise this year. So like a lot of people, we adjusted and you know what? It worked out fine. We FaceTimed on Wednesday when we were getting our food together and then on Thursday we FaceTimed while we were cooking and we even ate together over FaceTime and it was great. We were still able to have kind of our rambling conversations and as the older sibling I was still able to tell her what to do. We had football on in the background and we had good food and we have so many reasons to be thankful don't we?

You know what? Why don't we start out by telling each other what we are thankful for? Like Mark already challenged us to do, just take a moment and type in the comments what is one thing that you are thankful for today and let's encourage each other as we get started on this sermon.

You know in the last two and a half months I have four friends who have either been in a car accident or have almost been in a car accident. Two of them it was whoo dodged the accident at the last minute and nothing went wrong. Two of them the car flipped literally. Now we all know how to give thanks when we dodged the accident at the last second. If you've ever been in that situation you know you're pretty much on repeat saying oh thank God thank you God thank you God but how do we give thanks when the car flips? How do we give thanks when we're hanging upside down wondering how hurt am I gonna be physically? How hurt am I gonna be financially? And if you've ever been in that situation you know there's an emotional toll. There's this cringe that follows you for a while whenever a car gets too close.

You know there are 925 families in our county who had the car flip during the CZU lightning fires. They lost everything. Every week in our church office we see 16 to 20 families come in needing assistance because the financial car in their life has flipped over. Maybe that's you today. I cannot even begin to count the number of folks. Honestly it's probably all of us who've had our mental health flip in this season. It may have been just a slow rollover of anxiety or edginess or sleeplessness or worry something like that or it may have been an explosion of a mental health crisis but we feel flipped. And I think every one of us I know for me we've had some relational car rollovers in this season. How do we handle COVID? It's created tension. What do we do with the very right and needed racial reckoning in our country? And then let's throw an election on top of it all and friendships and families are fractured. The car has flipped.

So how do we give thanks? How do we give thanks when we feel like a part of our life or all of our life has been turned upside down? Thanks living. It's the name of the little mini-series we are in talking about gratitude and thanks in this season. If you have your Bibles nearby why don't you grab them? Open up to Colossians 3. You can download the sermon notes at TLC.org/notes. You can open them up on your TLC app. All the verses that you need will be there and today we're gonna focus on verses 15 through 17.

Now in context these three verses are part of a chapter where the Apostle Paul who's the writer of Colossians is instructing the church and by extension you and I what it means to live like someone who follows Jesus. If you ever wonder how do I follow Jesus in my daily life and my decisions read Colossians 3. There is an absolute lifetime of pursuit in this one chapter. But let me read our three verses for you that we'll be focusing on today starting in 15. "And let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts for as members of one body you are called to live in peace and always be thankful. Let the message about Christ in all its richness fill your lives teach and counsel each other with all the wisdom he gives sing psalms hymns and spiritual songs to God with thankful hearts and whatever you do or say do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus giving thanks through him to God the Father."

Three verses and three calls to be thankful. Now to help set this up I want to point out two things really quickly. Primarily when you see these words in this verse and these calls to thankfulness they are a group activity. It's not you alone it's you together. If we were in the South right now we would be saying these verses are y'all and you know throughout the New Testament the church and the Christian life are really described more frequently in terms of we and not me and the most common metaphor for the church is that of a body. We see it in this passage one body with Christ as the head so that job's taken everybody don't go after that one but we have many parts and we need all these parts to function together.

We can't have you know a toe and a kidney and a nose running off trying to do things on their own it won't work for them and it won't work for us. When the car flips we need each other we are better together that's why I call this thanks living together. And secondly each of these calls to thankfulness that we see in this passage have a connection to something bigger and I love that because I think if we are daily going to live lives of thankfulness and have some integrity to that thankfulness even when the car flips we need to know that it is rooted in something that it flows from something much bigger than ourselves and much more lasting than our own efforts.

So let's dive into this passage how do we give thanks when we feel like life is flipped? Back to verse 15 and let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts for as members of one body you are called to live in peace and always be thankful. First in this passage we see that thankfulness flows from peace. Thankfulness flowing from peace and I'm gonna spend some time on the peace part of it this morning because if we're gonna understand that command always be thankful we need to first understand about this peace. Paul starts out and says let the peace that comes from Christ. The most important the biggest peace that we have in our lives comes through Christ and this is a huge theme of the Apostle Pauls. Romans 5:1 says that we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us.

You can have peace with the God of the universe because of the completely done finished on the cross work of Jesus Christ and Paul says that this peace we have in Christ is to rule in our hearts and the word translated here rule isn't so much like a king or a queen reigning it's a word that describes the role of an umpire. In other Greek literature the word is used surrounding games or sporting events to identify the one who has the final word on victory. Let the peace of God call the balls and strikes in your life. You know and there may be times when you don't like the call the umpire makes. There may be times when like a mad manager you stomp out onto that field and you throw your hat and you kick dust and you throw the bases and you yell and scream and you know what like Adrian said last weekend you can be honest with God that's okay but when you are done yelling and you are done screaming we need to let the peace we have with Christ be the umpire.

It needs to have the final word in our life and then Paul goes on to say for his members of one body you are called to live in peace and you know what I think the order in this verse is important and gracious. We have to start with the peace we have with God before we go on to peace with others that's a really important order we need the storehouse of the peace we have with God in order to live at peace with others. Have you ever had an illness where it feels like your body is at war with other parts of your body it's awful all you can think about is I want peace well it's the same with the church we are members of one body and it goes best when we choose to live at peace with each other and you may be thinking well that's great I agree Val completely but have you seen 2020 peace is not exactly going to be the word of the year this year but even in this year we you and I we are still members of one body and we are called to live in peace and this is not a passive peace God took action to have peace with us he sent his only son from heaven to earth as a baby we heard that in the Advent reading this morning Jesus went to the cross to purchase our peace.

Listen to how the Apostle Paul describes it in Ephesians 2 he says for Christ himself has brought peace to us he united Jews and Gentiles into one people when in his own body on the cross he broke down the wall of hostility that separated us there is nothing passive about that and the peace we have with each other isn't passive we don't step back we lean in we choose unity over uniformity it means we're humble in our dealings with each other it means we pursue peace over our own rightness we let the peace of God be the umpire and from the stability of this peace thankfulness overflows that's why Paul can then say to us and always be thankful always be thankful it has the idea of an ongoing project be becoming thankful would be almost a literal translation like the house remodel that never ends which I believe is most house remodels in general becoming thankful is an ongoing project in our lives and as we daily give thanks as those thanks muscles grow stronger we become thankful people.

The practice becomes the posture the practice of thankfulness becomes the posture of thankfulness in our lives you know my dad passed away almost exactly a year ago now and he would be the first to tell you that he was not perfect but one thing that my dad did very well was build into his life a practice of thankfulness that really became his posture to the very end dad never ceased to say thank you kid when my sister or I did just the littlest thing for him and whenever he was in the hospital or the few times he needed to be in a care facility to recover he always said thank you to anyone who came in to help him to bring him something to tell him something always always said thank you and I literally in my whole life never saw my dad neglect a prayer of thanks at a meal it could have been jello in the hospital and I saw it happen but he said thank you.

His physical car was flipped but he had built into his life a habit of thanks that many times a day lifted his eyes up towards heaven he reminded himself in that thanks of the peace he had with God and that settled peace flowed into his relationships the nurses and the aides that encountered him loved him and it even strengthened our relationship in the final years of his life do you have a relationship that feels like it's lacking peace today it's flipped remember the peace that you have with God and let thankful thankfulness flow into your relationships thankfulness flowing from and feeding peace in your life and second in this passage we see that thankfulness flows from grace the Apostle Paul is not gonna wander far from Jesus in verse 15 he took it was peace with Christ and now he's going to talk about what we have in Christ the good news the gospel the amazing grace that we have because of Jesus look at verse 16 he says let the message about Christ in all of its richness fill your lives teach and counsel each other with all the wisdom he gives sing Psalms hymns and spiritual songs to God with thankful hearts.

Nothing gets rid of in gratitude discontentment unhappiness in our lives like grace and you can hear I just love it because you can hear Paul's love for grace he's wooing us he's calling us in look at this he says let it in all of its richness fill your lives for Paul this is not a stale story this isn't some kind of Sunday School answer Jesus this is something that he feels like there are depths to mine and oceans to fill when it comes to talking about the grace the goodness of God towards you towards me towards us together and he says let this richness overwhelm and fill your lives and flow into your relationships he goes on and he says teach and counsel each other with all the wisdom he gives.

Now notice teaching and counseling come after the reminder of God's grace you know we as humans love to jump to the part of the verse that says oh good we get to tell somebody what to do right now but teaching counseling admonishing is how it's translated in some other versions should flow from only a deep deep reservoir of grace and the wisdom that God gives not our own brilliance it's each other this is given receive we not only teach and counsel each other we are willing to be taught and counseled it's y'all and then Paul goes on to say sing songs hymns and spiritual songs to God with thankful hearts there's no secret knowledge in those words it just means it's awesome that we have all these ways that we can worship God that we can give thanks for his amazing grace.

It's important that we understand that when we worship God in song in story it is a way to feed a thankful heart and again it's all of us we're in this together and I think that's so important because when life flips we need people to sing Psalms hymns and spiritual songs with us sometimes when life flips we need people to sing Psalms hymns and spiritual songs for us you know I miss this in our time together I miss hearing your voices together because there are times when I'm sitting down in that front pew and maybe I'm going through a time where I feel like a car is flipped in my life or maybe a song reminds me of that time and my voice kind of drops out with emotion but I still hear you all singing and your Psalms hymns and spiritual songs create a thankful heart in me my faith is buoyed by this body but I believe that even in this temporary situation that we serve a God that is so powerful he can take our songs in all our little spaces and knit them together into a beautiful choir that still creates thankful hearts.

You know Covid cannot stop Psalms hymns and spiritual songs isolation cannot stop our thankful hearts and I love the way the Apostle Paul just continues to make this connection look at how he describes it in 2 Corinthians 4:15 he says all of this and that's referring to the things he suffered and persevered is for your benefit let watch this as God's grace reaches more and more people there will be great thanksgiving and God will receive more and more glory grace thanksgiving worship it's all connected the more people here of God's grace the more we live God's grace the more there will be great thanksgiving.

I think a wonderful example of this is our food drive this year thousands of you responded in thankfulness and in our isolation God took an I gave and turned it into a we gave and the result reminds us that we are not alone and there has been great great thanksgiving and our community has 1.8 more 1.8 million meals more than they had before because of your generosity and this is what happens when we sing Psalms hymns and spiritual songs thanks generosity flows from grace we give not out of drudgery we give out of thanks for what God has done in our lives and we remind ourselves and we remind each other that even though this world is not like it's supposed to be things are definitely flipped it's okay because Jesus Christ is here God has come he has put flesh to our grace excuse me he has put flesh to his grace and that is the song we sing that is the song that produces thankful hearts.

And in the final verse this morning we're gonna see that Paul just goes big it's kind of like in case I forgot anything verse 17 and whatever you do or say do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus giving thanks through him to God the Father Paul is pulling in all the corners of our lives and he is saying that thanksgiving flows from purpose thanksgiving flows from our purpose as representatives of the Lord Jesus one of the things many have struggled with in this season is feeling like their purpose has been lost in all of this the purpose that we maybe had in our work or the purpose in a relationship or even just the purpose we all find in our daily rhythms our routines it's all been so altered and for many of us it feels like the pandemic has pushed us into survival mode and purpose is sort of a luxury item right now a casualty of the war.

But look at this verse again your purpose has not been flipped your circumstances may be flipped but you are a representative of the Lord Jesus everything you do whether you are with people or you are isolated right now everything you do everything you say has purpose and because Jesus is rock-solid your purpose is rock-solid and then flowing from this sense of purpose that cannot be moved Paul reminds us that thanksgiving is to be our companion in life why it's compelling it's so compelling when people live thankful lives as representatives of the Lord Jesus.

I want to give you a glimpse of this in action of y'all in action I want to show you from last Monday what happened at People's Pantry it was amazing so incredible you all gave so much that we were able to listen to this at People's Pantry feed 165 families that represents almost 500 people in just 90 minutes the volunteers work non-stop loading chickens and canned goods and bread and even pumpkin pie into cars there was even a place where people could stop and get prayer if they needed it.

This is compelling people are drawn to God when they see followers of Jesus thankfully living on purpose people let their guard down when gratitude flows when we as purpose-filled representatives can be thankful in all circumstances for this is God's will God's purpose for you who belong to Christ Jesus it's compelling it points people to Jesus and it reminds ourselves along the way that we are part of something much larger than ourselves you and I are part of the body of Christ.

So how do we give thanks when life flips these three verses remind us that while it is very good to be thankful for something it's very good to be thankful for the many things that God supplies I'm very thankful that my friends were not hurt in those car accidents but what's better and what's necessary is to have thanks that is rooted in someone in Jesus in a world where things flip God knows we need an unmovable an unflippable source for thankfulness and that's what we've seen in this passage today three calls for thankfulness that are all rooted in and flow from Christ.

Think about your life right now today most likely all of us feel like life is flipped in some way maybe for you it's a relationship or it's financial or it's your mental health but even in this moment thanksgiving can begin not necessarily for your circumstances but in our Savior in Jesus who is with us in those circumstances today I want to challenge you take that relationship take that mental health anxiety take whatever it is to God and ask him to fill you with that peace that grace that purpose in that specific area and then let thankfulness begin to flow from that and see what happens see what God does.

I love the way pastor Ashley island says it she says thanksgiving isn't an event it's a discipline of the faithful when we give thanks and weariness give thanks and loss give thanks for the ones we wish were near we are really proclaiming forth proof of hope for gratitude is a relentless witness to the life found in the dark thanksgiving thanks living rooted in the peace the grace the purpose Jesus gives us is proof of hope it's a relentless witness to life found even when the car has flipped.

Let's pray and let me start by saying if you have never settled in your life in your heart peace with God why not today right now you can say God I don't understand it all but I want peace with you and I believe that comes through your son Jesus I surrender to your grace and your purpose for me and Lord for those of us who in some area of life today feel like it's flipped would you be near please would you use the truth from your word today to overwhelm them with your peace with your grace with your purpose remind each person who is hearing my voice that they are not alone they are part of the body of Christ the church is here.

And Lord we lay before you today the many needs of our nation it feels like so many things have turned over we lay before you families the families of the 250,000 and more who have died from Covid the families of those grieving a loss because of the consequences of Covid Lord use this body of believers to be a blessing help us to live our purpose as your representatives to be light in our homes in our community in our nation in our world in Jesus name amen.