SPEAKER_01: Hey, I'm Pastor Steve Hole.
SPEAKER_01: I want to empower you today to walk in your true identity as a worshiper and warrior.
SPEAKER_01: Embrace the power of God's Word and the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Today, be encouraged with a word from my guest speaker.
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Born for War podcast.
SPEAKER_02: Opening with a Debbie Downer statement, so bear with me.
SPEAKER_02: But rage and anger are peaking in culture today.
SPEAKER_02: People are angry and road rage is prominent.
SPEAKER_02: We experience these symptoms driving around the streets of our beautiful city.
SPEAKER_02: My theory is that humanity was already suffering from some of that, and we went deeper in, and COVID revealed that post-COVID.
SPEAKER_02: I think something's been fractured in our humanity where just beneath the surface, interacting and encountering people, rage and anger are just at the very grasp, and sometimes often their initial response.
SPEAKER_02: But that's not the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_02: That's not what we have access to.
SPEAKER_02: And so today, I want to dig into habit number six in Steve's book, Breakthrough Courage, as we look at the art or practicing gratitude, the art or gift of living in thankfulness.
SPEAKER_02: There's something that is unlocked in the kingdom of God that accesses the joy that we desperately desire.
SPEAKER_02: But what do we do?
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I myself, and I'm just going to be vulnerable here, I mean, I myself have had moments on the road where my humanity has definitely come forth, and I don't know what that's about.
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, I'm not, you know, trying out for uh, you know, a race car position or anything like that.
SPEAKER_02: I'm not gonna be, you know, the next Dale Earnhardt Jr.
SPEAKER_02: or whatever that is.
SPEAKER_02: I don't even watch racing really, so I don't know.
SPEAKER_02: I know that guy used to be a racer.
SPEAKER_02: But um but yet I still think that I have power and control in my hands, and everybody should move aside for me when I'm on the road and just split like the waters in the Red Sea and let me through.
SPEAKER_02: And so pray for me as I pray for you.
SPEAKER_02: And if you see me on the road behaving that way, just kind of give me the blessing.
SPEAKER_02: And um, no, God's doing a work there for sure.
SPEAKER_02: But my daughter, I'm teaching her how to drive, my 15-year-old, and teaching her the ways.
SPEAKER_02: And so it's a reminder of you can't use it in that scenario where you say, do what I say, not what I do, because she's observing what I'm doing when I'm driving.
SPEAKER_02: So it's like I've got to, I've gotta be, I've gotta be the change, right?
SPEAKER_02: That I want to see her do.
SPEAKER_02: So um, but no, in all seriousness, um heavy hearts, because we were bringing Sophie into the retreat on Friday, and we're driving by the King Supers in Monument.
SPEAKER_02: And if you guys have been following the news, um looks turning out to be that it was a crime of passion.
SPEAKER_02: This guy shows up and and and murders this woman in the parking lot of King Supers and then drives off a distance some ways away, and then um suicides out himself.
SPEAKER_02: And there's this broken rift that we are dealing with in humanity.
SPEAKER_02: And they and humanity, like no other, needs a rescue from the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_02: And how do we get there?
SPEAKER_02: How do we get to that place where we are turning our lens, we're not taking in the filters of the air of the world around us, and we're practicing gratitude.
SPEAKER_02: Gratitude, in my opinion, is a superpower of the kingdom of God, and we all need to learn the art of practicing gratitude in our daily lives.
SPEAKER_02: If you're to look at the word grateful as an adjective, having a feeling of thankfulness or showing an appreciation of kindness, the emotion of being pleased and relieved.
SPEAKER_02: If you have your Bibles, please turn with me to 1 Thessalonians.
SPEAKER_02: We're going to be in chapter 5, and the seminal passage for this morning will be verse 18.
SPEAKER_02: Paul writing us here with a habit that we should give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
SPEAKER_02: My paraphrasing of Romans 6 23, when we look at habits in our lives, I changed it to this the wages of bad habits are bondage and death, but the wages of good habits are freedom and life when built with Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: Bad habits, by their very nature, seem to be acquired easily, while good habits bring challenge and resistance from within ourselves.
SPEAKER_02: Habit number six, practicing gratitude, is this the practice of gratitude is the habit of seeing God's grace in any situation.
SPEAKER_02: This is where we discover and unlock deeper understanding of God's heart for us, his immaculate, perfect, and unfailing love for his beloved.
SPEAKER_02: Whatever you're bringing in the room today, disappointment from the week, from the year, from yesterday, it's all welcome.
SPEAKER_02: It's all welcome because life is not perfect.
SPEAKER_02: Life is, hopefully, we're trying to find the balance as Christians that we're walking this out.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus Himself said that this life will be full of trial, struggle, that it will be hard.
SPEAKER_02: But then on the other side of that coin in his benevolence and love, through gratitude we can find joy.
SPEAKER_02: What I'm learning, church, is that a grateful heart is a free heart.
SPEAKER_02: An ungrateful heart is a heart that is bound.
SPEAKER_02: Gratitude will inevitably lead me to deep and pure freedom.
SPEAKER_02: Practicing the gift of gratitude is ultimately the gateway to the joy that I desire.
SPEAKER_02: It is ultimately the gateway to the joy that you desire.
SPEAKER_02: God made his beloved creation to live free.
SPEAKER_02: It is our response and answer at Wholehearted Men on Tuesdays to the challenge of whole heart.
SPEAKER_02: Come in in a Tuesday morning and you'll hear a challenge from the men, whole heart, by a singular person in the group, then would respond with live free.
SPEAKER_02: The idea is that we're cultivating a free heart.
SPEAKER_02: We're taking the words of Jesus hostage in our hearts from John 10 10, where he's challenging us to say, Listen, I have come to set the captives free.
SPEAKER_02: And then he gives us the narrative of the enemy, what the enemy is all about, and what the devil wants to do for us, which is ultimately to kill, to destroy, and tear us down.
SPEAKER_02: But he has come to set us free.
SPEAKER_02: And how do we live in freedom?
SPEAKER_02: If that is our goal, and it is definitely a principle of the road, and wholehearted men and women, we want our men and women living free.
SPEAKER_02: Gratitude is the key ingredient to experiencing the kind of freedom we're designed to live from.
SPEAKER_02: Living free, living to the full.
SPEAKER_02: It is what God created us to experience and what Jesus came to secure at the cross on our behalf.
SPEAKER_02: Turn with me to Philippians, if you would.
SPEAKER_02: To the left, we're going to be in verse, our chapter 4, verse 8.
SPEAKER_02: And Paul is going to give us some things to consider when we're doing our mental resume, when we're going through our mental dashboard as to how we maybe get to that place.
SPEAKER_02: If we're going to be thankful in all circumstances, then finding X to that equation is in Philippians 4.8.
SPEAKER_02: And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing.
SPEAKER_02: Fix your thoughts on what is true and honorable and right and pure and lovely and admirable.
SPEAKER_02: Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.
SPEAKER_02: There's a decision here.
SPEAKER_02: We can wake up, we can bring in yesterday that had its disappointments, its anxieties, and its stresses, and its failures and disappointments with us into today.
SPEAKER_02: Or we can start to renew our mind today and be in today only.
SPEAKER_02: The scripture says, live in today.
SPEAKER_02: Tomorrow has its own issues.
SPEAKER_02: We'll get to those tomorrow.
SPEAKER_02: So we're going to stay here now.
SPEAKER_02: We're in today.
SPEAKER_02: All of us are here.
SPEAKER_02: Everybody looks great.
SPEAKER_02: Good to see you all.
SPEAKER_02: I know I'm looking well.
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
SPEAKER_02: No, I'm kidding.
SPEAKER_02: Um, I'm kidding.
SPEAKER_02: I'm kidding.
SPEAKER_02: If my wife was here, she'd throw something at me for that.
SPEAKER_02: Um, but we're here.
SPEAKER_02: We're here in this moment, and we're gonna live in the now, and so how do we choose gratitude in that?
SPEAKER_02: And so we have to take, first of all, we have to acknowledge that the narrative of the culture through all the medias, the chats, the snaps, the grams, the books, which by the way, I hope all of you in my challenge last uh month to leave those aside and maybe fast from those in February is going well for you.
SPEAKER_02: I did, went well for me.
SPEAKER_02: I'm having a great experience, so much so that I'm actually taking that into March and staying off the snaps, the grams, and the books.
SPEAKER_02: Now, full disclosure, I don't have any of those counts anyways, so this isn't a hard thing to walk out.
SPEAKER_02: So, but I'm living pretty free because of it.
SPEAKER_02: I just invite you into that glory.
SPEAKER_02: Um, so with this, the narrative of the culture, if this is God's kingdom in front of us, to think on things that are true and honorable, right, pure, lovely, things that are excellent and worthy of praise, then the counter of God's kingdom, the enemy's camp, would be the exact opposite.
SPEAKER_02: Just replace those with antonyms.
SPEAKER_02: He wants to fill you with anxiety, stress, fear, worry, doubt, tear your identity down, put you in darkness, things that are decrepit and decaying.
SPEAKER_02: And so we have to make a mental shift and this decision in our minds to choose gratitude, to think on things that are good and pure and holy.
SPEAKER_02: Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.
SPEAKER_02: Some of you right now are being held hostage, even with the narrative from the enemy, who at this very moment is saying, There's nothing good in my life.
SPEAKER_02: Because you're obstructed from the view of something that's right in front of your face, that you're not allowed to look around the corner or see beyond that space that there actually are things that are good and holy.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, the fact that you walked into church today, you were not stopped on the way in, you were not harassed on the way in, you're able to carry your Bible openly and come into a place of worship is a great place to start.
SPEAKER_02: You can leave the doors today, and the first person you walk up to, you can say, Do you know the truth and glory and love of Jesus Christ and the cross of Calvary and the power that He wants to bring in your life?
SPEAKER_02: You can say that to somebody on the streets in America and not be put in prison.
SPEAKER_02: That is something to be grateful and thankful for, Church.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
SPEAKER_02: So this is kind of cool.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, we're gonna get into this.
SPEAKER_02: The root word of gratitude is the Latin word of gratis, which means free.
SPEAKER_02: And so, if gratitude and freedom are connected etymologically, wouldn't it make sense that the two are also connected spiritually as well?
SPEAKER_02: When we cultivate hearts bent towards seeing the good we've been given, it frees us from the sludge of negativity so we can experience true joy.
SPEAKER_02: And true joy, church, is the desire.
SPEAKER_02: Joy and the peace of God's kingdom is what is offered today, every day for us.
SPEAKER_02: Do we make the decisions intentionally to cultivate that?
SPEAKER_02: Or are we trying to cultivate and manufacture a synthetic joy, dealing with the sludge, dealing with the things that block us up, the arteries that should be flowing with God's kingdom, his blood, bringing us through and helping us experience true joy and the peace of God?
SPEAKER_02: Or the sludge that causes us to tap out, to medicate, self-medicate, and try to produce the synthetic joy which is fleeting, it's never lasting, and ultimately it takes us into a greater place of despair and a deeper pit and trap and enslavement with the enemy.
SPEAKER_02: There might be a purging process for us, and this requires an action of inward reflection to identify the sludge we're allowing to build up in our hearts and minds.
SPEAKER_02: This sludge, if left with undealt, will eventually take root in our hearts and bring the bondage and cause decay in all of us.
SPEAKER_02: The scripture says that we're to live from our hearts to protect it.
SPEAKER_02: It is the wellspring, but we let things creep in, the sludge, and it will ultimately cause decay in us, both physically, spiritually, physiologically.
SPEAKER_02: We all have the potential and the ability, enabled by Jesus, to live from a more grounded place of true freedom.
SPEAKER_02: God created us to be thankful and a joyful people.
SPEAKER_02: He formed us so intentionally that joy will only flourish in a soil rich with gratitude.
SPEAKER_02: In fact, without gratitude, we do not have the capacity for joy.
SPEAKER_02: You can't get there.
SPEAKER_02: And we know this to be true because we only have to look into the Old Testament and see just on the other side of Egypt, where the Israelites have just been freed from their bondage, they're not having to cultivate, hunt, or harvest.
SPEAKER_02: God is giving them the daily delivering, his faithfulness, right?
SPEAKER_02: He's giving them the daily bread of manna, he's giving them the daily quail, and when they need water, he cracks a rock and they give fresh water.
SPEAKER_02: Their needs are minimal.
SPEAKER_02: But yet what happens?
SPEAKER_02: Due to the lack of ungratefulness, due to lack of thankfulness among his people, because he designed them, he's thinking, like, I'm giving them all their basic needs.
SPEAKER_02: They just have to wake up and hold their baskets out, and there's lunch, dinner, and breakfast.
SPEAKER_02: But it wasn't enough.
SPEAKER_02: And so, through an ungrateful heart, he releases deadly serpents through, and there's and there's decay, there's death, and God has to redeem the situation again through Moses, through prayer.
SPEAKER_02: And he's still waiting for his people to bring a heart of gratitude, a heart of thankfulness, because he designed us to experience that.
SPEAKER_02: God wired our brains in such a way that it is impossible to feel joy without a posture of thankfulness preceding it.
SPEAKER_02: So, gratitude or gratefulness is the prequel to joy and freedom, and this is a kingdom principle by God's design.
SPEAKER_02: Even deeper than that, as sons and daughters adopted by Christ at Calvary, we are invited to share the mind of Christ, renewing our mind in his word and thinking on kingdom things, things that are holy, pure, and good.
SPEAKER_02: So we get blocked up, and in a minute, there's gonna be we're gonna go through kind of like a group participation example where we get to kind of take inventory on something.
SPEAKER_02: But I want to read this to you because according to the research published by the Journal of Cerebral Cortex Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: You don't get yours?
SPEAKER_02: I'm a I I get a quarterly journal.
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
SPEAKER_02: You can sign up through our blog online.
SPEAKER_02: It's good.
SPEAKER_02: CR Welcome Desk.
SPEAKER_02: Um, Cerebral Cortex writes this uh gratitude primes the brain for positive emotions.
SPEAKER_02: It stimulates the hypothalamus, which is a key part of the brain that actually regulates stress and anxiety, and it processes the cortisol, which is the chemical that causes those emotions.
SPEAKER_02: The other piece of the brain that gratitude primes for positive emotion is the ventral tegmental, the area of the brain.
SPEAKER_02: This is part of our reward circuitry that produces the sensations of pleasure.
SPEAKER_02: And every person in this room understands that, so use your powers for good.
SPEAKER_02: These components make up the physiological forge in our bodies.
SPEAKER_02: Gratitude goes in raw and unformed, and as it goes through the fire, it is transformed, and the chemical compounds of serotonin and endorphins are forged, and we experience a freedom.
SPEAKER_02: Our body then, our mind then frees us from anxiety, stress, and depression.
SPEAKER_02: Pretty cool how that works.
SPEAKER_02: Pretty cool that God had that in mind when he's designing our ability to make a decision to choose something that will then free us from the bondages of slave anxiety, stress, and depression.
SPEAKER_02: Modern science is once again proving the brilliance of God's design of his beloved creation.
SPEAKER_02: It would seem that science is catching up with the truth of God's kingdom in this area of our lives.
SPEAKER_02: The feeling of holding gratitude will power up the brain system that controls our stress and anxiety and hold it in check.
SPEAKER_02: It will also open the floodgate to the brain function that releases the sensation of happiness and joy.
SPEAKER_02: True happiness and joy.
SPEAKER_02: Now, pausing here for a minute, all of us have been around people, and I had a scenario where back in the banking days, I would go to lunch with these two guys, and it got so exhausting because I would go and all they would do was complain and complain and complain about how they were getting ripped off, or somebody wasn't doing this, or somebody wasn't doing that, and the process was broken, and management was awful, and this and that.
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, and I would come back from lunch, and man, I needed a palate cleanse.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it was exhausting, and I felt like some piece of my soul was left at lunch.
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, oh, this is awful.
SPEAKER_02: So then it came to the place where I made a decision.
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, I can't go to lunch with these guys anymore.
SPEAKER_02: Like, this is going nowhere good, and I come back feeling worse than I went.
SPEAKER_02: And these guys, in my opinion, I mean, they had already been promoted, they had a good job from what I could see.
SPEAKER_02: They were making double the money I was making.
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, what do they have to complain about?
SPEAKER_02: But they did.
SPEAKER_02: And they complained and they complained, and they fed each other.
SPEAKER_02: And so, who we hang out with?
SPEAKER_02: Are you choosing relationships that are pulling you down in that area?
SPEAKER_02: Or are you aligning yourself with bloodstained allies that are calling out the positives, that are helping you see the blind spots of the good things that are happening to you?
SPEAKER_02: See, we need all that in our lives, church.
SPEAKER_02: We need people, brothers and sisters, blessing allies that can, even in the midst of struggle, trial, start to help us see the positives and see a different narrative.
SPEAKER_02: We are called to be thankful in everything.
SPEAKER_02: Paul writes that in 1 Thessalonians that we are to be thankful in all circumstances, not for everything.
SPEAKER_02: We're not supposed to be thankful for the things that we see in our lives that maybe are good, but we're going to be thankful even in the situations that are not perfect, that are not exactly how we want them to be, because I think it's in those moments where God does his greatest work, where maybe we're right at the base, you know, we're at we're we're in between the mountaintops, we're in those valleys, it's that glory to glory thing, but it's the two.
SPEAKER_02: There's too many O's in the two part.
SPEAKER_02: It's glory to glory.
SPEAKER_02: And you're like, that two was too long.
SPEAKER_02: But even in that, Paul is saying, give thanks.
SPEAKER_02: And we must be thankful if we're to experience the deep joy that is meant to dwell in the very center of our being, our hearts, the living water that flows from it that gives us life.
SPEAKER_02: Thankfulness is the key that opens the door to the joy we are meant to walk in.
SPEAKER_02: A thankful heart is a free, is a heart that is free.
SPEAKER_02: An ungrateful heart is a heart that is bound.
SPEAKER_02: So a grateful heart is a whole heart.
SPEAKER_02: And a whole heart is fully alive.
SPEAKER_02: And as a man and a woman with a heart fully alive, you are the glory of God.
SPEAKER_02: You were meant to have a whole heart and be fully alive.
SPEAKER_02: It is it is a foundational pillar of certainly the men and women's ministry here, the road ministry, our young kids' ministry, that we want to disciple saints, men and women of the kingdom of God, to live from a whole heart so that you would then carry the glory of God into a broken and hurting world, a world that needs to see what is possible.
SPEAKER_02: Hope and love, the things that God wants to give and restore us.
SPEAKER_02: We carry that with each other.
SPEAKER_02: We encourage one another and we take it out into the workplaces, into our relationships outside of the church where they need to see what is possible.
SPEAKER_02: So now I want to do something with you guys.
SPEAKER_02: If you would, in a moment, I want you to close your eyes and we're gonna challenge you here with something.
SPEAKER_02: We're gonna look at the dashboard because no doubt all of us walked in with something, and all of us made a decision this morning.
SPEAKER_02: I could even take a poll right now.
SPEAKER_02: Who woke up and said, start thinking of counting your blessings?
SPEAKER_02: Who woke up today and seriously counted your blessings?
SPEAKER_02: Praise God.
SPEAKER_02: So there's some mental discipline happening in the world.
SPEAKER_02: Who woke up here and was even thinking about yesterday or what's gonna happen tomorrow?
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, okay, come on.
SPEAKER_02: I'm there with you.
SPEAKER_02: The rest of you are undecided or just lying, that's fine.
SPEAKER_02: So let's let's practice something together for a minute.
SPEAKER_02: Close your eyes.
SPEAKER_02: And I want to challenge you here, based on Philippians 4.8, to lock into a memory, thought, or an idea that brings you joy.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe it's a deep desire of your heart that you're realizing or hope to realize.
SPEAKER_02: Holy Spirit, I pray right now over every precious saint and soul in the room, God, that we would anchor to a moment that was given by you in your kingdom, a gift, a memory of joy.
SPEAKER_02: If that's President Trump, I'll call him back.
SPEAKER_02: God, we thank you for the joy.
SPEAKER_02: In our lives.
SPEAKER_02: I pray right now, Holy Spirit, bring revelation, bring truth.
SPEAKER_02: We would anchor here.
SPEAKER_02: We would hold this thought today.
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
SPEAKER_02: See, to be free and feeling a deep sense of gratitude, church, I only need to look back at my life.
SPEAKER_02: The gift of my bride, my children, and remember the faithfulness of God.
SPEAKER_02: His miraculous hand reaching down and pulling me back up in a time where I needed him to be real.
SPEAKER_02: I needed his word to be real for me.
SPEAKER_02: Not the religion of my parents, my grandparents, my great-grandparents, but I needed God and his word to be real for me in my life.
SPEAKER_02: And I needed the rescue.
SPEAKER_02: And I needed his words to be true.
SPEAKER_02: See, every generation, church, and it shows to us, it's revealed in scripture, every generation has to find God for themselves.
SPEAKER_02: And he wants to show up and he wants to be real and he wants to heal you.
SPEAKER_02: He wants to bring you all the things that he promises in his book if you'll only reach back and start to practice and live out the things that he's showing us here.
SPEAKER_02: I understand all too dearly that it may feel as though it would take a miracle to be lifted out of the mire of fear, worry, and the darkness of doubt and be transferred to a place of gratefulness.
SPEAKER_02: However, Jesus gives us that choice, and it is ours to make, and we do serve a God of miracles.
SPEAKER_02: And that's the problem with miracles, right?
SPEAKER_02: Once you've experienced them, you can no longer doubt that they're available and real.
SPEAKER_02: And so we press into that promise, we experience miracles, either in our own lives or those connected and close to us, and we start to live from that place.
SPEAKER_02: And it encourages us, and faith and hope rise in ourselves and in each other.
SPEAKER_02: And so the art of practicing gratitude is the key.
SPEAKER_02: It unlocks joy, and to be grateful, we need to remember the reason for our gratitude.
SPEAKER_02: We are grateful because we've been rescued.
SPEAKER_02: We're offered a full and complete rescue at the cross of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_02: It's what he does, it's the offering.
SPEAKER_02: I love that it's Communion Sunday today because it's going to be an opportunity for us to reset, recalibrate for the month, for the week.
SPEAKER_02: We think about, we just focus here and now on the fact that we woke up and our eyes opened and our heart was already pumping and we're breathing the breath.
SPEAKER_02: And we got up and we started moving in our day.
SPEAKER_02: And life is a gift.
SPEAKER_02: Every day should be cherished.
SPEAKER_02: First Corinthians, if you have your Bibles again, let's go to chapter 2, verse 16.
SPEAKER_02: I'm reading the amplified here because I figured we need a little bit of a little extra meat on this bone.
SPEAKER_02: I love this because there's an invitation here from Jesus and the mind that we can tap into, and it's this is the choice that we make on a daily basis.
SPEAKER_02: For who has known or understood the mind, the counsels and purposes of the Lord, so as to guide and instruct him and give him knowledge.
SPEAKER_02: But we, we have the mind of Christ, the Messiah, and do hold the thoughts, feelings, and purposes of his heart.
SPEAKER_02: Through this transaction at Calvary, we now are adopted in as full sons and daughters with complete inheritance, and we can access the mind of Christ.
SPEAKER_02: We can make the decision to daily renew our mind.
SPEAKER_02: And before we even get out of bed, we can start to develop this discipline, this habit of gratitude and gratefulness.
SPEAKER_02: And before my foot hits the floor, I can start to think, God, thank you.
SPEAKER_02: Thank you just for being who you are.
SPEAKER_02: Thank you that you thought of me, that you think of me, that you love me, that you want to pour your love out over me in every day.
SPEAKER_02: Help my eyes be open to the things around me as I look to the mountains.
SPEAKER_02: Right?
SPEAKER_02: We don't live in the flatlands here.
SPEAKER_02: We can look to the mountains and be reminded every day from Pike's Peak where our hope comes from as an example of what the scriptures are saying that we have access to.
SPEAKER_02: A mind governed by God's Spirit is a mind filled with life and peace, church.
SPEAKER_02: Who here today is desperate for more of God's life and peace in their own thought life?
SPEAKER_02: Where there's the interruptions.
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
SPEAKER_02: Yes, amen.
SPEAKER_02: I'll put both up.
SPEAKER_02: Like the interruptions, this constant static and chatter from the enemy, always at work to take us away, to distract, divide, to discourage.
SPEAKER_02: I'm so sick of that voice.
SPEAKER_02: But I can choose God's mind and hear his belovedness over me as he delights in us, as he delights in me.
SPEAKER_02: I want a mind governed by God's Spirit.
SPEAKER_02: I want a mind filled with life and his peace.
SPEAKER_02: During a TED Talk, Paraolympic athlete and competitive swimmer Ty Ducker had this to say to a group of students at Grand Canyon University about the power of choosing gratitude.
SPEAKER_02: He says, At the age of just 11 years old, I began to better grasp and understand how the effects of anxiety, pain, and doubt can create a stronghold in our lives unless we do one simple thing: be grateful.
SPEAKER_02: This is the power of choosing gratitude.
SPEAKER_02: See, at the age of 11, Ty was so excited for his dad to come home and he was wanting to pull a prank on him, and his dad was jumping on a lawnmower and getting ready to mow the grass, and so Ty was going to sneak up behind him and soak him with a water gun.
SPEAKER_02: So he creeps up behind him, and not expecting this, his dad had to throw the lawnmower in reverse.
SPEAKER_02: Quickly stumbling backwards, Ty fell, grasping, pulling at the dirt and earth to escape, but the lawnmower was coming out too fast, and his left leg got trapped underneath the mower.
SPEAKER_02: He was immediately rushed to the hospital where he spent days and complicated surgeries and ultimately ended up losing his knee or his leg from the knee down.
SPEAKER_02: In that moment, in the days that followed, shortly after the days that followed, Ty said these words to his mom.
SPEAKER_02: Mom, I don't want this story, this possible tragedy to impact my ability to choose gratitude.
SPEAKER_02: Now, those aren't the words of his 11-year-old.
SPEAKER_02: This is him as an adult recounting that message to his mom.
SPEAKER_02: Mom, I want to pivot from here.
SPEAKER_02: I want to find good in this.
SPEAKER_02: I don't want to be afraid.
SPEAKER_02: I don't want to have fear.
SPEAKER_02: And so Ty recalls the joy of getting back into the water and the complete freedom he felt after he did the hard work of recovery.
SPEAKER_02: And so he feels freedom when he's submerged and weightless in the water.
SPEAKER_02: And Ty made the decision to leverage the joy of his desire to be in the water, to generate gratitude, and this propelled him to excel and compete on the international stage for his sport.
SPEAKER_02: Ty got back in the water as a swimmer that year, finished high school, and was invited by the Paralympic coach of the United States to come and train.
SPEAKER_02: He would also that same year make the Olympic team and go and compete in the 2016 Olympics in China.
SPEAKER_02: He would go on to several international stages from there, winning uh gold medals in his competition sports in the Paralympic Games, in the Pan America Games, and so forth.
SPEAKER_02: And he continued to build his resume, but always leveraging, and he has a faith in God that he talks about.
SPEAKER_02: It's a beautiful, it's a beautiful segment on the TED Talk.
SPEAKER_02: But he's talking about how living in the truth of God's word and choosing the power of gratitude has helped him pivot his life and continue on a positive trajectory and not letting that situation, uh, the enemy use that for harm, discourage, destroy, and tear him down.
SPEAKER_02: You cannot wait for all the elements in your situation to align and be perfect before you express gratitude, church.
SPEAKER_02: In the middle of what you're facing right now, if you're waiting for the results to come back, if you're waiting for the bank to respond, if you're waiting for that relationship to respond to something that you reached out and risked vulnerability on, and you're gonna say, if this happens, then I'll rejoice, or if that looks this way, or if this turns out the way, I hope it will, then I'm gonna go all in.
SPEAKER_02: That's not the heart that God wants, and that's not where we pivot from and unlock complete freedom.
SPEAKER_02: This is where our faith is built, and we step out and we bring gratefulness and we bring thankfulness before we get the results that we're looking for, before it's perfectly aligned in our lives.
SPEAKER_02: It's how the mystery of the kingdom of God works.
SPEAKER_02: You express thankfulness and your perspective is changed.
SPEAKER_02: You have a different eye to see the field that you're on, and you see the game in a different way, the battle that you're in.
SPEAKER_02: I want to give you six practices of gratitude, and I kind of spell them out in the words of thanks so you can use your fingers.
SPEAKER_02: T H A N K S, go back to one, and this will just be some of the daily habits that we can use.
SPEAKER_02: But T is truth.
SPEAKER_02: You have to seek the truth for your life in God's word and with trusted blood-stained allies.
SPEAKER_02: If you're not seeking first the truth, because the truth is what sets us free, when you live the truth of God's word, you live in freedom.
SPEAKER_02: So you have to make the choice today.
SPEAKER_02: God, show me what is true about my situation.
SPEAKER_02: Speak truth, bring light, bring your light into the darkness, reveal your truth in this situation.
SPEAKER_02: And He will.
SPEAKER_02: Be patient, and He will bring that.
SPEAKER_02: H is heaven.
SPEAKER_02: Be heavenly focused, thinking on things above.
SPEAKER_02: God's ways are higher.
SPEAKER_02: When we pivot from our immediate circumstances to the eternal truths of God's kingdom, which are faith, hope, and love, we re- we're recalibrating our hearts to the things that are pure and good.
SPEAKER_02: See, so often and so fast, even leaving this room, I would argue that at least half of you will stop to even remember or remind yourselves that you're eternal creatures.
SPEAKER_02: You were made for an eternal process.
SPEAKER_02: You will spend eternity somewhere.
SPEAKER_02: And so are we recalibrating our minds to the things of heaven, God's ways, things that are higher, and are we recalibrating to the heavenly things?
SPEAKER_02: This is just a glimpse.
SPEAKER_02: This is just a short walk down here.
SPEAKER_02: This is practice for eternity.
SPEAKER_02: And so we have to renew our minds that we have something so much to be so much more to be grateful for because ours is a promised inheritance and an eternal truth through the cross of Christ and what we get to participate in.
SPEAKER_02: A is appreciation.
SPEAKER_02: Always be looking for things that you can be thankful for.
SPEAKER_02: Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.
SPEAKER_02: There are things to be grateful for.
SPEAKER_02: Like I just said, even if even if where you start is the fact that your life has been purchased by Christ and ransomed for all eternity.
SPEAKER_02: Start with that place and watch it build from there.
SPEAKER_02: Just start waking up every day and thanking God for the life that's in your body, the blood that's pumping through your veins and the air that's in your lungs.
SPEAKER_02: And then kindness, this is a choice.
SPEAKER_02: Instead of experiencing road rage, turn on your blinker and wait your turn.
SPEAKER_02: Yes, sir.
SPEAKER_02: I receive that.
SPEAKER_02: Kindness, choosing kindness for yourself and others.
SPEAKER_02: Dwell on the good, choosing the path of forgiveness and the power of the cross.
SPEAKER_02: Things turn out best for people who make the best of the way things turn out.
SPEAKER_02: That's worth repeating.
SPEAKER_02: Things turn out best for people who make the best of the way things turn out.
SPEAKER_02: Things don't always turn out the way we think they should or will, but we have the opportunity to make a decision around that process and choose to think the best and see the best.
SPEAKER_02: N was negativity, and thank you.
SPEAKER_02: Spelling B was not my strength.
SPEAKER_02: I never got past the first round.
SPEAKER_02: Negativity.
SPEAKER_02: It's a big one, too.
SPEAKER_02: So thanks for bringing me back to it.
SPEAKER_02: Negativity.
SPEAKER_02: Be aware of the negative self-messaging.
SPEAKER_02: Renew your mind daily.
SPEAKER_02: This is where we come back to that art of practicing and holding hostage, the sludge that the enemy wants to bring as a narrative around our lives.
SPEAKER_02: The messages that we received through relationships, through our resumes of choosing poor decisions, God redeems that, and we have to be aware of the negative self-imaging and asking him to renew our minds and how he sees us every day.
SPEAKER_02: Satisfaction, S.
SPEAKER_02: Synonym for gratitude, the gift of being satisfied.
SPEAKER_02: This is hard.
SPEAKER_02: This is hard, specifically in our culture, because we have so much access to so many things in our lives.
SPEAKER_02: And so we can consistently be unsatisfied.
SPEAKER_02: As a Rolling Stone song says, we can't get no satisfaction.
SPEAKER_02: But we can.
SPEAKER_02: We can through Christ.
SPEAKER_02: And we have to choose.
SPEAKER_02: We should certainly count our blessings, but we should also make our blessings count.
SPEAKER_02: We are blessed, church.
SPEAKER_02: We're blessed with just being American citizens.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we've had a rough four years prior, and we're all anticipation and excited about what's to come and how things are going to turn around for us.
SPEAKER_02: And we should be.
SPEAKER_02: There's nothing wrong with having hope in that in that way.
SPEAKER_02: But the deeper hope, the deeper hope of what's yet to come on the other side of this earth and this life, the eternal things.
SPEAKER_02: Let's count the blessings of the cross.
SPEAKER_02: Let's count the blessings and the perfect work of Christ.
SPEAKER_02: This week I had a choice.
SPEAKER_02: I was actually going in to write this message with Mandy on Monday, and she called me on the phone, and we were kind of just working through a very various amounts of stress and frustration and disappointments that we were trying to process with things that we were all trying to face and look for God's word, look for a way ahead.
SPEAKER_02: And we just felt under it.
SPEAKER_02: And we just paused that moment and we just started praying together.
SPEAKER_02: I'm sitting in the parking lot at Every Home for Christ in the morning.
SPEAKER_02: And we started praying.
SPEAKER_02: And I just opened with thanking God for a lot of the beauty and the things in our lives.
SPEAKER_02: And our spirits started to lift.
SPEAKER_02: She got fired up and then she starts praying.
SPEAKER_02: And then I get fired up.
SPEAKER_02: And like what I thought was going to be a five-minute prayer turned out to be like a 25-minute prayer, 30-minute prayer in the parking lot.
SPEAKER_02: My windows are down, and people are walking into their, you know, their places of work, and I'm like, we're having like Holy Ghost revival in the car, and she's on the other end.
SPEAKER_02: And God starts to lift our spirits up in such a powerful way that, like, if you guys have, if you are fortunate to have a spouse and pray with them, pray with them and see what God will unlock in his kingdom over your lives and start to renew yourselves in that and the gratitude and the joy.
SPEAKER_02: And it was so simple.
SPEAKER_02: It was like I was just like, God, thank you for my bride.
SPEAKER_02: Thank you for this life.
SPEAKER_02: Thank you for today.
SPEAKER_02: We don't know about these things, X, Y, Z, but you do.
SPEAKER_02: Show us, bring light, bring truth, bring perspective.
SPEAKER_02: And it was, it was awesome.
SPEAKER_02: By the time we got the phone, we're both just like fired up and ready to go.
SPEAKER_02: Like, we're gonna take on the world today, man.
SPEAKER_02: Come on, let's go.
SPEAKER_02: And um, so gratitude is the catalyst in our lives that will build endurance and experiencing the abundant life of God's kingdom church.
SPEAKER_02: It creates the resilience in our hearts to welcome a new day, a better day that is coming, bathed in the healing light of God's kingdom.
SPEAKER_02: Gratitude unlocks the shackles of imprisonment, of fear, and we live to realize the truth and holy desires that we all carry in our hearts.
SPEAKER_02: Desires that are good and pure, that are meant to prosper us.
SPEAKER_02: God's Bible has over more than 100 verses that speak on practicing gratitude in our lives.
SPEAKER_02: The daily practice of gratitude is this.
SPEAKER_02: And this is a daily habit, church.
SPEAKER_02: Be intentional, be consistent with your practice.
SPEAKER_02: Set an appointment every day with yourself, set an alarm, use this device for good.
SPEAKER_02: Put an appointment on yourself that you don't break.
SPEAKER_02: Every day, you're gonna wake up and you're gonna meet with yourself and you're gonna start with going through the acronym of thanks.
SPEAKER_02: Just renew your mind there, and then think of three things in your life to be grateful for.
SPEAKER_02: And then you speak them out loud.
SPEAKER_02: God didn't think creation in his mind, he spoke it out loud, and he put breath in your lungs to give you the power of verbal proclamation.
SPEAKER_02: And so you speak those grateful things out in your heart, and you watch and see the light of God's kingdom come and push back the darkness of the enemy in your life.
SPEAKER_02: And then you journal those three things down, and you start to watch God build the resume of gratitude and thankful things and thankfulness in your heart.
SPEAKER_02: And you will grow, you will stand, you will pivot.
SPEAKER_02: This is where we become more than conquerors.
SPEAKER_02: In in Romans 8, Paul's talking about being more than conquerors.
SPEAKER_02: We become more than conquerors when we realize that despite our circumstances, there is so much to be thankful for, and the enemy is left holding the bag, going, none of my none of my tricks, none of my snares, none of my traps are working on these people.
SPEAKER_02: What gives?
SPEAKER_02: They're happy, they're joyful, and they are impenetrable, and we are, because we can stand in God's truth that way.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to the Forn for War podcast.
SPEAKER_00: We hope today's message has empowered you to make a difference in your world.
SPEAKER_00: To connect with Pastor Steve's sermons, books, and blog, visit Steveholdonline.org.
SPEAKER_00: God bless.