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So we are Austin people. Janine and I were both born in the city. We got married in the city. We went to we went to the big U here in the city. So we're at home, but we're also in Feel at Home Among you guys. So what an honor. What an honor to be here. Hey, let me tell you a little bit about what we do, and it ties into the message. So uh I basically do three things in Indonesia. First of all, uh I am not a gifted evangelist, but I sow the gospel liberally. So we go places, I intentionally take teams with me to parts of Indonesia that there are very few, if any, Christians. I go to areas where there are people groups, there are ethnic groups where there are no known believers. And I did that recently and uh got to talk to a guy who happens to be the mayor of the town. And so there's a kind of a way we segue into sharing the good news. So I went through this process of sharing the good news with uh Mohammed. Guess what religion he is? Mohammed Hatta was his name, the made, the mayor of the town. And unlike most situations, this guy wasn't all that interested. Most of the time, uh people have never heard about Jesus and they're like, tell me more, tell me more, tell me more. Especially when I say, hey, this guy's actually found in your holy book. And I start with the things that talk about Esau or Jesus. Anyway, so at the end of it, I said, Hey, Pop Muhammad, I understand. I bet you have a lot of stress in the work that you do, being a mayor and everything. Is there some way that I could pray for you specifically today? And in the name of Jesus, uh, and through his authority, and may I just like place my hands on you and pray right here? And he said, sure. He said, you know, my legs have really been giving me trouble lately, and there's a lot of pain. And I said, I would love to pray that the power that I've talked about would show up in your body and that and that you would experience relief from that pain. May I just pray for you? And he said, sure. So I laid hands on him and I prayed a simple prayer in the name of Esau, and I prayed with all the faith that I can muster, and I finished my prayers very short, and I said, So, Pop Muhammad, how do you feel? And he said, Well, the pain's still there. Okay. Uh I've occasionally things dramatic happen, but in that situation nothing happened. But I but he said, Hold it. Uh, I just want you to know that while you prayed, I experienced something I've never felt before. Just waves of peace and waves of love came over me. What was that? Of course, then the conversation went to the next level. So we get to do that a lot, and uh you you I know you can't relate, but imagine at least 99 out of 100 people that I talk to about Jesus have never heard. They have no idea about what we sang about this morning. They have no idea of Jesus' sacrifice, they have no idea of the life that we have in him because he rose from the dead, and we open up our hearts to him and receive that. The other thing I do is I mentor uh church planners. I mentor people who are sowing the gospel and starting groups that become churches. And I put this picture up because the team met Witanto, dynamic, wonderful brother. And hit this is his wife, Carol, and we were at a restaurant not long ago, and Carol and Witanto led her to Christ right there at the restaurant. She's serving us. And this is a Balinese gal that worships little gods that are actually demons, but she trusted in Christ and received Christ that day. We coach them, mentor them, encourage them, we train them, we train them in how to share the gospel, actually. And because of that, they've been incredibly effective. Next slide. Uh the girl here is her name's Kadek. So in the process of uh Weitanto getting out and meeting people, he's an extreme extrovert. And so he's meeting people and he meets a manager of a hotel, and this hotel says, Well, you know, you're a pastor, right? Yeah. One of my employees has been harassed by evil spirits lately. Uh, do you think you could help her? And Witanto says, Yes. Well, I can't, but Jesus can. So Weitanto met with Kadek and several sessions, which, by the way, were pretty dramatic. I mean, grown men could not hold this petite little Balinese girl down, strange voices, all that stuff. She was set free. And she was so dramatically transformed that she, within three or four days, began liberally sharing the gospel, and her friends and family started calling her sales promociesus. You could almost make that out. The English translation would be Sales Promotion Jesus. That became her nickname, sales promotion Jesus. And not only that, she was powerfully used to pray for the sick and heal people. Number of people have been healed through her ministry. So she, okay, we tanto up here in this corner, led her to Christ. She led Putu to Christ, who, if you could tell, he's a he's kind of buff. He's a security guard. And this picture I got on the plane, or just as I got on the plane to leave to come to Austin three weeks ago, Putu is now baptizing some unknown Balinese worshiper of demons who's now come to faith as well. That's four generations. Is that how it's how it works? And we could talk a long time about that. But four generations of new believers all in two months is the way that the gospel is going to spread throughout the nation where I serve. The other thing that I do is help people form, Kadek formed a group with her friends, and they go through a simple church model in which they experience Christ. And they go out, having studied and discovered the truth of the gospel, they go out and share it from these groups and start new groups. Okay. This reflects something I do a lot. I go from church to church. Sometimes it's groups of pastors, and we train them, and it's real simple, and everything we teach them, we we we practice, and they are equipped to have vision for these huge pockets of Muslims, and they go out and share the gospel. In every training, there are people that come to Jesus because one of the first assignments is to go out and practice what we learned about sharing our faith. And then they come back and report, hey, this is the first time in my life I've ever shared with a Muslim. And they said, Yes, what do I do now? Okay, great. Session two. How do we disciple a new believer? And so we go down, it's really basic, but God's opening all kinds of doors. That's not what I want to talk about, but I'm gonna come back to it. So, this is a verse that I want us to read that's very appropriate for the season. You know, like last Thursday, okay? So let's read it together. And whatever you do, ready? Let's read it together. And whatever you do, that's pretty encompassing, right? Whatever you do, you know, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus. Let's read this part together. Once more, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Giving thanks to God the Father through him. Whatever you're doing, whatever you're doing, do it to him and give thanks to God the Father. Another very familiar verse. Let's look at this one and give thanks. Let's read this one together. Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. Real simple. What's God's will for my life? Here it is. What's God's will for my life? Give thanks in all circumstances. Now it doesn't say give thanks for all circumstances. I mean give thanks in all circumstances. Whether you're stuck in traffic, whether you're in a hospital bed, whether you're doing a chore that you despise, whether you're in the heat of a stressful work situation, we give thanks. Now, easier said than done. I know. Get the thanks in all circumstances. Then Colossians again, rooted and built up in him, strengthening the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. Say it again. Tell the person next to you, overflow with thankfulness. That sounds like a lot of thankfulness. Well, today I want to walk you through a process of doing that. I want to walk you through a process of learning how to do this. In fact, we call it transformational gratitude. Transformational gratitude. Why? Because it changes us and changes our world. And I've experienced this. I'm in the midst of experiencing this. A gratitude that changes who we are and changes how we relate to people around us and really makes us more effective in making disciples. Because there's a motive behind there, behind this that walks our world. Now, what you know, need to know today, and it's much related to the idea that C.S. Lewis community uh from his book Mere Christianity, is gratitude is something we do. Unlike what we typically think, oh, I don't feel grateful, therefore I'm not going to express gratitude. No, no. Gratitude is what we do. We're commanded to overflow with gratitude. We're commanded to give things. And therefore, we're we're we're being obedient by doing gratitude. It's irrespective of how we feel. Now, what I'm about to share with you, I do every day. I do every day. You can ask my wife. It's been like, so the story is, you know, 40 years ago when Janine and I first got married, we did this on Thanksgiving morning. When kids came along, we we taught them to do this Thanksgiving morning. And sometime about 20 years ago, it began to be something that I did more often than Thanksgiving. And then it began to be a daily experience. A daily experience. Roll out of bed. I don't necessarily feel grateful. But what I do is I make a list of the ways God's blessed me or revealed his love to me, are good gifts in my life during the last 24 hours. And so the check is thank you, Lord, for. So list with start with checks, and then you make a list. Okay? So we're gonna do that. I never teach people something I don't help them practice. So we're gonna take about four or five minutes right now in the middle of church and do this. You ready? Pull out a piece of paper, a device, a cell phone, whatever you have you could write on. And I want you to make a list of ways that God's blessed you. Now I'll stretch it. I'll stretch it for the last week if you're not used to doing this. So in the last week, it could be big and global. It could be like, thank you for the cross. That's great. But specific, how has God answered a prayer? How has God surprised you this Thanksgiving? How has God blessed you? Maybe you had a pain in your body that's now lessened or gone away? Maybe you were expecting something really bad at Thanksgiving and it turned out to be good. Maybe it's a task accomplished. Thank God I don't have to cook another turkey for another month. Whatever. On my list, we're thank you, Lord, for the smell of a Christmas tree. This is our first Christmas coming up in five years that we've not been in America. I mean, that we're back in America and we we cut a we got a Christmas tree yesterday. Tangible expressions of the Father's love. I'll shut up for the next three or four minutes and let you write. What's your list? Whatever comes to mind. I'm asking the Holy Spirit to just show you why he said the Father has loved you. Some of you are diligently doing this. Way to go. Now, you could come back to this after church, but I want you to stand right now. All of you stand, all of us together stand. I want you to take your list, and now we're going to do something really important. Because gratitude that's not expressed is really not gratitude. So we need to communicate it. So uh I know God can read, but what I'd like you to do is just kind of turn your voices, turn your face to heaven, and just imagine standing before the Father and just saying thank you. And so I'm not asking you to shout it out, but vocalize it, okay? And don't worry about the person next to you because they're doing their list, okay? We're gonna do this in about 90 seconds. You ready? Let's do it. But thank you so much for uh just the joy of watching football, how fun that's been. Thank you for the beautiful, cool weather. Thanks for the trees turning around us. Thank you, Lord, for the chance to hunt this week. Thank you, Lord, so much for uh N. T. Wright's book on the crucifixion. It's been so powerful. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for my precious wife and how she's uh delighted in putting the Christmas tree together and just the fun of having that. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Amen. Amen. Have a seat. How'd that feel? Felt good, huh? And it's it's appropriate. Now, uh just came out with a book that has a hundred other exercises similar to that. Just step-by-step, ways to connect with God. Uh we don't we're running out of them, but there's you can order one on the back table there. Uh next slide. Yeah, it's that that that was designed by Jackson, that cover. Isn't that cool? He got a picture of me working out and next slide. So let me tell you what transformational gratitude is. It's intentional. So we make a decision. I will express gratitude. We could do that with people and with God. We could literally say, I choose to do gratitude. Therefore, it takes time to think through it, kind of like we did then. I usually take 30 minutes to do what you did just then just to think through how's God showing me his love? Write it out and then declare it, speak it out. We it's intentional. It's also honoring. Uh when people tell me thank you, it's honoring. Imagine the heart of the Father. When you and I say, Father, thank you so much for for loving me in these ways. It's honoring to God. It's an expression of worship. It's specific. We don't, you know, we don't find a lot of uh honor when somebody just slaps us on the back and says, thanks. But when they say, Hey, thank you for taking the time to listen to me and pray for me, thank you for that gift, thank you for uh for caring about me in this specific way. It's it's the way we do gratitude. It's specific, okay? It's it's expressed. We need to express our gratitude. Uh it's not good enough. It's like Willie Nelson. You were always on my mind. You know, you were always on my mind. I never told you, but you were always on my mind. That didn't do a whole lot for the girl that was leaving it. Uh it's appropriate. And expressions of gratitude are always in keeping with the with the blessing or the gift. How much more is the is the gratitude we owe God? You know, it's so appropriate that we would express that gratitude to God. It's just the right thing to do. Now, doing gratitude does something in us, it changes us. That's why I call it transformational gratitude. We become more aware of his presence. I think I misspelled presence there. No, I didn't. We become more aware of his presence. Now, let me let me tell you something you know. God is with us, whatever's going on. But we are not aware of his presence. At least me. When I crawl out of bed in the morning, it's not like I'm overwhelmed with the sense of the presence of God. There are exceptions. And I certainly don't feel gratitude. But when I do gratitude, it's like the song we used to sing from this psalm. I will enter his gates with thanksgiving in my heart. So we come into the presence of God. The front door of God's presence into his living room is gratitude. So I want to get into his presence as quick as possible every day. And he's there, but I want to be aware of it, and so I do gratitude. I bring an offering of gratitude. I didn't mention this in the first service. I should have a picture of it, but on the island where we live, and these guys saw it, is everywhere you go, there are offerings. They're made out of little banana leaf, little platforms, and in it are flowers and uh sometimes a cigarette, sometimes some little rice offerings and cakes and stuff. And everywhere you go, there are these offerings presented to the demons or the gods or the ancestor spirits from a house, on a road, at a four-way stop, in front of a field. And yet, my gratitude and your gratitude to the living God is way more important than that, and we get to do it day in and day out. So you experience more of an attitude of gratitude toward God and others when you begin to do gratitude to Him. You begin to have more of a grateful spirit. So, next slide. So, what happens is it feeds on itself. The more I'm grateful for the cross, the more I appreciate the cross. The more I'm aware of Jesus' incredible sacrifice for me, I begin to be touched in an emotional level. And I'm not an emotional person, but I begin to feel this deep level gratitude as I express it. It feeds on itself, it's cyclical. So doing gratitude changes us. You experience more joy. Some of you need that in your lives. Let me tell you, do gratitude and you become more joyful. Better yet, join others in their gratitude, and you become more joyful. So we become more joyful, we become more aware of his love. I want to tell you this: that when I have a list of 12 things that I'm thanking God for, and I'm standing up saying, Thank you, Lord, for, I guarantee you that I've not actually expressed all the gratitude he deserves. Because he's blessed me in so many more ways. But the blinders are kind of broadening, and I'm beginning to see more and more of his blessing in my life. See, it's appropriate. And what I mean by that, it's fitting, it's proper, it's natural that God's love for us would be remembered and honored and expressed through sincere gratitude. You know the story about the ten guys that suffered this incredibly debilitating and horrible skin disease called leprosy. They came to him pleading with him to touch him. Now it was interesting because it doesn't seem to indicate that they were healed immediately, but he then told them to go and show themselves to the priest. Now, for the Jewish people who were, there were nine of them, were like, oh yeah, that's what we do. And somehow you can imagine the conversations, but on the way, the skin diseases on their bodies and on their face and whatever began to be healed. And it was like, whoa. But one of the dudes, one of the ten, and what's sad is only one of them, stopped and said, Oh, that this isn't right. We've got to go back and find that dude and tell him thank you. And it's really interesting. The passage says, and Jesus asked the one guy, were not all ten cleansed? You know? And it wasn't like, it's not like Jesus is like, hey, dude, you owe me. But no, no, it's fitting. There's a debt of love and gratitude. It's fitting and proper and right and honorable to stop and say, no, no, you did this, thank you. And so he said to the foreigner, uh, where the other 901 return to give praise to God except this foreigner? Now, he was a Samaritan, but imagine an Arab in our culture, you know. Somebody that's, you know, one of them foreigners. He's the only one that remembered. He's the only one that came back and did it. And he said something really interesting. Then he said to him, Rise and go. Your faith has made you well. And the Greek word there, the Greek word is used for salvation, but it's also used for healing. So it's used for healing and salvation. Sodzo is the name of it. And so there's something that's whole when we grow in gratitude and we do it. Something in us is made right. So there's a there's an incredible benefit of it, but most important is him. Most important is the heart of Jesus. Or in the case of what we've read in the scriptures, the heart of the Father who says, Man, you remembered, you noticed. And I don't know about you. In fact, let me say this. I do know this about you. If you're in this deal, you've crossed the line, and Jesus is the boss and and he's transformed you, and in the process of transforming you, you know exactly how worthy he is. You know exactly how right it is. You know exactly that though it's important that change happens and now it's more important, he gets to be honored and he gets to be uh to be worshipped as he's worthy of. Now, I want to tie this all into what we do, which is the next verse, this verse has become very precious to me. Because in this course of wanting this to happen, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people, the grace of God that's reaching more and more Balinese Hindus and Sasak Muslims, and there's literally 122 tribal groups that I could name up here that 99.9% are Muslim in Indonesia, but the more and more of those that have heard the good news and turned to faith in Christ and have been baptized and are meeting in discipling communities, the more and more of that happens, the more gratitude there is to God. It's that simple. It's that simple. I'm sowing seeds and I'm praying like crazy that others will join me in sowing seeds of the gospel and praying that some will be like good soil and the seed will grow and flourish because what sprouts is gratitude. What flowers and bears fruit and comes out is gratitude and worship. Let me give you one simple illustration of this. A house that we used to live in on a street with all Hindus was right near a place that was visited by hundreds of Balinese Hindus every week because it was a household temple that had become very popular because this particular God could help people with their problems. So people would come and bring their offerings and pray to this God, and the and then one day I walked in there and something came over me like the best I could describe it as indignation. It's like, what? People are bringing their offerings to this God? The God I know created this little demon. And the God I know is way, way, way more effective and more loving and more real and more powerful than what you're bringing your little offerings to. And so in that was this yearning that those people would give thanks to whom thanks is due. Now, I wasn't an angry street preacher at that point. It was just a mixture of deep love for God that makes me want to keep sowing and keep loving and keep believing and keep caring and keep living where I live, even though I really like Austin. We were happy campers here. But I walked away from it joyfully because of that. Because of that motivation. So you want to sow seeds of love and sow seeds of the gospel and sow seeds of life and cultivate gratitude. It's it's connected. Okay? Now, here's the invitation I have for you. It's very simple. Uh I'm gonna invite you to do what I'm gonna do this week. And I'm quite confident I'm gonna do it. I've been doing it for 14 years. At least 364 days a year. And I'm gonna do it joyfully. It's gonna be it's gonna be an act of my will, it's gonna be life-giving for me as part of my devotional life. But I'm gonna wake up tomorrow morning and I'm gonna make a thankful list and I'm gonna express it to God. And I would invite you to join me tomorrow and Tuesday and Wednesday until next Sunday. Now I'm not asking you to do this until Jesus comes back. It'd be nice if you did. I'm not asking you to do this until 2017. But I'm gonna invite you today specifically to join me and to do gratitude this week. What is today? 27th? 27th through December 4th. And so I'm gonna ask you right now, think about it. How many of you would say, Ron, I'm with you. I'm gonna do that this week. Raise your hand. Okay. Good. Can I pray for you? Let's pray together. Father, first of all, I want to please don't get your feelings hurt. But I want to pray for those that didn't raise their hands. I want to pray for people that don't want to be grateful. I want to pray that your spirit would encounter them in such a way that they would go, whoa, I really want to obey Jesus and give them the will and the courage and the fortitude and the grace to say yes to obedience. And Lord, for all the majority of people that quickly raise their hands, I just say, Lord God, would you meet them just like you meet me? Every morning you meet me and my heart changes. There's a process in which I truly, truly am aware of your presence and truly am grateful. And I do pray that that kind of Holy Spirit encounter would be the experience of all my friends here that raise their hands. And so remind them, in the morning, remind them when they roll out of bed to do gratitude and to bring their offering of gratitude. And Lord God, I pray that gratitude would infect this church like a virus in the kind of way that changes them and changes their world. In the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.