Greetings in the Name of Jesus and welcome to the PLN Sunday Night Bible Fellowship!

Just about every week during this series, we've emphasized that there's real POWER in the act of GIVING THANKS. Are you tired of walking around in defeat and frustration and losing and depression and insecurity? If so, how GRATEFUL and THANKFUL about life have you been? Have you been able to look away from your tribulations long enough to take note of what God's doing? What kind of confession has been coming out of your mouth: faith-filled words of GRATITUDE or GRUMBLY/COMPLAINING type words of IN-gratitude? There's life or death in the words you've been speaking (Proverbs 18:21).

The Truth is one of the most POWERFUL ways we can find in Scripture to make a positive change in our lives is by pursuing a lifestyle of THANKSGIVING. We can THANK our way out of defeat and frustration and losing and depression and insecurity. We can also even THANK our way out of ignorance and confusion and into understanding and illumination and revelation. To be sure, we need God's GRACE and empowerment to do all that and as we've discussed in a number of previous articles, we can use THANKSGIVING to connect to overflowing GRACE, a surplus of GRACE that's way more than enough to take care of the few little puny issues and problems most of us are trying to deal with.

Keep in mind though that when it comes to living life out of THANKSGIVING we only have two choices. We can be THANKFUL or we can be UN-thankful. If you'll think about it you'll see that there's no in-between. We can't be medium thankful, we can only be one OR the other. If we're not THANKFUL then by default we're FULLY UN-thankful. And when we're UN-thankful we open the door to the Destroyer and allow him to come into our lives to DESTROY what God has given us to steward over (1 Corinthians 10:10). When we're UN-thankful and fail to honor God, we experience increasing futility in life and our hearts become hardened to the things of the Kingdom (Romans 1:21-22).

The Causes of Negative Consequences

Friend, it's not God who's making all those negative things happen when we're not THANKFUL. He gets blamed for it a lot but He's not the problem. No, Jesus went to the Cross for ALL mankind (1 john 2:2) so that GRACE could abound just for the taking, and it ALREADY abounds. All we have to do is connect to it by FAITH. The problems we're experiencing in life aren't from God; there're to a large extent the result of our own conduct and choices and decisions and attitudes and speaking. In short, we make ourselves dull and hardened to the things of the Kingdom by becoming UN-thankful, UN-grateful people.

Yes, the devil DOES come around to try to make our lives miserable but we have authority over him and according to our Bibles if we RESIST him he WILL flee (James 4:7). And yes, we DO have to live physically in an unrighteous world and deal with its systems and corrupt ways of doing things, but by FAITH we who believe overcome the world (1 John 4:4-5). The reality is though that both the devil and the world are trying their best to bring discouragement against us so we become UN-grateful people. You can be assured that the kingdom of darkness knows very well about the power of GIVING THANKS and wants to stop it and bring defeat into our lives instead of the GRACE that Jesus has made available as a key part of the New Covenant we're so blessed to live under.

The Causes of Ingratitude

That's why we need to be watchful and on guard against the negative influences that can come against us from those sources and cause us to gravitate into an UN-grateful lifestyle where the Destroyer can come in to steal and kill and destroy (John 10:10) all the things and the people that are important to us. So, here tonight for your consideration is a list of several of the particular things that will cause us to become powerless UN-grateful people if we allow them to take root:

Becoming Offended - Unfortunately Believers become offended easily, perhaps even more easily than our counterparts in the World. This is a problem because at the center of a lifestyle of THANKSGIVING is agape LOVE. It's LOVE that drives us to honor and celebrate God and each other but the Bible says that LOVE "...does NOT take into account a wrong suffered" (1 Corinthians 13:5). There're many, many people in the Body of Christ that are easily offended at the least provocation and it shouldn't be that way because it causes us to fall out of LOVE with each other. And if our LOVE is not working right then our FAITH won't work right (1 Corinthians 13:2). And if our FAITH isn't working right then we won't be able to fully connect to God's GRACE and empowerment because we can ONLY do that by FAITH (Ephesians 2:8).

Unforgiveness - There're Believers walking around their local churches tonight that haven't spoken to certain other individuals for decades. Some of them would say they've forgiven those other people for some past offense even as they refused to talk to them when an effort at reconciliation was made. But withholding yourself from reconciliation with another Believer for any reason is the opposite of an act of LOVE. The result of unforgiveness is that we become subject to the influences in life that put us into bondage (Matthew 18:34-35). Read it for yourself: the tormentors these verses refer to are the people in the prison who're responsible for torturing the prisoners. If you look carefully you'll see that people who're involved in the practice of unforgiveness are usually unhappy and full of fear, which are the result of the tormentors' work and are two conditions that always cut us off from God's GRACE and empowerment.

Pride - They're also a lot of PRIDEFUL Believers walking around your church tonight as well. Pride can come when folks have achieved something in life and received a lot of recognition for it. People in authority can be prideful because they're used to giving direction to subordinates. Ministers and clergy people can be prideful if they're not really careful because they're more proficient in the Word than their members, and local Believers tend to look up to them too much as role models. And Believers who're relying on their own strength to resolve their problems instead of trusting God are described in Scripture as prideful (1 Peter 5:5-7). The point is that God is opposed to (resists) the PROUD but He gives GRACE to the HUMBLE (1 Peter 5:5 from Proverbs 3:34). We need God's GRACE to empower us to overcome our problems but we can't connect to it in PRIDE.  

Self Pity - Most of us have problems we're trying to deal with and some of them are quite serious, even life threatening. The temptation though is to start believing we don't DESERVE those problems because of who we are or because we've done some really good works or because we see our problems as being worse than the ones other folks are dealing with. Self pity leads to dissatisfaction with the way our life is going and the dissatisfaction leads to thinking we're entitled to something better which leads to UN-gratefulness which cuts us off from God's GRACE and empowerment. The way to defeat this temptation is to keep in mind what we really do actually DESERVE and that Jesus took care of that for us so we won't ever have to receive it.

Envy - Finally, there's another particular cause of UN-gratefulness we haven't looked at in previous articles which is ENVY. We'll consider ENVY (jealousness) in more depth in a future article but for tonight let's just establish a few highlights. The word ENVY means to covet some benefit that another person has come into possession of. To covet means to wish for something excessively. Your New Testament says that when someone is honored (blessed) for something we should all REJOICE for the other person's good experience (1 Corinthians 12:26). We're to do that because Jesus COMMANDED us to love our neighbors as ourselves (Matthew 22:39) and that's why the Word says agape LOVE does not envy (1 Corinthians 13:4). If we ENVY our brother or sister, then our LOVE-walk won't be working right and if the LOVE isn't there then our FAITH won't work (1 Corinthians 13:2). And if our FAITH isn't strong and working right we can't connect to God's GRACE and we fall victim to the Destroyer.

In sum, here are five particular things to avoid if you're trying to be a GRATEFUL person and connect to the power of THANKSGIVING. We need the power and we need it desperately. But so many people in the Body of Christ are under the control of one or more of these five influences. Friend, be mature enough in your Christian walk to examine your life against these five influences, and if you find yourself a little too close to any of them just take the necessary corrective action so you can enter into the fullness of a lifestyle of THANKSGIVING.

And thanks to you sincerely for dropping by tonight. We'll be looking for you again next Sunday evening, March 25 and we hope you'll join us each week as we continue to study the subject of THANKSGIVING. May God bless you and your family with every spiritual blessing in Jesus' Name (Ephesians 1:3).

Sinners' Prayer

If you've never invited Jesus to be the Lord of your life, you need to and you can do it today just by saying out loud the following simple prayer:

Jesus I declare today with all my heart that I believe in you and that God raised you from the dead. I receive forgiveness for my sins and I ask you to come into my life today and be my Lord and Savior. Thank you for salvation and eternal life.

If you were sincere as you prayed this prayer, God has already come into your life and you are a new creation, a totally new species recreated in His image. Now ask the Lord to lead you to a good faith-based, bible-teaching church where you can be equipped to fulfill your potential in the Kingdom of God.

And, when you get a chance have someone help you look up the following scriptures because they confirm what you've done by saying this prayer today and believing what you said:

Romans 10:9

2 Corinthians 5:17

Ephesians 2:8

Prayer Requests

If you have a Prayer Request, please connect to the Link below and follow the promptings. The PLN staff members pray over Prayer Requests every Tuesday morning at 10:00 AM eastern time. Agree with us for God to answer your petition.

http://www.creditcounseling.net/prayer-request.aspx

Donations

If you've been edified by Prosperous Life Newsletter, you may want to consider making a SEED FAITH offering to support the Ministry (Galatians 6:6-7). God has instructed us to simply provide folks with an opportunity to sow seed into good ground so in due season you'll be eligible to reap a harvest and the rest is up to you as the Spirit leads. For your information PLN is a nonprofit gift to the Body of Christ so your financial offerings will usually be tax deductible (consult your tax advisor). Just go to the secure Shopping Cart on the Cornerstone web site by connecting through the following link. We appreciate your support and generosity.

http://www.creditcounseling.net/shop/item.aspx?itemid=1

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