Greetings in the Name of Jesus and welcome to the PLN Sunday Night Bible Fellowship!
Thanks for joining our discussion tonight and we hope you're enjoying a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday. If you've been following along with us in the current series then you know that we're in the midst of an examination of life under the New Covenant. The main reason for the examination is that many Christians don't fully understand what's available to us under this special way of life that Jesus arranged for us two thousand years ago. Total freedom without condemnation is part of it and access to the full POWER of the Word of God is another part. And the more we examine the New Covenant, the better it looks with an abundance of good things that God has made available for us to enjoy.
Last week we discussed that one of the character traits He wants us to develop is the ability to be fully THANKFUL for all the favor God has made available. We aren't naturally GRATEFUL for anything and in fact our Flesh is never really GRATEFUL. We can be glad about something good that happens to us but in a short time our flesh goes back to wondering why God is delaying the next good thing. But the Holy Spirit is teaching us to be people of THANKSGIVING not because God is trying to glorify Himself by getting a lot compliments but because being GRATEFUL is for our own good. As we saw last week, the SACRIFICE OF THANKSGIVING honors God and when we HONOR GOD, it opens the door for Him to HONOR us in return. And when God HONORS people, Scripture says it's with "heavy, overflowing" favor that will be more than we can handle so we can use the overflow to help establish the Kingdom of God (Deuteronomy 8:18) and for the performance of good works (2 Corinthians 9:8). If you missed the article from last week, I encourage you to click on the Archives link at the top of this page so you can catch up.
It seems clear that the reason THANKSGIVING is mentioned so many times in the New Testament is to help us realize that this is something that's particularly important. Following are ten of those scriptures so you can see them all in one place:
1 Corinthians 15:57 - Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through Christ.
2 Corinthians 2:14 - Thanks be to God who always causes us to triumph in Christ.
Ephesians 5:20 - Give thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ.
Colossians 1:12 - Give thanks to the Father for the inheritance we have received.
Colossians 2:7 - We are to be firmly rooted in Christ, established in our faith and overflowing with
thanksgiving.
Colossians 3:17 - In all that we do we are to do it in the name of Jesus giving thanks through Him to
God the Father.
Colossians 4:2 - We are to devote ourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of
thanksgiving.
1 Thessalonians 5:18 - It is God's WILL for us who are in Christ that we give thanks for everything.
1 Timothy 4:4 - Everything created by God is good and should be received with thanksgiving.
Hebrews 13:15 - Let us continually give thanks to the name of Jesus.
Accessing the Grace of God
The important aspect about New Testament THANKSGIVING is that it's one of the MAIN ways we can access God's GRACE. One of the definitions of GRACE is that it's undeserved EMPOWERMENT. It wouldn't be accurate to say that it's the only way to GRACE or that a Believer can fully access all of it just by being THANKFUL. Faith is also involved and so is study, mediation and knowledge of the Word, obedience, the words we speak (death and life are in the power of the tongue - Proverbs 18:21), how we think (as a man thinks within himself, so is he - Proverbs 23:7), etc. It's not just about being THANKFUL. But becoming a truly GRATEFUL person is certainly a principal entrance way to God's FAVOR and EMPOWERMENT and most importantly it's probably the most overlooked means for accessing it. It's the one that Believers pay the least attention to. We're so focused on the things that are wrong in our lives that we usually fail to be THANKFUL to God when good things happen even though according to the Bible, EVERY good thing that's given is from God (James 1:17). The truth is when those good things happen, we tend to take credit for them ourselves instead of being THANKFUL to God. On the other hand we're a lot more faithful to blame Him for the bad things that show up even though they didn't come from Him. Bad things do NOT come from God.
In sum, we can begin to CULTIVATE A LIFESTYLE OF THANKSGIVING and see God's GRACE begin to work more fully in our lives. As we study this, it's quite revealing to consider the Israelites in the wilderness as to how they conducted themselves there and what the result was. To make a long story short, the Bible says that in a matter of a few days after God had miraculously delivered them from Egyptian bondage, the Israelites began to complain about their new circumstances. They'd been witness to God performing miracle after miracle to get them out of Egypt, and despite that they had difficulty trusting Him for the next one. They grumbled and complained and grieved the Lord to the point of WRATH. So He wound up waiting for their current generation to die off before releasing them to go into the Promised Land. Because of their grumbling, complaining, unbelief and lack of trusting Him to fulfill His promises, they had to wander in the wilderness for 40 years and missed out on the good thing God had for them.
The Bible says that their complaining and ingratitude demonstrated hardness of heart which developed because of their sin and unbelief (Hebrews 3:13, 19). People with hardness of heart are unable to perceive spiritual things (Mark 8:17-18). GRACE is a spiritual thing; ergo, people who're ungrateful are unable to perceive God's GRACE and cut themselves off from it. It's not God who withholds His favor; no, the GRACE with all its EMPOWERMENT to produce Christian victory in life was released the moment Jesus finished paying for our sins. The GRACE is ready and available, ready to be received and used to provide HELP in a time of need (Hebrews 4:16). But it's we Believers by our ingratitude and our blame and our unbelief that cut OURSELVES off from the GRACE of God and from the victory that Jesus won for us at the Cross of Calvary. It's we who have ourselves opened the door to the destroyer/enemy/devil/Satan (1 Corinthians 10:10) and we should be blaming and taking authority over him (Ephesians 6:10-12) instead of blaming God for our lack of victory.
Some Concluding Thoughts
Friend, we can begin to change our negative circumstances simply by focusing on being GRATEFUL. Instead of blaming the Lord for what the enemy does, we can start THANKING God at every opportunity for all the good things He's already done and for what we believe by faith He WILL do. All of us have a lot of good things working in our lives that we should focus on instead of on all our problems. God knows what we have and what we need; our job is to TRUST Him by faith to carry out what He's promised. Besides, if we're focused on our problems, we won't notice all our miracles. Friend what have you been focusing on lately?
Being THANKFUL starts out as a sacrifice in the midst of the storm. But as you use it, momentum builds and grows and in due season you're guaranteed to develop a lifestyle of THANKSGIVING. And as that happens, you develop a softer heart to the things of God, His GRACE begins working stronger in your life, His miracles become more apparent and VICTORY appears. It's not the only thing but it's one of the main things that produces VICTORY in life and it's real easy to attend to. In short, living under the New Covenant is intended to be, has been designed to be, a life of THANKSGIVING and supernatural EMPOWERMENT. Just receive the Word tonight by faith and then make it a point to THANK God at every opportunity for all the great things in your life because He's the One who put them in your life.
Thanks for joining our discussion tonight. We'll be looking for you again NEXT Sunday night on December 6. In the meantime may the Lord bless you with every spiritual blessing (Ephesians 1:3), pushing you to VICTORY in every area of life!
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Sinners' Prayer
If you've never invited Jesus to be your Lord, you can do so today by believing and saying out loud the following simple prayer:
Jesus I declare today with all my heart that I believe in you and I believe that God raised you from the dead. I acknowledge that my sins have been forgiven for all time 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, God has already come into your life and you're 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.
When you get a moment have someone help you look up the following scriptures because they confirm what you've done by saying this prayer 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 central time. Agree with us for God to answer your petitions.
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