Well, I hope everyone had a really good Thanksgiving holiday. Good. It's good to hear. I'm sure a lot of us, you know, Thanksgiving, it's one of those holidays where a lot of us are struggling through some burnout after we're done, a little bit of overload. You might be dealing with some turkey or leftover overload, maybe a little bit of football overload. Um, hopefully not any extended family overload, although I'm sure if we're honest, some of us might be in that position. But but really hope you guys had a great Thanksgiving. Um I love the holidays. I really love holidays, and I'm not one of those types that's gonna get dressed up and decorate and all that kind of stuff. My wife is much more the let's decorate everything and do all that for the holidays. But I really enjoy the holiday season. I think most of us probably do. There are things that are stressful about it, but but definitely one of my favorite times of the year. And one of my favorite things about the holidays is learning really interesting, obscure holiday trivia. I just love learning about where certain traditions came from and all that kind of stuff. And this last week, I got to learn one. My wife actually taught me this really cool piece of holiday-related trivia that I thought was really cool, and I thought I'd share it this morning because it's the holidays. Simple reason. And so my wife told me, I didn't know this, that the turkey was this close to being our national bird whenever our nation was founded. You guys may have known that, but I did not know that. And I got to thinking about this week how different America would be if the turkey. Because you know, like we when you think of 4th of July and, you know, those t-shirts with the ragged American flag in the background and it's all dirty and just looks so tough. If you take that bald eagle off and you put a turkey on that shirt, it's totally different. Because there's there's no way to make a turkey look tough. There's just not. Totally different. So I'm glad that the I'm glad the eagle went out, but turkeys are like a big deal in our our history as a country. In fact, my wife was telling me this, she's just full of all this Thanksgiving knowledge, that there's actually this group called the American Turkey Federation. That exists, it's a real thing. And I guess for for years, the American Turkey Federation every year gives the president a live turkey, and this is kind of sad to be prepared and served for Thanksgiving dinner. It's been happening for decades, until the 60s, this is cool, when John F. Kennedy pardoned the turkey. And now, this is true, this is real. I looked this up on Google, it's definitely real. Um now, every year since John Kennedy did that, instead of that turkey being sacrificed and prepared, however you want to call it, the turkey gets to go live in Disneyland. Let's think that's cool. That's very good. I don't know. That has nothing to do with what we're talking about this morning at all. Um I just thought it was a cool piece of trivia. Actually, let's pray, and then we'll jump into what we're gonna talk about. God, thank you so much. Uh, thank you for God, thank you for this church, and thank you for your love, and that we can all just be here together and really thank you this morning for everything you've done for us. We love you so much. We just pray that you would speak to us this morning. Holy Spirit, you say in your word that when two or more people are gathered together, that you're with us, and we're here in your name, Jesus, and we want you to speak to us and teach us and help us walk out of these doors closer to you than when we walked in. And we ask this all in your name, Jesus. Amen. Well, honestly, holiday traditions aside, I really do enjoy the holidays, and so I'm really excited to be here this morning, kind of during the holiday season. If we've never met before, my name is Justin. I do uh I get the great pleasure of heading up some of our student teams here at his hands, the high school group, the junior high, elementary school. But I really get excited about being in here. On Sunday mornings, I'm always with the young kids, and they are awesome. I love them. But my chances of being pegged in the face with a bouncy ball are so much less in here than they are in there. That it's exciting. And I say that joking because parents, please know that we do not throw bouncy balls in his kids, but it happens. So I love being in here. It's it's great to do it, and I love that it's the holidays because it's just such a great time to talk about a lot of things that um that are really meaningful and really impactful in our lives. And and I am one of those people that I I love, I love Christmas, I love Thanksgiving, I get really reminiscent during the holidays. I don't know about you guys, but when it's holiday time, it's just something about it. I don't know if it's watching movies that I watched as a kid, they're always on TV. Just there's a lot of things that remind me of my childhood or remind me of younger years. And so I get very, very sentimental and I think a lot about the past during the holidays. And there are a few specific time periods that really jump to the forefront of my mind. Just times in my life where I have a lot of really distinct memories. One of those times is when I was 11 or 12, like my early, kind of late childhood, early teenage years. We lived in southern Missouri, kind of out in the country. We had like 10 acres, and it was just a really memorable time in my life. I have a lot of really great, distinct memories from that time. Another time that usually jumps right to the forefront of my mind is the first year and a half or so of my marriage. Megan and I, my wife have been married for over five years. Not a really long time, but obviously in that span we've had a lot of memories together. But that first year and a half is just full of these extremely distinct memories. And so anytime I get sentimental and I start thinking back on the past, that year and a half is like at the top of just so many things happened. And most of those memories, you know, you categorize your memories. And a lot of those memories fall under a category that I like to call stupid things Justin did that Megan forgave him for, memories. I have a lot of those. And there's a real concentration of those memories in that first year and a half of our marriage. And one of those stupid things Justin did, but Megan somehow forgave him for memories, was really at the top of my mind as I was getting ready for this morning. Megan and I had been married for about a year, and uh I had just finished college, just graduated, I had my first full-time job, really excited about it, and it was the summertime. Megan still had a year left of college, she was going into her senior year, and she had this summer job that was lined up, but it fell through at the last possible minute, and it was gonna be a great job because it was gonna work perfectly with the summer classes she was taking. Uh, but in the last minute, we really couldn't find another job for her to uh you know to take that would still work with those schedules, so we decided that she would just not work for the summer. We lived in a we had a really cheap apartment, so it was it wasn't a big deal there. Uh, but she was off for the summer taking a few classes. I was working full-time for the first time of my life. And like a lot of us, you know, kind of entering that first stage of life, we're out of the school stage and we're into the the workforce kind of thing, I got kind of overwhelmed. I felt like I was, you know, treading water a little in over my head with all the responsibility and all this kind of stuff. And uh I started to just get really, I don't know, really tense. And it kind of came to a head for me one day was I when I was doing laundry. And laundry is one of the things that I have done in our marriage to help contribute to the household. Um, I probably don't do it right, but I gets done. As a matter of fact, I know I don't do it right, um, but it gets done. So I've done laundry for a long time, and I remember that year I was doing laundry during the summer, and this thought popped into my head. I'm washing a load, and I think to myself, man, I'm working full time and I'm doing the laundry. And my wife is off for the summer. She should be doing the laundry, not me. There's this, I sense this tension in the room right now. Did you guys see where this is going? But as I think about this more, I'm having, you know, we've all done this before. I'm convinced I'm like, yeah. Yeah. Why am I doing the laundry? Not that it's a woman thing and I'm a man, it's a she uh she's off for the summer, I'm on. I shouldn't have to do the laundry. I'm contributing too much to this household. So, being uh I don't know, stupid, I decided to talk to Megan about it and express my feelings. And so I told her, I came to her, I said, honey, we really need to talk. Uh I just feel like, I just feel like I'm doing too much right now. You know, I'm working full time and I'm doing the laundry. And you're off for the summer, and I I really feel like it would be great if you would do the laundry instead. And when I told this to Megan, she didn't get upset. She actually got really hurt. It was the next day that she got upset. You know, it's stewed. I get home the next day from work and I open the door to our apartment, I go right to the refrigerator, that's that's usually what I do, and on the refrigerator, there's a sticky note. And I grab the sticky note and I look at it, and it says, I buy groceries. And I was like, okay. So I open up the refrigerator door to get something to drink, and there on the shelf in the refrigerator is another sticky note. And it says, I clean the refrigerator. And I'm kind of slow, so after I see the first two, I'm like, oh, these are all these different things she does around the house. And then I have this moment of panic, and I think, how many of these are there? So I shut the refrigerator door and I start to look around, and they're everywhere. I'm talking easy 100 to 200 sticky notes, and on every single one of them is something that Megan does around the house. Most of them say things like, I wash this, I dust that, I clean this. If our dog wasn't the type to just take the the sticky notes off and eat them, there would have been like 10 on him. It would have said, I clip this, I bathe this, I comb this out. All over our apartment, sticky notes on everything with reminders of all the things that Megan does to contribute. Things that honestly, I didn't even really notice. Definitely not things that I appreciated. And it was a humbling experience because in that moment I realized how unthankful I had been for Megan and everything that she did. And I will say that Megan wanted me to mention that she now looking back, she doesn't think that that was the most mature way to handle that situation. However, ladies, she has not been asked to do laundry since. So take it out for what it's worth. There's a lot of guys in the room right now that are like, if I get home and there's sticky notes all over everything, I know who to blame. I'm sorry. Um But you know, that was one of those moments in my life. It's a memory that sticks out to me. I was really thinking about it this last weekend and this last week in the context of Thanksgiving. And thinking about how thankful I am to have an amazing wife like that. And at a time when I wasn't that thankful. You know, I wasn't, most of those things that she did, I didn't even notice. I overlooked completely. I definitely didn't appreciate them or thank her for them. And it was just, it was a really, you know, it was kind of one of those moments where your eyes are opened and you realize something in your life that needs to change. And so, you know, in the whole context of Thanksgiving, having Thanksgiving weekend, I was thinking so much about things that I have to be thankful for, and I realized that being thankful, like having a thankful spirit, a really thankful attitude, is something that's hard for me. It takes a lot of focus for me personally to be thankful. I wish I didn't need a Thanksgiving holiday or 150 sticky notes to remind me to be thankful for things, but sometimes I do. I have to focus and concentrate in order to be thankful, and especially when life is stressful. The more stressful life gets, the easier it is, and I think this is just kind of human nature, the easier it is to focus on all the things that I'm not satisfied with, all the things that I wish were different, all the things that I want to change. And especially in those moments, I can get so focused on all that stuff, all the stuff that I want to be different. That focusing on the things that are I'm actually blessed with and the things that are good, those just kind of go out the window. I forget about those things. I wish it wasn't like that, but it is. It's Philippians 4, 6. And it says, Don't worry about anything. Instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need and thank him for all that he's done. I love this verse. I love how simple of a description of prayer that this verse is. It just says, When you're worried, pray, ask God for what you need, thank him for what he's done. And when I'm stressed out, when I've got a lot going on in life, and that's most of the time for most of us, the first part of that prayer, that's easy. Asking God, you know, for what I need, that comes naturally. That's on the forefront of my mind. It's that second part that I have to concentrate to do, to stop and to thank God for what he's done. But it's amazing when we do that, how much everything changes. And when we take time and we do actually thank God and just have a thankful spirit, how different that makes everything in life. See, thanking God is one of those things that obviously honors God, it blesses him, but it's incredibly beneficial to us. Because having a thankful attitude and a thankful spirit, man, there's just something about it that helps us combat a lot of the things that we struggle with. A lot of the stress and the worry and the anxiety and the fear, a lot of those things, being thankful and focusing on the things that are good and that we can thank God for it, it helps it helps combat all of those things. And so it's something that God asks us to do, not just because it blesses him, but because it blesses us. You know, thanking God is something that's that's really important. And like I said, when I get stressed out, it's just hard for me to remember to do that. But when I do, man, it's amazing what happens. You know, when when I pray and I'm mindful of what God has already done, because that's what it said. Thank God for what he's already done. When I'm mindful of that, when I'm focused on thanking God for the things he's already done in my life, the way that I pray changes. Because when I'm not in that mindset, when I pray and I'm asking God for what I need, a lot of it feels like a shot in the dark. A lot of it feels like I'm kind of grasping, I'm hoping, I'm I'm asking, hey God, please do this, but I'm not necessarily confident that it'll happen. I feel like it's a long shot. When I'm asking God for what I need, but but mindful of everything he's already done, it's different. My attitude changes. I have more hope. I have more confidence in God. I sit there, and a lot of things that seem like long shots, I realize, man, God's done this before. God's gotten me out of a situation like this before. There's no reason to think he can't do it again. God can do this. He's on this. He loves me, he cares about me, he's gonna help. And all of that comes from thankfulness. Stress starts to melt away, worry starts to melt away, things look a lot less bleak and a lot more hopeful. And so now prayer becomes something that's not just telling God what we need, knowing that he has the total power to do that, but but it almost becomes therapeutic. It helps. And it's all through thankfulness, through simply asking God for what we need. We don't have to feel guilty to ask God what we need. He asks us to do that. He tells us, ask me what you need. But when we do that, mindful of what he's already done, and thanking him for what he's already done, it reminds us that he is active in our lives. He is doing things, he does care about us, and he is going to help. And especially when we're stressful, especially when when there's a lot going on, you know, it's Christmas time and money's tight and gifts are right around the corner, that kind of stuff. I mean, we need all the help we can get in managing that, and and thanking God, having a thankful spirit, it helps. Jesus was someone who definitely understood the importance of thanking God in the middle of hard times. Earlier this morning, we took the Lord's Supper together, and that's something that we do every Sunday. It's something that Jesus asked us to do to remember him. And so we sort of imitate this exchange he had with his disciples right before he was arrested. And we see the story in Luke 22, verses 14 through 19. It says, When the time came, Jesus and the apostles sat down together at the table. Jesus said, I've been very eager to eat this Passover meal with you before my suffering begins. For I tell you now that I won't eat this meal again until its meaning is fulfilled in the kingdom of God. Then he took a cup of wine and gave thanks for it. Then he said, Take this and share it among yourselves, for I will not drink wine again until the kingdom of God has come. And then he took some bread and gave thanks for it. Then he broke it in pieces and gave it to his disciples, saying, This is my body which is given for you. Do this to remember me. So here we have Jesus, and he's thanking God for these small things with his disciples. And there's obviously a lot of spiritual symbolism and a lot of significance about what he's doing. There's a lot going on. But it doesn't change the fact that he takes some time and he gives thanks to God for some bread, some wine, some time with his friends. And it's such an interesting point in Jesus' life because there is no doubt that Jesus is dealing with a lot of stress and a lot of anxiety here. And we see later on he's praying in a garden, and we we get to see through his prayer just how much what was about to happen was was affecting him. And in the middle of that, in the middle of all that stress, all that anxiety, he takes time and he thanks God. I can imagine that for Jesus, focusing on what was good, focusing on what he enjoyed and what he was thankful for probably helped him work through a lot of that stress and anxiety. Get his mind off it. I don't know. And it can be weird for us to think about Jesus working through things. Because he's Jesus and He's God and He never sinned, and so it's we think sometimes, oh, he's Jesus. He didn't get stressed out, he didn't get affected by the things that maybe affect us. But Jesus was a person. And he did work through things. He got tired. He got stressed, he got discouraged. And when he did, he did practical things that helped him work through that stuff. So when Jesus was really tired and pulled in a lot of different directions, he would go off by himself and find just some time alone to spend with God, some time away from everything just to kind of relax and recover and recoup his strength. And that's something that any of us can do. Whenever we're you know tired and pulled in a bunch of different directions. It's something that Jesus did that we can imitate. And here we have this situation where Jesus, in the middle of what has to be one of the most stressful days of his life, he knows full well what's about to happen to him. He knows full well that he's about to be arrested and crucified. He knows all of that. In the middle of all of that, he takes time, has a meal with his friends, and thanks God. I can only imagine that that thankful spirit helped Jesus keep everything in perspective and helped Jesus work through what he was about to go through. And so it's something that we can take and we can look at and say, hey, sometimes the best thing to do when life is crazy and all this stuff's happening around us and we're stressed out and we're not sure what to do is just to stop, take some time, focus on what's good, and give thanks to God for it. That actually helps us. I said a few minutes ago that it's not easy for me to have a thankful spirit. It doesn't just come naturally. And it's clear through the Bible how much God values thankfulness. I mean, it's all over the Bible. In 1 Chronicles 16, 34, it says, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His faithful love endures forever. In Psalm 50, 14, it says, make thankfulness your sacrifice to God, and keep the vows you made to the Most High. In Psalm 104, it says, Enter his gates with thanksgiving, go into his courts with praise, give thanks to him and praise his name. And that's just a sample. There are so many verses in the Bible that are that are about giving thanks. And the thing about God is that so much of what he asks us to do, it blesses him, but it's also for our benefit. It's for our good. He loves us, he's our Father. And so when he asks us to give thanks, it's not just for him, it's for us. It benefits us, it helps us, it helps melt away the stress and the worry and the fear. It helps remind us that he is doing things. He's done them in the past. Whether it's the big stuff, like, man, we're alive, or it's all the little things that he's done to get us out of tight spots and situations that we didn't know what to do, and all of a sudden we make it out, okay. It reminds us that he's done so many things, and if we take time and just focus on those things, it's it's pretty crazy how big the list can get in a small period of time. And it's encouraging. And now when we're we're struggling with something and praying for him to help us, we're encouraged. When we're encouraged about what he's done in the past, we actually get excited about what he's gonna do in the future. Because we know he's gonna do it. Like I said, thankfulness, it's hard for me. I have to focus. And this week I was getting ready for this morning, and I felt really guilty about that. I felt like, man, I you know, this is not something that comes naturally to me. It's not like I'm, hey, we should all be thankful, and I'm really good at that. So here's what I do. I'm not very good at having a thankful spirit. I I spend much more time focusing on all the things I'm not satisfied with, all the things I'm I'm not happy with. I do that with myself, I do that with other relationships, I do that with our finances, marriage, you name it. I spend much more time focusing on that. And so this isn't something that I'm that good at at all. I have to focus and concentrate to do it. But but then I thought, well, that's actually not that big of a deal. Because if we have to focus and concentrate on doing something, instead of feeling down, like, oh man, I'm I have to focus and concentrate to Do this, we just say, hey, I need to focus and concentrate on doing this. Because there are so many things in life that we we focus and we concentrate, we give it all we've got to do it, but eventually, if we keep doing that consistently, it gets easier and easier. I have a son that's that's eight months old. And a lot of parents in the room this morning, and you guys have most of you have been through this before, but it's my first son, and so every week there seems to be some new thing that he's doing that he didn't do before. And I'm just amazed by him, amazed at watching him develop. Just last night we had to lower the mattress in his crib because we walked in his room after a nap yesterday and he was standing up holding onto the side. And those are those moments that all parents have that are like a great mixture of like excitement and joy with utter fear. You're like, yay, terrifying. And so we lowered his crib. I was thinking back, I watched him do things now with ease that three months ago took all the concentration in the world to do. Things like grabbing something and putting it in his mouth. Three months ago, if he dropped his pacifier, you would watch him as he would reach for it and get his fingers around it and bring it to his face and try to get it in his mouth, and he'd usually like work it around for a while, hit his nose a few times, but he'd get it, but you could just see in his eyes how much he was focusing to do that. It took all the concentration in the world for him to grab that thing and bring it to his face. All the concentration in the world. Now, three months later, I mean, we turn our eyes for a second and he's got something in his mouth, and you're like, what how did that how did that happen? I mean, 50 times a day, I'm like, no, don't put that in your mouth. When we walk in a room now, it's like, we're like secret service. We walk around, we're like, okay, that's gonna be in his mouth, that's a threat, gotta remove that, get that out of the way. I mean, it's like everything that's small enough, he'll grab it, he'll put it in his mouth. He does it with ease, but three months ago it took focus. And there are so many things in life like that for us. We were all like that at one point in time. Or even the smallest things now that are nothing to us took a lot of energy. And it's like that with God too. Sometimes, really important things with God, at first, they're hard. And it takes focus, it takes concentration, and we can actually feel almost like, man, I must not be that good with God if I have to focus this hard on just being thankful. But like anything else in life, if we do it consistently, it gets easier and it becomes more natural. And we don't have to focus as hard, it becomes second nature. And so this morning is really simple. It's just about it's just about us making a conscious effort to thank God for what he's done. About us just committing and being mindful of the fact that we have a God that loves us. And he does act in our lives, he does things for us out of love because he's our dad. And when we're stressed out and we're in hard times, he cares. And he wants to help. And when we thank him for what he's done, when we focus on what he's done, it helps us. It reminds us of all the times he's helped us out before, and it gives us hope and encouragement that he's gonna do it again. We're less stressful, less anxiety, we're more hopeful. It's not as bleak, it's just good. And all it takes is a moment. It just takes a moment every day. It just takes a moment to say, okay, I'm gonna thank God for something in my life. Or when we pray and we ask God for what we need, which is great. He wants us to do that, we just say to ourselves, okay, I'm gonna pray and I'm gonna ask God for what I need, but then I'm gonna spend a moment and just thank him for what he's done. In fact, this morning, we're we're gonna pray actually as the worship team comes up and gets ready to send us off with another song. Um, we're just gonna do that this morning. It's kind of different. But just take a moment. A minute, and just thank God for anything. And practice it and do it and start it now because it's so, so good. So we'll put a little music on, give us all just a minute to sit, focus, and just thank God for something he's done for us.

Yeah! Fading out, I be keeping my eyes wide open, I've been keeping my eyes wide open.

It's nice, isn't it? Isn't that good? I don't know. I just love that. I love just it doesn't take long. I, you know, sitting up and just thinking, okay, what do I have to be thankful for? It's a big list over time, and it's so encouraging because it reminds us that this God that we we worship, he's crazy about us. He loves us. And when we need something, he cares and he is gonna do it. And if we're discouraged or or or anything, he just wants us to be reminded, hey, I've been there for you in the past, I'm gonna be there for you in the future, I'm here for you now. And so this morning, we're gonna pray and just worship him. And then let's just remember that we're worshiping a God that's our dad. And a God that that wants us to thank him, not just because it honors him, but a God that wants us to thank him for us so that we're reminded of all the things he's doing for us right now. And then we can walk out encouraged, knowing whatever it is that we're stressed about, whatever it is that we've got going on right now, he's working on it. We can trust him and thank him for what he's done and what he's gonna do. So let's pray. God, thank you so much for your love. Thank you for everything. We could spend the whole day just saying thank you and not run out of things to thank you for. That's how good you are, God. And we love you so much, and we know that you love us a great amount. And so this morning, Lord, we just ask that you would you would just fill our minds and our hearts with things that you've done for us. Remind us of all those things. Just so we can be encouraged, God, because we get we get overwhelmed, we get stressed out, we've got things we're trying to do and a lot of resistance sometimes, and you know that, Jesus. You experience that, and so we just ask this morning that as we're going through that stuff, you would just remind us of what you've done and help us take a moment to thank you for it, so that we can be encouraged and blessed and benefit from all the great things that being thankful and having a thankful spirit does. And we ask this all in your name, Jesus, and just worship you this morning. Amen.