Overflowing Thankfulness

Whats up guys! Last week we kicked off our new Bible study theme for this month which is thankfulness. With thanksgiving being around the corner this is a time where many people and families talk about being “thankful”.

Anthony shared last week about a bible story from Luke where Jesus healed ten people who had leprosey but only one of them came back to Jesus to thank Him for all that He did. And we talked about how its important for us to express our thankfulness to God for all that he does. Not counting our L’s but counting our W’s our blessings that God gives us daily and expressing that to Him.

Tonight we are going to continue in that and our theme for today is “Overflowing Thankfulness”.

Let’s open our bibles now to Colossians 2:6-7 and start reading together.

Cool, lets start...

Colossians 2:6-7 (NLT)

6 And now, just as you accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord, you must continue to follow him. 7 Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness.

How often do you complain? No, really. Think about it. How often do you complain about something, big or small?

Sadly, you probably can’t even think of a real answer, because we tend to complain so much that we don’t even know we’re doing it.

*Remeber as a kid complanining not even knowing it.

How often do you say the things you’re thankful for?

Probably not nearly as much as you complain, right? Because for some reason, it just seems easier to complain than to be thankful.

Its easier for us to count our losses than to count our wins. And sometimes its just hard for us to be thankful.

But our bible passage is telling us that we as believers can overflow with thankfulness. Not just be thankful but overflow with it.

And some of you guys might be thinking to yourselves like “ok andddd” or maybe your thinking “that’s cap, I don’t believe it, I don’t buy it” or maybe you believe it you just don’t know how that’s possible.

Well we are going to learn together how to overflow with thankfulness.

Our bible passage tells us how we should live. It says we should live our lives in Him, rooted and built up in Him, strengthened in faith, and overflowing with thankfulness.

First thing, We need to be rooted in Jesus.

What does this mean? It means our lives and our hearts are to be His and His alone. We are to be connected to Jesus. To HIs Word . He is the foundation of our lives.

We are to be established in Jesus. You know how you see buissnesses say established in 1976. Why businesses do that is because it shows the customers or people that they are trustworthy or reliable because of how long they’ve been establihsed. They are a stable company.

Established in Hebrew has a meaning "to be firm, faithful, true; to trust,"

So when we are established and rooted in Christ it means that we are to be fimrly planted on Jesus and His word. It means that we are to trust in Christ no matter what.

The second thing is, we need to be built up in Him.

That means we need to be growing in our realtionship with Christ. Reading the bible, obeying what God says, loving and living like Jesus. Growing in our faith. Not just staying a baby christian but actually allowing God to grow us and to be used by Him.

Just like a plant or tree. The roots are in the ground and then over time you see the tree or plant grow and blossom into something awesome and beuatiful.

God does the same thing for us. When we are rooted in Jesus, rooted in Him, God grows us, we are built up in Jesus, into something awesome and beauftul.

And God changes our heart and our hearts desires when this happens.

And one of the things is when we are rooted and built up in Jesus, we overflow with thankfulness.

I would say that most of the time, you’re overflowing with something. Even if you don’t realize it and even if it’s not on purpose.

Sometimes we are overflowing with anger, or sadness, or maybe frustration, or worry.

And alot of times this happens when we aren’t thinking about God, we aren’t thinking about the blessings we’ve been given from God, we are just thinking about that certain scenerio or problem or person. And God is just an afterthought.

BUt when we are rooted in Jesus and growing in our realtionship with Him it leads us to have a heart of gratitude. A heart full of thankfulness. Why tho? Because Jesus is enough. Because without Jesus we have nothing but with Jesus we have all that we could ever ask for. Nothing else or no one else could complete us. Jesus is the only one who can complete us and fulfill us.

Jesus loves us! Jesus paid the price for our sins by dying on the cross. Jesus has given us new life.

So even when times get hard, or we are having family issues or trouble in school we know that our lives are secure in Jesus and we say God I don’t know whats going to happen or how to feel about this but I do know that my life is secure in you and your love will never leave me. I thank you for all that you do and all that you are Jesus.

1 Chronicles 16:34

“Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever.”

And this thankfulness in our heart pours out of us and people see that and will be like man why are you so thankful? All these bad things happened or you don’t have this or things could be better but you’re still thankful. Why?

And the answer is because of Jesus.

A thankful heart is produced when are rooted in and built up in Jesus.