Grateful For What Never Fails

Intro

[pray]

Intro

I want us to start this sermon time by taking a second to be thankful. So take a few seconds, and silently list what you are thankful for.

pause

This morning, I was thankful, although it didn’t feel like much of a blessing at the time, to wake up around 4 or so. After I kicked around a bit trying to get to sleep I laid there thinking about my sermon - which is pretty typical for me - just thinking of new ideas and new angles. I eventually turned on the TV in the living room and was looking through all the infomercials. And I was thinking about using some of that in my sermon because honestly, it fits pretty well!

Then I saw there was church on, so I tuned in. I didn’t want sermon material at that point, I was just hoping to get preached at a little.

Instead, I got sermon material.

In this sermon, the preacher was urging their congregation to “come through drippin.” Which is a phrase that I learned just this morning.

The idea was that he wanted them to be glad that God had given them money, and jewelry, and nice cars, and whatever else they had. He was equating our material wealth with the story of Moses - and if you are confused, God bless you; I was too.

But his point isn’t really important - and it definitely isn’t a very healthy or Christ-focused one. What is important, at least for me, is that it is merely an example of a greater issue in our lives and in our time.

[Kanye’s album]

All over TV, and all through our lives, there are people who extol the glory and providence of a God who made them rich. And while all things are God’s and He rules over it all, their sentiment is that they are somehow blessed - insinuating that they are more blessed than others - by God.

And because of that implication, it causes Christians to fall prey to the same material urges that have become the norm in our world.

That was brought back into the spotlight a couple of weeks ago, when - and I want to get what he is thinking about changing his name to correct here - Christian Genius Billionaire Kanye West went to Joel Osteen’s Church to promote his new album. Which if you haven’t heard it, it is pretty religious at best - and I use that word intentionally.

But they and the crowd celebrated the fact that he was rich and famous and Christian.

And while we don’t do it on that scale, that seems to be the prevailing feeling among believers. We are thankful for our stuff, for our money, for whatever, because that shows that God loves us.

We have, as the preacher this morning said, come through drippin, so God must love us!

[thankfulpic]

Now don’t hear this wrong, we should be thankful for everything we have. But those things remind me that we all - myself included - have a long way to go to get back to where God needs us to be.

You see, we are sometimes more thankful for that stuff than we are love - which is what God is the Bible tells us. We have become almost conditioned to be immediately thankful for the things we have rather than the love we know. The God who created and sustains us.

And we are so conditioned that we sometimes can’t even figure out which comes first? The chicken or the egg? Love or thankfulness? Stuff or gratitude?

So what are you thankful for?

Earlier we listed those things in our minds, right? So, be honest, what were you thankful for?

Are you grateful for things that will fail you?

If you are like me, and most of us, we tend to be thankful for those things - stuff as I call it. Now I don’t think that we intend for that thankful to be anything that isn’t healthy, necessarily, but the point remains. We are thankful for our homes, or our cars, our jobs. Sometimes we are thankful for phones, or social media, or as the good pastor this morning was encouraging his flock, for the jewelry and money they have.

And don’t get me wrong, we should all be grateful for those things, but how much more should we be grateful to God for simply existing! For each breath! For our family. For our friends. For the chance to experience that feeling of love and wonder that only God can offer! A sunrise. A peaceful moment. Just sitting and talking about life and feelings and dreams.

Those things that encapsulate all that God is. Those things that we could simply call - love.

After all, those things - love and all that it brings with it - those will never fail. You can lose a house, a job, a car. We should all lose social media. But you can lose all that other stuff - and you just might because it is destined to fail - but you can lose it all and still have love.

In short - you can have nothing, and still have love. So you still have God. You can have nothing, and have everything - and honestly, that is more often the case.

[blackfridaypic]

But those are the things we tend to be thankful for. Things that are dead. Things that will ultimately let us down. Things that inform not only our spiritual lives, unfortunately, but inform the very systems by which we live!

You see it in our political talk when people debate the finer points of capitalism - a movement dominated by our dependence on stuff by the way. You can see it in our social lives when we want to have the best stuff, or we want our kids to be on the cutting edge, or to be trendsetters and not be themselves. We buy them gadgets. WE BUY OURSELVES GADGETS! But we predicate our lives on accumulating things, we even pay to store all that stuff because our houses run out of room! We build bigger barns for all our stuff - things that are costing us money and time, and then we thank God for those things.

This trend has not only invaded, but has successfully taken over even our holidays that are intended to mark the gift of God shown through a child born with nothing.

[Talk about skipping over Thanksgiving...xmas stuff on tv and radio the day after Halloween…]

We don’t want to have to be thankful for people or time, or even Jesus, we just want more stuff! Honestly, from the commercials I see on TV, it seems like the real holiday coming up this week is Black Friday; a day when we leave our family to go spend less money on them so that on a day when we celebrate the coming King of the world they will have more stuff! Stuff that will one day fill the landfill. That is how America has come to spend both this holiday and the next. Days that should be about gratitude for life, love, and family - but has instead become a roadblock between our fear of death and our want of stuff.

And in our lack of gratitude, we have lost some ability to love.

You see, being grateful and loving, it turns out, are very similar. You can’t be grateful if you don’t have love in you. And you can’t love if you aren’t grateful. You might have the most money, you might have the best Thanksgiving meal, or best Christmas ever, you might have all the friends or success, but you will find - in the end - that all of that will fail. The toys break. The meal gets eaten and family leaves - hopefully happy, but sometimes angry about politics or the ball game, or how old cousin Eddie parked his RV in the front yard.

It will all end. All the fancy plates or expensive decorations or endless presents will all pass away. Our houses, jobs, the things we invest so much in to get more stuff - they will all one day be gone.

[loveparentschildren]

But love won’t. Love will grow and sustain as the years move on. Love doesn’t need our stuff. It doesn’t need money. It not only doesn’t need it, but those things more often get in the way of us feeling and understanding just what love is!

In other words, when you have all that stuff, you forget how to be patient. You forget how to be kind. Those things become for us a point of envy. Parents, we use them to keep a record of wrongs - taking them away or giving them only when our children “deserve” them. A pattern we repeat in the real world.

We offer stuff, because we forget to love. And what is worse, is that stuff is what made us forget to begin with!

No, stuff isn’t where love is found. And it is not what we will ever remember.

[bestxmas]

[story about my best Christmas ever..]

All of that stuff, every single bit of it, is overshadowed in my memory by love. You see it was in that place and at that moment in life that, I remember my dad playing basketball with me. Taking me to baseball practice. Teaching me to ride the lawnmower. Taking me to scouts. It was one of the few moments in my childhood that I can vividly recall there being enough peace and stability for me to establish my habits and for my parents to take time to invest their love - their moments - in me.

Yeah, I had all that stuff! A waterbed, a TV in my room (it was even color), Nintendo, that had been out for maybe a year or so at that point, a computer, cool clothes, a trumpet - all things I should be eternally grateful for, no doubt! But I don’t remember them. I can’t bring out a memory of their sustained importance to me. I can’t even recall specific moments with them. I mean I remember getting them. But I don’t remember them. They aren’t with me today. THEY HAVE ALL FAILED! AND THEY WILL ALWAYS FAIL! ALL THOSE THINGS THAT WE FORCE OURSELVES TO SHOW GRATITUDE FOR ARE USELESS CHURCH! WE CHASE AFTER THEM, WE WANT THEM FOR OURSELVES, FOR OUR CHILDREN, AND FOR OUR COMMUNITY AND EVEN OUR NATION - BUT THEY ARE NOTHING!

In the middle of a life that was in turmoil because of my age, because of constantly moving, because of the growing understanding of life and the world around me - in short - when everything seemed to be failing, even in light of those awesome things I wanted so much, the love of a person spending time with me is all that remains.

But it doesn’t just remain, it is the very core of me. It is the reminder that whatever I am doing, it just doesn’t matter when compared to loving those around me! And not loving through stuff. Not through trips. Not through anything money can buy! But through the simple desire to be a part of all they are. To show interest in the things that they are interested in. To want to talk. To make them understand that they matter and have value.

[Love never fails.]

Love never fails.

One of, if not my absolute favorite things to tell the world about our church is that we give back.

But I want to be clear, I am not talking about the money. But that is something that I am endlessly proud of. Giving 12% back to the community - with the hopes of giving more - is so unique and so refreshing in our age of ever-expanding church life. But understand that will one day fail. Or more appropriately, that will not be what our ultimate expression of love really is or can be.

But last Sunday, that is a different story. Our Faith in Community days; those show that we love someone more than money, more than tradition, more than time, more than ourselves! Our Band of Brothers Christmas. Our Souper bowl for hospice. Henderson Settlement. Mazatlan. Community involvement. Covenant Care. large and small scale community outreach events. EVERY MOMENT WHEN WE INVEST IN PEOPLE - NOT WITH STUFF, NOT WITH MONEY, BUT WITH THE CORE OF OUR LIVES! WITH OUR TIME! WITH OUR ENERGY! THOSE THINGS WILL NEVER FAIL! ALL THAT WE ARE AS A CHURCH WILL FAIL! EVEN THOSE GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT WILL CEASE, PAUL SAYS! PROPHECIES WILL CEASE, TONGUES WILL BE STILLED, KNOWLEDGE WILL PASS AWAY! BUT OUR PATIENCE, OUR KINDNESS, OUR TIME, OUR ATTENTION, OUR CONSIDERATION OF OTHERS ABOVE SELF, OUR GRATITUDE FOR LIFE, FOR PEOPLE, FOR CREATION, FOR EVERYTHING THAT WE THINK, SAY OR DO - THOSE WILL NEVER FAIL!

Because those things show that we love.

Luke 6:45 ESV

The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

[luke 6]

[luke 6]

And for those things, I will be thankful. It is for those that we must all become thankful. And we must become thankful, church, because it is only in those things that we - and this world - will see the very face of God. He is love. And if we are filled with that love, it will be the very thing that will flow out from us and into the world.

And for that, we must become thankful. And not just thankful today, but every day. And not just in church, but in our lives. In our jobs. In our politics. In our social interactions. In everything we do. Gratitude for life, for love, those must become the cornerstone of all we are. Because it is those - those things that flow out of our mouths and out of our actions that show our devotion to our God.

And if we are truly Christians, if we are truly filled with God’s love, then out of the abundance of that love in our hearts will flow our thoughts, our words, and our actions. And behind us, we will leave the only thing that will never fail. The love of our God, our Creator, our Heavenly Father.

[pray lord’s prayer]