Transcription
So whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable. If anything is excellent or praiseworthy at all, think about such things. He's not telling you to be an ostrich with its head in the sand and just ignore the negative and pretend it's not there. He just understands the patterns of this world better than anybody else, and he knows the human proclivity to focus on the bad way more than the good. And so Paul basically asked the question, what is there in front of you to be grateful [Music] for?
Today, I want to read for you two pretty iconic verses from a letter, and the theme of this letter is gratitude. Written by the Apostle Paul from from prison to a church he accidentally started when he was trying to get to Asia but ended up in Europe. And he, he accidentally started this church. So if you feel right now like nothing's going according to plan in your life, it might just be that God is rerouting you to something better. In a few years from now, you're going to be so grateful and say, "Thank you for it." Maybe not, but maybe I'd say there's a good chance that that's true.
Philippians 4:12-13 is this: "I know what it is to be in need and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret." Somebody say, "Secret." "I've learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well-fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all of this through him who gives me strength." Amen. Come on, can we get a better amen for the word of God? "I can do all things through him who gives me strength."
The theme of Philippians, like I said, is gratitude. Paul is writing this letter to a church full of people that he loves, from a season that means so much to him. And in just these two verses, he's saying, "Guys, I've learned the secret to contentment. I've learned the secret to to having and being enough in any and every situation. I've learned the secret to living alive and free." And the secret is gratitude. Gratitude was Paul's superpower. And in honor of of the Apostle Paul, I want to title this message about the power of gratitude, "Secret Superpower." As we go into the holiday season, let's finish this series the right way by talking about the power of gratitude.
So God, we love you. Thank you for loving us. Thank you for chasing each and every one of us down. Thank you for saving us. Thank you for calling us your kids. Thank you that when it comes just to life in general here and into eternity, we ain't seen nothing yet as far as your goodness goes. Speak to us. We're listening. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Take a seat, every location, take a seat, and welcome to church.
Have, have you ever been in one of these "Pay It Forward" situations in the drive-thru at Starbucks, where one generous person decides to pay for the coffee for the car behind them, but then that person is so moved that they decide to pay for the coffee for the car behind them, and then that car pays for the car behind them, and so on and so forth? I recently found myself in such a situation. And I, I pull up to the window to pay. The guy in the window, and he says, "Sir, you are the 24th car in a Pay It Forward chain today. Your coffee has been paid for by the car in front of you." How do you like them apples? And like, I was so, I was like, "Oh my gosh, there are kind people in this world." It just, it just made my day. I was so, I was so excited. I said, "Thank you." And then he said, "Would you like to pay it forward too?" I said, "What?" He said, "Do you want to pay for the coffee for the car behind you?"
Now, I'm a man of God, but I ordered a, a tall drip coffee. It's $1.99. It's the least expensive thing that you can get at Starbucks. And I'm looking in the mirror in the rearview mirror and assessing my situation. Behind me is four college-age girls in an Xterra with a UT sticker. And I totally judge the book by the cover, but I promise you, Sam, I was, it was completely justified. I was right. The windows were down, I could hear giggling and the song "August" by Taylor Swift. I could hear a conversation about Travis Kelce and where the Chiefs are playing this weekend. For whatever reason, nobody in that car is ordering a black drip coffee. I promise you, I know this Starbucks order. I've seen it so many times. This is, is four milkshake, I mean, coffee connoisseurs, each ordering a $6 Venti, two pump caramel macchiato with oat milk and a blueberry scone. You know how I know that? 'Cause that's my wife's order. I totally just threw her under the bus, but she's not here. We'll keep that between me and the thousands of you. But I'm thinking, this was supposed to be $2.32. This is going to cost me 50 bucks. But I know what you're thinking. I'm a pastor. I'm a leader of a church. I'm a man of integrity and character. And this is a, this is a feel-good, heartwarming, Pay It Forward Starbucks story that's worthy of the Evening News. The world needs this story. WWJD? What would Jesus do?
The guy asked me again, "Sir, would you like to pay it forward?" You want to know what one of your pastors said? "No. Nope." And I took my coffee and I saved my 50 bucks and I had the best day. Just the best day. [Applause]
Well, I'm good to close in prayer if you guys are. I think we accomplished what we all came here for. I love that joke. But before you walk out of here thinking, "What the heck kind of pastors run this place?" Let me ask you a question. Is that really 23 generous people? Or was that one generous person followed by 22 people who don't know how to receive a gift and be grateful? Discuss amongst yourselves. Go ahead. It's a good question. If I'm the first person in line, I, I was trying to pay for the coffee for the person behind me, but they totally negated it because they still paid for coffee. And they, did they do it with a cheerful heart? Or were they just worried what the Starbucks guy was going to think about them if they didn't pay it forward? Was this generosity or shame? And where's the gratitude?
Red Rocks, I'm telling you, gratitude might as well be a secret superpower. I don't know if you've ever thought about what superpower you, you would have if you could pick any superpower. I think we all would like a superpower in this day and age. I think we all could use a superpower. What would you choose? Super speed? Sam, super speedy Sam. Super strength? Conrad. Both of those are actually already kind of true. Invisibility? Would you be able to shoot little sticky webs out of your wrists to swing from skyscrapers and kiss girls upside down? To Michael Scott? Jesus had the power of flight and could heal leopards. What superpower would you have? We all want a superpower. And today, I'm making the case that gratitude basically is one.
So take it from Paul. Gratitude was the reason that this guy could write a letter of encouragement and contentment from a prison cell to a church full of people that he desperately wanted to be with. From a cold, rat-infested dungeon floor, shackled to that, writing a letter of gratitude. Not only does gratitude allow you to access more of God's power in your life, it also triggers, if we talk about physiology for a second, it triggers the happy hormones in your brain. This is Harvard Health Publishing. It says this: "Gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness. Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships." Other studies show that small daily practices of gratitude almost immediately start to make seismic shifts in the rest of your life when it comes to your mental health and your physical health. That trauma, that, that gratitude, excuse me, can help you get resilience for facing future trauma and helps you reframe past trauma. Gratitude helps calm the fear networks in your brain, increasing the neuro circuits responsible for feeling motivation in life, while simultaneously decreasing neural circuits responsible for anxiety. Scientists are now calling gratitude the fountain of youth for your brain, keeping your mind young and healthy and agile. It stimulates a strong sense of well-being. And the cherry on top, it's also an incredibly potent anti-inflammatory. I mean, gratitude is a secret superpower.
And I want to show you today four ways gratitude makes you alive and free. Four ways that gratitude makes you alive and free. Here's the first one: Gratitude unlocks the door to God's presence. Gratitude unlocks the door to God's presence. Psalm 100 verse 4: "Enter his gates with Thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him and praise his name." God's presence on your life equals more of God's power in your life. It was Jesus who once said, "What's impossible for man, introduce a little bit of God into the equation, and now it's suddenly possible." In other words, what you can't do with willpower, you now can do with God's power. What did Paul say in his letter of gratitude? "I can do all things." How, Paul? "Through God who strengthens me, through Christ who empowers me to do it." Gratitude unlocks the door to God's presence. Gratitude might as well be the difference between shouting your prayers to God from outside the house to having a heart-to-heart, face-to-face with God at the kitchen table, in his presence, like his son or like his daughter. You enter his courts with Thanksgiving.
Remember the prodigal son story in Luke chapter 15? The older brother is out in the fields, earning his, earning leads to his entitlement, and his entitlement is him keeping himself outside. It's him keeping himself outside of his father's house. Now, this is not a salvation thing, but this is a blessing thing. Listen to me. The father did not kick him out of the house. The father did not want him out of the house. And entitlement was him keeping himself out of the house with a scarcity mindset. "That promotion that he got, that should be mine. That life that she's living, that should be mine. That party that they're getting thrown for them, that party should be mine. I deserve that, not her. I deserve that, not him." Entitlement that leads to a scarcity mindset. Entitlement is you keeping you out, while gratitude is you walking in. Maybe that's why John Gordon, I love this, won't be on on the screen, but this quote: "Abundance flows into your life when gratitude flows out of your heart." Abundance flows into your life when gratitude flows out of your heart.
If gratitude means more of God's presence, it also means more access to God's plans. And by the way, this is what the Apostle Paul also said about the plans of God. First Thessalonians 5:6-8: He says this, "Rejoice always." That's one verse. In case you're looking to memorize a verse, by the way. "And so is this: Pray continually. Rejoice always, pray continually. Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." Did Paul just bottom line the meaning of the human existence? "This is God's will for your life." I mean, if I did a promo video for this message and I said, "Guys, get to church this weekend. I'm about to tell you God's will for your entire life." This would be the most attended weekend in Red Rock's history. Because when we hear the will of God, we tend to think, "Who I should marry? And what job I should take? Should I marry him or him? Should I, should I date her or her? Should I take that job or or this job? Do I stay in Denver? Is it Austin? Is it San Diego?" And listen to me, God cares about all of it. He cares. He cares about where you're spending Thanksgiving. He cares about your parking spot at the mall. All this. God has no beginning, he has no end. He cannot be exhausted. He cannot be bothered by you. That's my dare to you. Try to bother him. There's nothing your heavenly Father would love more than you trying to bother him by talking his ear off with all the stuff that's on your heart and in your mind, all the prayer requests that you have, everything that you want to know about God's plan for your life. However, it should be noted, this is his priority. The bottom line will of the Creator of the universe, according to this text, that you rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and give thanks in all circumstances. By the way, if you, if you meet the person who you're even slightly physically attracted to, and they rejoice always, and pray without ceasing, and give thanks all the time, like, marry them. Like, this afternoon. I mean, how attractive is that? Somebody who rejoices always, prays continually, is grateful in all circumstances. That's why one of the best places, if not the place, to meet somebody is serving at your local church. Let's go. Because serving is hand in hand with gratitude, and the presence of God is drawn towards the heart of a servant leader. Jesus is a servant leader. Can we make some noise for our volunteers at this church, by the way? We love you so much. Because here's what I know: Not only do you make this place run, not only do you do what you do so we can set the table to have front row seats to see miracles happen every week, and salvations, and eternal destinations be changed, and you're in the credits of those stories. The presence of God is attracted to humility and servant leadership, which means we get to experience new degrees of God's presence. Just because you're in this room, I just want to say thank you, and I'm grateful for you. Gratitude unlocks the door to God's presence. Amen.
Number two: Gratitude takes what you have and makes it enough. It's really hard to define gratitude without using the words "grateful" or "thankful." You should try it later. Here was my best shot, though: Gratitude is when you have what you need because you want what you have. You like that? Yeah, you might have to think about that one a little bit. Gratitude is when you got everything you need because you want what you already have. I'll explain it this way. You remember the scene where Jesus feeds thousands of people with one little boy's lunch? He takes the, the Lunchable, the fish and bread Lunchable. You remember what he does with it? He gives thanks for it, and then his disciples feed the entire crowd with it, and there's leftovers at the end. Praise God for leftovers. But what's crazy is, at first, it wasn't enough. And all of a sudden, Jesus gives gratitude for it, and then it's more than enough. Gratitude takes what you have and makes it enough.
So let's take that paradigm and reread Philippians 4:12-13. "I know what it is to be in need and I know what it is to have plenty. So regardless of what I have, I have learned the secret of being content. The secret of contentment in any and every situation, whether well-fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all of this through him who gives me strength." So think about this with me. Contentment is basically having and being enough. Doesn't that sound so good? Having and being enough. It's been said contentment is the greatest wealth there is, which means learning the secret to it might be the most valuable thing you can do. And I just think our world needs some inspiration from Christians right now on how to live a life of contentment. Because I just think very few people actually live a life of contentment, even though we live in a day and age where you have infinity on your phone, and you can literally talk, you have a conversation face-to-face with anybody on the planet with just the click of one button on a screen, and a high-def TV that would have cost $112,000 a decade ago, you can get for $500 at Costco this afternoon, giving you 4K access to millions of sports, TV shows, and movies, just right in your living room. That if you tried, if you wanted to, you could get a college degree on YouTube for free. You could get all the advice and wisdom for how to start the company you want to start this year. You could travel anywhere you want in the world this week after church today. You could go get lunch or dinner at any one of a thousand amazing restaurants in one of the coolest cities in the world and eat a meal you didn't have to grow or hunt or kill. You don't have to, to, to cook it. Like, you sit there, they bring it to you. There are now more places to go with easier means to get there, more things to do, see, and experience than ever before. We truly live in the most entertained and available and wealthy world that history knows about. And most of us are bored. Our souls are like the Little Mermaid singing, "But who cares? No big deal. I want more."
So what's the answer then? What's the secret? Is it, is it more money? Is it more stuff? Is it more of what we already have that's already not working? Is it faster Wi-Fi? Is it more drugs? Is it, is it billions of TV shows instead of just millions? For you, may, is it, do you, is it the new salary with the new job, for the cooler car, in the bigger house? And listen to me, I'll be the first pastor in line to pray for that situation for you. Why wouldn't I pray for that? All I'm saying is, if you don't learn the secret right now with what you have and where you are today, God forbid you get all that, and your soul will still sing, "But who cares? No big deal. I want more." You don't need more to have enough. You need gratitude. You just need gratitude because it takes what you have and makes it enough.
Paul said, "I learned that secret of contentment, how to be content in every season." I found it in the palace, and I found it in the prison. He said, "In my ministry, I got to live a few, a few years of my life, a few seasons in prosperity, and it was awesome." I, I found contentment there. They put me up in that, in that palace, or that, that home where I had the private chef who served me up a perfectly, a perfectly cooked medium-rare filet mignon. It just melted in your mouth for me and Timothy at dinner every single night. One time, Timothy asked for ketchup, and I slapped him in the face. I rebuked, rebuked his ignorant youth in the name of Jesus. And I, I enjoyed the prosperity because I actually didn't need it. And the very next week, I was thrown into this prison, and I learned the same thing here. I found the same thing here. I learned to be content because I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, regardless of my season. I know the secret. Gratitude is my superpower. The world did not give it to me, and the world cannot take it away. I'm telling you, a message about gratitude might as well be a message about happiness, fulfillment, contentment, because gratitude takes what you have and makes it enough.
All right, number three: Gratitude reframes how you see the world. Some of you are like, "I think he forgot he has his sunglasses on his sweatshirt." I recently was given a really cool gift, these, um, Ray-Ban polarized sunglasses. And usually sunglasses are like, hit or miss for me. Mostly miss, okay? I know that's surprising because obviously, cool's such a high priority for me. But, um, um, polarized Ray-Bans. And not only polarized, these are something called Chromance polarized sunglasses. What does that mean? I have no idea, but it's awesome. All right? It's like, once you go Chromance polarized, you don't go back. It's just, everything, everything's just better. All right? Follow me. Gratitude is kind of like seeing life with Chromance polarized lenses. And what I mean by that is, it's just better than, than normal. It's better than normal. All right? Because let me just describe normal to you really quick. Human beings, we think on average of 40,000 thoughts every single day. And normal is for 80% of them, four out of five of them, to drift in the negative direction. Four out of five thoughts drift in the negative direction. The survival instinct of our brains just makes us so much more prone to notice what's wrong as opposed to what's actually right. And we focus on what we don't have as opposed to what we actually do have, right? This is why bad news sells. We even bond over what makes us mad as human beings. "I'm mad. Are you mad? Are we mad together? Let's start a podcast about how how mad we are." Psychiatrists call this the negativity bias because mad is just easier. Cynical is easier. Complaining is easier. Have you noticed modern-day pessimists prefer to be called realists? But I'm just not buying it anymore. I'm just not. Because I think authentic realism is completely fair to both the bad and the good at the same time. And if by default, we, we tend to drift towards what's wrong, well then that means we need a little bump towards what's, what's right. Contrary to popular belief, faith is actually not blind optimism. Faith is actually a type of realism because faith lets you face the brutal facts and reality of today while at the same time holding fast in an unshakable way to the hope of tomorrow. That both of those things are true at the exact same time. Faith is a kind of genuine realism. Pessimism is overrated.
Remember when Jesus said, "He who has eyes, let him see. She who has eyes, let her, let her see. Heaven is here. The kingdom is now." The question is, can you, can you see it? See the one who's grateful will see what everybody else cannot. The one who's grateful will see in a way everybody else is not. While what's normal, while everybody else is walking around burning their retinas on everything negative, on everything that has gone wrong, is going wrong, or could possibly go wrong. Gratitude gives you new eyes to see the same world. You're seeing the same world. Oh, but it's not the same, is it? It's better. It's better.
A few verses earlier in this same exact text, the Apostle Paul says this in verse 8: "Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble." In other words, there's plenty of stuff that's not true and not noble. So I'm telling you, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, because we're in a world of wrong. So whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable. If anything is excellent or praiseworthy at all, think about such things. He's not telling you to be an ostrich with its head in the sand and just ignore the negative and pretend it's not there. He just understands the patterns of this world better than anybody else, and he knows the human proclivity to focus on the bad way more than the good. And so Paul basically asked the question, "What is there in front of you to be grateful for?"
There's a doctor by the name of Daniel Amen. He, he's a brain doctor and a psychiatrist. He's brilliant. So much brilliant content. He teaches a lot on the connection between your brain health and your mental health. We talk a lot about mental health, but that's your mind that lives in your, your brain. So are you cultivating a healthy home for your mind? Are you cultivating a healthy brain? And just one of the many things he talks about is, is cultivating a positivity bias instead of a negativity bias. And this is how he does it. I love this. It's so simple. Every night when he goes to bed, he lies down in his bed and he asks himself this question every single night: "What went well today?" Because tons of stuff went wrong, but I'm not asking that question. My brain already does that. I'm so good at that. "What went well today?" Because what that does is it strengthens the gratitude pathways. Like, if your brain is like a garden, you need to feed what you're thankful for and weed out what makes you cynical. He tells the story of, um, a few years ago, the day his dad passed away. And he said it was one of the hardest days of his life, obviously. He was close with his dad. But at the end of the day, he went to bed, and his brain on autopilot at this point asked that same question: "What went well today?" And maybe you beat me to it already, because his brain, here comes the lies and the shame and, "How dare what kind of son are you on the day your father died to, to ask that question?" As if his dad doesn't want him asking that question. As if God doesn't want you asking that question. And so he told those voices to shut up in Jesus' name, which you can do. And so I started thinking, and what popped into my mind was this beautiful interaction between one of the paramedics and my mom, where they had a brief moment of laughing together because she was talking about a dumb and funny thing that her husband, his dad, had said at breakfast earlier that day. And he, he thought about all the texts of love and support that flooded to his phone from his circle of friends who care about him so much. And said, "I thought about how lucky I am to have had a dad like that for so many years." And he fell asleep that night with a mourning heart and a smile on his face. Gratitude doesn't need you to pretend. In fact, genuine gratitude, it's impossible to be disingenuous. But gratitude is so much more than just like a nice thing you should be and something that polite people are. Gratitude is powerful, and it's here to overhaul your life if you let it.
When you preach about a topic, you tend to go through whatever the topic is that you're preaching about. And so a week ago, when I sat down to start writing this, I was like, "What do I want to go through this week?" I thought, gratitude. I want to be, I have had a very grateful week. A lot's gone wrong, but I've had a very, and, and gratitude has changed my week, man. It's powerful. It's a secret superpower that will change the way you see the world. Amen.
Okay, let's finish with this. Gratitude will get you through any trouble this world throws at you. And I know this is sensitive depending on your season. I have prayed so much for you. And stewarding this moment, and gratitude will get you through any trouble this world throws at you. Jesus said this in John 16:33: "I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. You know, in this world you will have trouble. But take heart, for I have overcome the entire world." In this world, though, you will have trouble. So follow me. The JV level of gratitude is being grateful for good things that go right. But when you graduate in gratitude, this is what Varsity looks like: Being grateful even when they don't. I didn't say it was easy. Being grateful even when they don't, because we understand this trial, this pressing, is creating new wine. This valley, if you will, is making me stronger and better and bringing God closer into every single square inch of my life, even the places and spaces I was hiding to from him prior to this trial. You guys, I don't always know why bad things happen. And I'm not trying to pretend to. I hate when pastors try to try to pretend to. Sometimes the best answer we can give is just, "Man, I don't know." I don't always know why, why painful and bad things happen. And I'm not claiming to know your pain at all. And I'm not saying God wants you to be happy about heartache. You have a God who counts your tears. You have a God who empathizes with your pain and sits in it with you, no matter how long it takes. We don't celebrate troubles. We don't pretend to like pain. But we do praise him for what the pain is producing. This is Varsity level stuff. We praise him for what the pain is producing. We find out firsthand in the fire that pain is not pointless when God's in the picture. That it's forging a different level of faith in my heart. That he's the God who can somehow take the worst of troubles that this life can throw at you and somehow work even that together for the good of those who love him, in his time. And you might say, "Well, Pastor, you don't, it's easy for you to say. You don't know what I'm going through." I would totally agree with you. I don't know what you're going through. Just like you don't know me. But I do know pain. If there's one leveler of humanity, the thing all of us have in common in a lot of ways is, is pain. Even the luckiest person you could possibly think of is going to experience crazy amounts of pain in this life. You guys, a lot of you guys know this. I, I have chronic migraines and headaches. And this scene has happened to me so many times where I'll be in a room or sitting like in a living room with a bunch of friends, and somebody will say, "Oh, I got such a bad headache." But then they'll notice I'm there, and immediately they'll try to like backtrack and go, "Oh, Doug, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. I know you have a lot of headaches." And, and as if I have dibs on headaches. I'm like, "I don't own headaches." Yeah, I get a lot of them, but you're still suck. Doesn't mean your headaches don't suck. All of them. Let's, I hate headaches in general. Can we just level the playing field when it comes to pain? The thing about pain is it can lead to something beautiful being forged in your heart, but you have to be willing to allow it to do so. Because it can also lead to a bitterness that, that causes you to in some ways like own pain. Like, this is, this is mine. Nobody else can relate. And I'm just saying what I feel like the loving heart of your heavenly Father wants you to know that he can empathize with you, that you are so much less alone than you know. Jesus said, "In the world, all of us are going to have trouble." Some of us have gone through it. Some of us are going through it. Some of us are going to go through it. But gratitude will get you through any trouble that life throws at you. C.S. Lewis said, said C.S. Lewis said, "God whispers to us in our pleasures, and he shouts to us in our pain." So if you're in pain, I'm so sorry. I, I don't have answers. Um, keep coming back. Keep staying close. Keep breathing. Keep praising him if you can. The power that's unleashed over your life when you praise him in seasons of pain [Music] is, you're not alone. Join a group. Reach out for prayer. Like, whatever it is. But, but also, there will never be another time where it's easier to hear the voice of God than it is for you right now. Every valley will end, I promise you. Every valley will end. But if you listen for the voice of God right now, in the, and right smack in the middle of it, you will be a different person when it does. You, I mean, people who have bled in this life and come out the other side praising the name of Jesus, I'll let that person give me life advice any day of the week. Paul being at the very top of the list. I mean, how is this guy not a pessimist? Paul's resume: flogged and beaten, shipwrecked and abandoned, having nothing work out, made, made fun of, thrown into prison, eventually killed. And that guy said, "I've got a secret superpower that they know not about. You can't touch me. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." Gratitude is my invincibility, and gratitude will get me through any trouble this world brings my way. Uh, and T, you can come up, and I'll close with this right here.
Last month, um, I was in Austin about to walk up onto the stage and welcome everybody to service, and my phone starts to ring. And it's my wife. And immediately I was like, she would never call right now. And, and my wife and my, my two kids had left church about 20 minutes earlier. I just had one of those gut feelings. And as soon as I picked up the phone, she said, very calmly, she said, "Babe, I want to start by saying we're all okay." She said, "But we got hit really hard on the highway and, uh, by a car going 70 and ended up on the side in the ditch on the side of the, on the car side." And, so immediately my brother was next to me, and I handed him the microphone and I said, "I'm, I have to go." And, um, and Sam was in the car. And it was like, it was, it was on the side this way. And she, you know, when she finally kind of came to herself, she unbuckled her seatbelt. And all the airbags had gone off. The car was completely totaled. And she's crawling in the back to try to get Will and Kinsley out of their car seats to hand them through the broken windows to Good Samaritans. And I'm so grateful for them. Um, Kinsley, our 2-year-old, was eating goldfish at the time. And the goldfish, like, went everywhere. And the moment of laughter that we had on the side of the road later on was as Sam was trying to get Kinsley out of the car, Kinsley would grab goldfish and just eat goldfish. I'm like, "When you're, when you're hungry, you're hungry, man." But that, that drive from the church to the, the spot of the wreck should have taken me 10 minutes. But the, the wreck shut the entire highway down, every lane and every exit, and took an hour. And you can't, like, get out of your car and tell 3,000 other cars that you're the dad and you're the husband. And man, when I finally got to that scene and got to kiss my wife and hug my kids, I can't tell you the amount of gratitude that flooded into my heart. And by the grace of God, nothing about my life changed other than dealing with so much insurance. But gratitude changed. Gratitude changed.
I'm walking on the stage right now. If God forbid, I got in a terrible accident this week and I couldn't walk anymore, do you know what I would give just to be able to do this? Like so many things you can do. So many things you have right now, and you would be so grateful to get it back if you lost it. Regardless of what you're going through, it's, I'm not minimizing that. I'm trying to maximize what's good right now. Regardless of your season, there are a billion people on this planet, some in this room, you just don't know whose greatest prayer request is to be where you are and have what you have. Let your heart be filled with gratitude. Man, it changes the way you see the world. This week, and I, I don't know why, you know, bad things happen or sometimes good things don't. And I'm praying with you. You, and I've got a ton of stories that did not work out as well as that car accident story worked out. We've preached sermons about that. I'm just saying, I felt so much of God's instructions to me this week: preach a sermon about what is good, what is pleasing, what is pure, what is beautiful. The loved ones you can hug right now. The heart in your chest that is beating right now. The lungs in your chest that are breathing. The voice in your l, in your, in your, in your throat that can praise the name of Jesus. The weather outside that is 68 degrees and sunny in November. If it's good, if it's pleasing, if it's beautiful, if it's pure, if it's noble, then think about such things. Think about such things. You're not pretending the bad's not there. You're just an expert in seeing the bad because you're human. Graduating in gratitude to begin to see all that is so good. The beauty that is here in front of me. The abilities I do have. The billions of people all over the world who would tell you, "You are so lucky to have your crappy car that you want to replace." And go for it, man. Do that. But do it with a grateful heart. There's so many ways you can cultivate gratitude. You can, a gratitude journal. Go on gratitude walks. Just start thinking of things that you're grateful for. Promise you, if you get going. A pastor in Dallas named Matt Chandler has this journal where it, it says it's a document on his desktop computer. It says, "Don't cry for me." And it's just a long list of things. "Don't cry for me. I'm married to the most beautiful woman in the world. Don't cry for me. I've, I've eaten a perfectly cooked steak. Don't cry." And then it keeps. And the last one is, he says, "One day when I die, I want this read at my funeral. The last one will be, 'Don't cry for me. I'm home.'" So much to be grateful for. But scientists say, say the number one thing that that taps us into the gratitude neuro circuitry in our brains is story. Can you find a story that fills your brain or your heart with gratitude? And I thought, I know the perfect story about a God who left everything and experienced all the lows of pain because he didn't want to just sympathize with yours, he wanted to empathize with it. And was tortured and made fun of because he lived a perfect life and was crucified on a cross and slowly suffocated to pay for the wages of all sin, so that this would be the worst place you ever [Music] live, that you can go to heaven forever with him in [Music] eternity. That's why we talk about Jesus every chance we get in here. Let the story of the Gospel build a gratitude in your heart. Amen.
Red Rocks, where you stand. Every location where you stand. God, we just love you. Thank you for loving us. Thank you for saving us. Thank you for calling us your kids. And as we praise your name and sing gratitude to you, I pray it would minister to your heart. In Jesus' name, amen. [Music] Amen.