Imagine you get a call one afternoon from a bank in your city. And they tell you that you had a great Uncle Elmo who left you with an inheritance of $50 million. You didn't even know you had Uncle Elmo and you didn't know you were his final heir. But they said all you have to do is you have to come down to the bank, you have to sign a few papers, and that money is yours. You are now a very thankful and excited man. And you go down to the bank and you draw out $10,000 and you take your wife out to eat…in Paris. You take her on this Parisian vacation, the sky is the limit. And you come home and you still have almost all that $50 million and life goes on pretty much as normal. And your wife is the one that does the finances of the family and she's still struggling to pay the bills, and to pay for all the shoes and clothing the children need, and the food budget and she's confused. And she comes to you and she says, “Honey, I don't understand what's going on here. You told me we were rich, rich, rich, but we're still living like we're poor, poor, poor. I don't understand.” And imagine you would say to her, “Do you know how hard it is to go down to that bank? Do you know how bad the traffic is? Do you know how hard it is to find a place to park? And then I get to the bank and I have to stand in one of those Disney World lines and wait for my turn. And when I get up to the teller, they treat me like I'm a criminal and they have to fingerprint me before I can get money out.” If you're the wife in that scenario, you are saying, “You're rich! How can anything keep you from getting everything that belongs to you?” That's this passage. If your heart is filled with thankfulness, if your heart is filled with gratitude, you will say, I'm going to make every effort to get everything that belongs to me in Christ. I'm not going to settle for a little bit of knowledge. I'm not going to settle for a little bit of self-control, a little bit of brotherly affection, a little bit of steadfastness, a little bit of love. I want everything that belongs to me in Christ. It’s yours. You didn’t have to buy it, you didn’t have to earn it, you didn’t have to achieve it, it’s yours. When your heart is filled with thankfulness for the awesome provision that has been made for you - captured by two words, “all things” - it should radically transform the way you live. Listen, thankfulness changes your focus. Instead of focusing on all the things you don't have, instead of focusing on how hard life is, instead of focusing on the all the difficulties you can meditate on, your focus has changed to the phenomenal hopeful provision that has been made for you in Jesus. Thankfulness not only changes your focus, it changes your agenda. Now what happens is you become determined. You become determined to run after everything that belongs to you in Jesus. All of a sudden godly character becomes important to you. And because thankfulness has changed your focus and thankfulness has changed your agenda, thankfulness changes your harvest. These character qualities begin to grow by grace in your life and that produces a harvest of good fruit in your personal life, in your marriage, in your family, at your work, in your neighborhood, with your friends, in your church. I am convinced that a harvest of godliness that does good wherever it goes grows in the soil of a grateful and thankful heart. You wake up the morning and you say, “My kids aren't everything I wish they would be. My marriage is not everything I wish it was. Or my university is a hard place, or my job is tough. I don't feel physically well, but I have been given everything I need, I'm rich.” Men, I would say this to you, if you are rich by grace, why are you living like you're poor? You've been given everything you need. Thankfulness changes your focus, thankfulness changes your agenda, thankfulness changes your harvest. I have to say this: there are ineffective, unproductive, and unfruitful men listening to me. Your relationship with Jesus isn't bearing the fruit that you would expect. Could it be that you've forgotten who you are? Could it be that you've forgotten what you've been given and instead of living with a thankful heart that grabs onto everything that's yours in Christ, you live more with a sense of neediness and your focus is on all the things that you don't seem to have? Men, may we not live in a state of gospel amnesia. May we remember who we are and may we remember what we have in Christ. And may that produce in us thankful hearts. May those thankful hearts be the soil on which godly character grows and may that produce a harvest of good fruit everywhere we go.
Transcript: week 3
MEN OF FAITH
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