House of Prayer: Thanksgiving - Hannah Heather

``Diving into Psalm 100 then, the psalmist invites us to enter God's gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. This is a kind of visual word picture. If you imagine God being in a central room of the temple, and the psalmist is painting the picture of your journey into the presence of God, into your time of prayer and worship. And he says, as you walk through the gates, start by saying thanks. [00:08:44] (33 seconds)  #EnterWithThanks

And the truth is thankfulness is really challenging in our culture. We've talked about the problem of the sinful human condition and the human heart, but the particular age we live in is an age that is rife with comparison. Right? Social media constantly can make us feel like the grass is greener elsewhere. Self sufficiency and independence are huge as well. We live in an age that says, you are the source of what you have. It is earned and not gifted. And if it's earned and not gifted, then we're not grateful for it. And then the mother of all idols of our age, I think, is entitlement. That brooding feeling that says, I deserve. I am entitled to. I want. And there's no greater thief of gratitude in your life than entitlement. [00:18:31] (55 seconds)  #GratitudeVsEntitlement

And so I wanna ask you today, church, what is your rhythm of gratitude like? Do you have practices? Do you have habits that daily reorientate your heart towards the abundance that God has given you instead of this scarcity that the world wants to tell you is all around you? What are the practices and habits that you do every day, every week, every month, every year to make sure that thanksgiving is a core part of your life and spiritual formation. [00:13:21] (35 seconds)  #DailyGratitudeRhythm

The point is this, that we have an enemy, and he wants to send thing he wants to send things into your mind. If you wanna picture these birds flying in unwelcome, The enemy wants to send thoughts into your mind, plant them into your heart. He wants to sow doubts like birds flying in unwanted. That is just the reality of spiritual warfare and our sinful human condition. [00:24:28] (28 seconds)  #SowGratitudeNotDoubt

Now the Jewish faith was ritually structured around practices of thanksgiving. All throughout the Old Testament, thanksgiving was central to worship and to life. There were songs. There were meals. There were celebrations. There were temple rituals. So for example, when you had a new child, when you inherited a property, when you were taking a vow, when you were thankful for something the Lord has done. These are all listed in Leviticus. And in each case, you stopped what you were doing. You stopped your work. You stopped whatever it was you were doing, and you went to the temple or the tabernacle. You gave thanks, and then you had a Thanksgiving meal together to celebrate what God had done. [00:10:31] (46 seconds)  #RitualsOfThanksgiving

So so far, we have had Adam kicking off the series looking at adoration and entering God's presence in worship, and he offered an introduction to prayer, which is to simply talk to God. He reminded us, just show up. Don't show off. Just show up. And then last week, Ian took us into petition where prayer is this space to bring our request to God and to keep on bringing them, knocking on the door and keeping on knocking. And Ian reminded us that sometimes the bravest part of prayer is just not walking away from the door and that God is often doing his deepest work in the one he keeps on asking. [00:00:48] (45 seconds)  #ShowUpPrayPersist

These people had freedom and food and wealth greater than Poland had had for decades. And yet, Grisebski noted that as he woke from this coma and he looked around, all the people seemed to do was grumble. Two words he said summed up the atmosphere, ingratitude and discontent. How could, in the space of nineteen years, what looked objectively to Krusevsky like abundance appear to his contemporaries like it was not enough? Despite being afforded the luxuries that he had once longed for, people were not more content. In fact, they were envious, ungrateful. [00:02:49] (52 seconds)  #ContentmentOverComplaints

And when we ritually remember and give thanks to God, taking time to actually put it into our habits and our practices, when we ritually give thanks, it repeatedly removes the the entitlement, the envy, the ingratitude that so easily can corrupt our hearts. [00:12:18] (19 seconds)  #RemembranceHealsEntitlement