Sermons

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The Habits of Thankfulness
Thanksgiving Day, November 28 , 2002
Pastor Dan Baumgartner

Psalm 145:1-7

I will extol you, my God and King,
and bless your name forever and ever.
Every day I will bless you,
and praise your name forever and ever.
Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised;
his greatness is unsearchable.
One generation shall laud your works to another,
and shall declare your mighty acts.
On the glorious splendor of your majesty,
and on your wondrous works, I will meditate.
The might of your awesome deeds shall be proclaimed,
and I will declare your greatness.
They shall celebrate the fame of your abundant goodness,
and shall sing aloud of your righteousness.

So, it’s Thanksgiving. It’s a great day. We talk about thankfulness, we sing about it, we pray over it. But do we practice it in our lives? Thankfulness is something I want to cultivate in my own life. And it’s easy today. But what about tomorrow? And Saturday, and Sunday. Will I be thankful? I know myself well enough by now…to know that if I want something to change in my life, I have to practice it. And this Psalm 145, that Lynne talked about earlier, gives us several things, habits… that can cultivate a thankful heart.

Every day I will bless you, the Psalmist says in verse 1.

In this context, “bless” means honor, pay homage to, or bend the knee. It means, in other words, telling the truth about who God is. Imagine if you woke up every morning, and… No, that’s too tough. Habits come one day at a time. Imagine if you woke up tomorrow morning, and your first words were: “God, you are the Creator of the glorious universe, God made flesh in Jesus Christ, and the abiding Holy Spirit active in my life, and I bless you!!” Every day!

What if this was a habit? If we could do this…it would change us.

Verse 4 reads, One generation shall laud your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts.

I have a friend whose dad sits, EVERY Christmas Eve, with the grandkids on his lap and the family gathered around…and reads the story of Jesus. One generation to the next. Many of you will be with family and friends today, some from different generations. You could have a chance to talk about something besides just the turkey and the Seahawks! To go deeper with a niece, a nephew, a cousin. One generation to another. I remember being just out of high school, and sitting on top of a mountain peak I had hiked up to with two friends. They were much older than me, in their forties (at least that seemed old at the time!), and I remember at lunch one of them saying to the other, “So, Jeff…what is the Lord teaching you right now?” And I got to listen in on how men who were middle-aged Christians…encouraged one another…and me.

What if this was a habit? If we could do this…it would change us.

Verse 5 says, On the glorious splendor of your majesty, and on your wondrous works, I will meditate.

I’m going to get off of the merry-go-round, find a place where I can leave behind all the noise, all the distractions. I was in Eastern Washington a couple of years ago for a class. One afternoon, I borrowed a pair of snowshoes, and headed off into the trees. It was snowing just a little bit, and after twenty minutes or so I was out of earshot of the camp, and out of eyesight too. And I just stopped. The wind whistled just a bit, it smelled like evergreens…and it was quiet. Just quiet. I found I could think about something for longer than 30 seconds at a crack. I found I could hear God’s voice. I could empty out all the “stuff” and think about who God was, and what He was doing in my life.

What if it was a habit? If we could do this…it would change us.

In verse 6, the Psalmist says, The might of Your awesome deeds shall be proclaimed, and I will declare your greatness.

Last Sunday here at Bethany, we heard some “proclaiming and declaring.” Ten different people across the three worship services shared some of the “awesome deeds” that God had been at working doing in their lives. Great stories. Stories of meeting Christ for the first time. Stories of God walking them through difficult situations. Stories of God surrounding them with people who could care and support. Not one of those people thought they had a story to tell. And afterwards, I must have talked to 40-50 different people who said, “What an encouraging thing to hear!” We proclaim what God is doing.

What if it was a habit? If we could do this…it would change us.

Finally, in verse 7: They shall sing aloud of your righteousness.

(It always strikes me that the community of faith is one of very few places in our culture we get to sing, to just lift up our hearts and voices). In October…the last morning our Bethany group was in China, I woke up at 6 a.m. to go for a run through the empty streets of Beijing. As I ran down the very quiet street, I heard a voice (loud one, top of lungs), in English (shocking), singing (on key), “Then sings my soul…My Savior God to Thee! How great Thou Art!” (sing this!). I stopped and talked to this older gentleman from Hong Kong, who said he walked and sang every morning. No matter where he was. No matter how unfriendly the environment. “How Great Thou Art.”

What if it was a habit? If we could do this…it would change us.

“Every day I will bless You…”
“One generation shall laud Your works to another…”
“I will meditate…”
“I will proclaim and declare your greatness…”
“I will sing aloud of Your righteousness.”

Five habits. Five ways to cultivate a thankful heart.
Let’s pray.