Series: As For Me and My House

David Stockton

There are four questions we’re trying to answer in this season. The first is :

1. What do you want Jesus to do for you? What do you want God to do for you? You can write that down as we go through the service.

2. What are you going to do to limit the “junk food”?

If you don’t know what that’s talking about, we talked about that last week. We put up a list of things like social media, tv, news, friend group, if you’ve got a boyfriend that’s junk food you should probably take a break from that for a while, or forever.

3. What are you going to do to eliminate hurry from your life and create space?

Sometimes we just try and jam more good or Christian or self-help type stuff in there. But the point of this is to actually create more empty space for the presence of God to move in. In that regard, we talked about dedicate your lunch hour to quiet yourself before God. Quit your job. Quit the extra hours at your job. Dedicate an hour before bed. Dedicate your drive time to be silent before the Lord. Some things like that.

4. Who will you spend time with that is hungry?

If there’s somebody you know that seems to have a hunger for God, intentionally spend some time with them. Or if it’s someone that you know is in a dry spot, or actually is hungry physically or in a hurting situation. It’s amazing when you link your life with somebody like that how your prayer life or your hunger for God goes up quite a bit as you’re trying to call out to God on their behalf, not just your own behalf.

Write some things down. I think it would be a good practice for us to engage in. Then please, above all that, join us on Wednesday nights. We want to be a praying church. I know a lot of times we say, “Hey come to the church and we’re going to pray,” and you didn’t even hear me when I said that; or it didn’t sound good because there’s nothing sexy about it, there’s nothing cool about it. “Go pray at the church.” But I really think that it’s an important time. I think it’s something that blesses the Lord’s heart. And it’s good for us to be together in that way. So we’re going to be live-streaming it and we’re also going to be doing it in person. Fast on Wednesday. It just means don’t eat food. And then come pray together. Make sense? Everything else is online too, if you want to find out more details on that.

1 Thessalonians 5. We’ll start out with this little intro. There have been a lot of Sundays this past year where I’ve walked up these little stairs knowing I need to say something about some troubling news or some disturbing event that has happened during the week. I mean, 2020, so many times I walked up those stairs, going, “uh…here we go.” I’m supposed to say something that makes us all feel better after we saw something really hard or challenging. And I was hoping that was just a 2020 thing.

But this is a new year and this week brought about the same type of things. COVID is still going strong. Our political unrest erupted into troubling and disturbing violence at the Capitol building. And for us, on a personal note at Living Streams a big change is upon us with Jay launching out. So there’s some heaviness.

It was neat because, as we were downstairs praying, one of the guys was like, “If you feel like the Lord’s speaking something to you, why don’t you just say it and pray it.” Everyone was saying and praying so much, I never got to say mine. It’s true. I felt like the Lord said something to me about Nathan, the guy who’s going to be hanging out with us for a while. It was just that he has a humility, a joy and kind of this light touch that he brings into a heavy room. I was like, “Wow, that’s so encouraging.” Because I am feeling like I wanted to bring some of that into a potentially heavy room. And it’s not all up to me because now the Lord is bringing somebody who’s going to help with that.

Then, as we were worshiping, I got the sense that, “Hey, wait a second. There’s a lot of people in this room that have been doing a lot of work this week to find their own soul in a place where they’re feeling light, they’re feeling joy in the Lord, they’ve been doing that work.” Then all of a sudden, the burden was gone. It’s not up to me. It never is. I’m thankful that a lot of you are already doing this work. You’re already seeking and finding the Lord and actually sharing that.

With all that being said, I want to offer something that I know has withstood the test of time, has seen many situations like we’re experiencing, as well as much worse, and has always been reliable, helpful, relevant, solid and stabilizing. It’s God’s word. God’s word is what we need to hear right now. God’s word has been there, done that for a long time. God’s word spoke the world into existence. It took the “to-hu va-vo-hu,” the “without form and void” chaos of the world, and brought about beauty and light and order. It’s God’s word that we need in our own souls and in our city and in our country these days. And God’s word is thankfully found in the library of scripture that we’re turning to.

This guy, Jon Tyson, said this about our society, which I think is so good.

The soil of secularism [progressivism, progressive Christianity, all these things] don’t have the nutrients for the human heart to flourish in environments like this. We need more for times like this than our culture as the capacity to give us.

Can everyone say ‘amen’? I mean, if you haven’t figured out that by now, I don’t know. I don’t know what to say to you. Our world is lost. We have blind leading blind. No doubt about it. Yet, we have before us the scriptures. In 1 Peter 2 (MSG), Peter is writing to the people he cares about, the people of God he’s connected to. He says this:

13-17 Make the Master proud of you by being good citizens. Respect the authorities, whatever their level; they are God’s emissaries for keeping order. It is God’s will that by doing good, you might cure the ignorance of the fools who think you’re a danger to society. Exercise your freedom by serving God, not by breaking the rules. Treat everyone you meet with dignity. Love your spiritual family. Revere God. Respect the government.

I know there are a thousand different emotions that might stir up in you when you hear that, but guess what. Let God win. Let his word win. Submit yourself to his word. Don’t make his word submit to you. There is such a temptation in our day to do the wrong thing in this regard. God’s word. Peter is not talking to people to have it easy and rosy. They were dealing with Roman emperors and extreme persecution. And yet this is what he writes. So let’s let the word of God rule in our hearts and minds.

Then we have Paul, who is writing to this town of Thessolonica and this little church that he had helped form there. These are some final instructions he gives them. We’re going to unpack them in the next three weeks. But let’s read it right now.

1 Thessalonians 5

12 Now we ask you, brothers and sisters, to acknowledge those who work hard among you, who care for you in the Lord and who admonish you. 13 Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work.

Seems a little self-serving there, right? We won’t focus on this part today.

Live in peace with each other. 14 And we urge you, brothers and sisters, warn those who are idle and disruptive, encourage the disheartened, help the weak, be patient with everyone. 15 Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always strive to do what is good for each other and for everyone else.
16 Rejoice always, 17 pray continually, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
19 Do not quench the Spirit. 20 Do not treat prophecies with contempt 21 but test them all; hold on to what is good, 22 reject every kind of evil.
23 May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.

So in this section, I see three different things that we’re going to bring up over the next three Sundays. The first one is cultivate gratitude, so we’re going to focus on that today. Next week we’re going to focus on what it means to consecrate ourselves. It’s going to get serious. Don’t come to church next week. It’s going to be serious. If you want to just keep doing life the way you’re doing it and not have to make any changes, don’t come to church next week. Because it’s going to be serious. It’s going to be good. The last week we’re going to talk about what it means to serve the Lord in our day and age. So we’re going to unpack those things on Wednesday nights as well. This actually goes along with all of that.

Cultivate gratitude. I want to focus on verse 16, 17, 18 and 19. So “be joyful always” is what Paul is admonishing the Thessalonians to do. To be joyful always. Does anybody know what “always” in the Greek is? Always. It’s not that complicated. He’s saying, “Be joyful always.” And then he says, “and pray continually.” It’s both and. There are always going to be situations where you need to be praying. But no matter how heavy the situation is, you need to be rejoicing. Rejoicing in the Lord always.

And Paul’s not talking to a people that, again, have it made in the shade. In the Thessalonian church, there was a bustling city, it was a happening place, but the Christians were being persecuted. Ray Stedman writes in his intro to Thessalonians:

The pagans of Thessolonica were severely persecuting the Christians, threatening them and taking away their property. So these early Christians were called upon to endure hard things for the cause of Christ. In that city, sexual promiscuity was common, was even regarded as a religious rite. To live a life of chastity was to be regarded as a freak. Therefore, as is the case today, there was great pressure upon these new Christians to fall into line with the common practices of their day.

So there was a challenge to their way of life. There was a challenge to the way of the gospel, to the way of Christ. Following Jesus was difficult and persecuted. It actually cost them something in the natural and in the practical. Yet Paul says to them, “I just want you to remember to rejoice in all things.”

And Paul, who’s writing these words, we know his situation. He’s been beaten. He’s been flogged. He’s been imprisoned unjustly. He’s constantly ridiculed, even by the Christians, as being not one who should be listened to because he wasn’t one of the twelve apostles. Yet he felt called by God to be this apostle and to speak in that way. In all of his trials and troubles, he’s a person who has realized it’s so important to rejoice always. We’ve got to figure out how to cultivate gratitude in this time, in this time of challenge in our world.

And another reason, if you look through the whole of scripture, gratitude and thankfulness is such an important thing. Actually it says that we access God’s presence, we enter his gates with thanksgiving. That’s how important thanksgiving is. The Bible talks about the joy of the Lord is our strength. If we can figure out how to find the joy in the presence of the Lord, we’ll be able to rejoice and that joy somehow becomes strength for us as we go into life and go into challenge and go into heaviness and despair.

If we’re not learning to rejoice in the Lord, we’re going to be kind of working off of our own joy. And our own joy is so fleeting. It’s so conditional. Which means our strength will be fleeting and conditional, as well.

If you look into the life of Jonah. You know the guy. "Go to Nineveh and preach forty days in judgment.” And he’s like, “That’s cool. No, I’m going the opposite way to Tarsus.” He’s down in Tarsus and he’s all, “Let’s get on a boat.” And, bam. A fish and he’s inside. He’s inside this fish. In Jonah chapter 2, he kind of goes into this kind of prophetic, poetic utterance. The way it starts out, “I cried out to you from the depths of Sheol.” Basically, Jonah thought he went to hell. Based on his understanding at that day and age of what hell was. It was darkness, it was burning, it was all those things that Jesus kind of unpacked a little bit more. And where is he? He’s inside a fish, so it’s dark. He’s inside a fish, there’s a little burning. It’s called stomach acid, but he didn’t know that. He thought he had died. He thought it was over.

Yet in that place, as he goes on, he ultimately gets to the end of this poetic, prophetic utterance. He says, “Then I offered to you thanksgiving.” And like the very next verse says, “And the Lord commanded the fish to spit him out.” Somehow when his heart began to turn towards gratitude, it moved God in a way that to him right where he needed to be.

And you think about Paul. Same thing. Before he went to Thessalonica to plant this church, he was in a place called Philippi. And he had been arrested and put in prison. He and Silas were in locks and stocks and they were in the prison. They are just kind of lying there all tangled up. It says at midnight, what did they do? They started singing. “Way Maker, Miracle Worker, Promise Keeper, Light in the Darkness.” They probably sang a different song. But they started singing it out, filling the whole jail with gratitude and thanksgiving for all that God had done for them. For who Jesus was, with them right at that moment.

And what happened? An earthquake. Everything started shaking and the stocks and the locks came off and the prison doors opened. And they just kept singing. They kept singing until the Philippian jailer was about to kill himself. And they’re like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Chill out, man! We’re all still here!” And then he ends up giving his whole life to the Lord, and his family, as well.

So Paul is coming off of this. He knows the power of gratitude. He’s seen it in action. So he’s calling to the Thessalonians, “Hey I know you’re going through hard times. I know I didn’t get to spend time with you long enough. I know you’re new in faith. I know you’re new in the Lord and not sure what to do in the face of all these challenges.” But he said, “Here’s some final things. Rejoice always and pray continually.”

And then he takes it a little deeper. He says, “Give thanks in all circumstances. Just in case you weren’t sure what ‘rejoice always’ means, give thanks in all circumstances. All circumstances.” Paul is not naive. He’s not ignorant. He’s saying, “all circumstances,” because he knows some circumstances suck horribly. Give thanks in those circumstances. This is what the people of God do. This is what the followers of Christ do. They give thanks in all those circumstances.

Then, to take it even further, “for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” It’s very rare that you see that. We’re always, “God, what’s your will for my life?” There are a few times in scripture where it actually spells it out. This is God’s will for you. This is one of them. 1 Thessalonians 5:18. Give thanks in all circumstances. God’s will for you.

1 Thessalonians 4, just a chapter earlier, it says, “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified; that you should avoid sexual immorality;” Bam. Next week. Can’t talk about it now. Consecration. It’s all there. Coming at you.

1 Peter 2:15 “For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people.” We read that verse already in light of all the chaos.

Then 2 Peter 3:9, it says, “It’s God’s will that no one should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” This is God’s will for us.

One of the things that is God’s will is that we are thankful. I know it seems silly. I know it seems almost New Age-y or something. There are all kinds of psychological, sociological studies that you can do that show the benefit of your own soul if you can cultivate gratitude and thanksgiving, if you can dwell on the good and think about those things. But it’s deeper than just some sort of self-help in this regard.

This is what he’s saying. Then what’s so interesting, and I think verse 19 is kind of the key to this whole section. Basically, I look at verse 19, “Do not put out the Spirit’s fire.” It’s like, if we do the things from 12 through 24, then we’ll find ourselves stoking the Spirit’s fire within us. But if we neglect these things, we’ll find the Spirit dwindling and diminishing.

That’s our hope this whole fasting season. We’re wanting to develop a hunger for God. A hunger for righteousness. We want to see the Spirit of God stoked into a bigger flame than it’s ever been in our hearts, as we go into another year that might have all headwind against us again.

Somehow, when we cultivate gratitude in our own soul, cultivate gratitude in our marriages or in our households. Yeah, I’m talking about your roommates or your friends. “Let’s take time to give thanks.” Cultivate gratitude. Stopping before you eat. Cultivating gratitude. Giving thanks. All of these things are beneficial practices. Ultimately, in our world, if we could figure out how to cultivate gratitude instead of standing against and fighting and adding to the noise—be a beautiful contribution that the church would be making to do this type of stuff.

I’ve been unpacking this. I talked about it last week a little bit. It’s a lesson that’s ongoing in my life, so I’m sorry if it seems a little confusing or redundant. Last week I talked about how my wife sat us down for prayer. My daughter, Bella, said she saw 2020 as a ship in a storm, but then 2021 she saw flowers everywhere. I was like, “Oh, that’s a nice thought.” I made some jokes about it.

But then I went home and this guy emailed me and said, “Hey, your daughter’s not just blowing smoke there. It’s actually the Bible says that, as well.” He sent me Song of Songs 2. And I can read it to you.

10 My beloved spoke and said to me,
    “Arise, my darling,
    my beautiful one, come with me.
11 See! The winter is past;
   the rains are over and gone.
12 Flowers appear on the earth;
    the season of singing has come,
the cooing of doves
    is heard in our land.

I just know, because I’ve watched the Lord interact with my daughter, and I know this was just like a confirmation, making me realize that it wasn’t just a sentiment from an 11-year-old daughter, but it’s actually the Lord wanting to speak to this. It was so encouraging to get that. I need to put this everywhere. I need to put this in my office, in my houses, this verse, because it’s confirming.

But then Wednesday happened. I was playing basketball with these guys and they kept showing me, “Check this out, check this out.” And I was like, “That doesn’t look like flowers.” Some of those guys did not look like flowers. And you know, it was this crash between, “Maybe the Lord wasn’t really saying that. Maybe I got it wrong.” Or, “Maybe the Lord was saying that and it’s coming.”

I was wrestling this through, but then I started thinking about my daughter, Bella. And it made perfect sense to me. My daughter, Bella, when she wakes up, she doesn’t see flowers. You know what she sees when she wakes up? She sees a wheelchair. And she jumps in that thing and goes through life. Her life is full of flowers, if you ask her, though.

And then, I’ve been on dates with my daughter. So I’ll get in a wheelchair and we’ll go together. A wheelchair date. It’s kind of fun. And I’ll get to see the way people see us, the way people see her. So many people, when they see my daughter, Bella, what they see is a wheelchair. And they are the stupidest idiots in t he world. Because that is such a miniscule part of her life. She’s a chef. She has been a cheerleader. She gets up on the stage at our Christmas plays and just like, bam, steals the show. She can memorize lines. It is so crazy. I wouldn’t get in front of anybody, ever, when I was a kid. She’s been a Disney model. She’s a great swimmer. She’s a total goofball. She’s hilarious. She’s great at telling stories. And she is the sweetest, most comforting thing that you have ever met in your life.

The other day, it’s a weird other story, but we have these two goats. And I don’t know what was going on, but they were just screaming so much. And they usually don’t do that. But this day they were just screaming all the time. And I was like, I said, “Bella, could you go hang out with the goats for a little bit. I think if I go out there, it won’t help.” And she was like, “Yeah.” Because she knows. We named her Bella Rapha, which is beautiful healer. Because, although she needs healing, we know she’s going to give healing to the world. And we’ve seen it time and time again. So she went out there and I didn’t hear the goats anymore.

And we watch football. She can’t watch football games with us, at least not to the end. Because she knows one team’s going to lose. And she’s like, “They just put the camera on them for so long and I just can’t…” She can’t take it when she sees a team lose. This is who she is. And if you miss that, you’re an idiot. And it’s the same thing. She has to cultivate gratitude. When God says there’s going to be flowers everywhere, Bella believes there’s going to be flowers everywhere. It doesn’t mean that everything’s going to change for her. She’s still got challenges. But the flowers are there for those who will find it. I love that in Song of Songs. It says, “Arise and come with me.” It’s like you need to come up out of the situation you’re in and let me show you the flowers.

And I think about when Jesus said to his disciples, “Hey, guys. You’re going to go through hard times. I know you are not Romans, so you have no rights. You have oppression. I know you’re not well-to-do Jews. You’re kind of the lower class, the worthless. And you’ve left all you have to follow me. And you basically have nothing at all.” But he said, “I want you to, every once in a while, when it’s feeling really heavy, I want you to look and see the flowers.”

The best way to do that, and we’re going to finish with this, is right here. The word eucharist describes this moment, this bread and this cup. The word eucharist actually means thanksgiving. I’m not sure if you knew that. I forget it all the time, and I’m like, “I think it might,” and I look it up and I’m like, “Oh, yeah, it does.”

What we’re going to do is to cultivate some gratitude that’s not based in wishful thinking or some sort of hopeful sentiment. But this is historical reality. That God sent his Son into the world because he knew the world was stuck and lost and confused. And not only that, but we were trapped in our trespasses and sins. So Jesus came and he lived a sinless life. And this bread represents his body. Perfect. And yet it was broken. It was broken by our sin. It was broken by the anger and corruption in the world. It was broken by the attack of the devil. It was broken for us.

And as we remember this, we do remember the horrors of that day, but what we remember is that Jesus did it because he loved us. And he did it so that we could be made whole. So with a grateful heart, let’s take this bread.

Jesus, we do. We take this and we remember what you did for us. And we are grateful.

And he didn’t just make us whole through his broken body, but he allowed his blood to flow, to wash us clean, so that we could stand before the Father without any fear, without any shame, and know we would be received.

So Jesus, we remember with gratitude, with joy, with thankfulness, that you have washed us clean of all of our sins.

Let’s take the cup.

And now, this is a time for you to spend some more time with Jesus. You can sing to him, if that’s what you want to do. You can sit down and write some of the commitments you want to make to him. You can come forward for prayer. We’ll have some people up here for prayer. But don’t leave this place without really pressing in to the Lord and see what he has for you.

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