God Is God Series

Sermon Brief

Date Written: November 1, 2013

Date Preached: November 3, 2013

Where Preached: OPBC (AM)

Sermon Details:

Series Title: Building a Foundation for a Thankful Life

Sermon Title: The 1st Piling – God is God

Sermon Text: Isaiah 40:25-31 [HCSB]

Essence of the Text: Isaiah wanted his readers to know the length, breadth, width and depth of who God was and is…

Essence of the Sermon: Isaiah’s words reveal to us today the length, breadth, width and depth of who God was and is…

Objective of the Sermon: KNOWING Who God is… allows us to be thankful that God is God… and He is there for ALL of us who turn to Him!

Introduction:

This week I am going to begin a series on how to build a foundation of thankfulness in our lives… this series will reveal WHY we should be thankful and how we can live out thankful lives!

In Phil 4:6 the Paul wrote, “…Don’t worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God…”

Paul says when we are troubled to go to God in prayer… no matter WHAT it is that troubles you, he says in EVERYTHING lift it up in prayer and petition…

Let me ask you something…

Do you have ANYTHING in your life today that you are worried about?

Do you have ANYTHING in your life that you are fretting over?

Do you have ANYTHING in your life that is weighing heavy on your mind?

Paul tells us we are to bring ALL of our troubles to God in prayer and petition…we are to lift it up to Him… but God is NOT a prayer vending machine with us putting in our prayers and Him dispensing our desired requests…

God is a loving God, but He is a God we must approach in prayer with the right attitude… and Paul addresses this in this verse, he says that we are to lift these things us in prayer and petition WITH THANKSGIVING!!!

Preacher, you have GOT to be kidding me! How in the world can I be thankful about my situation? How can I possibly go to God with a thankful heart and thankful attitude when I’m suffering so much?

Well first thing… Paul did not say it would be EASY, but when we approach God in prayer it requires the right spirit! It requires a heart that is focused on God and filled with thankfulness!

Well preacher what do I have to be thankful for? After all I am going to God with all my problems… and this world has NOT done me any favors… my life is not a fairy tale… in fact my life is hard…so

How can I be thankful when I am hurting?

How can I be thankful when my heart aches from the pain?

How can I be thankful when all seems lost to me?

How can I be thankful when it seems my world is crashing down?

My friends, being thankful in times of hardship and trouble is NOT something that comes easy for you? It is NOT something that will just happen. To be thankful in the difficult times is going to take an intentional effort and focus within your heart!

To build a life of thankfulness we must first begin with the foundation. I truly want our fellowship to be a church with a great foundation of thankfulness in our hearts, but I am sure that many of us are struggling in this area and we need help to get where God wants us to be…

So today, I want us, as a fellowship, to begin that journey together, to build a foundation of thankfulness in our lives…

I want us to become a gathering of believers whose focus and direction is based on our thankful hearts and our attitudes of thankfulness!

For us to be able to do this we must lay a foundation… a foundation of thankfulness that undergirds ALL we are in Christ…

Now here in Louisiana we ALL know the extreme importance of a good foundation, but many of us may not know just what it takes to set a good foundation… it starts with the driving of pilings!

Pilings are wide, heavy wooden poles several feet long (usually 20-40 ft long) that are driven into the ground to stabilize the ground underneath the foundation poured on top of them. Without these pilings the foundation would be unstable and unsafe on the shifting, swampy ground we live on here in South LA…

Well our lives are MUCH like that shifting, swampy ground in South LA… there is NOTHING in our lives that is ‘grounded’ and we can find ourselves being thrown about in a storm that life brings… but if our lives have the ‘anchor’ that is God we can weather these storms and we can live a thankful life!