Title: Christmas Is Coming but First: Thanksgiving
Text: Colossians 1:10-14
Thesis: A good seasonal wish-list should include a desire for a joyful and grateful spirit..
Introduction
This morning you may be expecting that my thoughts are going to reflect a concern that retailers are so bent on getting a head start on the Christmas season that they are usurping the season of Thanksgiving. Not only is the focus of Christmas shifted from the Christ in the manger to the merchandise in the market… we haven’t time to pause for a season of Thanksgiving because we are in a rush to get to Christmas.
But I am not going to do anything more that allude to those things and am rather going to hitchhike off of the idea of wishing for materials gifts to wishing for spiritual gifts which lead us to have joyful and grateful hearts for the season of Thanksgiving and beyond.
Colossians is a letter sent by the Apostle Paul to the Christians who lived in the city of Colossae. He describes them in verse one as holy and faithful people and in verse 3 tells them how much he appreciates them for the way they live out their faith. He specifically speaks of their devotion to Christ and their love for others. In verse 9 he tells them that from the day he first heard about them he has not stopped praying for them. So this morning I want to unpack the things Paul wished for them.
In that we believe “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives and straightens us out and instructs us in doing what is right,” we assume the things God’s Word wishes for the Christians at Colossae are things God wishes to be true for us as well.
The first thing God wishes for us is the knowledge of His will.
I. The Gift of Knowledge
We pray that God will fill you with the knowledge of his will… Colossians 1:9
Knowledge, as it is used in this context, is not a knowledge of all things but rather knowledge of a particular object or subject.
Paul is not wishing that the Christians at Colossae be granted knowledge of aerospace engineering, applied economics and management, physics, philosophy, animal science, comparative religions, history, mathematics, English literature, medical science or chemical engineering. Paul was wishing that they would have “full” knowledge of the will of God through all spiritual wisdom and understanding.
The prayer is that we fully grasp and understand the ways and will of God. The prayer is that we learn to allow the will of God to pervade every nook and cranny of our lives… our thoughts, our desires of affections, our attitudes, our aims, goals and purposes and plans.
What Paul wishes for us is woven into the text of Romans 12:1-2 where he wrote, “I urge you in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God - this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is… his good, pleasing and perfect will.” Romans 12:1-2
The second thing God wishes for us is that we live our lives in a worthy way.
II. The Gift of a Worthy Life
We pray that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way. Colossians 1:10
The text says we pray this, i.e., we pray that you will be filled with all knowledge of God’s will, in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord. In other words, being able to live a life worthy of the Lord is contingent upon discerning and doing the will of God. One thing builds on another… first you learn to discern God’s will and then you do it which results in living a life worthy of the Lord.
Knowledge is not just for the sake of knowing. Knowledge is for then doing. It is in knowing what God wishes that we can then anticipate and do what pleases God.
This is not a perfect analogy but to illustrate the idea, the servers at George’s Café know me and they know what I like. They know where I like to sit. They know I want coffee and a glass of water. And they also know what I am likely to order. So if they see me coming they put a cup of coffee and a glass of water on my table. Then they ask, “The usual?” And I say, “The usual.” And when they bring “the usual” they also bring an extra napkin. They know me and anticipate that I will want another napkin, so they bring an extra napkin or two. In getting to know me and my quirks they almost instinctively anticipate my will and do it.
The more you know the Word of God and the more you listen to the Spirit of God speaking to your heart and mind, the more you will know the will of God. And the more you know the will of God the more you will be able to discern and do what God wants you to do. And the more you discern and do the will of God, the more you will be living a life worthy of the Lord.
The third thing God wishes for us is that we have the strength we need for living each day.
III. The Gift of Strength
We pray that you will be strengthened with his glorious power so that you may have great endurance and patience… Colossians 1:11
We are reminded in Ephesians 5:8 that when we become followers of Christ we change kingdoms, so to speak. “Once we were in darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.” In I Peter 2:9 the bible tells us that we are a chosen people who belong to God who called us out of darkness into his wonderful light.
Jesus tells us in the gospels that “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you.” Luke 17:21
Christians are people of God, living in a dark world, who have the light and life of Christ shining within them and radiating out from them.
The world in which we live is a dark and threatening world and that is why we are told to “Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power… for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in heavenly realms.” Ephesians 6:10-12 In other words… life is hard!
So the gift of strength we need is a God-sized strength that is more than just a shot-in-the-arm boost or a Popeye can of spinach supercharge now and then. The prayer is that we “be being strengthened with all power according the God’s glorious might.” It is a continuous empowerment.
The gift of strength is further defined as strength for endurance and the strength of patience.
A. Strength for Endurance – so you may have great endurance.
The strength wished for us is an enduring strength which no situation can defeat and no circumstance can overpower you.
We were saddened to learn of the suicide death of a Lafayette, Colorado woman who was found with her daughter in their garage a couple of days ago. As the investigation has unfolded they have found that Patrice Clark had a history of alcohol abuse and in an earlier incident had stated to the police, “I want to end my life. It is too hard.” (John Aguilar, Woman Found Dead in Garage with Her Daughter Had Alcohol Abuse History, The Daily Camera, posted in the Denver Post, 11/20/10)
Life is just too hard and without the grace and strength of God it can be overwhelming.
B. Strength for Patience – so you may have patience.
The strength wished for us is expressed through a patience which no person can defeat… no person can exhaust your love.
The strength that empowers us to exercise extreme endurance through things and extreme patience with people is the strength we claim when we declare, “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.” Philippians 4:13
The last gift God wishes for us is a joyful and grateful spirit.
IV. The Gift of Joyful Gratitude
May you be filled with joy, always thanking the Father. Colossians 1:11-14
While we may think of the Christian life as sometimes being a grim thing… simply enduring the challenging circumstances of life and putting up with the challenging people of life is not enough. God wants us to be able to exercise endurance and patience with a joyful spirit. And so he prays that we will be given joyful and grateful spirits.
We will joyfully give thanks to Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light.
If you can imagine one of those antique balancing scales with two pans that were once used by assayers to weigh ore… imagine placing all that the good and the bad of this life in one pan and see the weight of this life tip the scale. Then imagine placing all of the good and glory that we will inherit in the kingdom of God in the other pan and watch the scale radically tip the other direction.
That is why we are reminded to not lose heart or grow faint in this life for our momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes on what is not yet seen, for what is unseen is eternal.
Certainly there is that aspect of our faith that invites us to look beyond the circumstances of this life but I also believe that the joyful gratitude spoken of in our text is not just a joy about some future inheritance. I believe cheerful and grateful spirits are for the things of this life as well.
Everyone in this room lives in the real world… some of our worlds are more real than others but we live real-world lives.
• We all have hassles.
• We all have things for which we may be grateful.
• We all have day-in and day-out ordinary events.
Robert Emmons, PhD, professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis and psychology professor Michael McCullough of the University of Florida teamed up on an experiment on the role gratitude plays in our emotional and physical well-being. They took three groups of volunteers and randomly assigned them to focus on one of the three things for a period of time.
The first group focused on everything that went wrong. The second group honed in on situations that enhanced their lives for which they were grateful and the third group just kept track of their daily stuff like going shopping, etc.
All three groups had hassles and good things and ordinary things but only the group that made it a point to be grateful saw their lives in favorable terms. They had fewer negative physical symptoms like headaches and colds. They were more active and outgoing. They simply enjoyed a higher quality of life.
God wants us to cultivate and nurture joyful and grateful spirits. The person who has a cheerful outlook on life and who hones in on the good things of life is living a more personally satisfying and more God glorifying life.
Conclusion
This morning we have unwrapped the gifts of:
• The knowledge of God’s will,
• The ability to live a life worthy of Christ,
• The gift of strength to endure hard things and to be patience with challenging people,
• And the gift of a joyful and grateful heart.
Meanwhile, we are smack dab on the eve of Black Friday. Black Friday is traditionally the beginning of the Christmas shopping season for gift giving and gift getting. It is traditionally the day after Thanksgiving. Retailers are chomping at the bit, so to speak, and gearing up so they can really get into marketing for the Christmas gift-giving season as soon as we can get Thanksgiving out of the way.
Last night, five days before Thanksgiving, a Salvation Army bell-ringer was working the front entrance of King Soopers. Already retailers have begun decorating their stores and some will open as early as midnight on the start of Black Friday. The stores will offer door buster deals and loss leaders to attract shoppers.
While the term “black” has been used in the past to describe disastrous days in financial markets… the idea behind “Black Friday” is that this is the day of the year in which retail stores have enough sales to put them “in the black.” As you know in accounting, losses are referred to being in the “red” while profits are thought of as being “in the black.”
But lest we get all wrapped up in the festivities of Black Friday… it is appropriate that we nurture being in the spirit of Thanksgiving Thursday.
So as you into this Thanksgiving week… May you have full knowledge of God’s will, live a worthy life, being strengthened so that you may have great endurance and patience… joyfully giving thanks to the Father for all things!
