So, if you can turn your Bibles to 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, we're going to be taking a break from Romans for this week and then we'll pick it back up next week. But 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, I'll be reading from verse 16 all the way down to verse 22.

And reading out of the NASB, "Rejoice always, pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. Do not quench the spirit, do not despise prophetic utterances, but examine everything carefully. Hold fast to that which is good. Abstain from every form of evil." Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we pray as we have gathered here together to worship you, more than just the time that we spend, more than just hearing of sermon, I pray that you would stir our hearts that there would be a greater sensitivity to your presence. We pray, Father God, for your word to do its work.

As you have ordained it, as you have breathed your very breath in it, help us, Lord God, to meet with you, that we would hear your Son's voice and follow Him and Him alone. Bless us this morning in Jesus' name we pray, amen. Well, as you guys know, this week is Thanksgiving.

Outside of the church, I don't even know if you ever even hear it. I've been saying this for years, maybe more than 10 years, that it seems like every year the holiday of Thanksgiving is less and less mentioned. In fact, now, as soon as Halloween is over and all the candy stuff and children are done, it's like Christmas lights go up and they're ready for Christmas.

So Thanksgiving is kind of like blurred. I don't know about you, but I just don't see it. I don't see it in the commercials. I don't see it online. It just seems like the world just doesn't know what to do with it. It makes sense that it's been a while that they've been trying to take Christ out of Christmas.

So just to kind of like the way that they're dealing with or the world is dealing with Thanksgiving is like, "What is this day for?" And so instead of fighting against it, they're just kind of nullifying it. And so now Thanksgiving is just a day before Black Friday. That's how kind of everybody's gearing up for what are the deals and we're looking for all of that.

And there's nothing wrong with wanting to find deals. But again, this specific day of Thanksgiving, it's not ordained necessarily in Scripture to be once a year that we set aside a day that we're going to celebrate this Thanksgiving. But as it has been designated and we are taking time off, I want to make sure that we don't just spend it like rest of the world.

Thanksgiving at the core of it, not just once a year, but at the core of what Thanksgiving is, it is directly related to our salvation. Romans chapter one says, "In summary of man's rebellion," he says that, "man refused to give glory to God and rather than to give thanks to his own creation." And so the summation of man's rebellion is ingratitude toward God.

So the whole point of salvation was to restore where God ought to have been. Instead of seeking our own glory in our own life and giving credit to ourselves is to recognize who God is. And we couldn't do that from a distance. So God forgave our sons, restored so that we can place him back where he ought to be, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords over our lives.

But the question is, we're commanded to be thankful. I know that many of you may have had a very difficult year, whether it was job, it was health, or family issues, whatever it may have been, financial. How do you give thanks in that context? Do we just suck it up?

Do we just pretend like it's not there and just ignore the hardship in our lives? Well, let me ask you a question. This is a...I think this will help us to understand why Paul, and through the Holy Spirit, is commanding us to rejoice. Imagine if your boss came into your work and you've had this job and you really love this job and he says, "I have good news and bad news.

Which one do you want to hear?" So you're thinking through, "Okay, you know, I don't know what he's about to say." And he said, "Well, here's the bad news. Bad news is you're fired. You love this job. It's a really good paying job. And you love the commute. You love the people there.

And you've had it for many years." And all of a sudden, he says, "You're fired and you're thinking through all of these things. I'm not going to take care of my kids. I just bought a house, you know, and you have all of these concerns." He said, "It's the bad news." And all of a sudden, he's like, "What is wrong with this guy?

What could I have possibly done?" And then he says, "Well, here's the good news. And the good news is the reason why I fired you is because our company won the lottery. Remember, we've been paying $5 every week and the biggest lottery happened, $1.5 billion. We were the winners.

So you don't need to work anymore. So everybody is going to get $100 million. And so therefore, you don't need to work." So all of a sudden, this good news turned into... This good news supersedes all the other bad news. Not only the bad news of you getting fired, but whatever bad news that you heard prior to that, this good news supersedes all of that.

The gospel itself, in Greek, euangelion, the literal understanding of it is good news. And that's what we received and that's what we are to proclaim, this good news. And this good news of the gospel supersedes any other bad news. Because all of a sudden, it gives perspective that whatever bad things, whatever horrible things that has happened, it's only temporary.

And in fact, even the bad things that happened, God uses that to ultimately give us greater hope in Christ. And so whatever bad news that you may have brought into this room, if you genuinely believe the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, this good news supersedes any other bad news.

Even winning the lottery is only temporary. It can only solve your financial problems, but it doesn't solve the problem of health, life, family, relational issues. But this good news of the gospel affects every aspect of our life. And whatever bad news may have ruined your day, this good news reverses that curse of that bad news.

Paul commands the church and God commands us, commands us to rejoice, to pray without ceasing, to in all circumstances give thanks. He's able to command us because these things are not related to our present circumstance, but an eternal hope that we have in Christ. If you're not a believer, this will make absolutely no sense.

If you don't believe in the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ, you can't fake it. You can fake fellowship, you can fake being nice, but you can't fake rejoicing. And a lot of times Christians walk around thinking like, "Well, the Bible says to rejoice, so I got to put on a good face." Internally that's not what's going on, but externally you all say, "Everything's good.

God works all things for good." But in reality, that's not your experience. What I want to do this morning is look at the three imperatives of Paul, which in a sense summarizes Christian attitude. This is what happens to a Christian when his eyes are open to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It is not something that you work toward. It is not something that if you work hard and discipline that somehow you can get. If you believe that you are the recipients of this good news, this is what happens. First thing that he says, he says to rejoice always, to rejoice.

How do you just turn this on and off? What does he mean by that? Jesus himself, when the angels declared the incarnation of Christ, when he was coming as a child, the angels said in Luke 1.14, "You will have joy and gladness and many will rejoice at his birth." He says his incarnation is going to produce much joy to many people.

In fact, Jesus himself, he's talking about his death and resurrection. This is how he describes it to his disciples. Truly John 16.20, "Truly, truly I say to you that you will weep and lament," he's referring to his death, "but the world will rejoice. You will grieve, but your grief will be turned into joy." In other words, the byproduct of his death and resurrection is going to produce in you a joy, a joy that the world is not going to be able to understand.

A joy that can only be produced if you genuinely believe that this good news is for you. Again, in John 16.22, "Therefore you too have grief now, but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice and no one will take your joy away from you." That this is not a joy that is affected by persecution.

This is not a joy that is affected by our circumstance. No one could take that joy away from you. And so that's how Jesus describes his death and resurrection. So when he says in John 10.10, "I have come to bring life and to bring this life abundantly." What do you mean when you see somebody who is filled with life?

We say, "Wow, that guy is so filled with life." Do we mean that he's just very active? He just can't sit still? I know plenty of people who are active and bitter and angry. We don't say, "Well, that guy's filled with life." Actually when we say, "That guy's filled with life," we're talking about there's joy in his life.

There's something about him. That's exactly what Jesus means in John 10.10. He doesn't mean that I have come to extend your biological life for eternity, which would be miserable for so many people. Chris, your experience of physical life is so hard. Why would you want that for eternity? That's not a gift.

If you're having a miserable time in this fallen world, why wouldn't you want your life to end? That's not what he's referring to. When he says to give life, he's talking about Zoe, to be made alive in Christ. So in other words, the description of salvation is to restore joy into a life of a Christian, joy that was suffocated when we were separated from the author of life.

And so our whole salvation is described at restoring life back into people who are dead in their trespasses. But this joy, this life is not based upon our circumstance. And typically, every Thanksgiving we'll say, "Well, what are you thankful for?" And we'll say, "Well, I'm thankful for my friends, thankful for my health, thankful for my children, thankful for this new job, thankful for our business, thankful for the economy." We're thankful for various things, and all of these things are great indicators that maybe God is blessing our lives, possibly.

But the thankfulness, the joy that Paul is talking about here is not based upon our external circumstance. In Hebrews 11, verse 1, it says, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen." So faith is the assurance of this hope, this strong conviction of things that I can't see.

That's what faith is, and that's what connects us to God. In Romans 12, it says, "To rejoice in," what? "Hope." So, our rejoicing is directly related to hope, and hope is what we have because we have faith. So if you do the math, basically, faith leads to joy. Faith leads to life.

Faith leads to rejoicing because of hope, and this hope is not something that is based upon this world. Even if everything in this external world comes crashing down around us, he said that this joy is not based upon our circumstance. See, when he says to rejoice always, how can you rejoice always when things are falling apart, when things aren't happening the way you want, when your children are not the way that you desire, or your marriage, or your work, or whatever it may be?

He can't possibly command us to rejoice always if our rejoicing is circumstantial. What he is talking about, he's talking about a rejoicing that is beyond our circumstance. Paul is not commanding this to the Thessalonian church because they didn't have any problems. He started this letter for Thessalonians because they were a model church.

He was basically chased out of the city because the persecution was so intense, and that's how they end up going to Berea where we happened. But the reason why he got to Berea is because the persecution was so intense. He was only there for a short period of time, and he bore a lot of fruit, and he had to run away to get away from the persecution.

And then so he was writing this letter concerned that Satan might have come back in and ruined their faith. And then Timothy comes back and with this great news that this church is thriving, but it's not because they didn't have problems, because in this letter he writes concerning fornication, because they were just a few months ago, they were idol worshippers.

So they had sexual immorality that was also in the church. They had habitual laziness because some of them took the grace of God and said, "Well, if God is gracious and he's going to come and save us, then why do we need to work?" So he had to address certain people who were lazy.

There were doctrinal errors. Satanic teaching that was coming in and saying, "Resurrection already happened, so there is no hope for you since you got left behind." And so Paul had to address false doctrines. People were forming social groups. The rich were staying with the rich, and poor were staying with the poor.

So these are problems that we would think a lot of churches have, and it wasn't because that they didn't have problems. He was reminding this church in the context of intense persecution, relational issues, doctrinal errors, sexual immorality, that in the context of all of this, he says, "Rejoice." Not because all your problems are taken care of, but because the hope that we have in Christ cannot be taken from us.

Every single one of us, when we were born, the moment that we were born, we were born with an instinct to live. And that was surprising to me. Again, when the doctor gives your first child to you, it's amazing how the baby comes out already sucking. There was no class on sucking.

You weren't born and sent you to a class and showed you a video and said, "This is how you drink milk." And you just start puckering and start sucking, and then that's how you get the milk, and that's how you're going to live. And then when you have enough, you poo.

You put pressure, and then you poo, and then you do that repeatedly over and over again, take a nap, and then you live. No one was taught that. We were born, and the moment that we were born, we were born with the instinct to live, to eat, to poo, to sleep, to rest, whatever it is.

So that natural instinct to live is the distinction between a Christian and a non-Christian, because a non-Christian finds life in this world. They find joy, and they find purpose and meaning in the world. So a Christian, once his eyes became open, saw that life is in Christ and Christ alone.

And so we find joy in Christ. We find joy in Him. And so therefore, we became followers of Jesus Christ. Our life is not found in this world, and that's the difference between a Christian and a non-Christian. A Christian and a non-Christian is somebody who decided to come to church and read the Bible every day.

A non-Christian can do that. I know plenty of PhDs who studied the Bible and very antagonistic toward the things of Christ. There's a lot of people who spend a lot more time meditating and praying than Christians. Go to a Hindu temple. Go to a Buddhist temple. The distinction between a Christian and a non-Christian is that he finds life in Christ, and that's why he says he commands us to rejoice.

In Romans 8.18, Paul says, "I consider that the suffering of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us." He says, "in comparison." In comparison to the glory, everything else doesn't seem that bad. If you don't believe this, if you don't truly believe that you are recipients of this good news, not just the theory, not just that you went to church, not just that you grew up in the church, but you genuinely believe that you are the recipient of this greatest spiritual lottery, then all of this stuff is theory, and you could force yourself to be joyful.

I should be feeling more joy. I should be attracted to Christ, but I just am not because it's just a theory. The prerequisite of all of this is that you actually believe, and you've actually seen the glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ. In Romans 8.31-35, and this is a passage that, again, I've quoted many times.

Many of you may have memorized it. It's probably one of the many favorite verses in Romans, where Paul says, "What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how will he not also with him freely give us all things?" Again, why would you be concerned about the affairs of this world when you know that if God loved you enough to send his only begotten son, why would he withhold any good thing?

If finances is what's best for you, why would he withhold that from you? If friendship is the primary thing that you need, why would a God who is willing to send his only begotten son, sacrifice him for you, why would he withhold any good thing from you? Who will bring a charge against God's elect?

God is the one who justifies. Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is he who died. Yes, rather, who was raised. Who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ with tribulation, distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

I know this is not a passage that's new to many of you, but every year that I read and meditate on this passage, it has more meaning. The reason why it has more meaning is every year that I live, I am more and more aware how fragile everything else is in this world.

Your friendship, even with your children, your marriage, your bank account, your health, your life, your business, whatever it may be. The longer I live, the more I am reminded just how fragile everything is in this fallen world. And anything that you have put confidence in, if that's your greatest source of joy, is anything outside of Christ, that which you made your greatest joy ends up becoming the source of your greatest despair.

Let me say that again. Anything that you have placed above to make it your greatest joy, it may be your children, it may be your wife, it may be your business, your bank account, whatever it may be, anything that you have placed as your greatest joy in life eventually becomes your greatest source of despair.

If marriage is what you pursue as your greatest joy, that will become the source of your greatest despair. If your children is a source of your greatest joy, that will one day become the source of your greatest despair. That's the irony of the cruelty of this world. And so when he says, "I command you to rejoice and to rejoice always," it's because our joy is founded upon this hope, this hope in Christ, that no matter how difficult this circumstance and no matter how ugly this year may have been physically, that this hope in Christ can never be taken away because it's not based upon me, it's not based upon you, it's not based upon your will, it's not based upon your discipline, it's not based upon your fruit.

It's based upon the love of Christ. He who did not spare his own son, why will he not along with him give us all things? Along with that, he says, "Rejoice always, and if you find life in Christ and that's where your rejoicing happens," he says, "then pray without ceasing." The question that we have to ask ourselves, "What does pray without ceasing look like?

Should I always be closing my eyes? How do I drive if I do this?" What about studying the Bible if we're praying without ceasing? What about fellowship and evangelism? When does that happen if we're always praying? You have to understand, again, in context, there are several words in the Bible that's translated for prayer.

There's "euchomai," "erotaio," "deomai," and every one of these things are slightly nuanced different, but in the end it just means to have desire. To have desire, you beseech and you're asking, petitioning, and so it has similar meaning, right? And translated slightly different from passage to passage. But the primary word that has been translated for prayer in the New Testament is "prosechomai." And that's the primary word that is used for prayer.

And again, helping understanding what this word is and the nuance behind it will help us understand why he's saying, "Pray always." The word is a compound word with "pros" as a preposition denoting closeness or going towards something. "Euchai" is a Greek word that means to petition, to desire. So to have these two words together, to pray means to recognize that our desire is met in Christ.

So when you have this desire and when you are in need of something, that you draw near to Him. That's what prayer is. So prayer isn't this religious activity of closing your eyes and having a list of prayer concerns, and then we pray for Him, pray for Him, pray for this, pray for that, and then we're done.

Primary understanding of praying is that our longing is satisfied in Him. That's what prayer is, to draw near. What's interesting, again, the word, the primary word for worship is "proskenaio." The word "pros" in the same word is "prosechomai." And the word "proskenaio" means to draw near to God and be prostrated, to kiss Him in adoration and reverence and in fear.

So the word for worship also has the idea of coming to Him. You can't worship God from a distance. The very word itself means to come. That's why when Jesus comes, the first thing that He says to His disciples is what? "Come. Come to me." And this is something that God could not say to the Israelites in the Old Testament.

If you go to the Old Testament, He says to come, but He says, "When you come, make sure you do all of this." And if you listen carefully to everything that God tells them to do in the book of Leviticus, you don't hear "come." If you've been studying through us in the book of Leviticus, the end conclusion of the book of Leviticus isn't "come." The end conclusion of Leviticus is, "You better stay away, because if you don't do exactly, exactly what I tell you to do, curse will be upon you." So in one sense, He says to come and make sure you do all of this when you come, but if you don't do it the way I tell you, you're going to die.

See, they couldn't come to Him. They couldn't come to Him by their own righteousness, and no animal ever washed away their sins. It was only to point to the coming of Christ, where Christ was going to fulfill all of that. So in the Old Testament, this holy God, in order to just even be in their presence, all of that ritual, day after day, morning and night, had to be done.

Every single day, every single week, every single month, every single year, every decade, it had to be done. Sacrifice, killing, over and over and over again. He says, "Only that way you can come even close, and even then, you can't come all the way. You can only come to a certain point, and that's it." Yet when Christ comes, veiled, His glory veiled in His humanity, He comes and says, "Now come.

Now come." And so the disciples follow Him, and they go where He goes. And then when He's crucified on the cross, the curtain is torn, and He says, "Now come." And that's the whole point of salvation, that we couldn't get to Him. And so Jesus says to come, and in the book of Hebrews it says, "Now you can come to the throne of grace with confidence." That was the whole point of salvation, and that was the whole point of prayer.

We make prayer like the way that the Jews practice the Sabbath, that we say, "Well, if we did all of these things, if we don't do all these things, then we kept the Sabbath." And Jesus says, "Sabbath was made for man, not man for Sabbath. The Sabbath wasn't meant so that you can work hard to keep it.

Sabbath was given to you so that you can rest. The Lord is the Lord of the Sabbath. Christ is the Lord of the Sabbath." And oftentimes, the way that we look at prayer is that prayer is another discipline of many other disciplines that we need to do and make a list, and we need to do it, and then we're so burdened by prayer, not realizing prayer is the primary gift of salvation.

But because of what He has done, He said, "Now come. Come to find life in Christ. Now you can come." You couldn't come before because of what He has done, because of our own sins. He says to come. You ever think about Jesus? Oftentimes we hear teachings about how Jesus broke away from the crowd because He needed to rejuvenate and really pray and depend on God to empower Him so that He can go and work, and all of that is true.

And so we say, "Yeah, we need to pray too. We need to go like Jesus and be an example, and we need to be prayer warriors," and all that is true. But you ever think that maybe Jesus went to pray with the Father because that's where He just wanted to be?

You ever think that Jesus broke away from the crowd because everybody wanted something from Him? The only place where He really found rest was with the Father, where God was ministering to Him, and that's where He found life? See, if we find life in this world, whenever we have issues and problems, we find human answers.

You have financial problems? Go to the bank. Are you sick? Go to the doctor. You're lonely? Find some friends, community. Something's not working right? Say, "I'm one of those people. I'm determined. I'm going to write down the pros and cons, and I'm going to use my intellect, my experience, and I'm going to do all this.

I'm going to get this done." If our life and our value system is found in this world, that's what we turn to when we are squeezed. See, but when He says to pray without ceasing, it means that the door has been opened. The door has been opened to Him.

It says, "You have my ear." A couple of weeks ago, Pastor James Yim gave a powerful sermon about adoption. He says, "The point of salvation is now we're adopted children of God, co-heirs with Christ." In other words, he's saying, "You have my ear. I am listening to you. Why would you run to a counselor?

Why would you run to something else? Why would you run to the world when you have my ear?" So the greatest benefit of salvation is that the door to the throne of grace has been opened. But here's the catch. This is not something you earn. This is not something that you work on.

This is something that happens because you believe. You believe. If you believe, life is found in Christ, and that's where you find your greatest joy. See, if church is simply an obligation, if Bible study is simply an obligation that a Christian does, eventually, eventually you will follow wherever you find the greatest joy.

You find the greatest joy in the world, that's where you go. You'll pretend in the church, but you'll pursue the world outside of the church. Because we're naturally, instinctively, God created us to live. Instinctively we are sucking. We're spiritually sucking for food. Every single one of us. I mean, physically, we've become masters at eating.

But spiritually, like where do you find food? Where do you find satisfaction? Where do you find joy? If you find that in this world, you can pretend and put on a good face at church, but as soon as no one is looking, you're in the world. You're in the TV, you're in Netflix, you're in traveling, you're in whatever it is that the world is causing you to feel joy.

That's why he says to pray, when he says to pray unceasingly, that's what he means. To come to him constantly. That the longing that God has placed in your heart, that you would find it in Christ, in Christ alone. To continue to come to him, not just Sunday, not only during prayer time, not only Bible study and discussion time, but all of our life.

Just like you pursue, if you like surfing, if you like eating, if you like traveling, just like you go to that because it feels good. And you feel alive when you do that. That you find greater life when you're in Christ, and so that causes you to be a pursuer of Christ.

You can see how easily we can be deceived in the church. Because we are in the church, we're in Bible study, we're studying, we're leading, and then we pretend like we find life in Christ, we sing about life in Christ, but is it really the case? Is that really your testimony?

Do you see him as your life? Do you rejoice more over the bank account? Do you rejoice more over your friends? Do you rejoice more over circumstance? Do you rejoice more over your vacations and where you are capable of going or not going? Do you rejoice more over your marriage?

Do you rejoice more over your children? Or is your life in Christ first and foremost? That's what it means to pray unceasingly, to come to him. And as a result of that, you give thanks to all things. And that's where Thanksgiving comes in. If our Thanksgiving is circumstantial, some of you guys have a lot to be thankful for, some of you guys don't have much to be thankful for this year.

Maybe hopefully next year it'll be better. Maybe the year after that would be better, if it's circumstantial. But he's commanding us to be thankful in all circumstance because it doesn't hinge upon what happened this year. Christian thankfulness and Christian rejoicing and Christian prayer and drawing to him is not circumstantial because it's based upon and hinged upon the firm rock of Jesus Christ.

That's why he's in Habakkuk, chapter 3, verse 17, 18, it says, "Though the fig tree should not blossom and there be no fruit on the vines, though the yield of the olives should fail and the fields produce no food, though the flock should be cut off from the fold and there be no cattle in the stalls, yet I will exult in the Lord.

I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. Is my worship, is my walk with God circumstantial? Or is it really upon him?" So I want to ask you, when you examine your life, how much of your rejoicing is based upon your friends? How much of your rejoicing is based upon your family?

How much of your rejoicing is based upon circumstance? How much of your rejoicing is based upon how loved you feel by your friends? Or is it really the good news? Has the good news of Jesus Christ superseded any other bad news? That's why he says, after he says all that, I think he commands him to be thankful in all situations, he says, "Not to quench the spirit.

Do not despise the prophetic utterances. Abstain from every form of evil." Because God has already given us the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit came to convict the world of sin, which he did for us, and to remind us of everything that he has said and done. And what is what he has said and done?

It's the gospel, it's the good news. And so he said the Holy Spirit has been implanted in us, given to us, in order to remind us and intercede for us about the good news. And that's why he says, "Do not quench the Holy Spirit." Because the Holy Spirit is already praying on our behalf, interceding on our behalf with groanings that our words cannot express, so that we can constantly recognize and to what?

To rejoice, to come to him, to be thankful. Let me conclude with this, because our primary struggle isn't necessarily theology. I would assume majority of you, I'm sure it's not 100%, but majority of you are here because you confessed faith in Christ, you believed him. At least you confessed it.

But within that confession, there are some of you who don't really believe. You confess it, it's more of kind of a security blanket, like, "If God is real, I don't want to go to hell." So it's nothing more than that, it's a security blanket. And if you can find that security blanket in the temple, in Buddhists, and maybe one day you might go there.

So it's not real faith. And then there are some of us who profess faith and you genuinely believe. So it's not a theological issue for you. But you haven't experienced life in Christ in a long time. You've been pursuing the world and you've been distracted and all the principles and the lures of this world has tempted you and gripped your mind and your heart and you're constantly in the middle.

When you hear good sermons or Bible study, you're like, "Yes!" And then as soon as it's over, you're seeking the world. John Piper says this in his book, A Hunger for God, a book of fasting. And then let me conclude with this. The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie.

It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime time dribble of triviality we drink in every night. That's where the rubber meets the road for most of us.

We're so distracted and so filled with the things of this world that we don't bring an appetite for the things of Christ when we come. And so we desire it mentally. But in our heart, in our spirit, there's very little room. So he says, "For all the ill that Satan can do, when God describes what keeps us from the banquet table of his love, it is a piece of land, a yoke of oxen, and a wife." He's talking about the parable in Luke chapter 14.

That's where the rubber meets the road. We can talk about how we want to be great for the kingdom of God and how we want to evangelize and want to do all these great things for our lives. We dedicate our lives, we follow the earth of Christ. But if we do not address the nibbling that we do on a daily basis in this world, which quenches the spirit, there is no appetite for things of God.

And that might be the reason why you haven't rejoiced in him in a long time. And that's why, that might be the reason why you don't go to him when you are squeezed. And that's why your thankfulness, you can only think of physical circumstance. So as we celebrate Thanksgiving, let's be mindful and deliberate that we don't celebrate and go down the path like the rest of the world, that we practice joy and prayer and thankfulness as Paul describes it here.

Maybe take some time to fast. I mean, Thanksgiving is about gorging. Let's do something different. Maybe fast. It doesn't have to be food. Fast at nibbling. What are you doing that's distracting you from things of God? Maybe take some time to fast away from that and ask the Lord to restore a hungering and thirsting for him that you had at one point so that our natural desire would be him above everything else.

To ask ourselves this week this question, what causes you to rejoice? What causes you to come to him and what are you thankful for? Let's take some time to pray as we welcome our worship team to come back.