Good morning, friends. My name’s Alex. Great to see you today. And I just love those dedication moments. Just seeing the beautiful energy of those kids on stage. Whenever we do dedications, weirdly, perhaps, this is me, reminds me of this Dave Matthews song. First just one step, one word and then with laughter, sing, oh life begin.

First just one step, let’s not forget these early days, remembering we began the same. We lose our way in fear and pain, oh joy begin. There’s this beautiful entry into the world that each one of us make those first moments of walking, of those moments of laughter. And then he throws in that line at the end.

That suggests that somewhere there’s the potential for every single one of us to find ourselves feeling somewhat lost. The beautiful thing that we celebrate every time we come here, every day we wake up and follow Jesus together is that we are invited back in to a joyful walk with the God of the universe.

And we get to do that together. And that’s our prayer. for each one of those children. We’re in a series called In the Way of Jesus. It’s really a series centered around spiritual practices, spiritual disciplines. So far, we’ve talked about the reading of scripture. We’ve talked about prayer.

We’ve talked about solitude and silence. This week, I’m going to move into something just a little different. But for those of you that are just jumping in, and I’m going to try and move quickly today because we’re going to come to this table at the end of the service. A lot happening with this and dedications, but I don’t want to have to rush this moment where we come.

to this table. In some traditions it’s called the Lord’s Supper, the Lord’s Table, some times we call it Communion, but beautifully it’s called the Eucharist, which actually means gratitude, thanksgiving. And so hopefully you feel this inexorable pull towards this table. Life with God empowers.

Life for God if you’ve got the outline that’s probably left there’s no blanks on that one I’m hoping most of you have got it if you’ve been here multiple weeks It’s this idea that you don’t follow God by working very hard. It’s not I jump in and I show God that I’m here I’m ready to go. I’m like making this happen no, the thing works the other way around we live life with God and he in those moments empowers life for him.

It’s a God driven thing. That’s what we’ve been learning, and so maybe I thought it’d be useful just to tap back into that idea of, in the way of Jesus and the idea of these spiritual practices and ask what’s the purpose of those spiritual practices? If perhaps you’ve caught this idea that this is some kind of I’m earning something from God.

No, this isn’t about earning. It is about effort. It is about growing intentionally, as we’re called to do. When we think about this metaphor of a trellis that provides a place for us to grow, we’re putting in that trellis that enables the plant to grow higher and higher as opposed to the other option.

Which is a life lived with no trellis, where it means that the life itself just sits dangling in this kind of weird bucket I bought, and it just doesn’t have the ability to go anywhere. When we practice things in the spiritual world, we’re actually intentionally growing in that, constantly. is we’re growing in the way of Jesus.

Richard Foster says this, The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep, for people that have grown deeper with Jesus. Now, in the Western world, in the modern world, when we hear grow, one of the things we might hear is this. I learned new stuff this year.

I’m learning information. And yet, if you were to go into the Eastern world, if you would go back a couple of thousand years, when they heard grow in a spiritual sense, they would hear you more like the person. Our goal is not for you to have more information at the end of the series. Our goal is not for me to have more information.

It is to become more like Jesus. Spiritual practices, roughly, can be split into two groups. This is a Dallas Willard idea. There’s practices of abstinence, where you might stop doing something fasting. is perhaps the easiest example of that. You stop eating in order to fill yourself up in a new way with your relationship with God.

But there’s others, like the one we’ll get to today, which is the practices of engagement. You’re actually choosing to do something. And today, we look at this beautiful idea of gratitude, which hopefully will link in beautifully with this communion moment. If you’ve got a text in front of you, Psalm 100, shout for joy to the Lord or the earth, worship the Lord with gladness, come before him with joyful songs, know that the Lord is God, it is he who made us.

We are His. We are His people, the sheep of His pasture. Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. Give Him thanks to Him and praise His name for the Lord is good and His love endures forever. His faithfulness continues through all generations. Would you take a moment to close your eyes?

Maybe lock into something for a moment you’re grateful for. Might be really simple, the sunshine that you saw this morning, the extra warmth in the air over these last couple of days. Maybe you’ve fallen in love. You’ve met someone that you care for deeply. Maybe someone has loved you in return. Maybe you have enough to eat.

Maybe you feel safe, protected. Maybe life in this moment feels good. And maybe you walk in, and there is so much that you aren’t grateful for. You wish you could change. Somewhere, perhaps for you, there’s a kernel of gratitude still for the life you have been given, for the God that you have come to know.

For a moment, hold on to that gratitude.

Reflect on it. Be thankful for it. God, as we talk about gratitude, help us to learn how to practice it, not just to feel it, help us to make it a significant part of our lives. as we see the value in it. Amen. Gratitude is a it’s an idea that’s got a lot of thoughts about it in antiquity. What I mean is over the years in history, lots of people have written on the subject broader than just the scriptural narratives.

A few of them here. For those of you that love this kind of stuff, Seneca said this a couple of thousand years ago ish now, true happiness is to enjoy the present without anxious dependence upon the future. Not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears, but to rest. Satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient for he that is so wants nothing.

The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not. Some depth to that, right? Ralph Waldo Emerson. Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you and to give thanks continually.

And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude. The challenging and the hard. And then this one from Cicero, the Roman historian. Gratitude is the mother. of all virtues. Somewhere these thinkers across history have said that being grateful for life experiences, and broad, not just the good ones, has a way of developing other virtues in us.

It’s a challenge to our souls that encourages us to grow, and certainly on a couple of levels. It seems like gratitude has a deep value. Gratitude is the antidote to comparison. Living life out of comparison, like the Ecclesiastes idea that all toil, all struggle in life is based out of our toil and chasing after the wind.

A comparison to everybody else. Gratitude is the antidote to that. Someone once said, I think it was Stephen Covey, that to live life based on comparison is like a metaphorical existence around the famous story of the two guys that have been chased by a bear. As the bear starts to move towards them, one of them bends down and begins to take off his shoes.

And his friend looks at him and says what are you doing? We’re being chased by a bear. Why remove your shoes? And his friend simply says, Oh, I can run faster. Without my shoes on the man says well, that’s ridiculous. What a silly idea you’ll never be able to outrun a bear and the man looks back at his friend and says I don’t need To outrun the bear.

I only need to outrun you living life in comparison is simply This most broken level hoping the bear catches your friend. So you get to win the race. It’s living life in order not to lose instead of living your life for some specific purpose. When we compare to everyone, we end up getting focused simply on winning at life, and gratitude for what we have seems to be a deep antidote to that.

Gratitude also seems to make us happier, people, according to a whole bunch of neuroscience floating around. This is Mark Travers, a PhD in neuroscience. He said, Gratitude stimulates the release of dopamine, known as the feel good neurotransmitter. This dopamine release enhances feelings of joy. and contentment, and encourages repeated expressions of gratitude, creating a positive feedback loop where the more gratitude we express, the more our brain seeks out situations and behaviors that elicit these rewarding feelings.

When you express gratitude, you seem to live a happier, more engaged life. This certainly seemed true in this interview I recently saw. These two actors, Timothee Chalamet and Hugh Grant, were interviewed by the same journalist at the same time. During the interview, Timothee Chalamet looking happy and young.

and engaged in life, leaned over, writing in a gratitude journal. In the midst of the interview, the interviewer turned to Hugh Grant and said, Do you have a gratitude journal? Hugh Grant replied like this, Don’t be absurd. I have a list of things that I hate. Explaining perhaps why he looks miserable and well, just to say it, a little British, if we’re honest, just a little grumpy And sad with the way his life is turning.

Psalm 100. on the surface. It is a beautiful invitation to practice thanksgiving and gratitude. At the top, before the verses begin, there’s a little header that gives some directions for when the psalm was to be sung. It says, a psalm for giving grateful praise. Some historians think that it was used during what’s called the thanks offering, a very specific offering listed in Leviticus 7, which wasn’t.

Something you had to do, it’s something you could choose to do at moments when life was at its best. Perhaps you’d been rescued from something, perhaps you’d been healed from something, but in specific moments where you were especially thankful. And when you read it at first glance, It feels breezy, feels light.

Shout for joy to the Lord all the earth. It’s like these loud kind of emotions tapped into it. Worship the Lord with gladness. Come before him with joyful songs. Know that the Lord is God, it is he who made us, we are his. We are his people, the sheep of his pasture. It’s the song of a person who is feeling deeply cared for, deeply loved in this particular moment.

Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and he’s courts with praise. Give thanks to him and praise his name. It’s a song I remember singing in Sunday school. Just this sense of just the beauty of life just emerges from it. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever. His faithfulness continues through all generations.

Read like that, the psalm reminds me just a little bit of this poem by Robert Browning. The years at the spring, the days at the morn, mornings at seven, the hillsides dew pearled, the larks on the wing, the snails on the thorn, God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world. It’s a psalm on the surface of simplicity and gratitude.

In a season of simplicity. particularly easy. Perhaps you’ve had those moments. It’s the moment that I experienced when somebody gifted my first car to me. This is a long time ago so this is what this car looked like and believe it or not I was delighted by what I’d received. Less happy six months later when it broke down and it couldn’t be repaired.

Just could for a lot of money. I think somewhere there’s an equation, right? You figure out how much you paid for the car, and then you never pay more on repairs than you paid for the car. I don’t know what that means, if you paid zero for the car, someone just gave it you. But certainly, this one can be repaired.

But the joy of two people that would choose to gift me something like that the joy of independence, the joy of growing up. In actual fact, in those moments, and here we’re talking about the feeling of gratitude, one of the heartaches is actually having nobody It is a terrible thing, Philip Yancey says, to feel gratitude and to have no one to thank, to feel awe and to have no one to worship.

Just to believe that somehow the universe, that doesn’t seem to care particularly whether you live or die, perhaps gave you Somewhere, those feelings of gratitude actually dissipate pretty quickly. I remember the first time I jumped on a plane to come see the time my girlfriend here in America crammed myself into one of those coach seats with no leg room and sat there for eight hours with no screen able to watch and I made it over here, but I was delighted.

Some months later a friend who worked for Delta gifted me a first class seat and I got to experience transatlantic travel lying down flat with beef tenderloin and wine lists and all of these different things. And I knew I’d never appreciate coach travel again. A couple of years later my wife went to work for a billionaire, and they took us off on their private jet, and suddenly first class wasn’t enough.

I now needed to fly private, and yet I still drag my family every year. Across the Atlantic in these packed coach seats with a child in my arms, a child under my feet, and a child on my lap. We’ve come very used to row 37, but never grateful for it. Scientists, neurologists would tell us this, bad experiences are like Velcro.

They stick instantly to our soul. On some kind of historical level, for people who grew up in caves, for people who grew up in danger, they reminded people to avoid those bad situations. While the good experiences are actually more like the Teflon pan, you may still have stuck somewhere in the back of your cupboards.

Or should have put in the back of your cupboards. There’s no way of them sticking without a practice of gratitude. And that’s what I’d suggest. Psalm 100 actually invites us into, to practice gratitude. And practice is what you have to do when you’re no longer in the season of simplicity, but in a season of perplexity.

When life isn’t what you expected it to be. When there’s so much surrounding that you would say, I wouldn’t choose this way if I could. Read Psalm 100 again with me and see some of the ways that the language is more nuanced than we thought at first. There’s ways that as you start to read it, you start to ask different questions about what this might be inviting you into.

Shout for joy to the Lord or the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness. Come before him with joyful songs. Know. Experience the perhaps, against all other circumstances, perhaps what you might imagine at times, your deepest fears, know that the Lord is God, despite perhaps the circumstances. It is he who made us, and we are his people.

We are the sheep of his pasture. Last year my wife and I were at one of those zoos that you drive around. And there was this sheep pen full of these different kind of animals, kind of pastoral animals. And one of them was on the outside, desperately trying to get back in. It was circling the fences, trying to find a space where it could squeeze through.

It was the longing of an animal to be where it belonged. And I would suggest there’s times in life of perplexity where we feel like that, where we read a passage like this and say, Am I? The sheep of his pasture. Does he really care for me? In these moments where I feel outside of his circle of care, does he notice?

Where am I? Do I belong here? As we continue, we see the language is more complex in the last two verses. Enter his capes with thanksgiving, his courts with praise. Give him thanks to him and praise his name. These are commands. And this last verse, for the Lord is good and his love endures forever. His faithfulness continues through all generations.

He’s awfully similar to the verses in Lamentations, where the lowest point of Israel produced songs just like this. Somewhere this language is actually far more complex than the breezy Robert Browning poem we read earlier. Some of the language has particular nuances. It tells us it’s a song of gratitude, and yet the Hebrew word for grateful is the same as the Hebrew word for confession.

Somewhere, there’s a statement being made in these songs. There’s a statement that God is good, and is a shepherd, and does care, despite Perhaps the evidence at times. This is Lamentations, the middle of the poem. Because of the Lord’s great love, we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning, great is your faithfulness.

I say to myself, the Lord is my portion, therefore I will wait for him. A song written in the midst of a ruined city, of hopes dashed, and of a future uncertain. These songs of gratitude are not songs when you simply feel good, when you feel grateful, but songs when you choose to be grateful, too. A question we might ask about gratitude in general is this.

How do you practice gratitude in the storms of life? If simplicity is sitting on a catamaran. Somewhere, perhaps, maybe, in the Caribbean, beautiful sunshine, everybody you love is present with you, blue skies seem to stretch out forever, the waves do that kind of cute little bobby type thing. Perplexity is a season where the storm clouds roll in, where the sea starts to get a little funkier, and you’re going to need all of your attention and skill to keep this ship moving.

That’s what That season. That’s perplexity. There, gratitude gets a little more complex because you can’t feel it by nature. In actual fact, in simplicity, your heart may forget gratitude at times. You may be so happy you forget to thank anybody but in perplexity, it may seem to forbid gratitude. Can I ever really feel grateful for what life looks like right now?

But I would suggest that isn’t the way that it has to be. In simplicity, your heart may feel gratitude. In perplexity, it gets to choose gratitude. This doesn’t mean that you’re not angry. In actual fact, beautifully, the Psalms are gifted with language for anger in the midst of a situation. Perhaps anger directed at times towards God himself.

This is Psalm 74, one of my favorites. Why do you hold back your hand, your right hand? Take it from the folds of your garment. In this situation, we see the Psalmist’s angst towards what he sees as his problem. That God, who can fix everything in a moment, has simply taken his hand and put it in his pocket.

Refuses to help. That language is all over the Psalms. It’s called imprecatory Psalms. It’s this beautiful gift in moments of perplexity, in moments of angst. So we’re invited to that, but somewhere, I would suggest, somewhere, gratitude still comes into the equation. In the Christian tradition, and I would say actually the Judeo Christian tradition across the whole of the scriptures, practicing, notice the word practicing, not feeling gratitude, but practicing gratitude, is not finding good in each situation, but finding God in each situation.

Finding him still with you in those most broken of moments. This at least are the words of the New Testament writers. This is Paul writing this during an actually fairly high point in his life. First Thessalonians 5 16 he says, Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, all. For this is God’s will for you who are in Christ Jesus.

During this time he’s on his second missionary journey. He’s traveling around the Mediterranean, he’s planting churches, everything for the most part other than the occasional beating from a town that didn’t appreciate his message is actually fairly positive. But he still writes this way ten years later where he’s languishing in a Roman prison where his churches are starting to turn against him.

Whereas life has a definite end point upon it. Constantly, this seems to be his refrain. A thankful heart is a grateful heart. Give thanks in every situation. In Philippians 4, written in jail, he writes it like this. Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again. Rejoice. But Paul isn’t actually even our best example.

These are the words of Jesus right before the first iteration of this table. Jesus gives thanks multiple times within Scripture, sometimes for the most innocuous things. Thanks for a moment of revelation in his disciples, thanks for the goodness of the day, for food, all of those different things. But read this in the moment of creating the table before us.

While they were eating, Jesus took bread. And when he had given thanks, he broke it. Thanks for what? Thanks for the body soon to be broken? Thanks for the blood still to be bled? Thanks for the hours of torture still to come? Thanks for the cost of his life still to be given? What is he giving thanks for?

He’s been giving thanks. for being able to give his life for people just like you and I. These are the examples of the New Testament writers in their lowest moments giving thanks and these are the examples of Jesus too. To give thanks when life is hard. When we don’t feel perhaps grateful at all. If you’d like a tool to practice gratitude, I’d love to offer you this.

It’s called the examine. It’s a Jesuit tool. The examine, I would say, offers us a way to practice gratitude regularly when we don’t feel it. It’s five things that you get to do just briefly, perhaps at the end of the day, perhaps in the morning, but it makes your gratitude regular and practiced, not just felt when it’s easy to feel it.

Step one, you just simply notice. Choose to become aware that God is present with you. That you are the sheep of his pasture, whether you feel like it in this moment or not. And step two, you simply get to be grateful. To bring to mind things to be thankful for. To remind yourself that you have experienced the life that God gives.

The opportunity to live in this world. You’ve had people around you that care for you deeply. Even though sometimes they aren’t capable of showing it. To be grateful for something as simple as this breath, this meal, this glass of wine with friends, the lighting of a candle, the most simple things and perhaps the most profound things too, for the love of a person who you have loved and has chosen to love you.

And then you review, simply think back through your day thinking about things that you wish perhaps that you could have changed. In step four you repent, you turn from perhaps the sinful moments of the day, the broken moments of your day, the things you would like to do different. And in step five with God’s help you resolve to live after him and his heart the next day afresh.

It’s a simple invitation of prayer, and that’s all it is, simply prayer that enables you to focus at different points upon gratitude. And as you practice that, my hope is this, that you start to see something happen. You start to see that gratitude not only makes you a happier person, that gratitude not only turns you from the competition that this world seems to invite, but gratitude

Attunement is this beautiful gift between God and yourself. It’s the hope that I have for each of you and for myself as well. Four or five times a day, you might feel that sense somewhere down there in your chest. That you are loved by God, cared for deeply by Him. That kind of experience regularly is life changing to how you live life amongst those around you.

And it begins to turn our hearts towards a neighbor. Having experienced God’s mercy, having experienced God’s goodness, it’s so much harder to not want the same for everybody that you come across. These are the words of William Shakespeare in Measure to Measure. Alas, why all the souls that were forfeit once, and he that might the vantage best have took found out the remedy.

He that could have taken advantage of that created this moment of communion or even better of Eucharist, of gratitude, of thanksgiving. How would you be if he, which is the top of judgment, should but judge you as you are? Oh, think on that. A mercy will breathe within your lips like man knew mad. As soon as we catch hold of the mercy, the goodness, the grace that has been given to us just in living this life, the gratitude for the God that would create a table like this, that is called simply gratitude, it turns our hearts towards every single person we might encounter.

As we come to this table and remember the Jesus that created it. My invite is this. Let us come to the table called gratitude with a heart of thanksgiving and confession. Maybe as you come here, you have something to say to God. Maybe some of it is simply, this is who I am. This is the brokenness I bring, the anger that I bring, the disappointment in what this world has become for me or someone I love.

Perhaps there’s frustration to bring, perhaps there’s sin to bring. All sorts of things that our own human experience. Perhaps there’s unbelief to bring. You get to bring all of you here in confession, which is not simply saying sorry, but it’s saying the same as. It’s coming into agreement with. God, this is who I am.

And you would be right to say that I am broken, right to say that I am not enough. But this is who you are too. You are the God that God is. gave thanks over a table that symbolized his own brokenness. In the midst of a moment where you would give your life, you took bread symbolizing your broken body, and you gave thanks?

In the midst of offering a cup that symbolized your blood drained from your body you gave thanks? We get to come to this table called gratitude. As we are, no strings attached. Grateful for the God that created it.

And the night that he was betrayed, Jesus gathered with his followers. And taking the bread, he gave thanks. And he broke it. And he handed it to each of them and said, This is my body, broken for you. And the same way he took the cup, he handed it to each of them. Said, This is my blood, shed for the sins. At this table we believe is his real presence.

It’s a special moment. The bread doesn’t change, the wine doesn’t change. They do mean something. Come with your need, perhaps, for healing. Come with your need, perhaps, for new faith. Come, perhaps, with whatever you want to bring. Come grateful for the God who made it. Will you stand with me?