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Gratitude: The Blessing of Gratitude, Learn the Importance Starting Each Day with Grateful Heart
Greg, Pat and John take us back to how the Israelites encountered God when they were in the desert. God established the tabernacle, and it was a grateful heart that was needed to enter His gates. That tabernacle still exists. For those who have said yes to Jesus Christ, that tabernacle is in you. The protocol of a grateful heart in order to tabernacle with God hasn’t changed. The enemy would want you to focus on the fires at your feet and not the blessings within your hands. There is a weird paradigm in America that there can be those who spend their whole lives being ungrateful, nitpicking, and they can still eat and have shelter. Being grateful for what God provides for us causes us to not only be grateful but to also acknowledge God. How we respond to what God has given us is important. Allow these truths to change your perspective of how God has provided for you and so much more. Also shared in this segment: Moses, sacrifices, Jesus Christ, our hearts, depression, abiding, and America.
Living a Surrendered Life
John and Pat discuss the importance of living a surrendered life. They continue to discuss how many people today are focusing much of their attention on what others say about the Bible instead of reading the Bible. They further discuss how there has never been a time like we are living in now where there has been more Christian literature in the forms of books, media, internet, audio and video and yet they are not many signs in which we can see how this has deepened the walk of most believers and to spur them on to live more surrendered lives to Jesus. They encourage us to take time to read the letters in red in our Bible, the words of Jesus. They further discuss how as they look at the landscape of our culture and the church they notice how the world has infiltrated the church rather than the church infiltrating the culture. They discuss how the more they read the words of Jesus and compare His words to what we see in the church at large they see much contrast. Jesus didn’t come to earth to give us a “cute” religion or a way of life but instead to give us true life since we are walking dead men and women who were walking in our sins. They continue to discuss how Jesus was extremely popular and large crowds came to see him and be ministered to. They enjoyed the miracles, acts of power, seeing the demon possessed delivered and in their right mind but when it came to those who would go deeper, those who would become a follower and disciple of Jesus HE gave them very important instructions.
Matthew 16: 24-26
24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. 26 What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul.”
God has called us to live a surrendered life. We are not able to follow Jesus if we have not laid down our lives before the Lord. Giving our lives to Jesus is not about saying a nice prayer but giving him our entire life, following Him, and loving Him with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. The truth is that we are doing people an injustice when we are not sharing with them the truth regarding Jesus’ expectation. This is why we have so much of what some are calling the gospel when in reality they have watered the gospel down and diluted that it is no gospel at all. They continue to discuss the sold out commitments of many of our Chinese Christian brothers and sisters that live their life only to honor God and at a personal cost to themselves. To this we were called to forever be grateful and totally aware and appreciative of the saving grace that has been given to us by Jesus when he died on the cross for our sins. May we live our lives in such a way before the Lord that it shows our great gratitude and love for all that He has done for us.