Raybuck, Roger: A Perspective On Thanksgiving-Eph 5 ~ Fairhaven Bible Chpl Ministry

Let's just, uh, take a few moments to pray one more time. Let's look to the Lord. We thank you, Lord, for this time that we can be together this morning, that we can look to you, we can sing praises to your name, and we want to especially thank you, God, for, uh, those among us who, um, have been absent for a time. We think of John being here, Lord, and we've mentioned how grateful we are that he is, uh, able to be with us this morning. We're thankful, God, for the testimony that Alexandra has given of her faith in you, and the testimony of, uh, another generation of believers coming to Christ and being brought into fellowship. Lord, it does our hearts good to see what you are doing in the lives of people here and in many other places as well. We're d- we're thankful, God, for all of the things that you're doing, and we want to give you honor and praise this morning for all you're doing in our lives, for what you're doing in this church, for what you're doing in our community, and we want to say, God, that we want to be the thankful people that you want us to be. And to that end, Lord, we want to commit this time, the remaining time of this service to you, and thank you for it in Jesus' name. Amen. In sixteen twenty three, Governor William Bradford made the following proclamation. To all you pil- pilgrims, inasmuch as the great Father has given us this year an abundant harvest of Indian corn, wheat, peas, squashes, and garden vegetables, and has made the forest to abound with game and the sea with fish and clams, and inasmuch as he has protected us from the raids of the savages and has spared us from pestilence and disease, has granted us freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience. Now I, your magistrate, do proclaim that all ye pilgrims, with your wives and ye little ones, do gather at ye meeting house on ye hill between the hours of nine and twelve in the daytime on Thursday, November ye twenty ninth of the year of our Lord, one thousand six hundred and twenty three, and the third year since ye pilgrims landed on the Plymouth Rock, there to listen to you pastor and render thanksgiving to Almighty God for all his blessings. This Thursday, of course, is Thanksgiving Day. It's a day in which we, like those early pilgrims, set aside time in our busy schedules, and I admit that our schedules are busy. We give time, we set aside time to give thanks to God. Now, there's nothing wrong with that. I am satisfied with this holiday. It's a, it's a very nice thing that we are doing. It's very noble. One of my children said the other day they, they felt that Thanksgiving was their favorite holiday of the year. But the Word of God tells us this should be a continual daily attitude in the life of every believer. It's not just that we take one day out to be thankful, but that, in a sense, we ought to have every day as Thanksgiving Day. I'm sure you've heard that before, but it's true, the scriptures tells us that, doesn't it? Ephesians five says, speak to one another and with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. And then in First Thessalonians, be joyful always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God concerning you in Christ Jesus. This is God's will. Paul's main subject here is praise, thanksgiving, glory, honor. He's raising up the name of God. He says always, continually, in all circumstances. Now, it sounds as if Paul is talking about a church service, doesn't it? It sounds like he's saying, sing and make, as he says, sing and make, uh, have spiritual songs, speak to one another in spiritual songs and praise, make music in your heart. But he's not talking about a church service. He's talking about a continual attitude that we should have towards one another as Christians, as believers in the Lord Jesus. It's an attitude of the heart that we ought to display every day. But how can we have that attitude continually? It's a tough thing to do, isn't it, to be thankful all the time? I think the answer lies in our perspective of Thanksgiving, and that's why I've, as I've given you the outline this morning to follow along, a perspective on Thanksgiving. I'd like to share with you a perspective on Thanksgiving, not just Thanksgiving as a holiday, but Thanksgiving as an idea and as a concept, because I think we need the proper perspective about God and about our circumstances. I'd like to read to you an excerpt from a, a note that one young woman wrote home to her mother from college. She said this, Dear mom, sorry I haven't written sooner. I found out that my arm really has been broken. I broke it and my left leg when I jumped from the second floor of the dormitory when we had the fire. We were lucky. A young service station attendant saw the blaze and called in the fire department. They were there in minutes. I was in the hospital for a few days. Paul, the service station attendant, came by to see me every day, and because it was taking so long to make our dormitory livable again, I moved in with him. He's been so nice. I must admit that I am now pregnant. Paul and I plan to get married as soon as he can get a divorce. I fo- I hope things are fine at home. I'm doing fine, and I'll write more when I get the chance. Love, your daughter, Kathy. P.S. None of the above is true, but I did get a C in sociology, and I flunked chemistry. I just wanted you to receive the news in its proper perspective. You see, to be thankful, to be truly thankful, we have to see things in their proper perspective, don't we? Because I think it's when we see things in their perspective, then we can sincerely and honestly give thanks to others and to God for what God has done in our lives and for what he's doing for us every day. Now, what keeps us from being thankful? Let me just quickly share with you. I think there's some attitudes that, that, that I display in my own life, and I've seen in others, and as I speak to people day by day, I see these attitudes displayed in others, and I- I'd like to just share with you, if you're not feeling thankful this Thanksgiving, check your heart right now for these attitudes. The number one thing that keeps us from being thankful is pride. That's the attitude that says, nobody gave me anything. I worked hard for what I have, and I deserve what I have here. I deserve what I've got, and since when do I have to tell anybody thanks for that? With that kind of attitude, we feel like we have no one to thank but ourselves. Another attitude that keeps us from being thankful is a critical spirit or constantly complaining about everything. Instead of being grateful, you're always looking for something to complain about. No matter what happens, no matter how good it is, no matter what God brings in your life, there's always something wrong. Another attitude that I see displayed a lot, and that keeps us from being care- grateful, is carelessness. Just not being careful. As someone once said that if the stars came out, if the stars came out only once a year, we would stay up all night to watch them. Isn't that true? But they're there every night, and we've grown accustomed to them. The Israelites made that mistake, didn't they? They grumbled about the manna. God had done a marvelous work in their lives and did in, uh, bringing them out of captivity, and he gave them their food every day, everything they needed, but they got tired of it. They got careless about it, and they forgot about what God had done, and they began to grumble, and they were ungrateful. Here's the idea I'd like you to keep with you this morning. Christians are called to a lifestyle of thanksgiving, not just to a holiday, but to a lifestyle of thanksgiving. And it's not only that, it's God's will. This is what God wants us to do and to be. It is God's will that we be a thankful people. Some of you may have heard of the writer Rudyard Kipling. If you've never heard of Rudyard Kipling, certainly you've heard of The Jungle Book. You may have heard of the long poem that he wrote called Kim. There's a, he was a very prolific writer. Now, Rudyard Kipling had the luxury and the benefit of not only being a well-known famous writer, but he was also able to enjoy the fruits of his writings during his life. Many writers wrote lovely stories, wonderful books, wonderful poetry, and yet they weren't appreciated till after they died. Well, Rudyard Kipling was not like that. He was a very wealthy man, and he made a lot of money from his writings, his his novels, his short stories, and his poetry. Now, one time a writer, a newspaper woman, came to him and said, Mr. Kipling, I've heard that people have calculated the amount of money that you've earned from your writings so far in life, and that your writing, your words are worth at least a hundred dollars a word. Kipling said, I wasn't aware of that. So the newspaper reporter pulled out a one hundred dollar bill. She held it out and she said, Mr. Kipling, can you give me one of those hundred dollar words? Kipling thought for a moment. He reached out and he took the hundred dollar bill, he folded it, and he put it into his pocket, and he said, thanks. You know what? He's right. He's right. Thanks is a hundred dollar word. It's a million dollar word, isn't it? It's a word that's too seldom heard, rarely spoken, and often forgotten, and we forget about giving thanks. And if any nation, if any people should be thankful to God, it should be us. We should be thankful. I'd like this morning to share a couple of thoughts with you from these, these verses about Thanksgiving, and I hope that you can carry these with you through the remainder of this week. First, our thanksgiving should be expressed. One of the choruses that we sing often, and we sang portions of it this morning, we sing portions of it at our evening meeting often, is from Psalm one hundred. It says, enter his gates with thanksgiving your heart, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. It is good to give thanks to God, and we ought to express our thanksgiving to others. We ought to say thank you to other people on a regular basis. Now, in the daily rush of things, and I, I admit this is true of my life, we, we tend to focus on problems. I think men more so than women. I don't want to sound sexist, but I think men more so than women tend to focus on problems. We're problem solvers. We've, we've, we've dropped the whole hunting thing, and so we're, we're focused on the problems. Solve the problems. Steve's saying, no, wait, no, we're still hunting and fishing. I'll tell you what, if I had to hunt for, for my food, I would be in big trouble. Problems, we focus on problems, and the thing is, is that when I do that, I tend to be critical. I tend to be critical of others because they're not solving the problems in the right way or the way in which I think they should be solved. They're not solving them fast enough. They're so- not solving them in the fashion that I would want to see them solved. So I tend to be critical, and I don't, I don't, uh, encourage people enough. But sincere gratitude that we express to one another day by day is one of the healthiest things that we can do. Sociologists and psychologists and others who study this at length say that it's one of the, the, the, the strongest human emotions that we can express to one another is gratitude, thanksgiving. It's important for us. And if you have a thankful heart, it's going to endear you to other people, because thanksgiving is not only good for the giver, but it's good for the receiver. But it's not always easy, is it, to be grateful? I think it's something we have to cultivate. It's something that we have to think about. We have to make a conscious choice to be thankful, to look for ways in which to do it. How can you start doing that? Let me give you a couple of practical things you can do. I'd like to challenge you this morning to begin to keep a gratitude journal. A gratitude journal. When someone has, when you think of some way in which to give thanks to someone else, write it down. Write it down, and make a point of using the telephone or emails or the regular mail to send a note of thanksgiving to someone else, to tell them thank you. Don't pass up those opportunities to say thank you to someone else when your own conscious or by the spirit of God, you are led to think that you should give thanks to someone else. Do it! It's the right thing to do. Don't focus on what you don't have, focus on what you do have. Let others know that you are grateful for what God has given you and for what God has done in your life. Make it a practice of doing that. Be a thankful person and let others know that you're thankful. But we also should express our thanks to God. Now, Luke seventeen, we read about ten men that were healed. The Lord healed ten men of leprosy. Now they all went off, they were joyous. Jesus said, go show yourself to the priest. And then one of them remembered and came back to Jesus and said, thank you. Thank you, Lord, for healing me. Jesus, of course, asked that question, where's, where's the other nine? Where's the other ones? There's only one came back. But he said to this man, he said, rise up, your faith has made you well. Do you ever wonder why Jesus said that? He was already healed. He was already healed of leprosy, and yet Jesus said, rise up, your faith has made you well. So I think Jesus was talking about more than just the physical healing. It was more than just the removal of that disease from his body. It was a mental, it was an emotional, and a spiritual healing that was brought about by the fact that this man came back and said, thank you. Thank you, Lord. God appreciates our thanksgiving. It lifts him up, it glorifies him, it raises his name high. It endears us to him, it draws us closer, closer. And as we read other places in the New Testament about thanksgiving, we see that the lack of thanksgiving, if we do not give thanks to God, it causes us to draw, to drift further and further away from him. Romans chapter one says, for although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Now, this seems to imply, at least, that people that are ungrateful and do not express thanks to God will drift further and further away from him. Now, I don't know about you, but I don't want that to be true of my life. I want to be able to say thank you to God when those, when I know it's necessary, when I know it's the right thing to do, and I want to draw closer to him. Now, before I move away from this, I'd like to give you a few ideas about how you can express your thankfulness to God. How can you do that today and every day? You can say thank you to God when you spend time with him, not just one hour a week. I'm grateful that you're here this morning, but if this is the only time you spend with God or with God's people, I feel sorry for you. Spend some time with God this week and tell him that you love him. You say thank you to God when you forgive others. You say thank you to God when you serve in his church, when you use the gifts that God has given you to serve him and serve others. You say thank you to God when you share his plan of salvation with someone else. You say thank you to God when you reach out to someone who's hurting. When you give God the best of your life, you say thank you to him. You say thank you when you are willing to praise him enthusiastically from your heart. And we can do that. We can do that today. We can do that every day. But our thanksgiving should only not, not only be expressed, but it should be expansive. Our thanksgiving should be expansive. Now, what do you mean? What do you mean by expansive? Expansive has several meanings, but... let me say that... what I mean here by our Thanksgiving being expansive is that it's kind of like after you have a very nice dinner and you're in a very good mood. Children, you know when your parents are in an expansive mood. You can sense that they are ready to say yes to the questions that you want yes answers to, right? That's what I mean. An expansive mood. You see, our Thanksgiving should put us in a sense, it should be put us in a mood to say, I want to give God thanks for everything, and as we give thanks, it leads us to more Thanksgiving. You see, you're sitting there after the nice meal, you've had a wonderful day, you're restful, and the children come and say, Dad, can I go to my friend's house tonight? I'd like to go and visit him tonight. And you're sitting there, and everything's great with the world, and what you're going to say? You're usually going to say, oh sure, that's great, honey, go ahead and do that, you know? And our Thanksgiving should be a lot like that, that as we give thanks to God, it, it leads us into greater and greater Thanksgiving. We should be thankful for the blessings that we enjoy. As our Thanksgiving expands and becomes more expansive, we look around us and we see the blessings that we enjoy every day. You know, I, I really, I really love my wife. She's a very, very special lady. She truly is a blessing to my life. She's the greatest thing that happened to me, aside from my conversion to faith in the Lord Jesus. She really is the greatest thing that's ever happened to me. And one thing that's really special about her is that every night she can stand in the kitchen, and she faces that sink full of dirty dishes, and she says, thank you, Lord, for those dirty dishes. No, no, she doesn't say that. No, she doesn't say that. She doesn't do that. Neither do I. Who does that? A few people might. But you know what? We should, shouldn't we? We should. Maybe some of you do. God bless you. God bless you if you do. I find it difficult to do that. But what does a sink full of dirty dishes signifies? It m- should make us say, thank you, God, we had food to eat tonight. Amen? Thank you, God, that we had, we can have this sink, that we can have these dishes. There's hot water coming out of the tap tonight that I can wash with, right? Thank you, God, for these things. It should have that effect, although it doesn't, does it? But have we forgotten to thank God for these blessings that we have every day? Our prayers often are very general. Now you think about that hymn, count the blessings, name them one by one, count your many blessings and see what God has done, right? Do you have that little thing there on that, on the slide, Ron? So the ch- child said this, so I tried to count all my blessings, but when I got to you, my calculator melted. Isn't that neat? That's great. That's the way it should be. Thankful for our blessings, but we ought to also be thankful for the burdens we sometimes have to carry. That's a tough one. First Thess five says, give thanks in all circumstances. Now, you might think that Paul's made a mistake or that this was easy for him to say, but it wasn't easy for Paul to say, was it? Paul had a situation, some kind of a physical ailment or perhaps a relationship. We don't know what it was exactly, but there was something going on in Paul's life. He said it, he called it a thorn in the flesh. It was something that bothered him all the time, something that was always there in his life. Paul was shipwrecked, he was stoned, he was deserted by his friends, he was left for dead, and yet Paul could say, in everything give thanks. How do we do that? How, how, how can you possibly do that? Well, I think we have to have the proper perspective on the burdens of life. You have to see that the glory that we will receive, the glory that we will see when we go to meet him, is so far greater than any burden that we will ever carry in this life. The scripture says this, I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed in us. The burdens of life cannot be compared to the glory that we will receive, that we will know, that we will experience when we meet the Lord Jesus face to face. We look forward to the time when we'll see and fully understand God's glory, and it helps us to put those burdens in perspective, doesn't it? Momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, Paul said to the Corinthian believers. We have to understand that our personal struggles with life circumstances allow God to perfect us. God's working in our lives, and every time we have a burden or a trial or some kind of difficult circumstance that we carry with us, God is saying, I am perfecting in you the life of Christ. That is why, for Christ's sake, Paul says to the Corinthian believers, I delight, wow, I delight in weakness, in insults, in hardships, in persecution, difficulties, for when I am weak, and this is his reason, for when I am weak, then I am strong. Wow. Wow. In our weakness, God can make us strong. He helps us through the times that we could have never, never faced on our own. And he does that because he says, here's a burden, and be thankful for that burden, because I'm working in your life. Now, I have learned to be thankful for the difficult circumstances my family has faced. I didn't say I was thankful for them, but I've been able to be sa- di- I think I can say today that I've been thankful in them. They're not always easy to bear up under, but God is doing a work. We have to recognize that God can use the difficult circumstances of life for the greater good. That puts those burdens in perspective, doesn't it? Paul said, I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me, and what had happened to him, by the way, when he's talking to the Philippians, he was thrown in jail unjustly. He was put into jail, and he was in stocks. He was singing praises, and he says to the Philippians, I want you to know that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel. You know, I was, it's as if you can say, I was sent to San Quentin unjustly, and I'm up in the Max B section, but I want you to know that this has been better for me here for the cause of the gospel. Iran saying, yeah, that's good. Iran wants everybody in jail. You see, the Philippian jailer was ready to take his life. He was concerned about his prisoners, and Paul and his companions were able to share the gospel with him and help him to understand that he didn't need to do that, that Christ could set him free. So therefore, Paul could say, my situation has turned out for the greater good of the gospel. You know what? Others can come to Christ, can come to faith in Christ when they see how you live your life despite those burdens that you carry. We should be thankful for those things, and we should be thankful for the benefits of just living. Be thankful for the benefits of living. When the Israelites focused on what they didn't have, they failed to see all that they did have, right? They, they focused on what they could not get, and they forgot all about what God had already given them. We are constantly adding to our prayer lists, but our praise lists grow shorter and short. Now, we ought to be increasing that praise list all the time. We ought to have many, many things to praise and give thanks to God for. Jeff Moore says this in a song. This is a, a contemporary Christian songwriter. He says this, Will I wonder what today will see? Will I find my dreams or stare in the face of tragedy? Whatever may come, whatever may be, of this I am sure I'm forgiven and free, and I will live like I believe it's good to be alive. It's good to be alive, to feel the wind in my face and see the blue in the sky. It's days like this I realize what a gift it is. It is good to be alive. And we've all had difficult times. We've all had struggles. You may be going through difficult times right now in your life. You may be struggling with different things. But if we look at the benefits of life, I think we find out that it's good to be alive. As this songwriter said, it's, it's good to be here. It's good to be with God's people. It's good to be able to know and experience the love of God every day walking on this earth, isn't it? And New York University did an experiment a couple of years ago in Times Square. They took a student, and they dressed him up as a homeless person. They put a sign around his neck that said, I'm blind, and they put a cup box out in front of him. This student s- uh, sat and stood at Times Square, the center of Times Square, for twelve hours. At the end of the day, he had three dollars and eighty six cents in the box. The following day, they put the same student back there, the same outfit, but they changed the words on the sign. Instead of saying, I'm blind, the sign read, it's spring and I'm blind. At the end of the day, he had over fifty dollars in the box. Now, what that told the researchers is that there's something in the minds and in the hearts of people that are moved by the fact that I can see something that God has done, and I can experience that, I can know that and understand it. There's a blessing ex- that we experience by just being alive, by just being, being able to be there. Now, that's not to say that it's not a blessing to be with the Lord. But there is a blessing and benefits to being here and walking this earth. Not only should our thanksgiving be expressed and expanded, but it should be expected. Our thanksgiving is expected. It's what we ought to do. It is what we ought to be. The scripture says, give thanks in all circumstances because, because this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. What should we do as believers? We ought to be thankful. That is God's will for your life. You should be a thankful person, a thankful man, a thankful woman, a thankful child. That's his will. And God knows, I know this to be true because I know when I have lived in the light of this, how my life changes and how much happier I am, and when I do not live in the light of this, how miserable I feel. God knows that when we are thankful people, that our lives are changed, and that's why it's God's will for us, because he wants change for the good. A thankful spirit is the mark of a growing Christian, someone who is growing in their faith, growing in their maturity before God. Those of you who are parents, you know that a baby, an infant, is one of the most grateful creatures on the face of, ungrateful creatures on the, on the face of the earth. I hear that. The answer is yes. Yes, they are. You can stay up all night with an infant, you can walk the floor with him or her, you can comfort them in their tears and in their misery, and you can put them down, and they will scream all the louder. They're ungrateful. They will express no gratefulness to you whatsoever until perhaps they are many, many years older. A child has to be taught to be thankful. You've done that with children. What do you say? He gave you a cookie. What do you say? You have to coax it out of them. Thank you. That's good. That's good. You have to coax it out of them. And sometimes as adults, I feel as if God is standing there in his heaven and saying, what do you say? What do you say? Right? But a thankful heart, a thankful spirit is the mark of someone who is mature. When we are ungrateful people, when we remain ungrateful with an ungrateful spirit, a thankless spirit, God is, it's as if God is saying, are you still such children that you cannot thank me or thank those around you? You know? When we realize how blessed we are by others and by God, and we express that, then it shows that we're growing. It shows that we're growing up, we're becoming mature believers. A thankful spirit is also the mark of a giving Christian. We realize how much God has done for us and how much he continues to do. We should be happy to give something back. We should be happy to say, God, you have given me so much. I want to give something back to you. Someone has said that for Thanksgiving to be real Thanksgiving, there must be thanks and there must be giving, right? Thanksgiving. Now, in this past year, we have seen this particular church, this local group of believers, this fellowship. We have been truly blessed by God. We've seen people profess faith in Christ. We've seen them baptized and brought into fellowship. I can look out, even though you're a little fuzzy with these glasses on, and I can see faces in this audience that was, that were not here last Thanksgiving. And I know that you were brought to faith in Christ, you were baptized here, and you are now in fellowship, and you are walking with God today, and that is something to be thankful for. That is a tremendous blessing from God. We've seen God answer prayers in marvelous ways. We've had great times of fellowship. We've had wonderful times of worship before the Lord. Just as our congregation has grown numerically, it's grown in maturity, but our needs have grown as well. And I say to you this morning, those of you who are here, who are not exercising your gifts, God has given you a gift. If you're in fellowship here and you are not exercising your gift, if you are not giving back to God in that way, I'd like to say this morning, come and see me, because I want to see you exercising your gift amongst the believers so that you can see the blessing of what God can do in your life and in the lives of others. Give back to God. Be committed to do so. A thankful spirit is not only the mark of a growing and a giving Christian, but it's the mark of a glowing Christian as well. If you're thankful to God, then you will glow with the love of God. Others will see it. They will recognize it in your life. You won't be constantly critical and pessimistic, but you'll be sincerely thankful. Though the difficult times are just that, and there is nothing that can diminish the times of difficulty and the difficult circumstances that we face in our life. Nothing's going to take that away. Those are going to be there. They're given. But despite that, we can glow with the love of God if we are thankful people. Paul says to the Corinthian believers, we are hard pressed on every side, but we are not crushed. We're perplexed, but we are not in despair. We're pu- persecuted, but not abandoned. Struck down, but not destroyed, for our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal weight that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes, and this is a secret, we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen. Having the faith to believe God in our lives every day, to make us thankful people. The psalmist was right. He was right when he said, it is good to give thanks to the Lord. It is good. It's a good thing. Maybe you've been going through some difficult times. Maybe you've prayed about those things, and they're still there. Maybe you've asked God to remove that thorn in the flesh that you have, that difficult circumstance, and God has said, that's going to stay there. I'm going to leave that there because that's going to cause you to rely on me, and when you are weak, then I become strong in your life. Maybe you've told yourself that you just keep on going and you ignore the problems of your life, you ignore those bad circumstances, and maybe they're just going to disappear like a parking ticket that you never pay, but they come back and haunt you, don't they? Well, I'd like to suggest this morning, why don't you try Thanksgiving? And I don't mean next Thursday. I mean try Thanksgiving to God. Try Thanksgiving as that concept in your life today and every day. See what God will do, and may God help us to be the kind of thankful people that he wants us to be. Let's pray. Dear Father, I thank you for the Lord Jesus and the way in which he works in our lives. Lord, I thank you for the many, many blessings. Lord, there are blessings that I do not even see, that you are working in my life. I thank you for those, Lord. There are blessings that I see every day and that I, in my own ungratefulness, I don't acknowledge. Lord, help me to be the kind of grateful person that you want me to be. Lord, I pray that this week, as we look at the holiday of Thanksgiving, we look towards Christmas and New Year's, we look at the, the hurting people around us, we look at the needs of the world. God, help us to be thankful people in the midst of difficult circumstances, that we might lift up your name and that others might understand that they might be thankful people too for what you've done. Lord, we're so grateful, and we want to give you thanks today. In Jesus' name, amen.