Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:06] Good morning, Westside. My name is Josh Cordell. I'm the youth and family pastor here at Westside. And we. Before I get started with anything, I want to say something to the young people in the room.
[00:00:19] I'm going to say thankful and gratitude a lot today. And if you want to keep track of how many times I say that, you can tell me afterwards. We'll go back to the video replay. We'll. We'll see what the actual number is. We'll get some candy for it or something. But we're talking about thankfulness and gratitude. I said that to the service, the earlier service, and I talked to one of my friends afterwards, and he said, I know you said the young people, but you did include those of us who have a little bit of oc. A little bit obsessive about things that he was like. He counted also, so feel free to count that. But we're talking today about a term I like to call gospel gratitude. And we're gonna go on a little bit of a gratitude journey that goes from unthankfulness to reasonable thankfulness to what we're gonna call gospel gratitude. So let's pray, and then we're gonna dive in.
[00:01:11] Heavenly father, you are so good. You give us so much to be thankful for.
[00:01:17] Lord, would you just speak to us today through your word? Would you draw us close to you? Would we understand how much we are loved by you? And would we be so eternally grateful for what you've done for us? We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:01:32] So the scripture we're going to start with is from the Gospel of Luke. And this is where Jesus comes across 10 people who have leprosy, and he heals them. So this is found in Luke 17, 11. 17.
[00:01:46] Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. As he was going into a vil, 10 men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, jesus, master, have pity on us. When he saw them, he said, go, show yourselves to the priests. And as they went, they were cleansed. One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Jesus asked, were not all 10 cleansed? Where are the other nine?
[00:02:25] So when I first read this scripture, it really made me think of when you see an ad for, like, a drug on TV, and there's statistics. And so 10 out of 10 people get cured from leprosy by Jesus. Okay? So that's the first step. That's amazing. Unfortunately, 90% of those people are unthankful. All right, so Jesus heals the 10 of leprosy, and nine of them don't come back and thank him.
[00:02:53] So all 10 of them had to have understood what had happened because they actually called out to him. It wasn't just like this fluke where they're like, oh, this is weird. How'd this happen? They saw him at a distance, they called out to him, and he heals them. One returns, but the other nine are unthankful. They do not return.
[00:03:14] And so we're gonna start by just addressing unthankfulness. And if you're like me, when I think of unthankfulness, I like to think of.
[00:03:23] So if I'm bringing up unthankfulness, I like to usually point it at other people first and then maybe talk about myself. But when I think about someone who's unthankful, the first thing that comes to mind is the person who I let into my lane. And they don't thank me when I'm driving. So I'm driving. I don't have to, but I'm like, you know what? You go ahead. I'm gonna slow down. I see you. You go ahead and pull in here. And they pull in, and there's no nod or like, little like, hey, thank you, and you unthankful.
[00:03:56] But I stop myself there. Or if I can't stop myself there, I've learned. I say such and such. You unthankful, such and such.
[00:04:04] And so it's easy for us to look and see when other people are unthankful, but it's a little harder for us to point that at ourselves and realize that sometimes we are unthankful. And so I find that for me, when I'm unthankful, it's usually because I'm distracted.
[00:04:23] It's usually because I'm focused on something that I'm putting all my attention on. And I call this kind of like having my head down, right? Like, I'm looking at this thing and I'm not seeing all of this.
[00:04:36] And this morning when I drove here, this is the late. This is the sleep in service. So you may not have seen this this morning, which I totally respect, but this morning, the sky was beautiful. The sky was beautiful. Maybe you saw it. Maybe you've already been out and about doing other things. Some of you are like, what sky? What are we talking about?
[00:04:56] But the sunrise was just beautiful. It was just beautiful. And if I have my head down, I miss it.
[00:05:04] If I'm focused on something else, if I'm in my phone, if I'm in my feelings about something, I miss that kind of thing around me.
[00:05:11] But when I have my head up, I'm able to see it. And when I see a beautiful sunrise or a beautiful sunset, I'm able to have what I would call a reasonable thankfulness. A reasonable thankfulness.
[00:05:26] If I look up and see something beautiful, I should be able to just go, oh, wow.
[00:05:31] Yeah, like, that's reasonable. To, like, see it and be like, oh, that's a good thing. Like, it makes sense that blessings, that good things would solicit a reasonable thankfulness from us.
[00:05:44] And so we're gonna jump into kind of, what are some of the things that do that? This is Thanksgiving season. What makes us thankful? What are the things that, like, are reason that we're thankful for? And so I'm gonna just.
[00:05:55] Shameless plug right off the bat. I am so thankful, you guys. I finished my book. I wrote a book.
[00:06:05] Thank you.
[00:06:07] And if you've ever noticed me reading anything, you know that this was not easy for me to do. Okay. To write a book was not easy for me. And this book is based on this loop that I walk with young people, and I've walked it over 5,000 times. And so this book is tools and what I've learned about connecting with people. Like, my goal is that you'd read this book and that you would feel encouraged and maybe have some new tools to better connect with the people in your life for them to feel like you are really with them. That's what this is about, is being with someone.
[00:06:44] And thank you. Thank you. And the book is for sale in the lower atrium today after the service at a discount price. And I'm signing books, which I never knew that would be a thing, that I would sign books. And so just so you know, it is there. But that is something that is.
[00:07:00] It's reasonable for me to be thankful for that. Things in life that we see that we're like, oh, look at that. Good thing. I feel good about this. I'm thankful for that. One of the reasonable thankful things recently is that in this church at Westside in 2025, we've had over 90 people get baptized, right? And that is so reasonable that, like, we would be thankful for that, that we would see it and we'd be like, oh, that's a good thing. And all those baptisms have amazing stories. So many of them just have incredible individual stories. And so that's something that we should be thankful for. It's very reasonable that we'd be thankful for that. Is anyone in the room a college football fan? Does anybody? Okay, so game day yesterday was at the University of Oregon and. Go Ducks. Go Ducks. That was a big win. Big win. Biggest win of the day. And so at game day, one of the things they do, it's like this big college football festival to kick off the weekend. And they have this thing where they pull a student and they kick a field goal for money to help pay off their school.
[00:08:04] And the player who was picked yesterday was able to first. There was a whole thing of where it didn't make the kick and everything. And then when they went off camera, he got another opportunity. He made a kick for $100,000. $100,000. You ready for this? Here's what's awesome. He's a Westsider.
[00:08:24] Otto Har. Otto Har hit this kick for $100,000 to go towards his school. That is something that is so reasonably thankful.
[00:08:35] Like, we should be like, whoa, that is awesome. Like, that is just such a cool thing to happen. And I'm not the least bit surprised that he made the kick because he was a high school tennis player. And so if you don't know this about high school tennis players, just incredibly athletic, multifaceted.
[00:08:53] Some of you know that reference.
[00:08:56] I was a high school tennis player, so that is a reasonable thing. Thing to be thankful for. Right. I wanna share one more. That just was so awesome. This year, this past summer, at our middle school summer camp, we had close to 100 kids. 92, I believe. 94. And the way summer camp works is there's like this crescendo at the end. You're building all week to this moment where, like, you just really want to encounter God. You wanna really feel close. You wanna feel the love of God. And the first night of summer camp with about 90 plus middle schoolers, Brent Earwicker shared.
[00:09:34] And we had an altar call for kids to come and receive prayer for them to either surrender for the first time to Jesus or to re surrender their life and rededicate their life to Jesus. And over 40 of them came forward the first night. The first night.
[00:09:48] And. Right. Amazing. Amazing. God. The hand of God. And then we watched God just work through that week. And it was such a special week. We saw so many lives changed. And just incredible things happen because of God. At work.
[00:10:03] And so that is a reasonable thankfulness where we are thankful for the thing that we can see. And I want to read from Psalm 9. Psalm 9:1 2 says, I will give thanks to you, Lord, with all my heart. I will tell of all your wonderful deeds. I will be glad and rejoice in you. I will sing the praises of your name, O most High.
[00:10:26] When we see the good things, we should name them and be thankful for them. We should give the glory to God, and we should be thankful for the blessings we have whenever we see them.
[00:10:37] That's so reasonable to do.
[00:10:40] But life is not always easy, and life is not always man.
[00:10:47] Just look at all the good things that are happening, right? Life is difficult. Life has hurdles. Life has what seem like bigger than hurdles. Life has devastating things that happen to us. And how do we remain thankful in that? And so that's where we're going to move into this next section that we're calling Gospel Gratitude. So I want you to think about this.
[00:11:10] Lindsay used these words in our call to worship a posture of gratitude.
[00:11:16] Think of gratitude as, like, a way of being. Think of gratitude as, like, a place that you would put yourself. It's a perspective you would have. And then thankfulness would be your way that you respond to the world out of that position of gratitude.
[00:11:31] So we have this life of gratitude, and then we're able to see the things, and we're able to respond with thankfulness.
[00:11:39] I want to read you this very cool little section from Habakkuk.
[00:11:44] Whenever I say a word like Habakkuk, if you ever hear a word come from this guy and you're like, that sounds different than how I say it, know that you are right and I am wrong. Okay? Just don't take that for granted. Like, that's just a given. I'm gonna mispronounce things. Like, if you're like, man, I didn't know that's how it's probably. Cause it's not. So in Habakkuk 3, 17 and 18, this is taking place as they know that Babylon is about to invade and they're looking towards the future.
[00:12:20] And Habakkuk says, though the fig tree does not bud, and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive CR fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will be joyful in God, my Savior.
[00:12:42] Amen.
[00:12:43] Amen.
[00:12:44] This Gospel gratitude, it's only possible when we understand who God is.
[00:12:52] And who we are and how he feels about us.
[00:12:57] If you ever see me with something like this, it's always coffee. No matter what time of day, it's probably coffee in here. There's coffee in here right now. It has a sticker on it that says, I am loved by God. And that was a sticker that was made by one of our youth leaders.
[00:13:11] It's what we say all the time in the youth room. In fact, in the youth room, what we do is someone's on stage and they say, God loves you and we love you. And then the people in the audience say, I am loved by God.
[00:13:22] I am loved by God. That was wonderful. Thank you for that. That was. Oh, thank you so much.
[00:13:28] So we say, God loves you and we love you. And then our young people respond by saying, I am loved by God. Because we want the foundation of our identity to be understanding that we are loved by God. That's the truest thing about us, that we are loved by God. We see it in Genesis 1:27, that we are created in the image of God. We are the imago dei.
[00:13:49] But then we were separated from him. And that's where this gospel gratitude comes into play. When we understand how loved by God we are.
[00:13:59] And it changes everything.
[00:14:01] Because there will be times where we are unthankful, and then there will be times where it's a very reasonable thankfulness. Right? Something good happens. Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. But what about the rest of the time? What about our whole existence? What about when things don't feel good or right and things aren't going our way?
[00:14:21] How do we do it? How do we do? What do we do? So I'm glad you asked. Here's the first thing we do. We see what God's will is for our life. And I say this all the time. If there's a microphone in my hand, we're probably gonna read this verse. This is from 1st Thessalonians 5, 16, 18.
[00:14:39] Rejoice always.
[00:14:41] Pray continually. Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.
[00:14:48] This is his will for us. That we would rejoice, that we would keep talking to him nonstop, that nothing would stop us from communicating with him, and that we would be thankful in all circumstances.
[00:15:02] Thankfully, it doesn't say that we have to be thankful for all circumstances because there's some bad stuff that happens. There's some bad stuff that happens, and we don't have to say, oh, man, it's hard for me to be thankful for that. Bad thing.
[00:15:15] But what we're asked to do is to remain thankful in the midst of that bad thing, to be thankful in all circumstances.
[00:15:24] And if we do this, you guys, this is like a separation. This is a different. This is different than just living a life where things happen and we react to what happens. This is living in a posture of gratitude, of gospel gratitude, where we understand who God is, His glory, who we are redeemed and loved, and then we're able to respond to the world around us based on that, and that changes everything.
[00:15:52] There's a great verse on this From Philippians, Philippians 4, 4, 7, says, Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again. Rejoice. Let your gentleness be evident to all.
[00:16:06] The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything. But in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
[00:16:26] Make your petitions and your requests known to God with Thanksgiving.
[00:16:33] So it's different than, like, asking for something, then waiting and deciding based on what happens here, I'm gonna be thankful or not.
[00:16:43] It's making a request to God with thanksgiving already. Being thankful, being thankful in all circumstances, but asking God for the things, because there's things that we need.
[00:16:55] And then it says that he will give us a peace. And that transcends understanding, a peace that surpasses understanding. So this is a peace that's different than normal peace.
[00:17:08] So my normal peace is when there's a couple of different times I have normal peace, a couple of different times where I have peace, and I'm like, deep breath. One of them is when everyone else in the house has gone to bed, and I'm like, everyone is safe. No one needs anything.
[00:17:24] All is good.
[00:17:25] Like, that is like, that's a peaceful moment for me. Another one for me is I love waterfalls. If I can ever be alone at a waterfall, if I can go for a hike and there's no one else at the waterfall, I'm just like. I do this. It makes that, like, angel sound. I just soak it all in.
[00:17:42] And that, to me, is a peace that is understandable. Like, that's a piece that makes sense.
[00:17:49] But what Jesus promises us is a peace that doesn't make sense, a peace that's beyond understanding, a peace in the midst of the trial, a peace when you lose the big game, or the diagnosis is brutal, or the relationship is brutal, or the life situation is brutal. To have a peace that the world would look at you and say, that doesn't make sense that you'd have peace right now. And you're able to say, I have peace because of Jesus.
[00:18:19] And there's these words that all tie together peace and hope and trust. And they all work together. And when we can have them based on circumstances, that makes sense to the world. But when we can have them outside of those circumstances in spite of those difficult circumstances, that's something that looks different to the world.
[00:18:42] And I think of in first Peter, there's a verse that's just so beautiful where he says, be ready always to give a reason or to give a defense. When someone asks you about the hope that's in you, be ready to give a reason. So that means that you're living a life, and someone looks at your life and goes, hey, what's with this hope you have? This is different. And then you're able to say, jesus, I have gospel gratitude. I have this thing that I am thankful for that is different than everything else.
[00:19:14] And we see this message of being able to live in that way throughout Amazing characters in the Bible.
[00:19:24] One of them we see comes from job in chapter 13 of job. So at this point in Job's life, he's lost his family, he's lost his health, he's lost his wealth, and he's lost his standing in society.
[00:19:41] And he says this one line that's so powerful. He says, though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.
[00:19:51] In other translations, it says, though he slay me, yet will I hope in him.
[00:19:57] This idea that the circumstances are not going to change how I view the mighty God.
[00:20:03] The circumstances are not gonna shake me.
[00:20:06] One of my favorite examples of this we find in the Book of Daniel with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
[00:20:13] Their Hebrew names are Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. But their Babylonian names are just so cool. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. I appreciate that my parents named me Joshua out of the Bible. Like, that's a great name.
[00:20:26] No complaints or anything. But I would have loved a Babylonian name like Belteshazzar.
[00:20:33] So I love these Babylonian names.
[00:20:36] So Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they're Babylonian names. They are faced with the fiery furnace. They have been given an opportunity, a choice of where. The choice is, bow down and worship this false God or be thrown into the fiery furnace. And Shadrach, speaking on behalf of the group, says, o King, our God is capable of delivering us from you, and he will deliver us from you. But even if he chooses not to, we will not bow down to you.
[00:21:09] Even if he chooses not to. Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.
[00:21:14] It's this hope, this trust, but it's not dependent upon outcomes.
[00:21:21] It's doing the right thing and leaving the outcomes to God and removing yourself from that.
[00:21:29] In the past decade, Stoicism has become very popular, especially with young men.
[00:21:38] Popular all around, but Stoic philosophy has become more popular in the last decade because it's this idea of being more about the process than the outcome, being more about the controllables and letting go of the parts you don't control.
[00:21:54] I think it also helps that Stoic philosophers, again, have cool names like Marcus Aurelius and Seneca, and they were warriors. And so it's this very appealing thing.
[00:22:04] And I want to give you. I'm going to tell you a quick Stoic story that gives you kind of a perspective of what Stoicism is. There's a popular Stoic story about a man whose horse runs away. And when his horse runs away, his neighbor says, oh, your horse ran away. That's really bad.
[00:22:20] And the Stoic says, we shall see.
[00:22:23] And then a while later, his horse returns and brought other wild horses with it, and now his stable is full of horses. And his neighbor says, your stable's now full of horses. That's awesome. And he says, we shall see.
[00:22:36] And then his son is out working on the horses, and he climbs up on a horse and a wild horse bucks him off and he breaks his arm. And the neighbor says, your son broke his arm. That's horrible.
[00:22:47] Stoic says, we shall see.
[00:22:49] And then there's a war coming, and the army is coming through town and they're recruiting new troops, and his son has a broken arm, so he can't go off to war.
[00:22:58] And the neighbor says, your son can't go off to war. That's so, so lucky. And as you can imagine, the Stoic says, we shall see. It continues on. It could go on forever, right? But it's this idea of not putting judgment on things and being able to kind of remove and see the big picture and be more about the process and less about the outcome.
[00:23:17] So I like Stoicism, but it misses the mark because it doesn't have Jesus. It doesn't have Jesus. So I've created my own word. Like I said, there's words I can't pronounce, so I just make up new words. So I have a word that's called Stoic, okay? And it's a Combination of stoic and stoked. Okay. And so it's that you're stoic in the sense of like, this is outside of my control.
[00:23:40] I have to let this go, I have to give this over, I have to remove myself. We shall see. But then it's stoked because you say, I have a relationship with the creator of the universe. I am loved by God, I have Jesus on my side, I am created in the image of God and I am redeemed. I should be stoked.
[00:24:01] And so what does this stoic thing look like? It looks like us having this gospel gratitude, this idea that like we, we get to do all the things and interact with the world and take on the challenges, and we also get to have open hands and let them go and trust God.
[00:24:18] And we get to be grateful throughout the whole situation because our gratitude is not based on the circumstances, but it's based on this bigger thing. And so like earlier, like we saw Job who said, though he slay me, yet will I trust in him? I think one of the most powerful moments of the gospel is when Jesus is going to the cross and he says, father, if there's another way for us to do this, let's do that nonetheless. Not my will, but yours be done.
[00:24:51] It's this absolute surrender and submission to the will of the Father.
[00:24:57] And it doesn't happen unless we understand how much he loves us.
[00:25:01] And if we understand how much he loves us, that we're going to operate from this position of gratitude, this attitude of gratitude, and we're going to be able to take on the things that come at us in a different way than what the world would expect.
[00:25:17] We're going to get to live in this way that someone might say, what is that hope that's in you?
[00:25:22] I would like some of that.
[00:25:25] As we think about these things and what an attitude of gratitude looks like, I would ask, how do we do this? That's one of my questions I love to ask is like, so how does that work?
[00:25:36] How do we do this thing? And we see in 1 Thessalonians that we rejoice always, we have joy, we pray non stop, we stay in communication with God, and then we give thanks in all circumstances.
[00:25:51] One of the habits that I've adopted and I got this from someone else, was I take a gratitude shower every morning.
[00:25:58] So when I get in the shower, I turn the water on and I start thanking God for things.
[00:26:02] The first thing is for hot water. I usually thank him for hot water. Sometimes I step in too fast and I have to thank him for something else. Cause the water's not hot enough, but I stay long enough that I always get to thank him for hot water.
[00:26:14] And so as I'm taking the shower, I thank God for things. And I try to have this attitude of gratitude. And what's amazing about gratitude, you guys, is that when we lean into it, when I don't get distracted, because I can hop in the shower and say, God, thank you for being so good to me. And then all of a sudden, I'm in, like, and what's my to do list? Right? I can get sidetracked, I can get my head down and get distracted.
[00:26:38] But when I stay in that gratitude mode for long enough, it always leads for me to humility.
[00:26:45] Because when I'm thankful for what God has done, I find myself by the end of the shower saying, God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
[00:26:53] You are good.
[00:26:55] You are the one. You hold this all together.
[00:26:59] And so as we lean into gratitude, all of these other things will come from this.
[00:27:05] I want to read a verse from Colossians that sums us up so well from Colossians 3, 15, 17.
[00:27:13] Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body, you were called to peace.
[00:27:20] And be thankful.
[00:27:21] Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
[00:27:47] So we have this gospel gratitude, this position, this posture of gratitude, and then that allows us to be thankful for things, and it allows us to keep returning to the God who is good all the time. And so as we go into this week of thanksgiving, I just want to encourage you to have this gospel gratitude perspective of where catch yourself when you're being unthankful and then be reasonably thankful for the good things.
[00:28:15] But then have this dystophic experience where you're beyond that and you go, I can be thankful in the middle of all of this because I have a God who's good and loves me.
