Cultivating Gratitude - David Dealy

[MUSIC] >> Good morning, vintage. >> Good morning. >> And officially, Mary Christmas. >> [APPLAUSE] >> Is legal to say that now. >> Thank you. >> I think I shared with some of you a bit of a stickler around the wait till after things giving for Christmas celebration stuff. And some of you came up and were really excited about that and felt the support. We're glad to be supported in the waiting community. But some of you believe that because I feel that way that this happens in my house, which is not true at all. My wife and my girls are all full-send Christmas by Halloween. So we are literally driving to our family Thanksgiving on Thursday. And my wife knows, I don't want to do all the Christmas songs yet. I want to save them. I just don't want to be bored of them. But it's time we get into a first week of Christmas. So she's like, how about just Christmas jazz? No words, just Christmas jazz. And I was like, fine. So she puts on Christmas jazz. Three songs in Michael Buble, elbows his way into the playlist. And we're all singing Holly Jolly Christmas. And I was into it. It was all good. Because I love Thanksgiving so much, I'm going to stretch us into one more day of setting our hearts on gratitude. Today we're going to dig into cultivating a life of gratitude that we might be. And I think it's really important, you guys. We live in a time and a moment with a lot of conflict, with a lot of anger, a lot of division and bitterness. And we will be cultivated into that by nature unless we choose something else. As we choose to cultivate a life of gratitude that leads us into Christ's likeness, that we might be people of heaven here in this moment in LA. It will not happen just by itself. It is something we participate in. And I want to dig into that. Today we're going to dive into the practice of gratitude. To do that and kind of set our hearts on this trajectory, I want to read a song. And this is going to be a song that most of you are familiar with, even if you didn't grow up in the church. It's a song of King David. And these are words that have comforted and challenged and stoked the souls of millions of people for thousands of years. And they're written by someone who has so many hero stories written about him. So even if you didn't grow up in the church, you've probably heard of David and Goliath. The hero story of the young guy who is the youngest of his family, no big expectations for him in life. He's a shepherd. And he goes into this battle against a great warrior because of his love for God. And this miracle happens and he's celebrated. And we love these stories. But the thing I love about scripture is it gives you the ugly side of people's stories as well as the hero stories. So David is not only a hero and a king eventually, but he's also a deeply flawed. And he makes horrific decisions. He tries to bury his brokenness and all of its surfaces. And I don't know when David wrote this song. But I like to imagine it's on the other side of all of his worst decisions. That this is a practice. It's more than a poem. It's a practice that David engages in. That he sits with. That it might cultivate his heart toward loving God and gratitude for his life. And without you, you stand with me. We're going to read this out loud together. This is Psalm 23. A song of David. Let's read this together. The Lord is my shepherd. I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters. He refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his namesake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows. Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life. And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Let's pray. Lord, I thank you that in the goodness of your word, you give us the mess of humanity and the best of humanity and your work in the midst of all of it. Today God would you stir our hearts to choose to be people of heaven, who see the wonder of this world and the goodness of your character, even in the darkest valleys. Would we hang our hearts and our hopes on your promises, Lord? Not on our own abilities. Would we find freedom today, God, by surrendering to you in Jesus' name? Amen. Amen. You can have a seat. Thank you. There was a man sitting on a beach at sunset and it was beautiful and it was warm and it has feet in the sand and he was just reflecting on the goodness of life in this moment where he sat right with the sea in front of him and he had next to him shoved into the sand of fishing pole. And as he sat there just being grateful for life, another man came stomping down the beach, walking way too fast for a walk on the beach, a bit disheveled and he kind of grumpily thumps along the beach. He sees the man sitting in the sand and he says, "What are you doing?" And the man says, "Oh, I'm fishing." I guess, well, how many fish did you catch today? He said, "Two, three, enough to feed my family." I guess, "Okay, listen. What if we invested in this opportunity and we could create a business model that would double, maybe triple, maybe even ten times your production?" And the man sitting in the sand said, "What would be my reward for that?" The man says, "Well, don't you get it? We could get a home equity loan from your house. I'll put in a chip in a little bit of cash. We'll buy a boat and you could have more fish, which means more money." And the man said, "And what would be my reward?" And now you can tell the business guys frustrated. He said, "You don't get it. You don't get it. We invest. This could, we could leverage with a little bit more of a loan. We could leverage into a fleet of boats. You could have whole crews working. You don't even have to be on the boats." And what's bringing fish after fish? This will be a huge operation. And the man says, "And what then would be my reward?" And the man says, "You don't get it. You could have enough money that you could just sit here on the beach all day long." And the guy says, "Sir, I have this reward every single day." I love this story as simple as it is because I know I have been both of those men, often in the same day. It is beautiful poem, story of lives cultivated towards something. And choice is made toward the cultivation of that life. One man lives in a state of contentment. The sunset and the sand and the rhythm of the ocean is his reward. The goodness of life. The other man has cultivated a life of striving. Everything is a headwind. Everything is an opportunity but also a challenge and clearly leaves him unsettled, missing the gifts of life all around him. Both are on the same beach, both are in the exact same place in the world in the same moment, but they experience the world radically different. Our question is, what life do you choose? What life do you choose? And after you have chosen what life do you cultivate? What life do you get your hands dirty to shape, to grow? A life of gratitude doesn't just happen. It must be formed and tended like a garden, a garden of your heart. Now most of you know the science around gratitude, it's pretty overwhelming. The simple practices of gratitude, they can improve almost every aspect of your life, your mental health, depression, anxiety, your sleep, your ability to persevere. in challenging times. Gratitude helps improve all of these things in the human experience. Psychologist Dr. Robert Emmons of UC Davis, he conducted a study on gratitude for two decades, two decades, and here's what he said. Gratitude heals. It energizes. It changes lives. It is the prism through which we view life in terms of gifts, givers, goodness, and grace. It is a prism. When we think about King David and the victories in his life, how he was celebrated, beloved, songs are written about him, and we hear the stories of his brokenness, of his greed, of his lust. There's a prism through life when we read Psalm 23 that has been cultivated and shaped to see the world through God's character and goodness. We can change this. Scientists refer to this as a headwinds perspective versus a tailwinds perspective. Headwinds, of course, are things we naturally notice in our life. They are the challenges. We tend to pay attention to the headwinds far more than we pay attention to the tailwinds by nature. We as humans were naturally given to the effort and energy of defeating headwinds and challenges. We celebrate this in our culture. When I think about headwinds, I think about Michael Jordan. I anybody who watched the last dance? Okay. Are you awake? Okay, great. The last dance. If you haven't watched it, even if you're not a sports fan, go check it out, please. It is great. It's nostalgic for me because this is when I was growing up. This was like, what was happening every week? It seemed like. Michael Jordan was the expert of headwind management. He's a guy who goes to Chicago. At the time, he goes to the Chicago Bulls. The documentary said that more people bought season tickets to the arena soccer league than they did for the Chicago Bulls that played in the same arena. More people were going to indoor soccer games than they were to the Chicago Bulls when he arrives. Like, they are bottom dwellers. And Michael Jordan not only elevates the Chicago Bulls, as a franchise, he elevates Chicago as a city on the global stage. He elevates the NBA into a global phenomenon. He elevates Nike as an organization. And he elevates player brand management. Like, there wasn't a thing of like a guy was a brand before Michael Jordan. He does all of this stuff because he saw everything as a challenge and he had this unending engine to take on the headwinds. There's even stories of when things were going really good for the Bulls and Michael Jordan. He would make up things to take on as a headwind. So like after a game that they lost, you know, players were shaking hands afterwards. And a guy shakes Michael's hands and he's like, "Hey, good game." And Michael's like, "Good game." "Do you say good game to me?" "Who are you to say good game?" "Oh, no, you didn't. You did not say good game to me." So it goes into the locker room. He's like, "This guy." "This guy said good game to me." And like, he is just building this like animosity toward this poor guy. Not only do you remember it saying anything. They play like a week later, Mike drops 50 on him. And he's like, "Don't you ever say good game to me again." Like the guy was making headwinds when there was no wind, you know. Like that's how intense he was. And we celebrate this. We love to hear the hero stories of people who overcome the headwinds. But there is a shadow side to this. Now at the end of the documentary we find out, Michael Jordan is divorced. He is utterly alone, has no real significant relationships that aren't business relationships. He's addicted to gambling because he needs a headwind. He needs a hit of something to excite him and engage him. There's a shadow side to living in the headwinds. And there's another way to live. Science tells us it's not just about headwinds in our life, but there's tailwinds too. And we don't celebrate tailwinds. We rarely look for tailwinds. And I was trying to think of someone who could be like the polar opposite of Michael Jordan. And for me it was Mr. Rogers. Just like, you can create a different human. And the way he showed up in the world, then Mr. Rogers versus Michael Jordan now. He didn't overcome major things. He was someone who cultivated joy, gratitude. He was a Jesus follower and stoked a life that shaped that in children and families. And there's this moment after the 9/11 attacks happened in New York when people went to Mr. Rogers to say, like, how do we talk about it to this with our kids? Like, what do we say when something like this tragedy happens? And Mr. Rogers said, tell them to look for the helpers. Tell your kids to look for the helpers. There are always helpers. I imagine he had reflected on a different Psalm that said, I look to the mountains, where does my help come from? It comes from you, Lord, maker of heaven and earth. Mr. Rogers had a totally different lens, prism through which he experienced life. One that saw so many gifts in people, in music, in relationships. That cultivated this life of gratitude that showed up in such a different way. Gratitude is so powerful. It's so powerful. It's so much more than just the, say thank you when you receive something. I did that with my kids too. You got something to say, thank you. What do you say? You know it. You know the like, "Kate, if I say, what do you say?" Yeah. We all know it. It's so much more than that. Alan Jones wrote a book called "Seasons of Grace." I just recommend it for you to check out. It's all about cultivating a life of gratitude. And in this book, he says, "It's important we recognize that gratitude isn't just an exercise of etiquette." It's not just one more virtue. We should cultivate. Rather, it is our spontaneous response when we wake up to the fact that life is a gift. As we pay attention to the life we live through our senses and our emotions, we find that it is a life of participation in God and in community. This life is pure gift. I love these words of activation. A spontaneous response when we wake up that life is in fact a gift. A life of participation in God and in community. Later in his book, he says this, I think it's super helpful. If you have a way to write this down, do it. He says, "Attentiveness is the gateway to gratitude." And gratitude is the gateway to transformation. Attentiveness, waking up, noticing, having eyes to see, is a gateway to gratitude. And gratitude is a gateway to transformation. And this isn't just for us individually. This is for us collectively. It's not -- gratitude is not just an individual endeavor. It helps our mental, physical, emotional, spiritual life for sure. But remarkably, it also deepens our connection to others. Here's what psychologist, Phil Bocken says. He says, "Feeling gratitude is only half the equation." Expressing gratitude is equally as important to reap the benefits of the emotion. Multiple studies have shown that expressing gratitude to an acquaintance, a worker, friend, or romantic partner can offer a relationship boost and helps us bind more closely together. Isn't that crazy? Not just feeling the emotion of gratitude, not just being attentive and being aware of things to be grateful for, but the act of expressing it, that it moves out of our body into our space together, it binds us as humans. Isn't that amazing? I'm going to show you how amazing it is because I'm going to break all the rules of American Church, and I'm going to give one minute right now for you to turn to somebody next to you. Introverts, I know your heart rate is racing. It's going to be one minute. I'm going to watch the clock. I'm going to call this back. I'll pry all of the extroverts off of you, I promise. One minute to share, just simply, one thing you're grateful for in this moment right now. One minute. Anybody next to you? Ready? Go. [Laughter] 30 seconds. 30 seconds. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Good job everybody. Okay, let them go. Let them go. Hey, well done. Everybody, good job. Easy, right? One minute. You can do this every day. You can do this multiple times a day. Moving gratitude out from just the things we notice and think about and feel expressing it to one another is good not just for you, it's good for us collectively. And it is a counter reaction to the negative, angry, you are meant to be outraged every day of every week. It is an active resistance to that. We will express gratitude as we experience and see it around us. Okay, four steps. Four practical things you can do as a Jesus follower to cultivate gratitude in your life. Here we go. The first is scene, scene, wonder in the world around us. The second is cultivating. Cultivating gratitude like a garden that is planted and watered and tended to that it might grow. The third is connecting, connecting body and soul with gratitude. And the last is remembering, developing a practice of remembering, seeing, cultivating, connecting, remembering. Here we go. The first is scene, wonder in the world around us. I had a buddy of mine who visited right before Thanksgiving. He has three little boys, age nine, five and one. Yes. And we were in my kitchen. He was like, "Hey, what was your favorite stage with your kids?" I think that was like translated, "Does this get any better?" Later. So my girls are 21, 18, 15. And yeah, thank you. And I told them, I said, "I loved the elementary years. The elementary school." Like when they're out of diapers and not toddlers and you're not like patting everything and locking everything, like they can function basic by themselves. But they haven't developed attitude yet. That's like seventh grade that seems to land. So in that window was so much fun. It was so much fun because I think in that stage we realize humans are made to wonder. Just to see wonder everywhere. I could tell my girls, "Do you want to go to the park?" The park, that park, with the slide. Oh my gosh, the park. Like everything was like that. A squirrel. Like a real live squirrel. Did you see the squirrel? Like everything was like that all the time. We're made like that. We're born like that. It's in us. And then we train it out of ourselves. We train the wonder out of ourselves. I can remember in my late 20s, early 30s when my girls were young. No one told me to do this. There was no conversation about it. But I made a decision that it was time to be an adult. And so I sold all my music equipment. I had like guitars and amps and a stand-up base and like all of this stuff. I sold all my skateboards and surfboards, like all of them. And no one told me to do this. It was this innate thing in me that's like, "Well, it's time to not be that anymore. It's time to be serious and get after your career and make a paycheck and take care of your family." And like, there's honor in that. There's honor in wanting to do that. But it's not completely the way we're meant to live. I had tossed out the things that were play, that were wonder, that were life-stoking. It was my own narrative. We're born with wonder. We train it out of ourselves. But I believe we can recapture it. I believe we can't recapture it. I'm in this process right now. I believe this in particular because there's a story in the Bible. And exit is chapter 3. I want to read it to you and then talk about it. It says, "Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. And he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Hebron, the mountain of God. There, the angel of the Lord appeared to me in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that the bush was on fire and it didn't burn up. So Moses thought, "I will go over and see the strange sight why the bush does not burn up." When the Lord saw that He had gone over to look, will you underline that somewhere? Or just make a note in your head, "When the Lord saw that He had gone over to take a look, God called Him from within the bush, Moses, Moses, and Moses said, "Here I am." "When the Lord saw that He had gone over to take a look, He called Him." And another translation it says, "When God saw that Moses saw, He called Him by name." Now I grew up with this story and if you grew up in the church, you probably have two. And I always heard this interpreted it as like, "This was God's billboard to Moses for a job to do." Like, "Hey, over here, come see me. I'm going to give you an assignment." Right? But that shifted when I read this poem by Elizabeth Browning. Check this out. She said, "Earth is crammed with heaven and every common bush of fire with God. But only He who sees takes off His shoes. The rest sit around in pluck blackberries. The earth is crammed with heaven. The divine all around us and every common bush, the playground, the squirrel, the sunset, a fire with God. But only He who sees, takes off His shoes. Acknowledges the holiness of this." And the rest plucked blackberries. Do you believe earth is crammed with heaven? Do you believe this is just like our human treadmill that we're just going to walk until we don't anymore and then we die? Or is it the divine all around us? Is it God's wink and whisper to us every day of the sounds and the smells and the sights and the relationships all around us packed with heaven? My case to you is that a small act of letting yourself be in wonder will open up a channel of fascination in the world that leads to gratitude. We have trained ourselves into cynicism. We have trained ourselves into the mundane. We have trained ourselves to lower our expectations of life. That surely would lead us to a place where there's no wonder. We feel like we have answers to everything that we're in control. There's nothing to celebrate. Seeing the world with eyes of wonder, I believe Moses had gone from this place of being a prince and privileged and educated and great expectations through fault of his own sin and brokenness and bad decision making into the wilderness where everything was reset in his life. He was made low and his eyes opened so much so that he sees what others don't see. And maybe there's burning bushes all around us every day that God would whisper things to us. How do we see the world with wonder? I want to give you three things within this idea of seeing. The first is simple. It's not prism, the lens through which we see the world. Can we begin to see life as a gift, not a threat? Our existence as a gift, not a threat. We are just over and over inundated with negativity in the space around us. And every day you're expected to be offended and angry. outraged and overwhelmed. You have to choose a different prism to see the world. It will not happen for you. No one will hand you this. You have to choose it. That you will see life as a gift. Secondly, as you change that lens from life being a threat to life being a gift, there's an invitation to recapture your beginner's brain. Recapture the wonder of learning new things, of experiencing world in a different space. When our girls were young, we would take them to this magical place, not dizzying. I couldn't afford it. Called the Discovery Museum. The Discovery Museum. And in the Discovery Museum, when you walk in the doors, kids are turned loose. Like, yes, climb on that. Yes, draw on that. Yes, pick that up and play with it. Like, they're just set free into their natural state of wonder. And so they had this dress up area where they could be a doctor or a firefighter or a model or whatever. And they would try all this different stuff on. And then someone had driven into the lobby a 1960s VW bug. And the kids could grab paint and paint whatever they wanted. They could climb on it and paint all over it and pictures and their name and whatever. And it was a mess. It was basically gray when all the paints just rubbed together. Like, it was just a gravy, W. Beetle. But they loved it. There was a miniature grocery store. They had little cans of soup and a little register and little shopping carts. And they were just allowed to be in wonder and play. And we don't have this as adults. So we have to find spaces or make spaces that stoke our wonder, our beginner's brain. So Noel and I try to go to the getty often. It's free, you guys. Parking is awful, but so's everywhere in LA. But go to the getty and just absorb the stories and the paintings. It is so inspiring. And we never get to everything if you just take it right and slowly move your way through. It stokes this curiosity and wonder in us. Go listen to live music somewhere. Put down the phone. Go listen to live music with some people and get lost in it. Have a meal, a slow meal with good conversation. This is our discovery museum, you guys. We have to create it. We have to find it. Whenever Noel and I visit a new country, like go to thing to do is to take a cooking class. And when you take a cooking class in a foreign space, you learn a lot of things. You learn about the history of the place. You learn about why they grow, what they grow on their land. Why they celebrate and how they celebrate things in life. You learn all these things about people and you are the beginner. You don't need to know anything. You're not expected to do anything. And it's so fun. And hopefully you eat good food. Hopefully. There's a joy in learning. Let yourself learn. And maybe for some of you, it's a challenge of letting yourself learn because you hate that beginner moment. You hate not knowing how to do something really well. And so you just don't do anything. I want to say, you can choose that life all day long. But there's a gift on the other side if you allow yourself to be a learner. And then thirdly, so if we change the lens and prism through which we see wonder, if we cultivate a beginner's brain, we see wonder in the world. And then third, create. Create like the creator. The Bible tells us that we are created in the image of the creator God, that he likes to create, that he does it on purpose, that it's a joy. And he says it's good. It's good. It's good when he creates. And that image lives in us. You're meant to create. No, I know. I can hear some of you like, I'm not an artist. Sure. That's fine. I'm not asking you to be a professional artist. I'm not asking you to sell anything. I'm not asking you to post anything. Create for the act of creating. I put this challenge to my girls and my youngest daughter, Maggie, started knitting. And I was like, well, that's a weird one to choose. But she got so into it, you guys. She has like spools and spools and spools of yarn. And she's just like making stuff all the time, which is way better than watching The Simpsons. Create for the sake of creating. I think it's beautiful that King David was not just a politician, was not just a warrior, but he was a poet. It gave space for that creative and mago day that gave him words and language, not just for his own life, but for the people of Israel that we can read today. And it spurs us towards something. So create like the creator. All right. Second, big highlight. Cultivating gratitude like gardens. Here's the theme. Put the work in. Get your hands dirty. Your life right now is perfectly designed for what you are experiencing. You get to choose. And often it feels like we don't get to choose. It's like we're just-- we wake up and we're told what to do and where to go and where to be. And that's not true. You have agency. You get to choose so much of the design of your life. When Noel and I travel, it's a remark what we love gardens. And I'm not talking like food to table garden. I'm talking about nothing useful, except for something beautiful to experience gardens. And no matter where you go in the world, you go to Hong Kong, you go to Buenos Aires, you go to New York, there's a garden there. This is what we do as humans. We make beautiful spaces to just be in. And your heart is the same way. Cultivate it. Have the meal. Spend time creating. Listen to good music together with others. Do the small acts of shaping your heart and your lens. Get involved in it. And with time and with patience, like gardening, fruit will come. Fruit will come. When Noel and I about a year and a half ago, before we even knew about vintage or planned on moving here, we took a trip down to see her family. And we lived in a little town north of here called Camarillo. And all our girls were born there. We were there for about 12 years. And in that season of our life, we lived in government housing. Like we were very poor. And each of these little townhouses had a backyard about the size of this podium. And we're going to plant something here. And so it was a little bigger than this. We bought some fruit trees, about lemon trees, orange trees. And we planted those. Bless you. Almost 20 years ago. And so we took this trip to visit her family. Like, oh, let's go buy the old house. And we were definitely trespassing. But we walked down the side yard and we looked over the fence and you guys that could cry thinking about it in this moment. These full, big, beautiful fruit trees were in the back of this yard just beautiful. And we planted and we cultivated and we watered into something that would be in bare fruit. Your heart is the same way. Do it today. Start today when you walk out of this place. So into a lens that sees life as a gift. Talk to each other about the tailwinds of gifts you didn't earn, but have been given. Celebrate them. Spur one another on toward the goodness of our life. With time and patience like a garden, you will cultivate gratitude, which will transform your life. Third, so the first is seen and then cultivating your heart like a garden for gratitude. Third is connecting your body and your soul. You guys, our body is matter. We don't talk about this in church a lot. Our body is matter. When God Himself shows up in the human story, He doesn't show up on a white horse with a sword as a warrior. He shows up as the least functional being on earth, a human baby. Like a human baby can't do anything. Like a giraffe baby can walk within a few hours or something. Could at least try to run away from something? Like a human baby can do nothing for nine months. It's just a meat blob. And that's the way God shows up in our story. And so it tells us that flesh and blood matter, our bodies matter, to feed our senses is to cultivate our body and soul together, connecting. This not only builds gratitude in us, it builds empathy, it builds connection. In World War II, the American Armed Forces We're trying to figure out how do we lose less fighter pilots and planes in the midst of World War II that we're just, they're losing them like every day constantly. And they did a psychological study of like, who are the pilots that don't die most often? Like what are some themes we could try to find to bring them home and keep them safe and keep our troops fighting? And they found one common theme of the fighter pilots who lived through most of the battles. And that was that they made model airplanes at home growing up. They used their hands and they built models of airplanes. Like this was more than just a vehicle, it was more than just a battle. Like they cared about the experience and the sights and the sounds and the function of these machines so much that they felt like it was a part of their life. This is the way we're wired. Sight, get off the screens. Get off the screens, give yourself a break. It's robbing you of seeing the beauty around you. Stare at your spouse. Go for a long walk. Gaze at the ocean. People spend all of their PTO to come where we live. Go enjoy it. Hearing. Listen to stories. Listen to your friends. Listen to nature and listen to nothing at all. Listen to laughter. Listen to the story. The story of the pastor and the wife had cancer. They went through all of the chemo and treatment and surgeries and on the other side they thought they were in the clear but went to remission. Cancer came back. They were in the second round where he would take his wife every week for chemo. It was painful. When it was desperate and it was so sad and dark. But this pastor created a practice where every week when his wife had finished her treatment and was resting he would go down into the hospital kitchen and he would order the same slice of chocolate cake. The same slice of chocolate cake. And he would sit there as she was resting and he would smell the cake to sit with it. And he would take a small little piece and let it sit on his tongue and he could taste like the squishiness of the cake. And then the chocolate would melt on his tongue and he would say as a practice this is good. This is good. There is good in this world. It was his active resistance using his body, his tastes to pause and experience goodness. We can do this connecting our body and soul. Finally develop a practice of remembering. This is where we are going to land. Memory is this unique attribute of human beings. This incredible ability to remember so often we remember the worst of our stories. The things said and done to us, the things that happened to people we love, circumstances that were painful. But we have as much ability and agency to remember the good if we choose. No one created a faith journal in our early years of marriage. We would write down the things we were praying for. Like big things we were praying for that we would just petition and pray and ask God to do in our life. And as those things happened in weirdly specific detail we would write them down. That was good not just in the exercise of remembering and capturing the moment but in the next season for the next thing we were praying for, the next thing we were believing we would go back and remember, okay we prayed for this. This felt impossible and we prayed for and asked this is the way God showed up. And he did it again and he did it again and we had this arsenal of hope. We go back to it to remember not just the let down in the pain but remember God's faithfulness and goodness in our story. And God knows, you guys God knows our ability to forget. He's well aware of it. In fact he gives so many people in the story of scripture instructions on how to remember. So Moses who we read about in the burning bush, he's leading the people of Israel into an impossible situation with their backs up against the sea and their rivals, their oppressors running on top of them looks like no place to go and God shows up and does a miracle. And on the other side of the miracle God says this, build an Ebenezer. Does anybody know what an Ebenezer is? It's like a monument. It's a physical remembrance space. And he says, as you build this you will remember what I have done and tell your children and tell your children's children and tell generations who I am and what I've done for you. Remember King David wrote the song we read together as an exercise in remembering the character of God. Now he could come back to you and we could come back to you to remember goodness. And of course Jesus. In his night before he is betrayed and crucified he is having dinner with his most beloved, his 12. And he says, as I am about to leave you, I give you this, this bread and this cup to remember. As often as you gather in remembrance of me do this. He knows we will forget. As we close, I just want to ask you close your eyes for a minute. I want to pause Lord. As we've kind of set this table here Lord in your Word. What are the places for us? What are the invitations Lord? To see the world a bit differently today. To be more than just nice people. To be agents of hope and life and joy. And all of the fruits that you say will grow in us as we say yes to you and walk with you. What are the places and invitations you are inviting us to surrender? Just want to invite the prayer team up front right now. And church as we sing this song together, if there is in you a need for prayer you can come up and receive prayer. As you sing would you hear not just your own voice but the voices around you. This might be our little practice of gratitude together. Would you stand as we prepare to sing? [Music]