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"As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving."
(Colossians 2:6-7)
Here at DFEA, we accomplished a big goal, and I want to express my appreciation first and foremost to God and then to so many of you. Our goal was to raise $4,000 for a mission project in the month of September. A friend of mine in South Asia has invited me to be a guest professor in his college. In addition to me preparing 30 lectures for the class, "A Theology of Missions in the Book of Acts", we needed to raise the money to help make it happen. Some of you reading this are thinking, "This sounds like missions." You are absolutely correct. When we go on mission trips, we raise the money to go and then volunteer our time to help in any way that we are needed. By my last count, we had raised close to $4300! Thank You, Lord! I have started taping the lectures on my private YouTube channel and sending them on for the students to watch. These students, by the way, are from three different countries and serve in some difficult places where there is much persecution. I often feel like I should be studying under them instead of the other way around!
Being thankful is a blessed way to live. Too many times after accomplishing a goal, I rush toward the next goal without slowing down and expressing sincere appreciation to those who made it happen. An attitude of gratitude is something all followers of Jesus should seek to have. The older I get and the more I serve the Lord, the more cognizant I am of just how amazingly accurate John 15:5 is. Jesus said, "I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing." Did you see that? Without Jesus, we can do nothing of eternal impact and importance. I am so grateful to God for all His gifts manifested toward my family, ministry, and me personally. God is so very good to us!
Five separate times the Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Colosse about being thankful. I have heard that perhaps the believers in the church were not as thankful as they should have been and therefore, Paul exhorted them emphatically to be thankful. The child of God should be the most appreciative person in the world. Those who have received the Lord and are established in the faith should not just be thankful, Paul writes, but we are to abound with thanksgiving. When we are overflowing and effusive with thanksgiving in our hearts, it reveals a couple of things. First, being thankful demonstrates that we know God and realize that He is the giver of every good blessing. Second, when we live in this lane of being grateful, it impacts the way we live and treat others. Those who complain constantly are most unappreciative. They are so worried about what they do not have that they fail to see the blessings they already possess.
The seeds of worry and complaining never take root in the soil of thanksgiving. As you and I count our many blessings and even name them one by one, as the hymn states, not only will it surprise us what the Lord has done, but it will also bring joy and peace to our hearts.
Thank you again! Your prayers and financial gifts empower DFEA to literally reach around the world and take the Gospel of Jesus to some difficult places.
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