I know it seems kind of obvious that we’d do a series on being grateful in November, and I do want you to be grateful, but I also want you to be grateFULL.

I want you to experience the best life you can possibly live. God does, too. And this isn’t just some feely good kind of message. God wants good things for you just like you want good things for your kids.

We have to be careful that we don't live in a mindset that makes us the center of the universe and that everything God does is just to make us happy. That's not biblical. But it's also not biblical to say that God doesn't want good things for you, or that God doesn't want you to enjoy life.

When he put us in the garden at the very beginning, he created it for our enjoyment. It seems the church world has gotten to a place where any pastor that encourages you that God loves you and that he wants you to be successful and to have joy gets labeled as a prosperity preacher.

Do you really think God's plan for you is for you to suffer your whole life?
If you do, that's not what the Bible teaches.

Jeremiah 29:11
“For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

Psalm 37:4-5:
Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this.

Romans 8:28
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

If that's the case, then why do we struggle?
James 1:2-4
2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. 4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

“Count it all joy.” Let me say it like this: be grateful. Even in the hard times.

It is easy to be grateful when things are good, but not so much when we’re struggling. And what we hate about the struggle is the fact that it seems like our entire lives are shaking. It's like somebody's grabbed us and is just shaking us with all their might.

About 70 to 75% of the population hates it when the boat is shaking. That group just wants things to be calm. Don't rock the boat, don't shake anything up, just be chill.

But we are constantly being shaken. Every single day something goes wrong. Every day we have trials and struggles, shaking.

And in the midst of that, it can be really difficult to be grateful. It can be hard to have a mindset that says, "thank you God," when it seems our lives are in chaos.

Yet James says it is precisely in that moment where you feel like you are being shaken, where your faith is tested, where you have to remain steadfast, faithful, that you need to be grateful.

I could pull up a bunch of different verses right now about different things for which we can be grateful, but there's a passage in Hebrews 12 I want to share with you today in the hope we can have a better understanding of what it means to be grateful, and how by being grateful, we can be gratefull.

Hebrews 12:28-29
28 Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, 29 for our God is a consuming fire.

How can we be grateful when it seems everything around us is shaking?

1. We received an unshakeable Kingdom.
I follow a guy on TikTok who told a story about nearly dying while hiking the Sierra Nevadas. He'd gone exploring by himself as a teenager and was climbing up a rock face, no ropes, no harness, six stories up. He was pressed against the rock, nothing to grab to go up, nothing to step on. He was able to get stable momentarily, and as his mind raced on what to do, how to get out of this, whether or not he was about to fall to his death, his legs began shaking. In that moment, his legs fired upwards like pistons, and he reached as far as he could, his right hand finding a root that was shaped like a handle. He pulled himself up, rolled over onto his back, and took in the gravity of what it just happened. After a few moments, he sat up to see what it was that saved him. It was the root of a bristlecone pine, which scientists say is the oldest living thing on earth. It had been growing there for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years. It just so happened to be at the exact right point on planet earth to save him from falling.

This is a good metaphor of what we've received when we say yes to Jesus. This is more than just heaven someday in the future whenever we die, but this is a lifeline, a rescue, an unshakable kingdom now.

Unshakable.
Not possible to weaken or get rid of; calm, composed, steady.

In this life of chaos and disorder and constant waves of uncertainty, the one thing we can count on is Jesus.

He’s the sure foundation. He’s the stronghold we can run to. He’s the calm in the storm and the truth in the sea of lies.
Hebrews 13:8
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
If he was faithful then, he’ll be faithful still.

Psalm 136:1
Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.
Not fleeting love. Not conditional love. But steadfast. Unshakable. His Kingdom mimics his character.

And the only way into his Kingdom is through him.
Romans 3:23
All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God

Romans 6:23
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 5:8
God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 10:9
If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

If you want the stability that comes through Jesus Christ and his kingdom, then it is going to require you embracing Jesus Christ and his kingdom. His death and resurrection is what gives you opportunity. Your believing and confessing is what gives you access.

Until you get into his unshakable Kingdom, you’ll not only never overcome the chaos of life, you’ll never walk in the “full” I’m talking about in grateFULL. This is bigger than just calm in the chaos. It is overcoming the chaos!

We can be grateful because, through Jesus, we’ve received an unshakable Kingdom. Stability no matter how chaotic the world is around us.

Hebrews 12:28-29
28 Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe,

2. We’ve been given child of God access.
I'm sure I'm not the first person to show you this photograph, but this is John F Kennedy Jr in the oval office beneath his father's desk. I'm probably not even the first person to make a correlation between this image and an example of what it means to be a child of God.

As children of God, and I mean those who have made Jesus Lord of their lives, we have access to the inner court, to the holy of holies, to God's very throne room.

Sin always leaves us on the outskirts, separated from God, disconnected,
but because of the blood of Jesus, his sacrifice, his resurrection,
because we've said yes to him, those who were far from God are now close to God, those who were lost are now found, those who were dead are now alive.

So we've been invited into this unshakable kingdom, and as the result, even in spite of our sin and our brokenness and our struggle, we've been invited into a relationship with God, into the family,

and not a God who is out to get us or ready to strike us, but one who has endured the chaos of the world, who has been tempted like we are, one who has had to overcome the shaking that this life brings.

We don't have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses,
he understands them, and while he was tempted in every way, he did not sin. That’s Hebrews 4:15

We are in relationship with a God who does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. He’s a God who, as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him. And as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. And just as a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust. That’s Psalm 103:10-14

As a result, our worship and reverence and awe are simply the natural byproducts of our realization of who he is and our encountering his character and nature.

So when we come to God in those moments of worship, whether we've been the best person on earth or the worst, our worship is never based on our goodness, but his, not our righteousness, but his righteousness, not our worth, but his matchless worth.

And when a God like our God, who is almighty, eternal, awesome in glory and power, one who is able to crush us with a single thought, instead chooses mercy and grace and love in lieu of us getting what we deserve, grateful worship and awe is the appropriate and natural response.

It is true, our sin separates, and our sin makes it difficult for us to have those moments of worship. Sin not only creates separation between us and God, It creates separation between who we are and who God wants us to be.

When we refuse to live our lives as an act of worship to God, it not only creates difficulty in moments of worship, it invites the chaos, the instability, the shaking, back into our world.

While we’ve received an unshakable Kingdom and have been given access to God, we can also be grateful that:

3. He is a consuming fire
Hebrews 12 ends with the phrase, “our God is a consuming fire.“ What an odd way to end it. The writer is encouraging us that we've received this inconceivable kingdom, that we worship God in reverence and awe, and to conclude that encouragement, he tells us about the consuming nature of the fire of God. What in the world?

You have to go back a few verses to understand, and once you understand, it makes sense why we should be grateful for his consuming fire.

Hebrews 12:18-27
18 You have not come to a physical mountain, to a place of flaming fire, darkness, gloom, and whirlwind, as the Israelites did at Mount Sinai. 19 For they heard an awesome trumpet blast and a voice so terrible that they begged God to stop speaking. 20 They staggered back under God’s command: “If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned to death.” 21 Moses himself was so frightened at the sight that he said, “I am terrified and trembling.”

Those of you you have lived your entire lives terrified of God, scared to death of what he would do if he knew what you were doing, you need to understand that God has not been angry at you, but at your sin, at your iniquity. He's not out to destroy you, he's out to destroy your sin, your iniquity. He’s trying to save you! And with Moses, he sent the law so we would know what was sin. And the law terrified us because for the first time,
we got a glimpse of exactly how grotesque our sin was.

But you have not come to a physical mountain:
22 No, you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to countless thousands of angels in a joyful gathering. 23 You have come to the assembly of God’s firstborn children, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God himself, who is the judge over all things. You have come to the spirits of the righteous ones in heaven who have now been made perfect. 24 You have come to Jesus, the one who mediates the new covenant between God and people, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks of forgiveness instead of crying out for vengeance like the blood of Abel.

Now here’s the admonition:
25 Be careful that you do not refuse to listen to the One who is speaking. For if the people of Israel did not escape when they refused to listen to Moses, the earthly messenger, we will certainly not escape if we reject the One who speaks to us from heaven! 26 When God spoke from Mount Sinai his voice shook the earth, but now he makes another promise: “Once again I will shake not only the earth but the heavens also.” 27 This means that all of creation will be shaken and removed, so that only unshakable things will remain.

What are we talking about here?
God is telling us that in the shaking, the things destroyed are the things that are shakable. That's your sin, your iniquity, your idolatry, your immorality, your flesh, among others. He's saying the only things that remain after the shaking are the things that are eternal, righteous, good.

You see, the only consuming fire they had known before was the consuming fire they saw at the top of the mountain as God's power and might tangibly swirled in clouds of fire and thunder and lightning in the darkened sky. Their response was terror, begging God to stop speaking. They were in absolute fear of being consumed by the fire of God.

But we now are at Mount Zion, having not just come to a mountain, but having come to God himself, Jesus Christ, not only our mediator, but the one whose shed blood speaks a better word of forgiveness, not vengeance.

So we can embrace the shaking that God is doing in our lives to rid us of sin and iniquity, those things that separate, those things that destroy, and fully understand that God is not consuming us with his fire he is consuming those things within us that will keep us from experiencing the fullness of Christ Jesus and his kingdom.

His fire is not meant to consume us, but to consume that which is trying to defile us.

And this is why, even in the midst of the shaking, the trial, even the fire, we can be grateful. God is consuming in us not only that which inhibits his Kingdom coming in our lives, but also that which is keeping us from being grateFULL.

God has something better for you than the chaos and depravity of this world. He has a plan for you. A purpose. A place in his family. Joy unspeakable.

It is easy to look at a chapter like Hebrews 12 and be overwhelmed with ideas like God being a consuming fire. But everything God has ever done in your life and anything he will ever do in your life, is to help you, to grow you, for your benefit, with your best interest in mind.

We can talk for 10 more weeks about adjustments we can make, things that we can change in our hearts, But I don't know of a better response right now than to simply be grateful.

Let’s pray.

Thank you God for loving me. Thank you for believing in me. Thank you for your thoughts towards me. Thank you that you haven't given up on me. Thank you that even though I sometimes can't understand it, you still have a plan for me. Thank you that I can trust you. Thank you that you've never failed me. Thank you that you are my rock. Thank you that you are a strong tower I can run to.

And thank you for the trials. Thank you for the shaking. Thank you for being a consuming fire in my life. Thank you for your voice that speaks to my heart, that beckons me closer.

God I am grateful. And because of you, I am grateFULL.

Amen.

What is the Holy Spirit saying to you through this message?

How does he want you to respond?