This month we've been talking about things for which we can be grateful.The air we breathe in our lungs. The purpose and plan God has for us. The blessings he pours out on us on a regular basis.

We've talked about the difference between being grateful and being entitled. We talked about how negative and positive thoughts, rewire, our brains, and how gratitude can help us eliminate negativity in our lives so that we can be hopeful.

We've spent all of our energy so far focusing on being grateful for who God is and for what he is doing in our lives.

And we need to be grateful for these things. We need to have these things as a part of our focus. Being grateful creates opportunities in our lives where we can be filled with the good things that God wants to pour into us, where we can do those good things he created us for.

I’m convinced you can't be gratefull unless you're grateful.

But as we lean into Thanksgiving on Thursday, I want to open your eyes to a different facet of gratitude that we don't often think of.

I don't know if you know it or not, but we are insanely critical of ourselves. And that could be for some good reason. We know the depth of our struggles, sins, doubts. We know more than anybody on earth how good or bad we really are.

Looking at our lives through this lens feeds not only that criticality that we show towards ourselves, but it makes us skeptical whenever people are grateful for us.

Most of us here have a hard time receiving gratitude. There is a phrase you will hear often the longer you are around people at Freedom: "Thank you and I receive it.”

I hear this most often in the context of meals. I love paying for people food when we go out to a restaurant. One of the first experiences, Monique and I had with New Covenant Church all the way back in 2012 was after a young adult service. We went to Joe's Pizza and Monique and I were broke.
There was a big group of people and Pastor Chuck quietly looked at me and said, "Are y'all ok on money?” I whispered, “No." He said it's OK I’ll cover it.

Believe it or not, that was the start of the process of God getting the orphan spirit out of me. It really went down in 2015, but in that moment at Joe's Pizza, Pastor Chuck did to me what a father does for his kids. So every time I pay for somebody's food, it's a small way of me saying thank you to him. It's me expressing gratitude.

Truth be told, we receive gratitude with about the same efficacy as we receive love. Why is that? Why do we have such a hard time receiving someone else's gratitude and love?

Is it a "deserving" thing? Do we feel like we're not worthy of it?

This is one of the biggest struggles people have in their relationship with God. We live in a world where when you mess up, people respond with anger and vengeance. So we naturally project the same human responses on to God.

But is that how God acts? Is that really who he is? Angry and vengeful?

Micah 7:18
Where is another God like you, who pardons the guilt of the remnant, overlooking the sins of his people? You will not stay angry with your people forever, because you delight in showing unfailing love.

Psalm 103:8-9
8 The Lord is compassionate and merciful, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. 9 He will not constantly accuse us, nor remain angry forever.

Goodness, if you can’t think of anything for which you are grateful, isn’t this it? Paul may have described himself as the “Chief Sinner,” but I’ll take the role as “Chief Moron” the way I so easily fail.

I am saying all of this and using the context of Pastor Chuck being fatherly towards me to highlight the truth that I want to share with you today.

God doesn’t hate you. He’s not fed up with you. He’s not done with you. In fact, he’s grateful for you. He’s glad you are alive. And more than anything, he wishes you could see in you what he sees in you.

The problem is that we’ve learned behaviors from people around us that make it difficult to see God like this. Bad father figures and their evil words and epic crash outs have distorted the Good Father that God is. This has been a part of Satan’s plan for your life, which I write about in Killing the Orphan Spirit.

What I believe the Lord wants you to see today is how much he loves you, how much he believes in you, and how grateful he is for you.

We’ve spent 3 weeks talking about how grateful we need to be.
Let’s talk about how grateful God is for you. Can you receive that?

First, some verses
1 John 4:9-10
9 God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. 10 This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.

Zephaniah 3:17
17 For the Lord your God is living among you. He is a mighty savior. He will take delight in you with gladness. With his love, he will calm all your fears. He will rejoice over you with joyful songs.

Ephesians 1:4-6
4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love 5 He predestined us to adoption as sons and daughters through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, 6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, with which He favored us in the Beloved.

Ephesians 1:4–6 (Jason’s paraphrase)
Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, his plan for us was that we would be holy and blameless before him, making us the focus of his love. His plan was us adopted through Jesus to be his sons and daughters. His heart’s desire, and to the praise of the glory of his grace, his favor through Jesus was upon us.

No matter what you believe God thinks about you, it is very difficult to make a case that he wants anything less than you as his son or daughter, you as the focus of his love, you holy and blameless before him.

I can't help but think that God’s heart towards me mimics a godly father's heart towards his kids. (In actuality, good fathers mimic HIM). I do my best to be a godly dad and I still fail constantly, but my heart for my kids? This year we took a trip to the Grand Canyon and we stopped in Winslow Arizona to have lunch. We went there just because of the song, plus we wanted to take it easy. We were sitting there eating and I just burst in tears.
Nothing was wrong. It's just that everything was right. I saw how much fun my family was having, especially the kids. The tears were just an interruption of love that I had for them.

Don't you dare think for a moment that God doesn't feel the same way about you.

Isaiah 43:4
…you are precious to me. You are honored, and I love you.

But still for some that is so hard to receive.

Today I want to help you break three lies that you might be believing that is keeping you from receiving the love and gratitude God has for you. And this message is not to say that you are the most important thing in the universe and that everything revolves around you. This message isn't about making some god or idol out of us. It's simply to remind us that in spite of us, God is grateful for us, that he loves us.

1. You’re not so broken you are beyond repair.
Psalm 147:3
He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.

God is not off, put by broken things. He fixes them. And what is interesting is that we typically have the mindset that when God fixes us, he just puts pieces back together. So that means he has to first find all the pieces,
then he has to reassemble them, then he has to figure out someway to keep it all held together again, and then we spend the rest of our life with these scars and cracks that are permanent reminders of our brokenness.

Do you know how God binds wounds and heals brokenness? He makes us new.

Ezekiel 36:25-27
25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. Your filth will be washed away, and you will no longer worship idols. 26 And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you so that you will follow my decrees and be careful to obey my regulations.

2 Corinthians 5:17
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

God loves you so much that he does more than just repair you, he makes you brand new. Naaman cleansed in 2 Kings 5:14
So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.

Why new skin like a young boy? Why not just no leprosy? Because God goes further than repair. He restores.

Mark 2:22
And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.

The context of this verse is that the people are expecting God to do something new, but still in the same format as the old. Jesus was explaining to the people that he was doing a new thing. It was so new that the old way couldn't contain it.

Some of us are in the same spot. We think the sin and struggle from our past is so big if there's no way possible, God could fix us, or that he would even want to. But what I'm hoping you will see today is that God loves you and he is grateful for you and that there is no brokenness that is so massive that it's beyond repair.

So you have to abandon that old wine skin thinking that you are too broken. “I’m too broken for my family of origin, too broken for that spouse, too broken for my kids, too broken for that church.” Eliminate all of that thinking. God shows his love and gratitude for you in that his desire for you is for you to be made new, not just repaired.

If you think you are too broken to be repaired I pray you would encounter the restorative power of the Holy Spirit today before you leave.

2. You’re not so far away that he can’t find you.
Luke 15:4–6
Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, “Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.”

Quick side note here: Notice Jesus never says why the sheep got lost, just that it is lost and that the good shepherd searches for it. I don’t know why you are far away from God, but we can deal with that later. Call out to God. Bleat your little sheep head off. Be found today.

The people who were hearing Jesus say this most likely knew the reference to Ezekiel and understood that Jesus was not only saying that God goes after lost sheep, but Jesus was also saying I am that God, the one who goes after lost sheep.

Ezekiel 34:11–12, 16
For this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I myself will search for my sheep and look after them… I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered… I will search for the lost and bring back the strays.

Psalm 139:7-10
7 Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? 8 If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there. 9 If I take up the wings of the dawn, If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, 10 Even there Your hand will lead me and Your right hand will take hold of me.

Do you really think you are so far God can’t find you, that God can’t rescue you?

Do you know something interesting about the word “search?” If you are searching for something, it implies that it is something you value. People don't turn their houses upside down looking for something they don't care about. And God does not search for you out of obligation.

In Matthew’s version of the parable of the lost sheep, he ends the story in Matthew 18:14

Even so it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.

God is currently walking the streets of your life right now calling your name.
It is evidence of how much he loves you, and how grateful he is that you are alive. The question is are you going to respond to his call?

3. You’re not such a burden he doesn’t want you.
Why do we think like this? Why do we think he is going to give up on us? For some reason we are conditioned to believe that God is going to walk away, even with how many times he’s promised never to leave us or forsake us.

How would you feel if your kid was struggling with something heavy on their hearts and they never came to get help from you because they were scared and didn’t want to be a burden on you? Welcome to how God feels. And I don’t say that to make you feel bad, it’s just that this is the space where so many people dwell. It's why you don't ask for help. It's why you don't call people and tell them why you're struggling. It's why you feel all alone. You just don't want to be a burden.

This is one of those moments where you just need to let the word of God speak.

Matthew 11:28–30
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

Jesus is saying the exact opposite of “you’re too much for me.” He invites the heaviest hearts because carrying us is easy for Him.

1 Peter 5:7
Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

The word “cast” means to throw with force. He’d rather receive your worry with force than you carry it. He can handle the burden. Can you give it to him?

Psalm 68:19
Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior, who daily bears our burdens.

One more. Isaiah 46:4
Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.

Why does he do this?
Psalm 18:19
He rescued me because he delighted in me. That’s gratitude.

I said you’re not such a burden, not you are not a burden.What’s the truth?
Truth is, yes, you are a burden. Why? Because life is hard and heavy. Sin is heavy. Brokenness is heavy. The past is heavy. Pain is heavy. Your mistake isn’t in the struggle with the burden. Your mistake is in believing that God can’t bear it. Your mistake is in believing the people around you God called to help you carry it can’t bear it. God never promised you wouldn’t be heavy. He just promised to carry you, if you’ll let him.

I constantly tell my kids this specific phrase. I will wrap them up in my arms and I will say, "do you know I love you?” They will say yes. "Do you know I'm proud of you?” They will say yes.

What am I really saying to them? "I love you, and I'm so thankful for you."

You may have never heard a single person under the words to you, but don't make the mistake of believing that God doesn't feel that way about you either.

He loves you, in spite of the mess. He's proud of you, in spite of your failures. He's grateful for you, regardless of how you feel about your own worth.

Your job today isn't to question why.
Your job today is to simply say thank you and I receive it.

1 John 3:1
Behold what manner of love the Father has poured out on us that we could be called his very own children.

No matter how broken you are, he can make you new.
No matter how far away, he can find you.
No matter how burdened, he still wants you.

He loves you and is grateful for you. How do you need to respond today?

Let’s pray.

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

How does he want you to respond?