Encore - 1012- Thankful in Everything Part 2 Ephesians 5:20

Welcome back to the Follower of One podcast. I'm Mike Henry Sr., thanks for listening. Today we want to finish our three episodes on thankfulness.  If you hear this on the air date, it's the Friday after the U.S. holiday for Thanksgiving. And today I want to cover the verse in Ephesians 5:20 from the ESV, it says, "giving thanks always and for everything to God, the Father in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ."   Notice how the author words, this. This goes all the way back to verse 18. Paul seems to be saying that giving thanks for all things as a result of being filled with the Holy Spirit. We're thankful in the name of Jesus.   I think of "in the name of" as being something like me saying, I want to express my gratitude on behalf of myself and my family. I'm sharing the gratitude that my family has. I want to share the gratitude that Jesus had. Jesus wasn't happy about having to go to the cross, but I believe he was grateful.   We're hearing here that he was thankful, and he saved us and he was thankful that he had the opportunity to do that. I never thought about that a whole lot until I was thinking about being thankful.   It's easy for us to think about being thankful. But what about being thankful for those hard things and being thankful to God, even in the middle of them. In this passage, we see that the Holy Spirit fills us, and we become grateful with the gratitude of Jesus.   We're thankful to God, the Father. The entire Trinity is involved. Today, let's remember which camp we're in. The holy spirit fills us. Therefore, we belong to Jesus, and we experience his gratitude. Even the negative things that happened to us will be used by God. Therefore, we can join in Jesus's gratitude to God, the Father. The end of everything is good for those who love God and who are called according to his purpose, it says in Romans 8:28. Let's keep the gratitude going. Let's remember what God has done for us and let that memory make us grateful so that others notice. I hope that your gratitude causes others to ask you, "Hey, what's different? What's going on?" And then you'll get an opportunity to speak for yourself to talk about how Jesus transformed you. That's what we talk about in Follower of One. We want to live our faith in such a way that others question what's going on in our lives. And we get to share with them a little bit about how Jesus has changed us.   Thanks very much.