Where is the best place to live? Every year, the United Nations ask this question about countries.  Every year, Money Magazine asks the same question about cities and towns in the US. Forbes Magazine does a similar assessment on a world scale.

The UN uses only three basic criteria to determine the world’s most hospitable and

inhabitable countries: life expectancy, educational level, and annual income. Countries

whose inhabitants live the longest, know the most, and earn the most, win. Underneath the

simplicity of those measuring sticks is a complex evaluative grid that touches on issues of

politics, economics, cultural institutions, and the like. Money Magazine‘s touchstones

include leisure activities and cultural opportunities, access to health care, number of golf

courses, air and water quality, and traffic density. Where is the greatest place to live?

This idea got me thinking: What are the Bible’s best places to live? What are God’s criteria for determining that? We’re going to look at the best place to live this morning, not according to the UN or Money Magazine or Forbes Magazine, but according to God.

The criteria are these: Where do we become most fully alive, most fully ourselves? Where do we

find our greatest joy and peace and wisdom? Where do we experience the deepest sense of

belonging? Where is it that, and then at the same time, where it is safe and yet abounds with adventure? Where do true riches reside?

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As always, these are only notes. They are not a manuscript of what I say on Sunday morning. Oftentimes my notes are fairly close to what I say on Sunday morning. However, this week I made some major changes. Check out the audio file for further details and illustrations that communicate this idea of how to be filled with joy through active thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving is less than two weeks away. So I’d like to start out with a question that, hopefully, will prepare us for not only a great day, but hopefully give us a great way to live.  My question is this, “Are you thankful?”

I find that many of us are passive in our thankfulness. We’re thankful but we don’t spend much time in that department. That is, if I asked you if you were thankful, you’d say, “Yes.” And If I asked you what you were thankful for, you’d be able to name 10 things fairly easily, 20 things with a little difficulty, and you’d maybe struggle with a list of 30 things. Listing 50 things in 10 minutes would be very difficult for most of us, because we are passive in our thanksgiving.

How many of you have enough joy? How many of you wouldn’t want more joy? How many of you are just busting out at the seams when it comes to joy? Joy is a by-product of thanksgiving. Joy fills us when we see that we are blessed and seeing that we are blessed comes when we stop taking many of the things in life for granted and begin to see them as something that God has given us in love.

Now, it is one thing to be thankful. It is yet another to live out of a thankful heart, where I am constantly naming things in my life that I am thankful for as they come to me. What does this look like?

Someone once asked me the primary difference between this church and most other churches. I said, “That’s easy.” Most churches are primarily about programs and they have small groups as one of their programs. Small groups are secondary most churches. New Community is primarily about small groups and everything that we do feeds into and out of community and our small groups.

If you are a thankful person, then thanksgiving is secondary to living. Living is primary and occasionally you stop and give thanks. What we’re going to be talking about today is about living primarily out of a thankful heart. How thankful are you in an aggressive or forward kind of way?

In thanksgiving, we are called to not just be thankful, but to live out of a deep sense of gratitude and thanksgiving.

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 Opening: They don’t understand by Sawyer Brown

 Have you ever felt judged . . . put down . . . or shamed by someone? Have you ever felt like someone was trying to control you or manipulate you or shame you to get you to do something that they wanted you to do? Do you ever worry? Do you ever worry about someone? About their life? About the choices they’re making? Have you ever had some Bible thumper beat you up with their convictions, or maybe you’ve watched them beat someone else up with their convictions? Maybe you’ve beat someone up with your religious convictions? Have you ever thought that all those things could ever be part of the same problem?

This morning we’re continuing on the series entitled, “Who am I?” and we’ve been asking the question of what defines us. Where do we get our sense of worth and value, and our sense of identity or belonging from? In the first week we said that many of us base our identity on how others perceive us. If people that we love are mad at us or call us names, or ignore us, then we often times have a very low sense of self at those times. When people are happy with us and we’re all having fun together, then we have a higher sense of value and worth. We said that God did not create us to have a foundational identity based on something that is constantly moving. We were created to have our identity based on something that is stable and firm, much like the house that we live in was built upon a firm foundation in order to whether all the storms that mother nature can throw at it, so we were created to have our identity based on a firm foundation. A firm foundation is not based on whether or not others are happy with us. A frim foundation, we said, is based on our Creator, who is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. Our identity is based on how valuable we are in God’s eyes, Our value is  not based on our value in someone else’s eyes

In the second week, We said in the first week that nobody should ever define us. We said that our sense of value and worth should never come from what people say or do to us. We were not created to for our identity to be based on something that is constanly moving like, how other people perceive usThe second week we said that nothing, especially money should define us. We said that only Christ, who thought we were invaluable, who was willing to die for us, should define us.

Christ is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow and as long as we are defined by things that move, we will be filled with anxiety and fear. the only way that Jesus can become your Prince of Peace is when your identity is based on him, on what he says about you, because he created you. When you base your identity, your foundation on anything other than Jesus, then your house, your idenity will always be shifting as the storms of this world beat against you.

 That’s where we’ce come from, this is where we’re going. Jesus said,

Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. “Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces. Matthew 7:1-6 (NIV) Read the rest of this entry »

Leading Christian psychologist Larry Craab wrote in his book Connecting the following:

We’ve been asking the question, “Who am I?” What identifies who I am? Am I identified by what others say about me? Do I find my value and my worth my purpose or my identity, my sense of belonging from others, by what they say or do to me. Am I emotionally healthy when people are patting me on the back and saying, “Atta boy” and does my world fall apart when I mess up or somehow don’t live up to somebody’s will for me? Do I take my report card to my husband or my wife and receive my value and my sense of self worth from them or do I get it from somewhere else. Do I go to my husband or my wife, my parents or my friends and at some basic level ask the question, “Am I worthwhile? Am I valuable? Do I belong?” Or do I go to my husband or my wife, my parents or my friend knowing who I am, knowing that I’m worthwhile, knowing that I’m valuable, knowing who I am when I go to them? Depending on which way you approach people in your life, it makes a huge difference on the level of confidence and maturity that you display. The former will always lead to times of deep anxiety, the later towards much peace.

We said that just as a building inspector requires a firm foundation for your house, so that your house will weather all the storms Mother Nature throws at it, so it is that your Creator created you to have a firm foundation, which is Christ. As long as you and I build our identity on anything that moves, on anything that can be taken away, on anything that is dependent upon sinful people, your foundation, and therefore your value and worth will always be unstable and you will always have a shifting foundation, which will cause anxiety, fear, and stress at the very core of your being. God created you to know who you are and you can only know who you are when you understand at the heart level whose you are. We can only answer the question “Who am I?” when we come to know the Great I AM.

We said that we cannot find our identity from anything on the outside. We cannot allow anything or anyone else to define us. We cannot be defined, we cannot find our value, we cannot know our worth apart from our Creator and our Lord Jesus Christ. You are so valuable to him that he was willing to die in order that you might have life, life abundant. We must find our value and our worth in him, because in him our world no longer shakes, but becomes firm. The storms in life the value and worth and sense of belonging that he gives us, but our house, our identity stands firm.

This morning I’d like to continue probing the question, “Who am I?”

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