Hi, everybody. I'm in Idaho. My family's come, and we're having Christmas together. This is Tegan, my granddaughter, and this is Juliet. "Hi. Merry Christmas." Merry Christmas to all of you. I really hope you enjoy the worship service. "Bye-bye." I've been trying to convince us to give ourselves the best Christmas gift ever. The gift that no one else can give to us. It's a gift we must give to ourselves, and it's the gift of developing the habit of being thankful instead of complaining. Experts say that the average person complains 14 times a day, either out loud or to themselves. I think that's kind of low, don't you? I mean, at work, or when your family gathers together at Christmas, or around the dinner table, is there complaining that goes on? Well, a couple of years ago, I challenged the church to go 21 days without saying a single complaint. 21 days, because that's how long it takes to break a bad habit. And so I passed out purple wristbands with the words "A Complaint-Free Person" on them. Do you know what happened? A whole lot of people complained that the wristbands were purple, and purple wasn't their color. And others complained that they were being asked not to complain. An amazing number of people resisted trying to go 21 days to develop a new habit of not being a complainer. Catherine Marshall is one of my favorite Christian authors, and the reason is she's just so honest and so real. I love her books. And in one of those books, she talks about how she had never thought of herself as a complainer, but she came to realize that she was a huge, prolific complainer. A sermon by her pastor one Sunday woke her up to how big a complainer she was. So she determined that she was going to go one day without giving a single complaint about anyone or anything. And she really made it through the day successfully. And she wrote, "What I learned from that is that I didn't have much to say that day if I didn't complain." She was really amazed that so much of her conversation with other people was a complaining kind of conversation. Do you know anyone like that, who wouldn't have very much to say if they didn't complain? In Philippians 2:14, Paul writes something I think is just really powerful. He says, "Do all things without complaining." That's hard to do, isn't it? And maybe the person you married tempts you to be a complainer. Or when you're at work, you have a boss that's unreasonable. You know, we have plenty of excellent excuses to give in to the temptation of complaining. I can only say complaining is a form of self-abuse, because no one can complain and be joyful. It's impossible. And that's especially true in a marriage. Expressing thankfulness is a verbal hug. Complaining is a verbal shove. I was thinking this last week about how often people complain about getting old. You hear that all the time, about things that stop working in them and all of that. I was thinking that getting old is actually a privilege, a blessing. Kobe Bryant was killed much too young in that helicopter crash. I'll bet you his wife wishes that he could have grown old with her. It's a blessing. This morning I opened two wonderful gifts from God: my eyes. You know, I think we take our eyes for granted, but I'm so grateful for the blessing of being able to see. I can see you, people I love. I can see this beautiful world. I can read books and learn things because I can see. My eyes are a wonderful gift from God that I open every day and give thanks to Him for. I'll never forget visiting a member of this church a few years ago. He was dying. And as he lay there in bed, he said, "I've had a wonderful life. I only wish I had realized it sooner." I think that's true of a lot of people. "I've had a wonderful life. I only wish I had realized it sooner." The Apostle Paul had so many bad things happen to him. He suffered so many losses, including being beaten and stoned, and even Christians badmouthing his ministry. But he wrote this: "We know sorrow, but our joy is undefeatable." He had defiant joy. Joy that defied the circumstances he was in. That's the kind of joy I want. Don't you? I don't want my joy to depend upon the behavior of other people or the things that are happening to me. "We know sorrow, but our joy is undefeatable." Elisabeth Kübler-Ross is a famous researcher who spent a lot of years interviewing people who were dying, to try to understand what they were thinking about. And she said that as she interviewed them, she was really surprised at what they would miss in death. She said they weren't going to miss their Audi or their BMW. They weren't going to miss their house, or trips around the world, that sort of thing. They talked about really ordinary things that they were going to miss. The smell of coffee in the morning. Their dog or cat. Just being with friends, having tea or coffee with them. Just the ordinary things of life turn out to be the most valuable, what they would miss. It seems to me most people undervalue what they have and overvalue what they don't have. I think that's a guaranteed way to be unhappy: to undervalue what you have and overvalue what you don't have. This Christmas, I hope you'll give yourself the best Christmas gift ever: developing the habit of being thankful, and counting your blessings one by one, every day. Christmas is my favorite time of the year. The parties, the great food, the family gathering together, giving gifts to those that we love. In fact, you know, the first Christmas was all about giving a gift. It was God giving us the gift of His Son, Jesus, and eternal life through Him. John 3:16 describes it this way: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whosoever should believe in Him should not perish, but have eternal life." It's one of the greatest of all Christmas verses in the Bible. And not one word about shepherds or a manger, or about cows or sheep. It's all about God giving us the gift of His Son, Jesus Christ. And that's why I say giving gifts at Christmas is actually following in the footsteps of God Himself, who gave us the greatest of all gifts at that first Christmas. Today, though, I'd like to speak about giving yourself a gift. I know that's a bit unorthodox, but I hope by the time I'm finished, you will give yourself this gift. It's a gift that you can't wrap and put underneath the tree. You can't buy it on Amazon. In fact, no one can give you this gift. You have to give it to yourself. And it's the best of all gifts. What would you think that gift might be? Thankfulness. It's the most important attitude in life. Thankfulness turns what we have into enough. Did you know that the Bible actually commands us to be thankful? In other words, if we're not thankful, it's a sin, because we're commanded to be thankful in 1 Thessalonians 5:18: "Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God." It's a commandment. It doesn't say give thanks for all things. It says give thanks in all circumstances. In other words, even in hard times, there are still good things in our life. I'm a fan of Elizabeth Edwards. I don't know if you know her story, but her son died, and then she developed breast cancer, and then her husband had an affair. A woman walked up to him in a hotel bar and said to him, "You're so hot." And his ego was so big, he fell for that line. He tried to tell Elizabeth that it was a one-night stand, but the truth is, it was a long affair, and he had a love child with this woman. Elizabeth believed him at first, until the news media broke it to the nation, because he was a presidential candidate. That's when she learned that her husband had lied to her, and it was crushing. What was really crushing was not only that he had betrayed her love and lied to her, but that former friends rejected her and criticized her because she divorced him. The title of her book is Resilience. Perfect title, describing her. What was her secret to resilience and bouncing back? It was practicing 1 Thessalonians 5:18: to give thanks in all circumstances. Thankfulness for all the blessings that she still had, in spite of his betrayal. She took a big hit, but she found that she had so many good things still left in her life. You know, as I read her book, it struck me that thankfulness makes ordinary people tough in tough times. Still, how do we do that when life is hard? Paul tells us how in Philippians chapter 4, verse 8, which is one of my most favorite of all verses. Paul says there, "Whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, whatever is praiseworthy, think," and the word in Greek there is "focus," "focus on those things." The Bible repeatedly says that the quality of the life that we have depends upon what we focus on. Focus is one of the keys to a great life. A few years ago, Bibles for India invited me on a mission trip to India. It was just eye-opening to me. We went back into the poor rural areas. Not to the cities, but to the backwoods areas. And you know, there were no real hotels there. There were a few trucker hotels, if you want to call them that, that were incredibly poor. We had to carry our own food in our suitcases. Cans of tuna and PowerBars, that sort of thing. Before I went to India, I didn't think bedbugs were real. Well, one night I got into bed, and I popped out in about two seconds. Bedbugs had just bitten my back, and it was full of red welts. I want to tell you, I believe in bedbugs now. That night, I slept on a wooden coffee table, because my bed was full of those bedbugs. The next day, we went to a rural church way out in the backwoods. It had no roof, and it had only a dirt floor. There were no chairs, so we sat on the dirt floor, and we worshiped. And it was one of the greatest worship services I've ever been part of. I can still hear the joy in their voices as these people sang. They sang for about 20 or 30 minutes, and then the pastor began to take requests. And one woman, about 30 years old, raised her hand. It was actually only a stub. She had no fingers. Leprosy had taken all of the fingers off her hand, as well as most of both her ears and all of her nose. She was terribly disfigured. She made her request, and the pastor translated it for me. Would you want to guess what it was? "Count Your Many Blessings, One by One." I'll never forget this. This woman actually thought she was blessed. She was a blessed person, even with leprosy. Thankfulness gives us perspective. Thankfulness makes ordinary people tough, so that they can survive tough times. This Christmas, I hope you will give yourself the best Christmas gift ever. No one else can give it to you. Only you can give it to yourself. And that is to develop the habit of thankfulness. To count your many blessings every day, all day. I sure hope you enjoyed the worship service, and I pray that God's blessing and favor would rest upon your family this Christmas. "Pastor Mike and I wish you a very merry Christmas. God bless you. Bye-bye."