Gratitude - Summer in the Psalms - Sermons - Matt Baker - 7.5.26

**Matt Baker** (0:04)
Well, good morning Church fam, how are we doing this morning? Good. All right. I like the enthusiasm. Hey, well, my name is Matt. If I had the joy of meeting you, I serve as your Director of Adult Discipleship here at Storyline. Hey, I hope everybody had a fun-filled and safe holiday weekend celebrating the 4th of July. Did anybody eat your fair share of ice cream and, I don't know, hot dogs and burgers? Anybody? We grilled last night and my daughter, she's the pickiest six-year-old in the world. She requested pancakes with peanut butter on top. So that's what baby girl got. At least she got some protein. And if it wasn't for peanut butter or yogurt, she would like fade away, I truly believe. Man, we had a blast. We saw some fireworks last night and I thought they were illegal. Apparently not. Colorado, you know how to do fireworks. It's crazy. Man, I, for one, I'm grateful that we live in a country where it is free to come and worship the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. Well, hey, we are going to continue in our Sermon on the Psalms series. And man, I'm excited. So far, we've already unpacked the emotions of joy and delight. Anybody remember two other ones? Love. Okay. Last week, Pastor Josh unpacked courage. I don't know why I did this. Strength. I don't know. Courage. Today, we're going to be looking at turn attention to gratitude. And we're going to be in Psalm 138 So if you have a Bible and hope that you brought yours today, we're going to be in it for the next 30 or so minutes. Psalm 138, as you're turning there, would you just join me in praying?
Father, we are so grateful. God, that we get to know you, that we get to come and worship you freely in this space.
God, thank you for the work you're doing in this church. God, thank you for the work you're doing and all the Bible-believing, gospel-believing, Jesus-exalting churches in our community. God, we pray for more. We pray for more and more. God, thank you for these people.
What a sweet people that they are. God, I pray that you would help rid our minds and our hearts of any and all distractions.
God, remind us that as we come to your word, God, you promise that you will open us up by the power of your word. Help us to see the beauty and the wonders that are here.
Holy Spirit, once again, we ask that you would be on the move, that you would lead in God in your truth. Father, help us to be able to see what it looks like to truly be a grateful people.
Father, we love you. We thank you. It's in the match. In the name of King Jesus, we pray. Amen. Well, hey, my family and I, we are coming up to a huge milestone for us. We have been in Arvada, Colorado for just about a year. We moved here last July. And man, in a lot of ways, it's like gone by really fast. In some ways, it has not gone by really fast. If anybody has had the joy of buying a new house, or just moving into any space, right? It could be as move-in ready as they make you believe. But inevitably, there's going to be some projects that need to be done, or your spouse will tell you that need to be done. What you need to know about me. Man, and this is no joke, my wife will be here next hour. Something that she laments, if not every week, maybe even every day, is that I am not handy at all. Like, I'm just not. I can't fix things. I can't build things. Like, if we get IKEA, I get so frustrated at following the instructions. Who did this? Like, I can't put up a curtain rod. I just, there's things that I can do. I like people, I like teaching, and I like, but I can't do stuff around the house. Which my wife has grown to, I guess to be okay with that. Another area of home ownership that I just struggle with is lawn maintenance. I know some of y'all are crazy, and like, lawn maintenance is like your hobby. Like, your front yard looks like Augusta National, and I do not understand how it's possible. Like, aren't we in a drought? Aren't we? Don't we have water restrictions here? I don't know. Like, I'm inviting, I'm doing my share so that you can break rules. Okay.
I know, like, I know in theory, okay, what it would take for me to have a nice, pristine lawn, okay? I've heard that you probably should seed your lawn. I don't know if you do that in the fall or in the spring. I know that you probably got to do some sort of like, you got to feed the lawn fertilizer. I don't know when to do that, but that's probably something you should do. And I do know, I do know this, is that you probably should be watering your yard consistently. Now, am I in the habit of doing any of those things? Not very consistently. I just chalk it up to the past year has been crazy. It's been absolutely crazy. But I know in theory what it takes for us to do that. Also, about six months ago, I learned this new thing I thought people were playing a joke on me. They said, hey Matt, you really need to get your sprinklers blown out. I was like, that's not real, that's not a thing. They're like, no, Fura, you need to do it. I was like, what does that mean? What do I do? I don't know. So I just called somebody, he did it. He probably took all my money because he thought I was just gullible. So I did that. But I know if you were to come to my house, you would see my front yard, you'd be like, hey Matt, you're front yard and don't even get me started on the backyard. It leaves much to be desired. I would say, I know, I know. But I so badly wanted to look good. I know there are things that I should be doing, but my philosophy of when it comes to lawn maintenance is just to hope for the best. It's just hope for the best. Maybe guys can bring some rain, maybe this drought will end and then maybe I'll wake up one day and it seems like, boom, just perfect, beautiful, immaculate lawn. I wonder if that hope for the best mentality is how many of us approach gratitude. Hey Matt, in theory, I know that gratitude is something that I should want to be. I should want to be grateful. But you're not taking any steps towards actually intentionally following through with that. I just wonder if there's anybody here, and this is my hope this morning, is that we would see what biblical gratitude truly is. It's this, it's remembering, it's praying, and it's trusting in God at all times. It's remembering, it's praying and trusting in God at all times. Hopefully everyone would say, hey, I'm on board with that. Like, sign me up, I'm with it. But maybe there's that one guy, maybe that one gal, it's like, you know what? I'm still, I still don't know if I need to just give all this effort and intentionality towards gratitude. All right, let me persuade you, we're gonna be in the Bible for about the next 30 minutes. But for the next two minutes, can I persuade you with some science? Okay, here we go. All right, are there positive impacts to gratitude on our body? I wanna say yes, but here, these blew my mind when I was doing some research over the past couple weeks. All right, number one, expressing thanks decreases activity in the amygdala, I think, which is the brain's fear center. This significantly lowers levels of cortisol, the stress hormone. So if you want to have less stress in your life, you know what you ought to do? Be grateful. Practice gratitude. Okay, next is this. A Harvard study, so you already know this is legit, it's from Harvard. A Harvard study tracking older adults found that those in the highest third of gratitude scores, don't miss this, had a 9% lower risk of dying over a four-year period compared to those in the bottom third. Translation, if you want to live longer, which you doesn't want to live longer, you should practice gratitude. Okay, I feel like I didn't get you with those two, but I will for sure get you with this one. All right, daily gratitude exercises, like journaling for just 15 minutes, can result in a 25% increase in sleep quality. That's amazing, right? Who wants to sleep better, sleep longer, then practice gratitude. Now, these are awesome, but it points to the fact that God, our creator, our designer, created our bodies to respond in such a way like this to gratitude.