Faith Empowered Thanksgiving

“Scripture says gratitude is happy to have coffee — faith-empowered thanksgiving is happy with who’s pouring it, even when the cup is empty.”

Sermon Summary

What do you do with a gift you never wanted? Scripture doesn't dodge that question — it walks straight into it. There's a scene of worship breaking out not over blessing, but over judgment — voices crying out in gratitude not because everything is good, but because God is sovereign over everything, the good and the unbearable alike. Scripture calls that thanksgiving too, and maybe the truest form of it.

Most of us know the easy kind. Someone hands you something good, you say thank you, they say you're welcome. Scripture treats that as a starting line, not a finish line. It traces a much longer road — from being thankful for a gift, to being thankful for the giver, to being thankful for a relationship strong enough to hold you when the gift disappears, to being thankful for who God is even when you don't understand what's happening to you at all. And further still, to a kind of thanksgiving that shows up when what you've been handed looks nothing like a gift — when it looks, honestly, like a cup of mud.

Scripture doesn't explain away suffering, and it doesn't promise you'll understand it. What it offers instead is a way to be thankful in the middle of it, because the One holding it all is trustworthy even when the picture doesn't make sense yet.

Scripture lays out that road in stages, each one deeper than the last, and each one asking more of your faith than the one before it. Most people live somewhere in the middle without realizing it.

This week's message unpacks all five levels of that journey.

Sermon Text: Colossians 3.17

Date: July 19, 2026

Preacher: Todd Pylant

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