Colossians 2:6-15: What Are You Thankful For?

Introduction:

My passage is Colossians 2:6-15. You can turn there now. What are you thankful for? As you think back over the last year 2017 what are some things that make you feel particularly blessed? If we are honest though. Thankfulness is something that we often find hard. And we find it hard because the priorities of our hearts are wrong. We focus on the wrong things and thus we find ourselves
disappointed and ungrateful, don’t we? Christmas presents and thankfulness:

• Christmas as children
• Christmas as an adult: getting pineapple socks

And retailers know that we find contentment and thankfulness, hard don’t they? That is what boxing day sales and new year sales are all about. Boxing day adverts succeed by tapping into our discontentment and dissatisfaction. By manipulating our lack of thankfulness for the things we already have. Retailers know that, if they can poke at the right nerve, they can steal our attention and get their hands on our money.

We experience a similar temptation as Christians too don’t we. We as Christians have so many things to be thankful for. By God’s grace, and his grace alone, we see our own sin. By God’s grace, we have come to trust Christ. By God’s grace we have received forgiveness. We have been adopted into God’s family. We have been given a new heart. We have the Holy Spirit. God is by the Spirit slowly making us like Christ. And Christ is coming back to usher us into our eternal home with him.

We have so much to be thankful for. But we don’t find thankfulness easy do we. How many times even this week have you found yourself grumbling to God? How many of your prayers are in truth complaints in disguise? Where are you at as we enter 2019? Thankful or Ungrateful? Content or discontent? In Colossians 2, our passage this evening, Paul is confronting his
audience with this very question.