This is the Truth Network. Welcome to "If Not for God: Stories of Hopelessness That Turn to Hope." Here is your host, Mike Zwic. If Not for God with Mike Zwic, I've got the owner of the Truth Network, Stu Epperson Jr., and. I tell you what, guys. I am excited about his new book, and especially with Thanksgiving coming up so quickly.
But Stu, what inspired you to write this book?
Well, Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. Maybe my favorite holidays, hands down. I think I like it better than Christmas. I like it much better than Halloween. I don't even consider that.
I consider that Reformation Day. But you know, we look at Thanksgiving, and oftentimes we kind of start it there, we stop it there. We're grateful, and then we move on to you know the biggest shopping day of the year happens to be what many see as Thanksgiving is a little roadblock, right? To get so I can get to Black Friday, right? Right, right, right.
You know, so you're thinking, okay, well, what is this really significant? What is what does it mean to be thankful? What's the what's the biblical theology? Of gratitude, and as I started thinking about that more and more, and as I started studying a specific Bible verse, which really is one Thessalonians chapter five verse eighteen, which basically says, "In everything, give thanks." This is God's will in Christ Jesus concerning you. I started studying that, and it started studying me, Mike, and I tell you.
God's word is so powerful, and I'm just telling you, if a lug nut, not the sharpest bulb in the drawer, can write a whole book on one Bible verse, a pastor can preach a whole sermon on one Bible verse. It's like a steak. Would you just stuff a steak down your throat with one bite? No, man, you'd cut it up. You'd enjoy the taste.
You enjoy the ribbing of a ribeye, you know, and the the delicious flavors, right? And and the sides and the whole meal, and so. Kind of setting the Thanksgiving table. Hey, this is bigger than just one day of the year. You know where we're going to pause and we're going to you know not go out to eat.
We're going to have family. We have a you know fire in the fireplace and have a lot of food, fun, family fellowship, and don't forget football. Hey, it's bigger than that. This is a something that goes pervades our whole life. You know, this is a whole calendar.
This is a three sixty five, twenty four seven affair. That's so rich and so powerful, and that's the whole essence of the book. Getting into a theology of what Thanksgiving is, and why really Thanksgiving should become thanks living.
Well, and I'm sure, and I've I've seen this over the years that it's hard to be depressed and at the same time grateful and thankful. That's right. You can't have you your mind can't think two thoughts at the same time, and so you're either going to go the way of depression, grumbling. Upsettedness, selfishness—all this comes out of kind of narcissism. And if you think about your problems long enough, you will be depressed.
I can assure you that. Jeremiah seventeen says, "The heart is deceitful, desperately wicked. Who can know it?" So even when you are talking to yourself, you can you go down a real negative track. But when you start to give thanks, you start saying, "Hey, hey, everyone listening right now, just stop for a second and think of one thing you are thankful for." So before Thanksgiving, you have to have Thanksgiving, right? You got to get in your mind.
As a man thinks in his heart, so is he, right? Proverbs.
So what are you thinking about?
So think about something you're thankful for. Hey, think about the person that shared the gospel with you for the first time. Where were you? Who was that? I mean, they obviously.
were there doing that, so you could hear the gospel. They could have been somewhere else doing something else, right? But they shared the Lord with you. They brought you to the Lord. The person that taught you Sunday school when you were just knee high, just a little guy, you know, and they they came in, and man, they had a lot going on, and man, they they had the long conversation.
Their wife, I don't know if I am going to be a Sunday school teacher. I don't know if I want to fool around with that. These kids, man, what if they laugh at me? What if I can't connect with them? But that person sacrificed.
You know, I just got a thank you card. From a science school teacher of mine, listen to this. She was simply, probably fresh out of college, and she volunteered and was my science school teacher, my associate teacher, assistant teacher. She kind of organized things, maybe brought cookies or donuts sometimes. When I was in high school, at Calvary Baptist Church, somehow she got my address.
You know what she's done for the last forty years. I just got my fortieth birthday card from her on October sixteenth, my birthday. She sent me a birthday card for forty years. Huh. You know what that means?
In that card, she always sends a card with a cool note that's you know the the all right the already Hallmark variety, you know, with a poem. But then she hand writes something in there every time, and she says things like "I'm praying for your ministry." So if you look at the last forty years of my life. Anything God's done in me through me, anyone that's come to Christ, maybe that's been encouraged, maybe from one of these books I've written, maybe from a broadcast being on your show, whatever. There's been a lady, a sweet lady, praying for me for 40 years. She sent me a birthday card this year, so I stopped.
I kept the card, and I wrote her a thank you note, a handwritten thank you note. And I wrote, "Thank you so much for forty years. This, I think, this is like the fortieth year or so of the cards. Thank you for taking time to send this to me. Thank you for pouring into me as your one of your students forty years ago.
I am just trying to figure life out, like what is the Bible, how do you pray, how do you deal with conflict, you know, just all this stuff. How do you handle relationships?" And this godly lady. Poured into all of us. We were just kind of wet behind the ears kids. And I sent her a copy of my book, Thanks Living, a signed copy because I know the author, so he signed it, very kind.
And I said, "Look, I said, thank you for this, and thank you for being a blessing, and for all those prayers." And everyone listening, someone watching, listening this, you have someone that has blessed you, that's poured into you, that's taking time, that's taking you to school every day. How about a parent? How about a grandparent? How about an aunt? How about an uncle?
How about a sibling? That insisted you ride to church with him. I'm not taking you to lunch unless you let me drive you to church. And maybe it was that moment at that church where you gave your heart to Christ. How about writing them a thank you note?
How about sending them a DM? How about texting them? How about using this this smartphone for something that's not dumb, like a thank you note or a DM or a text? Thank you for being there for me. Hey, thank you.
Boss man, for hire me. The first guy that gave me, that hired me to work at a job. You hired me. You gave me a break. No one else wanted to hire me.
So you think about practically when you start doing that. It changes your whole. They they they say the psychiatrist, the neurologist, the the brainiacs out there, the researchers. They say it actually stops Alzheimer's. It reverses that.
It has anti aging benefits to it, big time. Health benefits, mental health benefits. You mentioned that about you know a depressing thought versus a gratitude thought. You know, but spiritually, let's go deeper. Deeper.
There's a foundation. There's an old rugged cross that my gratitude is ultimately anchored in. And it's called grace, and so you can't really have genuine, eternal, meaningful, substantial gratitude without grace.
So just start asking yourself this question: What is grace? What do I have from God that I earned, that I worked for, that I deserved? And you know, a guy wrote a book called "What's So Amazing About Grace." I love that. Dr. Jeremiah wrote a book on Amazing Grace.
Just powerful. If you think about that, you think about what God has done for me. You can start making a list of things that, like the whole Bible, is that, and there could be volumes and volumes of what God's done for you in your life, so you could be following Him today and doing a radio show. You know, Zwick, you got stuff in your life you're probably grateful for, but if not for God, you wouldn't be here.
Well, it's true, Stu, and and one of the things that I just saw recently is, is there was a study done by Harvard University, and they showed that people who had a positive mental attitude. Lived eleven to fifteen percent longer lives, and so yeah, we want to eat the healthy foods, we want to exercise, we want to do all that stuff. But man, if you think about it, if you just live ten percent longer, if the average person lived to be eighty, that means you you're on average, not not guaranteed, but on average, gonna live another eight years. And so, to me, part of having a positive attitude is yes, not complain. But then, on the other hand, in addition to not complaining, it's also being grateful.
And when I am spending time counting my blessings and praising God, I don't know about you, but first thing in the morning, we spend time in worship, we spend time in prayer, and we spend time in the Word. And it is very hard for me to be depressed when I do all of those things. But you know. What what inspired you the most to to write this book?
Well, let me just get get. Let me correctly frame what you just said. You are saying that if people buy this book, they're going to live a lot longer. I like that. I like that.
There you go. The publisher is really going to like that, Moody. You know, honestly, we do it every year. We do Thanksgiving every year. Just like we do Christmas every year, and every year we say He is the reason for this season, right?
Every year we put up, we try to put things up to remind people that spiritually, there is something bigger here, right? Than just the food in front of me and the people around me. There is a amazing, loving, gracious, giving, and forgiving God who has done so much for me, right?
So I go through, I've been through the motions. I've had Thanksgivings where I didn't feel thankful, right? But I still had to go around the table and give something per mom and dad. I am thankful for, right? And now, as a father myself and a grandfather, I make everyone go around the table.
What are you thankful for? And I try to ask people to say something that maybe spiritually inclined, you know, something a little more deeper, a little more than just I am thankful for this cool new sweater, or I am thankful that my Cowboys are up at halftime, and unfortunately, I am in here eating and not in there watching into the game. And right, but whatever. But here is the thing. What inspired me, Michael, is this little verse in Thessalonians that I've quoted for years, but I've never really studied.
And then I started really studying it about eight years ago, and it started studying me. And in that journey, in that process, God started convicting me about the linear nature, the ongoing nature of. Gratitude and Thanksgiving, and that's how the title came. Thanks Living. You know, we have a little website, MyThanksLiving dot com.
We have Thanks Living bracelets that'll give you a verse of the. There's a QR code that'll take you to the site. It'll give you one verse every day for every day of the year, a gratitude verse, just to anchor you back in what God has done. And I started looking at this verse, man. I got the five A's of five eighteen, and I'm telling you.
It is rich, all the stuff in there. I hope, I wish every pastor would preach this verse on Thanksgiving, on the Sunday before Thanksgiving. Wouldn't that be cool? It would be. And so, if somebody's listening and they go, "Well, you know, why should I pick up this book?" Yeah, well, because Michael Zwicky says this book.
When Michael Zwicky speaks, people listen. I would say you pick this book up, Michael, because you want.
Well, you want to be encouraged. There's five reasons basically. First, you will have a verse memorized that you maybe don't have memorized. That's pretty cool having God's word, God's voice in your head instead of your voice and other voices and all the other noise and nonsense, right?
Okay, the world's voice. There's plenty of that out there.
So you have a verse memorized. Number two, you have a verse you can meditate on. You go back to the idea of a stake. You're chewing God's word. His delight is in the law of the Lord.
Psalm one, verse two says, and verse three. In His law, He meditates day and night. And the idea of meditate there, and that word, the Hebrew word is ruminate, which comes from the idea of a cow. A cow has seven bellies.
So a cow chews the cud, and I don't want to mess up your lunch or your breakfast. But when a cow chews, he he brings it back up and he deposits it in another. Cavity, another stomach of his seven different stomachs, so he is getting every absolute molecule of nutrition that's in that grass, so that he can make the best milk, he can have the most protein, he can he can and he can be ultimately the the steak dinner for someone one day that's the most savory, delicious.
So you'll have a verse to meditate on.
Okay. Thirdly, you'll have something that is something you can share with somebody. You can teach it. I give you a basic five A's of five eighteen outline that are real simple that take you right through the verse.
So it's something you can teach. I would say fourthly, it is something that you can use as a gospel tool. There is something about God's word. Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God. Use it in evangelism.
Ask someone, hey, where does gratitude come from? Ask ask one of your secular guys that talks about that quotes the Harvard studies and all the gratitudes things. Ask them, hey, what's the source of all gratitude? You know, because like the Big Bang, where did it come from? Where did it come from?
Where did it come from? Well, where did the where did the monkey come from? Where where the the you know the glob of of whatever come from? And the tadpole, right? It all goes back to the Creator.
Someone had to start all this, right? Yeah. And so you know, so gratitude's the same way. It all goes back to an old rugged cross, where my Savior paid everything for me, and gave me His life, and took my sin. The great exchange, the imputation of His righteousness to me and my unrighteousness on Him.
He who He, God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. 2 Corinthians 5:21.
So you start using it as a witnessing tool, man. You're using God's word, and it's powerful. And the fifth thing is, it's it's a it's a little bitty book. I mean, I'm not the brightest knife in the drawer. I'm not.
I spend a lot more time in the basketball court than I did in the weight room. And so it's just a it's a simple little shareable thing.
So you can pick the book up for cheap, you know, at Amazon or wherever, and you can get or go to mythanksliving. dot com. T here is links. You can buy it in bulk for your church. A lot of pastors are getting it for their church.
I said one pastor bought two hundred. Bought two hundred. Yeah, he's going to give it to like all of his leaders at Christmas or Thanksgiving time. You know, he could give it at Christmas time. He could give it in July.
He could give it on July Fourth because the point of the book is to say, hey, don't limit this gratitude practice to a day or to a season. Make it something that's all over your life all the time, and watch what God does to that. Yeah, I mean it's good, and and it's. I don't think this is the kind of thing where we could say a quick prayer and maybe put some oil on somebody and go, "Okay, you're good. You're good with the gratitude for the rest of your life." This is something that you have to practice on a daily basis.
And you know, I heard a guy one time, and he said this: is Les Brown. He he may be a Christian, but he was a motivational speaker. But what he said was this: is he says, "If you want to be negative," he said. That's not something that you really have to work on," he said. "You just kind of be," he said.
"But if you want to be positive, that's something that you have to work on because our natural tendencies, going back to the book Thanks Living, our natural tendencies do are to complain, grumble, tell everybody how bad everything is, and and moan about everything that's going on with us. It's not always natural to. Look at our gratitude list and to spend time thanking God for what we're thankful for. How would you recommend that somebody start that habit? That's a great question, Michael.
I would say that you just start it like anything. Like you start it like I write. I'm not a great writer, but I but when I write a note to someone to thank them, I always start with the words "thank you." So just start with those words, and that kind of will unlock your pen and your mind and your heart. Use the words a lot. Teach your kids how to say thank you.
Teach them more importantly why to say thank you. You know, and go to the Lord and just you know just to make a list of things God has done for you. What has Jesus done for me? Why am I even here today? Why am I even on a Christian radio show talking about God and talking about gratitude and talking about what He's done for me?
Well, because He's done it. He's done a miracle in my life. He's done something supernatural in me that I did not deserve, to save me, to make me new, to give me a new heart, to seal me with the Holy Spirit, to adopt me into His family. Wow! When I, while I was yet a sinner, when I deserved death, when I was an enemy of God, like Ephesians two describes, but God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love, wherewith He loved us.
For by grace you are saved through faith. He has given me everything. What can I give back?
Well, let's see. Can I best that? Can I die on the cross for someone? I came and die on the cross. I don't care how brutal it is for myself because I'm a sinner.
There needed to be a spotless, sinless sacrifice. And that was the one who was wounded for my transgressions; he was bruised for my iniquities. And by his stripes I am healed. He's the one who came and took my place, died in my place on that cross for me. How the Christ died for our sins, and he's the one that came on a rescue mission for me.
So what do I do? I live a life of gratitude. The Puritans and the Reformers nailed it. They said the two keys the whole Christian life. They said if you could sum up every volume of systematic theology, every biblical exposition of soteriology, and all of the classics and all of the scriptures, if you could put it all into two words, they said the sum of the Christian life is grace and gratitude.
So if you are not a grateful person, if you don't have any thanksgiving in your life. If you don't have, if you are a grumbler by nature all the time doing it, we are by nature's grumbler, by the way. Grumbling is the language of hell. Gratitude is language of heaven.
Okay, if that's you, there's a good chance you haven't experienced God's grace, or maybe you have, and you've kind of drifted away and you've gone to a dark place. And God, maybe through this crazy, fallen, messed up guy like me and Zwick, is calling you back to Him, and He's saying, "Stop it with this." Wake up! He's trying to shake you up to wake you up. Maybe the circumstances have gone so dark in your life that it's time you let the light of His Word in. It's time you got around other believers who are also messed up.
It's not a—it's not some crystal palace the church is. No, it's a daggum—it's a battleship. It's also a hospital.
Okay, get in there, get some healing, and get some gratitude. And start thanking God that you He gave you another day to live, to listen to this broadcast, to be encouraged, to go out there, and in everything give thanks. Thank you that it's His will. Thank you that it comes only through Christ Jesus. It is what he did.
Go to him. Obsessed with what Jesus did. Think about every aspect of his atonement, from his baptism to fulfill all righteousness. You couldn't be baptized to be saved, for Pete's sake, because you are not righteous enough. That water is going to get you wet.
It's not going to wash anything away. You needed the perfect righteousness of Christ imputed to you. His perfect life. He lived the perfect life. We're saved by his life.
Romans chapter five reminds us. You needed his atonement on that cross, the shedding of without the shedding of. There is no remission of sins. Thank Him for shedding, for dying, for hanging in darkness for three hours, rejected and forsaken by everyone, including His own Father, so that we could be accepted and we could be brought in and adopted.
So the Son took our sin, so God could make us sons.
So thank Him for the empty tomb. The tomb is empty, so my life doesn't have to be. Right, he said, "It is finished." So I'm not finished, right? But my sin is defeated, man. If I'm a Christian, I have everything to look forward to.
What in the world? The unbeliever. If you don't know Christ right now, hey, you better live this life up and enjoy it. You better eat, drink and be merry. You better party, hook up with whatever and whoever, and go live it out, buddy.
Because this is the best it's ever going to be for you. Because the moment you die, and you're already miserable right now. You just all these these things are just fig leaves to cover your pain and your misery. When you die, it's hell to pay forever. If you're a believer, hell has been paid forever by Jesus on the cross for you.
If you're a believer, you've received that gift. You know what that means? This is the this is the worst that this is going to worse is going to be. I'm looking out at leaves changing, the beautiful time of year, and I'm looking at. I mean, I'm in here doing this, sharing Jesus with people, and you know, you know, and I'll get laughed at, I'll get, I'll get, I'll get beat up a little bit for being a Christian, but nothing like Paul, who was striped, who was stoned, who was thrown in dun.
You know who was accosted and absolutely beaten for his faith? Believers in Christ today, all over the world, in India, in the Middle East, in the Far East, and all over Asia, are beaten today. While we're speaking, someone will be executed because they love Jesus. And you know what? Those people counted all joy.
How could they have more joy than me when I'm a healthy, walking around? I'm not going to miss a meal today. Right, I'm I'm I'm able to do all these things. I want to go somewhere. I get in my car and drive there.
I mean, look what God has given me.
So gratitude reminds us of from whence it came. It reminds us from whom we came and and and who has blessed us. Like the the great song, the great you know doxology. Praise God from whom all blessings flow.
So that's why we go back to that first word in everything. That's the amount. If you read the book, you'll get all the five A's breakdown of each one of them. Tons of good stories, analogies, and encouragement for you. And at the end of every chapter, there's a we're going to work it out.
We have thanks living, three or four questions, and then we have living thanks. A little challenge for you and me. Hey, call someone, thank them for teaching you your first Bible verse. Call someone. And just give them an encouragement, and pray with someone today, and thank God for putting them in your life.
Write a note to someone, a thank you note. Right, you know, send a DM, send a text. I got all these little practical things in there, like I shared earlier in the show, for you to do. It's just a little. It's just a little way to turn your your orthodoxy into orthopraxy, and and to really live out the gospel.
I mean, this is walking with Christ, growing in Christ, and that's why that word, thanks, living. Embracing the power of hope every day—it's a daily exercise. And you'd be surprised. Watch the fog lift if you just stop right now and start. Even when someone attacks you, when someone's mean to you, and you're in a really bad situation, just stop and give thanks to God.
Hey, you're still alive, Matthew Henry. Great story, the great theologian, Matthew Henry. Got he got this guy got mugged, he got beat up real bad and robbed. They asked Matthew Henry about this just after the incident. You know what he said?
What he said? Listen to his gratitude from Matthew Henry, the great theologian. I love his commentary. I use his commentaries a lot. Matthew Henry said this.
He says, first of all, I'm thankful that this was the first time I have I had never been robbed before. That's the first thing he said. The second thing he said is, though they took my purse, they spared my life. He said, "I'm thankful for that." He said, "I'm thankful that even though they took everything I had on me, all my possessions, they didn't take everything I had." And then finally, he said, "I'm thankful that it was I who was robbed, and not I who robbed." That's right, and and Stu, I'm going to let you finish the final three minutes of the show. But what I wanted people to know is this: is that all they have to do is to go to the website, um, and and they can pick up the book on the website, and then tell them one more time why they should listen to the show or pick up the book.
Go ahead. I'll tell you, it's it's just a simple, basic. You know, we've talked a lot about this. The fact that the world, you know, everything that's good in the world comes from God.
So you think about how the world uses little catchphrases like, "Hey, in business, treat others like you want to be treated." Well, that's where does that come from? We all know that comes from Christ. Love your neighbor as yourself. All these things, servant leadership.
Now, that's a big thing. That's a big catchphrase. Listen to this. In secular companies, they're saying the greatest of us. We want to serve.
We want to come underneath our employees. We want to pick them up. We want to call them team members. We want to lift them up higher, as opposed to cracking the whip on them or or you know pulling them, dragging them, you know, by their teeth to do things. We want to motivate and encourage, and we want to serve them.
We want to lead by serving.
Well, that's. What Jesus did, right? He laid down the his robe. He picked up a rag. He washed those disciples' feet.
The same thing is true of gratitude.
Now, the secular world is talking about how you need a gratitude journal, take gratitude walks, be thankful, make a little list every day of gratitude, do some gratitude exercises, gratitude breathing.
Well, this all comes from the scripture. It's the Bible. That says, "In everything, give thanks." It's the Christian who has more cause and more reason to give thanks and to express gratitude than any other person. Why? Because we've been given the indescribable gift of Jesus Christ, salvation, eternal life.
Oh, my soul! For God so loved the world, He gave.
So, what do we do? We give thanks. That's the beauty and the power of gratitude.
So, thanks, living. The goal of it is to take you there to encourage you. MyThanksLiving dot com. You can order these gratitude bracelets that'll remind you. Hang it on your arm.
Get one for the youngsters. I got. I got. The host here has one. The the the Michael Zwicky himself actually has one of the first ones.
These just where we just brought these and gave them out at Wednesday in the Word.
So it's just if you hit the QR code on the bracelet, it will take you to one gratitude verse a day for. All three three hundred sixty-five days of the year, just to remind us to look up and to thank God for all He's done for us, for all that He's done for us, and I carry this around. The blood-stained nail, Stu. That's yours. I've got more, so thank you.
I'll take it. I'll put it in my pocket. Great reminder to be grateful. Yeah, yeah. Hey, no matter how bad things are, I haven't been crucified lately.
So make sure to pick up the book, "Thanks Living" by Stu Epperson Jr. I'm reading it right now, and happy Thanksgiving, guys. God bless you. If Not for God. All right for my YouTube channel.
If not for God, with Mike Zwicky, just like subscribe and hit that notification bell, so you'll be alerted when we have our next video.
