Not So Fast: The Last Thing to Do in 2025

0:03 Hey, Summit family, Brian Leritz here. I'm excited to share the Word of God with you. If you have your Bibles, why don't you go ahead and grab them? We're going to be in Psalm 103 as we wrap up this year, 2025. Can't believe I'm even saying those words. You know, when I graduated from college, yearbooks were a thing. I don't know if yearbooks are still a thing now, but as a senior, I remember sitting down for my picture. They take the picture and then the yearbooks come out later on. And what they had us do, all of us college graduates, they had us to actually write some words, parting words, reflecting on our time there. You know, some people, they just took some moments to actually thank meaningful professors who had played a pivotal role in their lives. Other people thanked the institution. It was a Bible college and for the solid biblical foundation that they felt like they received as they were preparing to launch out into the real world. And then if you were to get a hold of that yearbook and you were to flip to my words, you would only read five words.

1:08 And forgive me, I can't believe I did this, but my five words were on to the next thing. Yep, that's exactly what I said. My mom is still giving me grief, on to the next thing. See, I was so excited. I was going to, I just graduated, was graduating from a Bible college in Philadelphia, was headed out to California where I was so, so looking forward to starting seminary as well as I had secured a job at a church out there that I was really excited about. And so here I am graduating from college, but I didn't even take time to reflect. I didn't even take moments to actually say thank you and to sit in gratitude. My thoughts were simply on what's next. I was so fixated on what was coming that I really couldn't actually appreciate and really express thanks and gratitude for what I had just experienced.

2:04 Maybe that's some of you. Maybe some of you are type A personalities like myself. We're rounding out 2025. We're on the precipice of 2026. So maybe you're already thinking what's next. Maybe you're not using the words resolutions, but you're just looking forward to what's next, what kind of person you wanna be, what kind of habits you want to cultivate in the new year. And while there's a lot of great things that we can say about that, one of the drawbacks is, is for some of us, we can, again, get so fixated on the future that we don't take the time to pause and reflect and sit in gratitude and a sense of thanksgiving for the not-so-distant past. Maybe others of you, maybe this doesn't resonate with you because you're not as forward-thinking. Maybe you're laser focused on the now. Maybe you have tunnel vision, not just on the now, but maybe your personality type is you tend to dwell on what's not going well.

3:04 Well, as you can see, this too can be a problem because you can get so fixated on what's not going well that you fail to zoom out and to appreciate and give thanks for the good things, even in those painful things that have happened. Well, today, I want to just spend some time as we close out the year to just call us to just sit in gratitude. I want us to really unpack this biblical theological idea of actually what does it mean to be people who cultivate gratitude, not just something we do seasonally, but who operate out of a posture of biblical gratitude. You know, as we zoom out on scripture, one of the things that we see, especially in the Old Testament, is that when God moves in the life of his people, he doesn't want us to just rush past that. He actually wants us to mark the moment.

4:00 In fact, in the opening pages of Joshua, as the people of God, finally, after years of wandering around in the wilderness, after years of anticipating the promised land that God had said was coming their way, they cross the Jordan River. Miraculously, God opens it up. They get to the other side, and God says, not so fast. I actually want you to not have a mentality of on to the next thing. I actually want you to mark this moment. For them, what that meant was they got some stones, some stones of remembrance, so that in the years to come, when they were going back that way, maybe they had their kids with me and they saw those stones and their kids were to be like, hey, mom, hey, dad, what are those stones for? They could actually sit, stop, and reflect in gratitude on what God had done. I could even take you before that to the Red Sea and God miraculously opens up the Red Sea. They walk through on dry ground.

4:57 well, that next chapter, they practically spend the whole chapter in praise, in thanksgiving, in gratitude to God. So one of the lessons we see, and you don't have to go to seminary to figure this out, is that gratitude is a big deal to God, that when he moves in our lives, he doesn't want us to think onto the next thing. He actually wants us to mark the moment and to be people of gratitude. The flip side is also true and tragic. There are moments in the scriptures where people don't express appropriate gratitude. And what we see happening there are dire consequences. In 2 Chronicles 32, verse 35, it says, but Hezekiah did not make return according to the benefit done to him, for his heart was proud. Therefore, wrath came upon him and Judah and Jerusalem. You see what's happening there?

5:52 When King Hezekiah didn't express gratitude, the Bible says, actually, not just he experienced the wrath of God, but it also came upon the people of God. I hope you're getting it, that gratitude is a huge deal to God. It's not just something that is an elective in the journey of Christianity. It is actually core curriculum. Tim Keller says this, what you remember, what you mind, what's central to your thinking, what's central to your consciousness, sets the course of your life as a whole. If your mind is centered on the mercies you've received, you'll be a happy person. If it's centered on the injustices you received, you're a bitter person. It all depends on what you remember. You know, studies actually show that there's a direct correlation. We can draw a straight line between our health and well-being as individuals and whether or not we're people who express thanksgiving, gratefulness, gratitude. Gratitude is a big deal, not just to God. It's a big deal to our own sense of well-being. Now we come to Psalm 103. It is a Psalm that is all about gratitude. In fact, one commentator says that Psalm 103, it is the lyrical masterpiece of all of the Psalter. I love that. It's all about gratitude. In fact, one of the things you should notice as you read through the Psalms, many of the Psalms, at the start of it, there's a title.

7:25 Sometimes it says something to the effect of that this is addressed to the choir master. What you'll notice in Psalm 103, there is no title. It's not addressed to any specific person. Why is that? Well, I believe it's because David, the author of the Psalm, isn't so much talk to the masses directly as much as he is talking to himself. Look at how Psalm 103 opens up verse one. David writes, bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, David says again in verse two, O my soul. Do you see the personal pronouns there? David is saying, bless the Lord, oh, my soul and all that is within me. David is talking to himself and yet he's inviting you and I to kind of eavesdrop in on this conversation in which he's preaching to himself about gratitude. This whole psalm is all about what it means to be a grateful person.

8:35 Now, I want you to look, if you will, at the location of where gratitude should be. David isn't just talking about his mouth. In other words, he's not just coaching himself to say grateful things. David instead says, bless the Lord, oh, my soul. Soul is the deepest places and parts of who we are as a person. He moves from that and he goes on to say, and all that is within me, within, within. Now, the original language of our text is Hebrew, and the Hebrew word for within, forgive the grotesqueness of this, it is a word that simply means guts. I hope you're getting the picture. David is saying that I want the epicenter of who I am, my soul. I want the very guts of who I am to be a person of gratitude. You know, Corey and I, when our kids were little, like many of you who are parents, we were huge.

9:34 I think my biggest nightmare, Corey and I's biggest nightmare, among others, is that we did not want to release from our home entitled children. We wanted our kids to be people of gratitude. And so whenever someone did something nice for them, we were always coaching them to say thank you. If they got a gift at a birthday party, we wanted them to say thank you. There were even times in which we had them write thank you notes. I remember not too long ago, one of our kids went on a missions trip, and I coached him in how to raise money, and that money started to come in. And I said, okay, we got to now double back, and here's a stack of thank you notes. And I actually had him sit down and write thank you notes to the gifts that he had received. See, I wanted my kids to be grateful people, but here's the frustration we know as parents. While we can get gratitude in their mouths, our limitation as parents is that we cannot get gratitude into their souls.

10:36 We can't get it into their guts. It's one of my own frustrations as well. If I can just be incredibly honest to you, there have been plenty of times in my life where I've expressed gratitude with my mouth, but I haven't really felt gratitude. David wants us to understand that gratitude needs to be baked in into the core of who we are as the covenant people of God. Now, the question that I want to entertain for the remainder of our time together is, how do we get gratitude to move from our mouths into our innermost being? The Bible talks about out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. I want my heart, not just my mouth, in an authentic way, I want my heart to be filled with gratitude. So how do I move, again, gratitude from my mouth to my heart, my soul, to my guts, to that place that is within me? How does that happen?

11:33 Three things. First of all, David wants us to understand that if we're going to have gratitude at the very epicenter of who we are, that we need to be people who don't just listen to our soul, but we need to be people who preach to our soul. Again, David says, bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, the Hebrew word for bless. Again, it's this idea of saying good things, it's the idea of gratitude. David is speaking to himself. He's commanding the innermost part of who he is to be a person of gratitude. He's talking to himself. Now, let me just say this, very important. In this therapeutic age in which we live, we spend a whole lot of time being coached on the importance of listening to ourselves. I want you to hear me. That's incredibly important. And I can't tell you how much I've benefited from as I've sat with counselors and therapists from these very necessary skills of self-awareness and trying to process in real time, what am I feeling? What am I sensing here? That's an incredible gift. But here's the danger. We can spend an inordinate amount of time listening to ourselves to the point where ourselves, our feelings become the drivers of our lives.

13:00 And what I want us to understand is feelings make wonderful passengers, but horrible drivers. I want you to look at your feelings, the innermost part of who you are, sort of like a two-year-old child. Now, if you've got a two-year-old child, you understand you don't put them in a trunk. If you do that, you're probably going to be arrested as you should be. You're not a great parent. You don't stick them in the trunk. But equally problematic is if you gave the keys to your car to that two-year-old child. That's equally problematic. I'm going to go on a limb and say, that's not good. You're probably going to wreck. Instead, what do we do with our toddlers. We put them in a seat. We strap them in. When they talk to us, we dialogue with them. We talk to them. We don't ignore them. That's how I want you to see your feelings. You don't stuff them away. You don't neglect them. You don't cease to interact with them, but neither do you give your feelings the key to the car. You put them in their appropriate place.

14:05 You engage with them. You speak with them. You dialogue with them. David is modeling that to us right now. Listen, I understand for many of us, 2025 maybe has been a really rough year. If I could just be honest with you, there have been some loved ones in our family who've died. There have been some loved ones in my friend group who have died. I've sat in on a couple of very heart-wrenching funerals. I'm thinking about a buddy of mine who died of ALS, another buddy of mine who died of lung cancer. very, very hard things. And there's times in which I have felt down in the dumps, but I've also experienced some great things. And so there are times in which if I just listen to how I feel, gratitude is not going to come out, but I've got to be a kind of person who I've got to learn to become my favorite podcast preacher. And it's not just me. If I'm understanding David right to update the language, we all have to become our favorite podcast preachers. And one of the things we're going to have to preach to ourselves over and over and over again are sermons on the goodness of God to us, in which we say, bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name. Now, this is very important because that now leads us to the second thing, and that is we don't just have to listen to our soul. We have to preach to our soul. But secondly, we need to remember God's benefits. Cornelius Plantinga, if you're looking for a great book on gratitude, has just come out with a wonderful book called Gratitude. It's one of the best books that I read this year in my top 10, I would say. Cornelius Plantinga, a wonderful Jesus lover. He reminds us, he didn't come up with this, but he reminds us of a framework for gratitude. Essentially, he says, gratitude is predicated on three things. Number one, there is a benefactor, someone who's given something. For us, that would be God. Two, there is a beneficiary, someone who has received something good. That would be us. And then thirdly, there's a benefactor, beneficiary. Cornelius Plantaga

16:12 actually says there is a benefit. That is, there are good things that a benefactor has given to we beneficiaries. David picks up on this. That's why he says at the end of verse two, look at it with me and forget, speaking of God, not all his benefits, his benefits. Listen, I don't know what 2025 has been like for you, but the very fact that you are alive and breathing today, it is a benefit from God. One of the exercises that I like to do every single day, I'll get up early in the morning, I'll brew me a nice cup of coffee. I'll sit there in this special place in our home. I'll have my time with Jesus. But I always begin by rehearsing the benefits of God in my own life. At the end of every year, an exercise that I like to do is I take out my prayer journal. I just think through the previous year, and I'll literally write out the specific benefits of God to me and my family.

17:12 All of this is baked into what David means when he says that we are to be people who should not forget all of God's benefits. But now notice, the rest of Psalm 103 is now David, after teaching us to be people of gratitude, him actually showing us the benefits of God. I don't have time to get to all of it. Let me just give you three benefits of God that we should all be grateful for. Number one, in verse three, David says, here's one of the benefits. He says, of God who forgives all your iniquity. Iniquity there is a synonym for sin. Why should I be grateful? Because my sins are forgiven. Here's an exercise you should do before the end of the year. Just take some moments by yourself and just write down your lowest moments of the year as it relates to your own sanctification process, your own journey with Jesus this year?

18:10 What are those sins, those things that you've done or maybe are doing that are grieving the heart of God? And I don't want you to dwell too long on that. I want you to draw a straight line from that into his forgiveness. Here's what the Bible says. Write those sins down and then receive the forgiveness of God. As the word of God says, as far as the East is from the West is as far as he has removed our sins from us. First John chapter one, verse nine says, if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just not to remind us, not to beat us over the head, but to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. I was just reading recently a great passage in the Old Testament on the day of atonement. What the high priest would do is he would lay his hand on a goat and him laying his hands on that goat was emblematic of him transferring all of the sins of the people of God on that goat.

19:09 And then they would send that goat away into the wilderness, never to be seen again. It was emblematic of our sins being removed from us. Well, Jesus Christ is the ultimate scapegoat. When on the cross, all of our sins was laid on him, never to return. I don't know about you, but that's something to have gratitude, to be grateful to God for. What's something else we can be grateful to God for? What are another one of his benefits? Not only does he forgive all of our iniquity, but next David says, who heals all your diseases. Praise God, we serve a God who is a healer. And his healing isn't on the History Channel. It's not just something he did thousands of years ago that is kind of confined to the pages of Scripture. God is very much still in the business of healing.

20:02 If you know anything about our church, we are really big into multiplying. And part of the ways that we do that is we plant churches. One of my favorite church plants is pastored by a church planter who went through our residency, a guy by the name of Carlos Lollett. He pastors a wonderful church called Reality Miami. If you're ever down there, please go to that church. Amazing things are happening. One of his leaders is a friend of mine, a guy by the name of Gus. I was just with Gus not too long ago in Atlanta. We'd been praying really hard for Gus. He had a rare brain condition that he had been diagnosed with. He had gone back to the doctor to kind of get consultation next steps. He kind of figured that they were gonna tell him that surgery was needed. After he was diagnosed, he just kind of sent out an email to me and some other leaders, and we went to praying for him. And then he goes to the doctor and he gets stunning news. The doctor kind of scratches her head and says, this is the first time I've ever seen this, but I've been looking over your scans over and over and over again.

21:04 But that brain condition that I was prepared to talk to you about next steps, it's gone. And then she leans in. She happens to be a Muslim doctor, Gus told me. And she said to him, are you a person of faith? And Gus says, absolutely. He's wondering where this conversation is going. She says, I've seen your condition many, many times in my practice. This is the first time I've ever seen it go completely away. They have a wonderful conversation in which she says to him, as a person of faith, do you mind praying some specific things for me? Without saying it, what she was saying is, man, people have prayed for you. You've been miraculously healed. I want to invite you into some very personal things in my life. We rejoiced with Gus because here was a man who understood what David was saying. He's healed our diseases.

21:59 And that's exactly where some of you are right now. God's healed you. He's healed your diseases. Now, I know this opens up a can of worms. Again, I'm here to tell you there's been some meaningful people in my life just this year that, man, I fasted and prayed for, and they're no longer with us. And maybe as you reflect on 2025, one of the gut punches you've received is the same thing. I mean, I've prayed for individuals. And I just got to say, Brian, these individuals, they didn't receive healing in their lifetime. Well, remember Psalm 103, David, yes, he's talking to himself, but who's he inviting in on the conversation to eavesdrop in? The covenant people of God. And a part of what that means is, is that when we die, as David ultimately did, I mean, here's the guy who talks about healing all our diseases. Well, David has long since died. He's in the presence of God.

22:51 I want you to understand, and I don't say this as some kind of loophole or an excuse. Death is a form of healing. David and people who are in Christ to be absent from the bodies, to be present with the Lord, more alive than they've ever been in their lives. One of my buddies who died of ALS, I watched him suffer, but he's a Jesus lover. more alive than he's ever been in his life. One more thing you should know about this Hebrew word, when David talks about a God who heals all of our diseases, that word is also used sometimes in a spiritual sense. In fact, we see it in Isaiah chapter 53, when it talks about by his wounds, we are healed. So part of the healing, yes, it's death, but a part of the healing, this takes me back to the first thing is, is a spiritual healing that we've received. Some of you all look at your lives and the leaps ahead you've taken and the sanctification process and the things you used to struggle with.

23:50 You don't struggle anymore. That is a different kind of healing. We serve a God who is into comprehensive healing, physical and spiritual. Thirdly, and finally, when we think about the benefits of God, verse four, David says, here's another benefit who redeems your life from the pit. Back in David's day, a pit is exactly what it would sound like. It was a deep hole in the ground. It was so deep that if a person was placed inside of it, they couldn't get out of it by themselves. Some of us who may be a little bit more familiar with the Bible, one of the more popular stories is tucked away in Genesis, a guy by the name of Joseph, his brothers betray him. And right before they sell him into slavery, they put him in a pit, this deep hole in the ground that he can't get out of. David says, you ought to be a person of gratitude because we serve a God who redeems your life from the pit. What does that look like for us today in 2025 as we prepare to close out the year?

24:50 Is that if you keep living, you're going to find yourself in situations and circumstances that you cannot get out of on your own. And yet, some of you have testimonies that I've been in this situation and circumstance that looked hopeless and God took me out. For some of you, maybe it was your marriage was in a pit. You saw no hope, and yet God reached out, and your marriage is not just surviving, it's thriving. Others of you, maybe you've been on an infertility journey, and you've tried everything, and it felt like it was hopeless. You were in a pit, and now look at you. God has miraculously opened up the womb. Others of you, you've been in financial pits. You've been in all kinds of pits that the letters behind your name couldn't get you out of, your social network couldn't get you out of, and yet God has redeemed your life from the pit. All of these and so much more are reasons for us to not just say on to the next thing, but it's reasons for us to stop and celebrate and be people of gratitude.

25:53 Finally, how do I move gratitude from my mouth to the innermost part of who I am? How do I live out of a posture of gratitude as we close? David wants us to be people who rehearse the gospel, who rehearse the gospel. Last part of verse four, David says, who crowns you with, underline this phrase, steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagles. That phrase, steadfast love, it is one word in the Hebrew, it's hesed. No hyperbole here, but I actually think hesed is the most powerful word for sure in all of the Old Testament, if not in all of the Bible. It's used some 251 times in the Old Testament, 127 of those times it's used in the Psalms. Many of those times it's used by David. It's one of David's favorite words. Chesed means God's unending, unfailing, covenant faithfulness to his people.

26:50 One of the first places we see chesed, steadfast love, it's in Exodus chapter 34. Here are the people of God. They have sinned egregiously against God. They had constructed a golden calf. They had worshiped this golden calf in place of God. God then says to Moses, Moses, that's it. You can go into the promised land because I did promise that to you. I'm just not going with you. Moses says, no, you can't do that. He talks God out of it. God says, okay, Moses, here's what I'll do. I'll go with you. And then Moses gets greedy and he says, God, show me your glory. God tucks Moses into the cleft of a rock. He passes by him. And as he passes by, he proclaims his name to Moses, and he says these words to him. Exodus chapter 34, verses 6 and 7. The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in, here it is, steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands.

27:47 Of these names that God uses, the only one he uses twice is hesed, steadfast love. And it's in the context of the people of God sinning. God is saying, even though you've been faithless to me, I'm going to be faithful to you. Oh, friends, that is the gospel of Jesus Christ, that when we are faithless, God is faithful. Now, I'm not saying that to kind of green light us taking advantage of grace or us taking advantage of God, but the truth of the matter is, God has way more mercy than we have mess. This is exactly what Paul gets to, as he says in Romans 8, verses 38 and 39, for I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

28:45 Oh, you ought to give thanks to a God that even when we try to let go and do our own thing, squeezes us tighter. He's faithful even when we are faithless. Those are wonderful things to say thank you for. Let me close with this story. There's a guy by the name of Eddie Rickenbacker. It's a shame that name probably doesn't resonate with you. Eddie Rickenbacker, legendary pilot in World War I, won all kinds of awards. Later on in life, he would go on to start an airline called Eastern Airlines. It's now gone defunct. But in World War II, General Douglas MacArthur had invited Eddie Rickenbacker to come over to the South Pacific and to encourage the troops. By this time, Eddie Rickenbacker was way too old to actually fight in combat. And so he comes over, he's flying over there, and on his way over there, his plane crashes in the Pacific Ocean. Miraculously, Eddie Rickenbacker and the crew survive. They're floating in the middle of nowhere, the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

29:47 They're there for, gosh, over 20 days. At some point, they run out of food. They're on the brink of starvation, wondering what's gonna happen, when all of a sudden, Eddie Rickenbacker feels something land on his head. It's a seagull. Eddie Rickenbacker quick grabs it, kills it, digs out the guts of it, takes a hook and a line, and takes the intestines of this seagull and begins to fish with the intestines of the seagull. And lo and behold, they catch enough fish that it sustains them, and miraculously, they're picked up. Years later, Eddie Rickenbacker retires in the Everglades there in Florida. It is said, if you ever wanted to see Eddie Rickenbacker in retirement, you could go to the end of a certain pier around two o'clock in the afternoon, and there would be old man Rickenbacker with a bucket of shrimp, and he would take shrimp and he'd toss it up into the air.

30:43 to a gathering flock of seagulls. If you walked up behind Eddie Rickenbacker as he's tossing the shrimp up into the air to a gathering flock of seagulls, you could hear him whisper these words, thank you, thank you. Thank you. Eddie Rickenbacker had sense enough to know that if something dies for you, the least you can do is say thank you. Friends, I don't know what your 2025 has been like. I'm sure there's been mountains and valleys, but Jesus Christ is still on the throne. We are gripped by his grace. His steadfast love towards us is unfailing. There's no other reason to say thank you, friends. It's that. So before January 1st comes, can we just stop and bless him, not just with our mouths, but with our guts?