In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of being thankful in all circumstances. He explains that Jesus came to set us free, but before we can experience freedom, we must first be convicted of our need for it. The preacher warns that if we are not thankful, negative consequences will follow. He also touches on the topic of prayer, highlighting the idea that God allows us to face challenges in order to fix and transform us. The preacher encourages the audience to focus on Jesus and not be consumed by bitterness or negative influences.

Well, it's good to be back with you again today on Eagle's Wings. I'm Don Corville. Let's have a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, we are needy. I am needy. I ask you, Father, to fill us afresh with your Spirit that we might understand. That which you have for us. Heavenly Father, I ask that you would open up your Word to us. And Father, I ask that you would be glorified by all that's done and said. Lord, I need your anointing that I might minister in the power of your Spirit. Father, I pray that you would anoint our ears to hear my tongue to speak. That you might be the one that is exalted and seen. I pray if there are any listening today on this program that do not know Jesus Christ as their Savior. That they would listen to what you have to say for them. For it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Well, last week we took some time to share on being thankful. And I had another chapter to that. Probably an entirely different type of sounding chapter. But it's in the area of what happens if we are not thankful. You know, we've just gone through Thanksgiving. If the tapes made it okay in the mail and things didn't get delayed. This should be the Sunday after Thanksgiving. And we're thankful for God giving us this great land. We're thankful for the blessings that he's given to us. But what happens if we're not thankful? I want to take some time to share with you in this area of what happens to us if we're not thankful. You see, Jesus Christ is God in the flesh. As the scripture says in 1 Timothy 3, 16, I think it was 3, 15 or 16. That God was manifest in the flesh. He came down, not just to give us a good example. But he came down to die on the cross for our sins. And he was crucified. And bearing the third day, he arose. And now when he arose from the grave, he arose to show that he was victorious over death. Now when we receive Christ as our Savior, we come to him. Acknowledging that we are a sinner. And that we cannot save ourselves. And we by faith appropriate the blood of Christ that was shed on our account. And we say, Father, I believe that you died for me on the cross. That the Lord Jesus Christ was crucified on my behalf and in my place. He took my place. And I now by faith trust Jesus to be my Savior. And what happens when we're truly saved is the Spirit of God comes within us to live and abide. Now we should be the most grateful people to be set free. Because you see, Jesus did not only die for sin. But he died to deliver us from the power of sin to set us free. The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, he said. He said, I came to open the prison doors. To set the captives free. To loose those that are bound up. Jesus came to set us free. The truth shall make you free. But you know what the truth will do before it makes you free? It will first make you miserable. You may kick and squirm and cry and try to get out of it. But if you're under conviction by the Spirit of God, you're just going to be miserable. You see, it will set you free. But first it will convict us that we need to be set free. And the sad thing about it is, many of us will never admit that we are really miserable with life. I've got a little checklist here and a prayer book I've picked up from a prayer seminar. And it goes through these things. It says, first are all sins confessed. If you're going to have a walking relationship, a living, abiding, fresh relationship with God. You're going to have to have your sins forgiven at the cross first. And then as you go through each day, you confess your sins. If you commit a sin or sins, you commit them one by one. So you confess them one by one. Here's how to have the victorious Christian life. As soon as you sin, and the Spirit of God brings it to your mind. Confess it, deal with it, get it under the blood, make any restitution you need to do. Thank God for forgiveness and cleansing and then go on. And live by faith. Now, are all your sins confessed right now? Behold, the Lord's hand is not so short that it cannot save. Neither is His ear so dull that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God. And your sins have hid His face from you so that He does not hear. You see, Christ died on the cross for our sins. The reason God the Father turned His back from God the Son, for one terrible moment in history, was because He could not look on sin. And Jesus, the Scripture says, became sin. He became my sin. All the sins that I ever committed or ever will, were laid on Jesus Christ. And God turned away when Christ became sin. And if we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His Word is not in us. So are all your sins confessed? Are all relationships with others made right? You know, the Bible says in Matthew 6, 14 and 15, For if you forgive men their transgressions, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions. So are all relationships with others made right? We're talking about being thankful. We started off last week. Here's the consequences of not being thankful. One, we're not thankful if we have unconfessed sin in our life. We're not thankful if we have a relationship with somebody else that's not right. We're trying to pretend that things are right. You see, thankfulness comes out of a heart that's free. It comes out of a heart that's been cleansed. It comes out of a heart that's filled with the Spirit of God. And so to have this thankful heart that we were talking about, this thankful attitude last week that we were talking about, you must be clean. Are you seeking God's will in all things? You know, we make our plans. I'm a good one for making plans. I love to make plans. I love to make plans to go off on trips up into the mountains. I love the mountains. I love to travel. Even though I'm beginning to get a little tired because I've traveled so much, I still like to travel. But you know, it's good to come home. You get tired of living out of a suitcase after a while. But in all my plans and everything, I have to submit the ultimate travel departure to the Holy Spirit. Might come down to the last day and the Holy Spirit says, Nope, you're not going on this trip. You're not going here or there. And I say, Yes, sir. You're the Lord. You're the boss. Might upset somebody else's plans because my plans were curtailed by the Holy Spirit. But if you're led by the Spirit of God, you're a son of God. God sometimes comes up, I believe, with emergencies for us. Situations where He needs us all of a sudden. Some things have developed. And I'm not saying that God gets caught off guard. But I believe many times we might have a flat tire. We might break down. We might get deterred. We may have a distraction, a delay, or whatever. Because God is trying to get us to somebody that's seeking Jesus. And He does these things to us. But if I'm not in a frame of being thankful, if I'm not in an attitude of being so grateful to Jesus, keeping my gaze on Him, I'll look at that circumstance, and I'll get all bent out of shape. And you will too. And I do get bent out of shape. I hate to confess my sin to you. But do you know that today, I got angry at my little five-year-old. And boy, he can stretch me. Stretches all of us, I think. And boy, I gave him a little whop. And I grabbed him. And I told him something. I just told him off. I didn't spank him. Because I was angry and I knew it. But I told him off. And he was laughing at me. He thought it was funny. He was getting rebuked by Dad. And it's a good thing he was laughing. But I told him, don't you hit one of my girls. He's got a temper. And I guess he's got it from his dad. And I have to keep it under control of the Spirit. You know, I reckon the old man did. But he hit the seven-year-old. And he's a big five-year-old. And he's strong. And I keep telling him, don't you hit your sisters. And I grabbed him. A little bit later, I drew him aside and I said, John, you know, Daddy got angry at you. I ask you to forgive me. He said, I forgive you, Daddy. Oh man, God humbled me through that. I hated to go back to God. I went downstairs immediately after that and told the Lord what I did. He knew what I did. And I felt so bad. I felt so low I could have crawled under the carpet. Oh God, here I am supposed to be a teacher of Your Word. And that little five-year-old got to me. You see, we have to seek God in all things. You know what God told me? He said, if you'd been abiding in Me at that moment, you see, you moved away for a few moments. If you'd been abiding in Me, He wouldn't have got to you. And you sought My will in that and how to react. That's why you reacted in anger. Oh, Father, help us. Help us to understand how important it is to seek Your will in all things. Continue to lead us as we go through here now. In Jesus' name. Something else. Are you seeking to glorify God above all things? And whatever you ask in My name, do you mean that? Well, I do, He said. Do you remember? John 14, 13 and 14. Why did He say that? He said that the Father might be glorified in the Son. He said, if you ask Me anything in My name, I'll do it. I'll do it. So we seek to glorify God in all things. Are you depending on the Holy Spirit's guidance? Well, obviously, for a moment there today, I was not depending on the Holy Spirit's guidance. The flesh got in there. And got control. God keeps reminding me how weak I am. And I keep telling Him how poor and needy I am. And He keeps showing me how poor and needy I really am. You know, we was in a meeting yesterday morning and somebody prayed, Oh God, it would be so needy if we could just flip a switch and we'd be in continual fill-the-spirit mode. So many words, He said it like that. That's what we want. That's what the flesh would like. But God leaves us weak. Cracked, marred vessels, so that we will continually depend on Him. Are you depending on the Holy Spirit to guide you? You know, the Spirit will help our infirmities. Romans 8, 26 and 27. Because we don't know how to pray as we should. The Spirit Himself will intercede for us. And so, He does it according to the will of God. He's our helper. Let's depend on Him. Don't depend on yourself. Don't depend on your brother or sister. Ultimately, depend on God. You know, I told you a while back, if you give all your expectations to God, you'll never be disappointed. That's hard to do. And something else, are you trusting in God in spite of what seems to be? You know, Proverbs 3, 5 and 6, we quote this all the time. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not into your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge Him. And He'll direct your paths. Oh, we have to continually trust Him, day by day. And then, will you praise God no matter what? Well, it comes back to the area of being thankful and grateful. You know, we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. This is why God says, in 1 Thessalonians 5, 16, 17 and 18, right in there, that we're to rejoice always, we're to pray without ceasing, we're to in everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. Hardest thing in the world is to take that everything and put it into an operating mode. Now, what happens to us if we are not thankful? I'll tell you, I'm going to share some things with you with the time that we have left today. What happens to us if we're not in a thankful mode? And if I have a little time, I've got some little tidbits, more things I'd like to share with you, maybe in the area of prayer. You see, God gets us into fixes. He lets us get into these fixes. I listened to Mr. Gillum last night. He puts us up on the overhead at this prayer seminar that by the time you hear this, it's going to be over unless it continues for two or three weeks. But he says, listen to this, this is what it says, God has you right now in the circumstances of His own choosing, so He can fix you. God is fixing to fix you, but if you try to fix the fix He's fixing to fix you with, He'll find another fix to fix you until you let the fix He's fixed for you fix you. You got that? Let me say it again. God has you right now in the circumstances of His own choosing, so He can fix you. God is fixing to fix you, but if you try to fix the fix He's fixing to fix you with, He'll find another fix to fix you until you let the fix He's fixed for you fix you. Maybe I'll give this to you later on, maybe if I give it to you enough you might be able to get it quoted down. But you see, God orchestrates the details in our life and if we're not thankful and grateful then we will become bitter. Bitterness is one of the major spiritual diseases that we have and so many of us do not recognize that when we fail to forgive, we have entered into the realm of bitterness. And you know, our soul, which is our mind, our will and our emotions, will operate, I should say this, it will operate in contrary to the Spirit. If we're in a carnal frame of mind it will war against the Spirit. And the Word of God says, The Word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the divining asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. This is why we need to be in the Word continually. You need to pray the Word of God. When you pray, just don't pray words, pray the Word of God, get in there, it will keep you on track. And what happens is, if we are not thankful to God, we will give ground to Satan, we'll give a jurisdictional area. I have a little pamphlet, I'm going to share some information from you. I don't know who wrote it for sure, there's no author's name mentioned. It came in some of my homeschooling material in the Advanced Training Institute of America. And this stuff, we hear about spiritual warfare all the time. But this is so important in the area of being thankful. We will give ground to Satan. Ephesians 4.27 says, Don't give him ground. Don't give him a place. And if he gets ground, then he'll get a stronghold in our mind. And we'll begin to receive these attacks from Satan. And the Scripture says in 2 Corinthians 10, in verse 4 and 5, it says, For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalted itself against the knowledge of God and bringeth into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. My friend, if you're a Spirit-filled Christian, you're going to be under attack. I'm under attack, I believe, continuously. I have to abide in Jesus continuously or I'll get wiped out. I'm not some kind of super-saint. We all are needy. We all need God. And if we're not careful, Satan can get a stronghold. And as Jesus said in Matthew 18.34, we can bring into our life afflictions, these tormentors. God will allow them to come in, in His mercy, to teach us to come back to Him, to depend on Him. Now, what do we need to do? Very simply, if you get into an area and you know that you're wrong, you come back, you confess that sin to God. Say if it's bitterness, you confess it to God. Then you ask God to regain the surrender ground. You tear down the strongholds with the Word of God, with truth, and you show mercy by forgiving your offender. I was thinking about this, this week, earlier this week, how much, or it was last week even, last part of last week, how important it was for me to forgive someone that hurt me, and it hurt me several times. How important it was for me to forgive. Now, let's just talk about one area. If we are not thankful, this area of bitterness will get in. Now, the problem in the area of our life is that bitterness will defile our soul. It will contaminate you. It's just like pouring a little muddy water into a glass of pure, clean water. And so, as we are trying to have a good relationship with those around us, as the Scripture says, peace with all men, and we are trying to have holiness without which no man shall see the Lord, as we are trying to do these things, we have to be careful and watch diligently that we won't resist the grace of God. Now, if we don't, it would be very easy for a root of bitterness to spring into our lives. Now, listen, I'm not really preaching today, I'm just sharing my heart with you. I have been one, I feel like I have been one that has been targeted by Satan for destruction. Do you feel like that? Boy, if you are a child of God, you are right on the bull's eye. And the Scripture says in Hebrews 12, 14, and 15, we have to watch it because many can be defiled. Many can be defiled by this root of bitterness. I was just trying to get over to Hebrews if I could. Hebrews 12, 14, and 15, listen to this, follow peace with all men and holiness without which no man shall see the Lord looking diligently, lest any man fail of the grace of God. Lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you and thereby many be defiled. You know, I use the term of flying on eagle's wings, learning to live by the grace of God depending on God for strength. Hold up your wings and fly on the turbulent winds of life, but let God be the one that holds you up. Don't try to be always flapping your wings in the storms of life, but learn to fly on the turbulent winds. You know, the birds will use those winds to fly. And if you'll watch, you can watch it, some of the birds, the big ones especially, know how to fly on the turbulent winds and the updrafts and they can fly for hours up there and not burn up much energy. Now, what's the consequence? If we allow bitterness to enter in our soul, we let down our guard and we're not thankful in everything as the Scripture says, bitterness will decrease our soul. Now, let me give you a little quote here. If we pursue that which is evil, God may allow us to have the evil desires of our hearts, but send leanness into our own soul. You remember Psalms 106.15? He gave the request, but it said leanness into their souls. How many times we're seeking for things instead of seeking the face of God. You know what? Satan can answer your prayers. If you have sin in your life, God doesn't hear your prayer and doesn't answer, but Satan may come in and give you some things. You seek God on it. Oh, it's very dangerous. But lost ground can be regained. You know Psalms 23? He restoreth my soul. Some of us, our souls are shriveled up. We've been so contaminated and attacked by Satan. We've given so much ground. We've been shriveled up to the size of a pea. And we sound like that pea in a boxcar. We just rattle around. We've got all this noise we make. Ask God to restore your soul. The Lord is our shepherd. He leads us in the path of righteousness. He prepares a table before us in the presence of our enemies. Ask Him, God, would you come in? I feel like my whole life I've been under attack. Or this situation has just drained me. You know, you can see people that are under stress. It shows in their face. There won't be any joy. And you can pick out someone that's under the control of Satan. They will have an evil countenance. There's one on TV. One of the newscasters. Man, that person has the most evil countenance of any of the newscasters I've seen. Every now and then, I'll watch the news. I'll be somewhere and I'll get to watch the news. And my wife said, why do you do that? I said, so I know whatever they're for, I'm against. I keep in contact every now and then. I might listen on the radio. Whatever they're pushing in for, then I'm for the other thing. But we need to be careful that we're not focusing on some evil thing. You know, if you focus on a problem, something that's come into your life and it's been eating away at you, you will conform to that thing. You will become like that. That's why it's so important to not be bitter. And we need to focus on Jesus. He's our life. Father, give us the grace to focus on You. Give us the grace. Let me give you an example of a stronghold from this pamphlet I have. And I know this is not some real great study today. Some of you like for me to preach. Some of you like for me to teach. I just want to share my heart with you a little bit. We need to be careful in this area of being thankful in everything. We make mistakes. It's hard to be thankful if you drive through a traffic light and you get a ticket. But if you got the attitude, you know God, and you wasn't intending to do it, God allowed it. God might have blinded your eyes. I know the preacher, he shared how he went through a red light here last year sometime. And he just flat, was not paying attention to what he did. He looked up and he was already into the intersection and that thing changed and he went through a red light and there was a cop that was real late at night just him and the cop around and he got a ticket. And he thanked the officer for being a minister of God. He said, boy that cop, that police officer got out of there real quick. He didn't know how to handle that. But he thanked him for doing a good job for being a minister of God. So God sometimes allows us, I believe, to get into these things. We need to keep our attitude right. Now, let me give you an example of a stronghold. If you've given a ground to Satan, you've given him a stronghold. And maybe somebody's done something to you and you say, my offender will never change. This person won't ever change. He won't ever change. Who are you focusing on? That person. By the way, this is a false conclusion. Satan convinces many husbands and wives to divorce each other because of this very lie. And children rebel against their parents. Employers quit their jobs and on and on and on. There's things in the church because we say, they'll never change. I'm quitting. I'm leaving. We're getting a divorce. And we're focusing on the problem and on them and not on God. And we've bitten the bait of Satan. God states, Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh. Is there anything too hard for me? Many of you have not come to God with your problem and said, there it is, God. I'm going to believe you to take care of it because I can't do a thing with it. I'm just going to praise you and give thanks, rejoice in the victory and watch what you do. That's keeping your eyes on Jesus. God promises wives that they can win their husbands who do not believe the Scriptures by demonstrating a meek and a quiet spirit by learning how to show sincere honor to their husbands. Read the Bible. Read 1 Peter 3, 1 and 2. And God urges husbands to love their wives and not be bitter toward them. And when they love their wives with this agape love, their wives will become treasured helpmeets. Read Ephesians 5, 25 through 33. Why are we focusing on things and circumstances? It's because we're not thankful and grateful to our God. What a wonderful God He is. And then, you know what? We feel like we must punish our offender. God promises to do the punishing of our offender. Giving you a quote here. God promises to punish our offender if he continues to reject the gracious appeals of those He offends. It is not our place to bring retaliation, but to allow the wrath of God to take its course. Vengeance is mine. I will repace at the Lord. We must give thanks and everything for this is the will of God concerning you. And we don't like the circumstances. Sometimes we get into very difficult circumstances because of maybe ground or things that we've done in years past. I know many get into bad marriage situations. And they say, how can I give thanks for this? You give thanks because you believe God's going to work through it. And you probably violated many scriptural principles to get yourself into that jam. Don't blame God for getting you into some bad situation. But begin to thank Him and praise Him that He is sovereign and loving and He cares for you. He's going to take care of the situation. Focus on God. Focus on God. Continually focus on Him. You know, I don't believe I have enough time to get into many different areas in this. I'm just touching on to the area of spiritual warfare. There's so much about it written. So many men teaching it. I don't claim to be any kind of expert on this area. I don't claim to really be an expert on any kind of area. But if you've given ground to Satan, you are under the influence of his principalities, his powers, and his evils and the rulers of darkness. And the Bible warns us not to give place to the devil by bitterness. It instructs us that we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities, against powers, against rulers of darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. I was with a man that's in the seminar that's going on right now, a revival prayer seminar. And we invited him to come out and he said he couldn't come out. He's having a little sickness with his kids. And then I just said this, I understand what's going on. And then as he understood that I understood how we're hit. Satan tries to hit us when we're in a spiritual ministry. He tries to hit us. I don't know how he gets in with so much sickness to hit in this area. But he does. We wrestle not against the sickness and the illness but we wrestle against the principalities and the powers. Through the grace of God, the power of God, we resist the devil and he has to flee. We get the victory. Sometimes we have to take many hits from the enemy to gain ground and have great victory in areas, in people's lives and in churches. Oh, Father, give us the victory that you've secured for us at Calvary. We claim it, Father. I pray for those that are listening today that are struggling. Lord, I'm doing so little but I pray that the little will help. You said your word would not return until you void. Father, they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony. In the name of Jesus, we claim the victory. I claim the victory for those that are struggling. I pray the victory in their life, in their marriages, in their jobs where they're struggling. I pray, Father, that they learn to get their gaze on Jesus and look to you and not look at these things. Oh, thank you, Father, for the blood of the Lamb. We praise you and we thank you, Father, in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, I've been sharing some things with you. Remember to confess bitterness as sin. Ask God to regain the surrendered ground. Tear down the strongholds with truth. Use the word of God and then show mercy by forgiving your offender. You know what Jesus did on the cross? He said, Father, forgive them. He was hurt many times. He was misunderstood many times and He still is. But all He had was love. Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. And you may be under an attack right now. And you just say, Father, forgive them for they don't know what they do. You know what sin is? If you fail to forgive, that's sin. And sin is whatever weakens your reason, it impairs the tenderness of your conscience, it obscures your sense of God, or it takes off the relish of spiritual things. That thing is sin for you. However innocent it may be in itself. So if it weakens your reason, if it impairs the tenderness of your conscience, if it obscures your sense of God, your abiding in His presence, if it takes off the relish of spiritual things, your enjoyment of spiritual things, whatever does that, that is sin for you. And if you do not forgive, it is sin. Oh Father, Father help us. And remember, remember, God has you right now in the circumstances of His own choosing, so He can fix you. God is fixing to fix you. But if you try to fix the fix He's fixing to fix you with, you'll find another fix to fix you until you let the fix He's fixed for you, fix you. Oh Father, we're so needy, we're so needy. Teach us to pray. You say, ask and you shall receive that your joy may be full. Father, we ask for you to work in our lives in a powerful way. Father, I pray for those that are listening today that they would become like Jesus in the fix that they're in. And there may be... So in closing, is Jesus Christ all you need? Yes. But is He all you want? Let me challenge you to make Him all you want, my friend. Till next time, God bless you.