Frankie Mazzapica - The Secret That We All Know
Thank you for tuning in today. My name's Frankie Mazzapica. The title of today's message is "The Secret That We All Know," the secret we all know. The secret we all know is we know that if we live our life being thankful, having a sense of gratitude, it affects everything else in our life. Like, we know that. Most of us, anyway, know that if it's not this sense of thankfulness where we look around and we're thankful, we make the conscious decision to be thankful, and we couple that with praise, saying, "God, I know I wouldn't have any of these things if it weren't for you," we know in our heart that that changes everything.
And I wanna talk about that because, oftentimes, it's kind of a secret. What's strange to me, or I should say humorous to me, is that pop culture has taken biblical principles and kind of massaged it to make it their own, that when you look at things with gratitude, it changes your life. Has anyone heard the term "manifesting"? Just kind of nod at me. Manifesting, you know, it's a very popular term where you look into your future, and you speak things as as if they were, and they end up happening. And those of you who know your Bible are smiling right now because that's what they call manifesting, but that's actually words from God.
In Romans chapter 4, verse 17, it says those same exact words: "Speak things as if they were though they may not be," to speak them into existence. I know good times are coming. I know opportunities are coming my way. I know things are hard right now, but God is in control. Where you begin to speak those things, "I know I'm sick in my body, but I believe that God is healing me as I'm saying these words". You begin to speak these things in conjunction. You're praising him, "Lord, I thank you that you're making these things good. I thank you that you're doing all the things that I can't do myself. I thank you that you're changing her heart. I thank you that you're changing his heart".
That when we do this, the Bible says this in Proverbs 18:21, that "life and death is in the power of our tongue, And those who love it eat its fruit". It's kinda like the food you eat affects your body. We all know that. We're not happy about it, but it is what it is. The food you eat, in the same way, the words you say, has a direct effect on your life. So let me just dive into the three major points for today's message: praise, praising God, and thanking him, having this gratitude in your spirit. It causes your life to be pleasurable. Like, thinking about that. Isn't it true that life feels like a grind? Like, it's just, "I gotta get through this. I don't know. Oh my". It's just a grind.
The same problems you had yesterday are here today. It's just a grind. But praising him and thanking him, this is gonna be my first point, it makes life a pleasure. Number two, praising him causes a victory. Whatever you're fighting, it causes a victory. And number three, when you praise him, what ends up happening is you begin to experience the presence of God in ways that very few people ever have. So let's just dive right into it. Praising him and bein' grateful, that's the secret. And I wanna say in Philippians chapter 4, verse 6, it says, "Do not worry about anything; but pray about everything. And thank him for whatever he's done".
You're thanking him. You're praising him. Every time you worry about something, if you worry about it, you pray about it, "I know you're taking care of this". What's fascinating is people who do not do this, they live their life, let's see here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's my guy. They live their life looking through these dark lenses, and it affects everything they see. A person who doesn't praise God, a person who is not filled with gratitude over things in their life...of course, we all have issues and problems, the common denominator that we all have. So we're all believing God for a miracle. But the person who cannot see anything worth praising God over wears these dark-colored glasses, and that's all they can see is the negative in their life.
I went to a gas station a couple years ago, and I walked in. I needed to go to the ATM machine to get some cash, and I'm looking at this small, little screen, and I can't see a thing. The green letters, I could barely see 'em. I'm looking at 'em like this, and then I look over to the guy over the cash register, the guy running the gas station. And I'm so angry with him because I'm like, "You're in charge of this right here, and you're clearly charging an arm and a leg for everything". I mean, I can't buy a Snickers bar without breaking the bank. I know you have money. Fix this screen! So I'm gettin' angry. I'm gettin' mad, and I'm keep lookin' at him every time I have a problem. I don't know why I need to look at him.
Have you ever been driving in a car, and you're behind somebody who's driving really slow, and so you pass them, but you can't just pass them, right? You gotta know what they look like, and you want them to see you look at them, and that's not even enough. You're looking in your rearview mirror with squinted eyes, hoping they can see you in the rearview mirror. It's like I want my face to tell you how I'm feeling. And so, I looked down at the screen, and I realize that I never took my sunglasses off, and so everything that I was looking at was dark. See, when everything we see is that way, it's like we live our life caught up in that.
One of the biggest challenges that I have are mornings. I typically don't get down and discouraged in the middle of the day. That very rarely happens. But when my alarm goes off and I wake up, before I even open my eyes, I can feel myself being discouraged and down. It's almost as if everything about my life is just down and discouraged. I've started a new practice. I did it this morning, as a matter of fact. Because before my eyes open, I felt myself begin to get discouraged about miscellaneous things, and so, I forced myself to put on a different set of lenses, and I just laid there in my bed and thought of things to be thankful for.
I said, "Lord," because I love my pillow at that time of the day, "thank you for this pillow. Thank you". And I start there. 'Cause all I'm thinkin' about is I don't wanna get out of bed. "Thank you for my bed," and I just start going down the list, "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you". And what ends up happening is my entire view on life, my entire view about the day that I'm about to live, all of a sudden begins to shift and change. Now I'm getting out of bed experiencing a pleasure in life rather than laying there seeing only the negative.
You know, I don't think they have cartoons anymore. Maybe they do and I just haven't noticed, but everything is animated now, like Ariel and all these different animated movies, and they're so real. I'm not gonna tell you whether or not I've cried in one of 'em or not. Maybe, maybe so, it's none of your business. They're so real. But what I miss are the simple cartoons growing up. I loved to watch "Winnie the Pooh". Anyone just wave at me, "Winnie the Pooh". I don't even wanna say wave at me if you don't know "Winnie the Pooh". I don't need to experience that sense of "oh my goodness, I'm getting old".
But Winnie the Pooh lived his life. I mean, everything was like rose-colored, and when the poor guy couldn't find any honey, the little bear. "Oh my dear God, let him find some honey, my goodness". But whatever he's walkin' around, rose-colored glasses, you could not get him discouraged or down. But then he had this buddy of his. What's his name? Let me hear it. Eeyore, this guy, it does not matter, I've never seen him in a good mood. He is down all the time. His eyes are drooped. He just feels like the world is coming to an end. Every single time he opens his mouth, he's like... [dopey sounds] This is how he lives.
And so, you got Winnie the Pooh, all of a sudden, everything he sees, there's a bright side. He's experiencing pleasure in his life. It's not that he doesn't have problems, but he's thankful. I wanna tell you, just dig deep. I'm not sayin' it's easy. I'm saying it's necessary to say, "Thank you for this. Thank you for that. Thank you for this. God, I thank you. I thank you. I thank you". And that's when something phenomenal happens.
When we do that, in Philippians 4:7, it says, "And then the peace of God will guard your mind". It keeps the voice of the enemy out. It's like these people, and I get sucked into it sometimes too, where everything you look at is negative. It's like the enemy is just whispering in your mind all day long, "Don't look in the mirror. Don't look around. Don't think everything is trash. Everything is horrible, and it's going to stay that way". The Bible says, "If you just praise me, I will protect your mind, and you will experience a peace that surpasses anything that you can understand, anything". Are you good in math? Like, anything!
Let me talk about how praising him and being thankful causes victories to take place in your life. There's a king called Jehoshaphat, King Jehoshaphat. It's in 2 Chronicles chapter 20, verses 21 and 22, King Jehoshaphat had these enemies attacking him. You know, most of our enemies, we don't have the pleasure of walking up to 'em and sayin', "You are an enemy in my life"! It it doesn't help. It makes things worse. But we know exactly who they are. And it's like, it's just that, like, they just, you would love, you would love to be this person of having a positive perspective and constantly praising him, but you got this person in your life, or you have this problem in your life, and the Bible says this: that when King Jehoshaphat begin to praise the Lord, he had no reason to praise him from the outside looking in. He's bein' attacked by an army, and he's about to lose everything.
Well, the Bible says this: that when he praised him, the Lord began to set up an ambush for his enemies. He stepped in, and he says, "I know you're afraid. I know you're anxious. I know all of your confidence is completely gone, but you're lifting your chin to the best you can. You're lifting your chin. You're looking at me". And he's going, "Look, I'm gonna fix this. I'm gonna go ahead of you and fix this 'cause you keep lookin' up. You keep trying to find me. You keep looking at me". In Psalms 56:9, it says, "Every time you pray, the tide of the battle shifts, though it may be bleak, I know that I'm servin' a God that can change anything".
Remind yourself often that there is no reason why oceans that cover the majority of the earth roll and crash, but they stop at a certain line. How is that, when it covers the majority of the earth, but it stops right there? The Lord tells the ocean where it stops. He tells it...the wind is so interesting. It just comes, it goes, sometimes it slaps you in the back of the head, sometimes your shirt is like this, sometime, you look at the American flag and it's flapping this way. The Lord directs the wind. Further, in Job chapter 12, verse 10, it says this, that "the life of every living thing," every deer, every bear, every eagle, "is in his hand," watch this, "and the breath of every human".
Your very next breath is coming out of the hand of God. Charles Finney said, "I'm serving a God that can do everything, and I don't know what you're going to do, but I'm speaking it. Lord, I thank you that you got me this far. I thank you that your breath is in my lungs. I thank you that you pull trees out of the ground. I thank you that you run rivers with your finger in your direction. I thank you that you direct traffic in my life. You all of a sudden bring good things from this direction and stop bad things from this direction. You say, 'Look, this good thing, I'm gonna hold it back because I got something to teach you right now.' But the God who changes seasons says, 'Okay, that season's over. Start unleashing the flood of good things.'"
This is what God does. This is seen with the right lenses "of I know God will fix what I'm doing". What's the end of the story with Charles Finney? Every one of those young men got saved. He didn't go out there and start preaching to 'em. The presence of God just overcame them. I wanna let you know or remind you, we've all had those knuckleheads in our life, where they're just throwin' rocks, and all we wanna do is say, "Hey, we all live in glass houses and I got a pile of rocks too".
It's easy to throw rocks, but the courageous among us throw ropes, the courageous among us. And when we do that and we say, "Look, I can't physically convince you, but I know a God who can change your heart, and I'm gonna call on him until he does, and while I'm doing that, I'm gonna thank him, 'Thank you for my kids, thank you that I have a healthy body, thank you that you've always taken care of me.'"
Say your age on three. You can whisper it if you want to. Ready? One, two, three, go. God's been taking care of you for that many years! That many years he's been taking care of you! Thank God you've been takin' care of me for 20 years, 40 years, 100 years. This is keeping those lenses on. These things bring victories where the Lord says, "I'm gonna set up an ambush". So, first of all, it causes life. Praise causes life to be enjoyable, and further, it causes victories to take place in your life. When you catch yourself bein' negative, when you catch yourself being an Eeyore, you are bringing a cloud of disappointment and discouragement into the room.
That's what you're doing. You're bringing it into the room. I was around, I had a long day at work last week, and my son just got out of school, and he was in a good mood, and I was in a bad mood, and he showed up, and he was like, "Hey, how's it goin'"? And I said, "I'm havin' the worst day ever". He's got rose-colored glasses. I've got black glasses. And all of a sudden, I caught myself, and I said, "Frankie, don't be that guy that changes this entire conversation and causes him to have a good day into a bad day. Change it, Frankie. Change your mouth. Change your words". My mother in the Lord used to say, "Frankie, change your face"! Change your face.
I wanna talk about how praise and gratitude, you already know this secret, how it changes the atmosphere, and the Lord begins to come into your presence. One of the things I pray about the most is I say, "God, you have met face-to-face with Moses, and you talked to him like a friend talks to a friend". A lady by the name of Catherine Coleman, she said one time, "The Holy Spirit is more real to me than you are". I've told the Lord, "I'm jealous of the relationship that you had with them". I am jealous. I am so jealous, and if they experienced your presence like that in a Romans chapter, I think it's 1:11, I'm not sure. My memory is failing me. It says that "God has no favorites".
And so, I mentioned to the Lord, I say, "God, if you don't have favorites, I want to be able to say that the Holy Spirit is more real to me than anyone I look at it. If you don't have favorites, that's what I want". And when you praise him, "You are great, I desire your presence. I long for your presence. I'm gonna close my eyes and block out this world because everything in this world is not living for, it is distracting me. It's discouraging me. I don't wanna think like this, but when I close my eyes, I can see the way you see," what ends up happening is the presence of the Lord comes closer and closer to you.
You begin to experience him in ways that no one else does, and what ends up happening is that this dark perspective that's affecting your very soul, it begins to shift. You still have troubles, you still have challenges, but now, you're walking with the Holy Spirit because you kept on speaking things as if they were, though they may not be. You kept on praising the Lord. David said this in Psalms 27, verse 4. He says, "This one thing I asked, this only will I seek". There's nothing else that's more important. There's nothing else I'm gonna go for, except "to gaze at the beauty of your face, to seek you in the temple and worship you in the sanctuary". Come on, does anybody resonate with that? Does anybody resonate with that?