Comfort for the 2020 World in Need of Wholehearted Thankfulness

Our comfort also hinges on knowing how we are to show ourselves thankful for such deliverance. The reason is two-fold. First, we who have been redeemed by God are required to show our thankfulness to Him by walking according to His will. God is angry with those who continue to walk in sin. 

But by nature we don’t know God’s will. We don’t know how to show ourselves thankful to God for His grace. God must teach us in His Word what is good and acceptable in His sight. We can only have the comfort of knowing that God is pleased with us if we know we are walking according to His will. 

Second, God promised that we who have been redeemed from sin through Christ will also produce fruits of thankfulness through the Spirit. These two go hand in hand. Christ’s work of redemption and the spiritual fruits of thankfulness are inseparable. If we see the Spirit producing fruits of thankfulness in our lives, then we have the comfort of knowing with certainty that Christ has redeemed us. But we need to know what these fruits of thankfulness are so that we can recognize the Spirit’s work in us.

When we go to the produce section of the grocery store, we carefully examine the fruit by separating the ripe healthy fruit from the rotten fruit.  In the same way, God's Word makes evident the rotten works of the flesh from the fruit of the Spirit.  

Galatians 5:19-24  

19 Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21 envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. 

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.