Happy Thanksgiving, everyone, or, I guess, technically, it's a happy Thanksgiving eve.

On this holiday built around gratitude, we can learn a lot from the Apostle Paul, a man

who loved to celebrate God's grace and others with heartfelt thanks.

And as we've seen several times on this podcast, Paul says learning to speak thanks is what

cleans up the mouth, it cleans it up from using crude and vocal language.

This giving has this powerful, cleansing effect on our lives and what comes out of our

mouths.

And Paul's life itself models this gratitude.

He mentions thanks about 50 times in his epistles, leading to one of my favorite quotes

acclaimed by New Testament scholar David Powell, who once wrote quote, the Apostle Paul mentions

the subject of thanks, giving more frequently per page than any other Hellenistic author,

pagan, or Christian, quote, oh, wow.

It's a high claim, but it's a claim that explains a text like 2nd Thessalonians, chapter

2, verses 13 to 14, or Paul writes this, but we ought always to give thanks to God for

you, brothers, beloved by the Lord.

Why?

Because God chose you as the first fruits to be saved through sanctification by the spirit

and belief in the truth to this he called you through our gospel so that you may obtain

the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In this text, we see four truths that motivate our thanks, giving.

Here's Pastor John at the end of 2001 in a sermon to explain.

The first one is found in 2nd Thessalonians 2, 13.

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