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Let's be Thankful for the Grace of Salvation

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(I Timothy 1:12)

I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength, that he considered me faithful, appointing me to his service.

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Today is Thanksgiving Day. The Thanksgiving Day that we celebrate at church today originally started in America. The first Thanksgiving was held in 1621, which was about 400 years ago.

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During that time, the England churches were concentrated only on the formality of the worship so they were not really worshipping God. Some of the people noticed these kinds of wrong doings, so they insisted that they should offer the right kind of worship to God.

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But the England churches with all of their power drove them away from England. They were driven away from England and they met many difficulties but even in those times, they continued to worship God rightly with their lives.

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Finally, they got a huge ship and left to find a place where they could worship God freely. They overcame many difficulties and had near-death experiences, then they arrived at a place, which is known as America now. The people who arrived at that place were around 120 people. We call them the Puritans or the Pilgrims.

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They arrived at America in the middle of winter so the Puritans/Pilgrims experienced many difficulties. Almost half of the Puritans/Pilgrims died by disease or by freezing to death from the cold harsh conditions. But even still they thanked God that they could freely worship God in that place.

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After winter, they planted rice fields and sowed seeds. The "Indians", a.k.a.(also known as) the Native Americans, who lived in that place helped them very much. And at that year's fall, they had their first harvest.

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The Puritans/Pilgrims offered the thanksgiving worship to thank God for His grace of allowing them their first harvest. In that place, they also invited the Indians that had helped them. They worshipped and had the Thanksgiving feast for 3 three days.

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The biggest characteristic of faithful people anywhere is that their hearts are filled with thanks. This is also true in the Bible that the biggest characteristic of faithful people is that they have thankful hearts. The Apostle Paul, who wrote 1st Timothy that we read today, also lived a life filled with thanks.

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The Apostle Paul thanked God for choosing him. Originally, Paul was a person who had persecuted Jesus' believers. Paul treated Jesus as an enemy and he persecuted all of the Christians, followers of Christ Jesus.

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But the love of Jesus is so big and amazing. Paul hated Jesus so much but Jesus appeared and showed himself to Paul. Jesus also gave a blessing to Paul and that blessing made him preach the gospel to many people.

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Paul thanked God for his whole life for loving him, for not throwing him away, for choosing him to live in heaven forever and not only that but also for entrusting him to do God's work. Paul never complained even when he encountered so many difficulties. He lived a life of thanking the fact that he could live for Jesus.

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We also have received salvation as a gift. We were also enemies of Jesus because of our sins. Before, we were people who could not do anything so Jesus could have abandoned us.

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But Jesus especially loved us that He became human like us and came down to this world. And Jesus took all of our sins and died on the cross because of His great love for us.

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God gave us a gift called Salvation. If we confess our faith in Jesus, God gives us this salvation, which can make us children of God. God opened the way to eternal heaven. We can enter heaven if we just confess Jesus. It doesn't matter who we are. It's such an amazing and great blessing we have received, isn't it?

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Sometimes we meet unexpected difficulties. But nothing can take away the grace of salvation that we have received. So from today, I hope you can have strong faith to thank God anytime for this grace of salvation.