This series, Thanksgiving: Prayers of Gratitude and Praise, looks at the thanksgiving prayers in Paul’s epistles and uses four different points of thanks that Paul offers to God as a way to help inspire gratitude and praise in our hearts as we enter the Thanksgiving and holiday season. Believers are called to share in God’s work by using the gifts they have received to build up other believers and glorify God. We must work together through prayer to lift one another up in faithful ways so the body will work as God intends.
God intended the fellowship to use the gifts to glorify God, to unite one another in the great work of Christ, and to encourage believers as they awaited the return of Christ. As they waited, the believers needed to use the gifts as a means of continuing to express the good news of Christ. We are meant to use these gifts in different ways to express to others the depth of God’s love we have experienced in Christ. As the fellowship grows under the authority of Christ, the responsibility to reflect the good news should continue to be the why for the local church.