The Amazing Fruit of Thanksgiving – Episode #540

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The Amazing Fruit of Thanksgiving
Episode #540
April 9, 2017

With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special Guest: Carole Nelson

This is the continuation of a series of Podcasts started in Episode #536.
God responds to us. Thanksgiving bears the fruit of loving God, and ingratitude bears the fruit of rejecting Him. Which fruit do we see in our own lives?

(Martha) I just see that to say, “Thank You” to God is to receive God. And if you don’t say “Thank You” to God, you reject God. It’s huge. It’s not a small thing. And when you receive Him, you get more of Him. When you reject Him, you get less of Him. And then you blame Him for not being there for you.
(John) The importance is reflected in the consequences for not doing it, because the degradation and the destruction that the thankless person goes to… I mean, they become just squalid, disgusting, and the reason why is because it’s that important. Thanks is that important. And so, this has all been huge and amazing, absolutely.
(Martha) Carole, I appreciate your transparency, and everybody who hears this will appreciate it too, because you’ve set yourself out as an example. And the revelation and the transformation He’s giving you is just incredible.
(Carole) You know, I can remember years ago in the 1970’s for all you folks out there that are as young as I am. When we said, “Enter His gates with thanksgiving in our voice and enter His courts with praise” and I would be clapping and dancing and hollering and hooting and having a great time. And that’s fine. I’m not belittling that, but I look back on that time, and I look back and I think, “Oh, Jesus, how little I understood of how precious thanksgiving is to Your heart. How much thanksgiving ministers to You, to Your whole being. To be grateful for everything that You do, everything that You’ve done, everything You will do. And that everything is as it should be, because You are You, and You are Lord.”
(Martha) It just leads you to repentance, doesn’t it? To look back over your life and see situations that you weren’t grateful in. And so, you missed it. It just takes a lot of forgiveness to come to the Lord about this and ask for the new heart that He’s given us. I made my life difficult on so many grounds when I failed to say, “Thank You.”
(Carole) We’re just sitting here taking this in, all of us. Just wondering if thanksgiving just creates a heart of love, or it opens the door to Christ’s heart of love in me to manifest Himself? It is creative. Thanksgiving is a creative pathway. It’s not cold. It’s not just words, it is a creative pathway. I am watching, and this one person I am watching the creation of things that were not, become as they are. It’s been a creative process.
(John) And a creative miracle.
(Martha) Umhmm. I was just thinking if you want to see this in the life of Jesus to prove that is how He lived, you can look at Matthew 11, where He went to the cities of Chorazin, Bethsaida, Tyre and Sidon and did miracles. And then in verse 20, He said, “He began to denounce the cities where most of His miracles were done because they did not repent. Woe to you, Chorazin. Woe to you, Bethsaida, for if the miracles had occurred in Tyre and Sidon which occurred in you, they would have repented long ago in sack cloth and ashes. It will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to the heavens?” And He goes on. Then He says in verse 25 of chapter 11, but in the Greek He rejoiced greatly. It was an exuberant rejoicing. Jesus said, “I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well pleasing in Your sight.” He rejoiced greatly with exuberant praise. He saw what God had done, and He praised God for doing it that way. He had hidden it from the wise and intelligent in those cities. He had hidden it from them, but revealed it to Lazarus, Mary, Martha, the children.
(Carole) Well, that’s very personally piercing right there to me, because when I am ungrateful, I am the wise and intelligent and I am the adult, not the sheep, not the child. I am the adult, who reasons according to my own mind, my own assessment. And I’m blind and deaf. And so, it truly is what Jesus says. It’s hidden from me when I choose to be in that place as a goat, as an adult, as someone who thinks she knows anything.
(Martha) It’s always puzzled me how you could see, how these cities could see miracles and not believe, and that’s why. Because they’re reasoning it. And it’s true through the whole gospel. Every time anybody reasoned, they couldn’t see Jesus. Instead of just saying, “Thank You” for the miracles… Why couldn’t they just say, “Thank You” for the miracle? And they didn’t apparently. They didn’t even see that there were miracles that He had done. Big!
(Carole) I’m just seeing that when I am in that place of seeing myself, seeing my spiritual walk, seeing wherever I am spiritually in my spiritual need, when I am assessing it according to myself, according to my reason, according to my own judgment, then it’s hidden from me. The very provision, the very, my very inheritance, which He died and suffered to give me is hidden from me. It’s there. It’s right there, but I can’t see it.
(Martha) That’s brilliant, Carole.
(Carole) But today is a new day, and He has ‘unhidden’ this. It has been ‘unhidden.’ And by God’s grace, He has implanted a new seed of gratitude for everything in me. And I am just excited to watch Him water it and make it grow.
(Martha) He’s so faithful to remind me to thank Him. He might do it through a person or He might say go to like to Psalm 50, but He is so faithful to undertake that and help me. Imagine being gracious enough to help you do what you’re supposed to do and should do automatically. Then I’m thinking too of the Beatitudes where Jesus said, “Praise God when you’re persecuted and be thankful, for great is your reward in heaven.” And that is so difficult to do. It just, God help me.
(Carole) Thanksgiving takes us to the heavenlies. It truly does.
(Martha) Yes, it does
(Carole) It truly takes us to the heavenlies, to the reality.
(Martha) It opens the heavens down onto us too.
(Carole) Yes, yes.
(Martha) What’s being poured into our friend’s life is amazing. I told at Thanksgiving there was a surgery, a crucial surgery that was made available to her after she became grateful, that was not available before. The surgeons that had talked to her said, “I can’t guarantee it, may not be a success.” Everyone she went to. After she became grateful, she came to this surgeon and he said, “Sure, I can do that,” and he did it. It was successful and changed her life.
(Carole) I haven’t seen a lot of that, Martha, in that context of that is the fruit, and it is the reward…
(Martha) It is.
(Carole) …of gratitude and receiving Him, receiving what He has done and looking to Him and choosing to become grateful. And through even choosing to become grateful, becoming grateful, having that gratitude that is in Jesus Christ truly manifested in and through you.

The Amazing Fruit of Thanksgiving – Episode #540 – Shulamite Podcast

Gratitude (or ingratitude) is how we choose to respond to God’s sovereign rule over our lives. But God responds to us, too. Thanksgiving bears the fruit of loving God, and ingratitude bears the fruit of rejecting Him. Which fruit do we see in our own lives?