Prayer
Briefly prepare your heart in silence, and ask the Holy Spirit to awaken your sense of anticipation that God is about to speak to you through His Word. Then, before you read, I invite you to pray this prayer based on Psalm 126:2-3:
Holy Spirit, show me the goodness and glory of God today!
Fill my heart with joy,
fill my mouth with laughter,
and put a song of praise and thanks on my lips.
Amen.
Reading
Have you ever done something for someone else and not been thanked for it? If you’re anything like me there was a part of you that felt “put out” by that experience. We inherently understand as human beings that when someone does something good, kind, generous, gracious, thoughtful or loving for us (especially if it was completely undeserved) the only appropriate response is gratitude. As soon as we recognise the goodness and grace we have received from someone else, it is only right to say, “Thank you”.
Growing up, we probably all had the experience of an adult handing us something and then asking, “What do you say?” And we all know that the correct response they were expecting was, “Thank you.”
Here in this incident, Jesus healed a group of ten lepers and yet only one returned to give thanks. Could it be that his status as a Samaritan set him apart? Could it be that the other nine were Jewish and that they had a sense of entitlement? Whatever the reason might have been, this man recognised the grace given to him and expressed deep gratitude, praising God in a loud voice and thanking Jesus.
From Jesus response to this grateful leper, it is clear that Jesus considered the other nine to have been acting inappropriately by not returning to thank Him. It’s not that Jesus needed to be thanked, or that He performed the healing in order to be thanked. It’s just that it was thoroughly inappropriate and selfish not to feel and express profound gratitude to the One who had just transformed their lives completely by healing them.
And if we recognise that Jesus has healed and restored us even more completely -through forgiving our sins, rescuing us from the curse of sin and death, and adopting us into God’s eternal Kingdom-Family – should we not be offering our lives to Him as a living sacrifice of thanksgiving (Romans 12:1). As the author of Hebrews put it:
15 By Him (Jesus) therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name.
May we never be an ungrateful people! May we always be a people of deep gratitude who daily offer our Lord the thanks and praise that are due to His Name for all he has done for us!
Contemplation
Please take time to ponder what Jesus has commanded us. Turn this declaration over and over in your mind. Keep it in mind throughout the day and live in step with Your King, Jesus.
As a disciple of Jesus Christ:
- I will recognise the Lord’s amazing goodness to me in all its forms and give Him thanks!
Holy Spirit, fill me with an awareness of all that Jesus has done for me today, and help me to respond with wholehearted words and deeds of deep gratitude and praise! Amen.
Dave's Diary 