So Jesus answered and said,
“Were there not ten cleansed? But where are the nine?
Were there not any found who returned
to give glory to God except this foreigner?”
And He said to him, “Arise, go your way.
Your faith has made you well.”
Luke 17:17-19
We can’t ponder thanksgiving and worship without talking about the ten lepers. Only ONE came back to thank Lord Jesus?? Yet how often have I been guilty of the very same thing?
As we surrender our lives in greater measure to the Lord Jesus, we will find that our gratefulness will become more and more evident. A surrendered life means trusting Him fully with how He will handle the small and large concerns that we face. When we give up control to Him, we begin to recognize that God does know what He is doing. We then get out of the way to let Him reveal His love in ways we didn’t realize before. Gratefulness will become a spontaneous fountain from our hearts and lips. Trust me. I know this from my own life.
Think of gratefulness to Him as the temperature gauge of who is in control: is it me or my Heavenly Father? Ponder that for a bit…
Intentional gratefulness is the greatest cure for discouragement. It beats out the blues. It drowns out the voice of self-pity, and it can be a tool to overcome depression and anxiety. Indeed, there are many factors regarding these instances, but from personal experience and years of offering pastoral counseling, I am hard-pressed to find people who live daily in effervescent gratefulness who are down for the count for very long.
When the thankful, now-healed leper returned to Jesus, he must have immensely blessed the Lord’s heart. Let’s be people who bless our Redeemer’s heart, too.