Luke 17:11- 19
You might say, “It’s November, it’s obvious what this month’s devotional is going to be. Let me take a wild shot in the dark and say something thematic that has to do with the holiday of Thanksgiving. And let me also guess he’s going to use the story of the ten lepers. “
Well since I’m not one to disappoint, let me put on my Captain Obvious hat and talk about the subject of thanksgiving while using the obvious scripture in Luke 17:11- 19. While the theme and scripture in this month’s devotional may lack the element of surprise, by the time you get done reading this devotional in its entirety, you’ll be surprised with the depth of power that thanksgiving holds to unlock doors of future blessing and peace.
10% Rule
When it comes to thanksgiving, I like to bring up what I call the 10% rule (and I’m not referring to tithing). When we read the narrative in Luke 17:11- 19, it gives us 10 lepers all asking Jesus for healing. The Bible tells us they all receive healing as they walk (Luke 17:14c), but only one returns to tell Jesus thank you. One out of the 10 returned to say thank you. Now I don’t want to beat up on the other nine too bad, maybe they were thankful; But I’ll bail them out and say maybe in their excitement they just forgot to return to Jesus, and by the time they did remember, he was gone (wink wink)!
What is it about thank you that many can’t always remember to give it? 10 lepers are healed and yet only one says thank you. This is the ten percent rule in action. If you help 100 people it’s likely in today’s day and times that about 10 will say thank you.
The second part of the 10% rule I’ve found is that sometimes, we as Christians are so busy asking God for more, that we actually fail to stop and fully thank God for what he has already done. In turn, we end up shorting God on thanksgiving and we actually only thank him for about 10% of what he does. Now, it’s impossible to truly thank God for everything he does, but if we examine our lives I’m sure we can find a few areas where we could offer more thanksgiving than we do.
I have a friend who’s in the fast food business and they train their staff to remember the customer must receive five “thank yous” while in the drive thru. So between ordering and receiving your meal, you as a customer should expect to hear thank you five times.
What about when you’re in the bank making a deposit or withdrawal and you exchange thank yous with the teller? Their thank you to you is for you entrusting their bank with your hard earned dollars and your thank you is for their service to you as a customer.
Lastly, what about when you drop something and a passerby picks it up and quickly returns it to you, you then feel it’s necessary to throw out a quick thank you.
I’m making the point that we tend to think of thankfulness as a quick one-time exchange with someone for a service or favor and we’re on our way, but this is not the thankfulness the Bible speaks of.
True Thanksgiving
When speaking of thankfulness to God, whether through a Psalm thanksgiving (Psalms 100) telling you to shout for joy or prayers of thanksgiving remembering God’s goodness (Ephesians 1:16), the writer displays passion, expressing to the reader a “heart of thanksgiving.” Getting back to Luke 17, in the case of the leper, you see a display of passion. Thank you is not solely from his mouth, but instead you can feel it overflowing from his heart as he throws himself at the feet of Jesus in worship (Luke 17:16).
With God blessing us each moment of each day, it’s obligatory for us to remain in a passionate perpetual cycle of thanksgiving.
If we knew the power in a heart of thanksgiving, I believe the 10% rule would be destroyed and our society would look drastically different. True thanksgiving would put a knife in the heart of consumerism; it would cancel debts owed to one another and bring peace back to our hearts. You probably think I’m taking this too far, but the Bible gives us numerous examples of what thanksgiving has the power to do.
The Power of Thankfulness
1. Thankfulness brings wholeness. (Luke 17:19 KJV)
While the other nine lepers receive strictly a cure, Jesus grants the thankful leper wholeness. Maybe the leper dealt with rejection after being quarantined from people for so many years. Maybe this former leper needed to learn how to return to healthy relationships after being in a relationship of dysfunction with nine other men. What about strength he would need to go back to his life on his own? The Bible makes clear that he was the only foreigner of the group (Luke 17:18), and now that the former leprous Jews were healed, they might return to their people and leave him without a friend. After all, Jews were not to associate with Samaritans (John 4:9). Whatever he needed, Jesus blesses him with a harvest of wholeness after he sowed his seed of thanksgiving.
2. Thank you has the power to become currency.
You might ask with the first point why did you call thankfulness a seed? When I hear seed, I usually hear it in reference to money—and thankfulness is not money. I told you we’ll unlock the true power of thanksgiving with this devotional, but think about the last time you really helped someone in need who couldn’t afford to compensate you financially. Knowing they have no means of financial payment, you made a conscious decision that a thank you will do. In this case, a thank you actually becomes a currency or means of exchange. I’m not saying run to your nearest grocery store to fill your cart or basket and then expect your thank you to cover the total at the register, but I am saying thank you can sometimes cover a debt that you in other ways cannot immediately repay. Thankfulness has the power to wipe debt clean.
3. Thankfulness can quickly open the door to God’s future blessing.
Israel was lead out of Egypt into the wilderness where they were due to reach the Promised Land in probably a couple of weeks max. This short trip grew into forty years. Why such a long trip? The Bible tells us in Numbers 11 that the people began to grumble and complain about the food they received in the wilderness. Instead of thanking God for the miracle of bread from the sky in the midst of a desert, they began to complain. So God issues them a judgment of wandering (Numbers 14:26- 30). The Israelites thankfulness would have lead them to the Promised Land quickly, but on the contrary, their ungratefulness prolonged the trip. Here’s where we learn a door opening principle.
Your grumbling equals your wandering.
You have not earned the right to receive direction until you are first thankful for where you are. In comparison, we live blessed far beyond generations before us. But it’s thanking God for what he has already done that grants us the privilege to receive the blessings He has for us next. Once God got rid of all the ungrateful generation, he granted Israel instruction that opened the door to their future. One direction from God can turn years of aimless wandering into a life of promise.
4. Thankfulness coupled with worship and prayer keeps away darkness, confusion and anxiety while granting us peace. (Rom. 1:21 NLT, Philippians 4:6, 7)
Romans 1 explains that when men refused to give worship and thanksgiving to God it opened the door to darkness and confusion. In addition, Philippians says when we pray with thanksgiving, it casts down anxiety and God grants us His peace (v. 7). You’d be shocked how quickly a prayer in the true spirit of thanksgiving can erase anxiety.
5. Thankfulness magnifies God. (Psalms 69:30 KJV)
When you magnify something, you’re making a conscious effort to enlarge something or someone or to increase their size. Thankfulness can make God so big that we forget about the things we don’t have.
6. Thankfulness is the will of God. (1 Thessalonians 5:18)
People will spend years wondering “What is God’s will for me?” Thessalonians gives us a great answer. It’s God’s will for us to be thankful in every circumstance. How can I be thankful in a trial that seems to be the hardest of my life? Once you receive in your spirit that God is sovereign, you’ll understand He’s in control of all things. If he allowed the circumstance or problem, He’s going to use it for your benefit in the end (Romans 8:28). You may not always enjoy the circumstance, but you are commanded to be thankful anyway. Psalms 50:14 ESV reminds us that thanksgiving is a sacrifice, meaning that sometimes you’re going to have to do it when you don’t feel like it. There’s going to be times it overflows and other times, it’s going to seem nauseating to release those words from your mouth, but a heart of thanksgiving will eventually override how you feel for the moment.
Let 1 Thessalonians 5:18 be your verse for the month, or better yet, tuck this verse away in your heart (Psalms 119:11) to be used in life’s most trying times. Although the Thanksgiving holiday lasts just one day in a calendar year, if a heart of thanksgiving is developed, it can lead to inner peace and outer prosperity.