Give Thanks

Ps.30:^11-12 “You did it: you changed wild lament into whirling dance; You ripped off my black mourning band and decked me with wildflowers. I’m about to burst with song; I can’t keep quiet about you. God, my God, I can’t thank you enough.” (MSG)

The thing that holds people back from God’s best and from intimacy with Christ is actually religion. The nine were Jews, they needed to fulfill the religious rites. But who was it that told them to go and show themselves to the priest in the first place? It was Jesus. The people that experience the best of Christ are people who are more interested in Jesus’ heart. People who do not really care about religion. When God wants to reveal Himself in a special way, check, it was not to people that had a religious order. David is a classic example; he was the result of a fling, “…in sin did my mother conceive me.” (Ps.51:5, KJV). He was not even in the order of things. When the other children were going for military training, David was not sent with them. But God trained David Himself and he was God’s general. Even Jesus Himself, when Jesus came, He was outside of the religious order.

Most times, because we want to align with the religious order, we miss out on what God is doing. What is the heart of Jesus? That is more important, not what religion says. The truth is, it takes someone that is not burdened or yoked with religion to discern and enjoy the heart of Jesus. This one, the one that came back, enjoyed the heart of Jesus. Jesus laid His hands on him and touched him, he could look at Jesus eye to eye. The others just went to show themselves to the priest, but Jesus said to this one in Luke Luke 17:¹⁹ “…Stand up and go. Your faith has healed you.” They say the others were healed but this one was made whole. In other words, if their fingers had fallen off, to be healed means the leprosy was gone but they still had missing fingers. Made whole means if his fingers had fallen off, the fingers grew back at Jesus’ Word.

The others could say, ‘We saw Jesus, we shouted to Him from a distance asking for mercy. He spoke to us and gave us an instruction; we experienced His power.’ But the one who came back would say, ‘I got close to Him, I fell at His feet, and He laid His hands on me. I looked into His eyes and saw His heart; I felt His heart.’ So where are you, are you in the nine, or are you in the one? Where are you because Jesus counted and that is huge! When you see a cluster of ten men from afar off, and they are talking to you, most people will not count. But Jesus counted because everyone matters to God, everyone! Behind life is a story, behind every life is a testimony, behind every life is a work of grace that Jesus is doing. Jesus counted! Some of us need to move away from the nine and come close to The One. Some of us are sitting on testimonies of the amazing work that God did or is doing in your life. That needs to change going forward. Where are you? While for some, what you need to do is to give your life to Jesus in gratitude to Him.

Prayer: Father, I release my life to You in gratitude and I ask for the grace to be a consistently grateful child and not to cover Your glory but to give it to You, in Jesus Name. Amen!