Welcome to our Together on Mission Podcast, when we seek to be with and like Jesus. As we begin a conversation with Jesus in the morning, the scripture, prayer and meditation, and then continue that conversation with them throughout your day. Your host is Travis Twiney, the pastor at the Inland Vineyard Church in Corona, California. In this season of the podcast, we will be journeying through the Gospel of Luke, specifically looking for moments in the life of Jesus of the Nazareth.
Good morning everyone, and welcome to a daily together on Mission Podcast. I have my Bible open to Luke chapter 17. We're looking at moments in the life of Jesus, and we will get to this moment in just a moment. But the title of the podcast this morning is Grateful, the power of gratefulness, the power of thanking someone genuinely, honestly, specifically.
We'll come back to that publicly. We'll come back to that with all of our heart. And in order to be grateful, in order to be thankful, it's like we need to go back and express how we feel about who that person is or what that person did. And so often we just want to go forward to the next thing.
And so going back and being genuinely and honestly and specifically and publicly grateful is getting more and more rare. So here's a good question to ponder before we read the short story. How generous are you with your gratitude? How generous am I with my gratitude?
How generous are we with our gratitude? So Luke chapter 17, verse 11, Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance and they called out an allowed voice.
Jesus, master, have pity on us. When he saw them, he said, go show yourself to the priest. And as they went, they were cleansed. One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back.
Praised God an allowed voice. He threw himself at Jesus's feet and he thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Jesus asked, we're not all ten cleansed.
Where are the other nine? Has not one returned to praise God except his foreigner? Then he said to him, rise and go, your faith has made you well. When we look back at verse 15, one of them, when he saw he was healed, came back.
He came back and he praised God and allowed voice. He threw himself at Jesus's feet and he thanked him. So the only one came back. Gratefulness is getting so rare, and evidently two thousand years ago, it was rare.
And it's rare today because we don't want to go back. We want to move on to the next thing. There's always something to move on to, always someone to move on to. One came back and stopped and paused.
And in this case, threw himself down at the feet of Jesus and said, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for healing me. I am so grateful. This would have never happened without you. I could not have done this without you.
Thank you, thank you for healing me. So the question presses, how generous have you been with your gratitude? You know, because part of life and most of life is rubbing shoulders with other people. It's called marriage.
It's called being on a team, being in a family, having a neighbor, an extended family, being a part of a group, whatever that context of community might be. Do we stop, you know, pause, think, and specifically highlight what we're grateful for. Go back and say, thank you. Because again, it's so easy to move forward and assume.
And this is, I think, really important. Assume that people know that in our hearts were grateful. But the problem is when we are grateful only in our heart, our hearts not actually seen. We may actually be very grateful.
But if we're only grateful in our heart, then nobody will ever know how grateful and how thankful we actually are. It's like we may say that somebody is a priority, but unless we prioritize them on our calendar, are we really prioritizing them? Will they really ever feel prioritized? And it's the same with gratefulness.
I'm grateful in my heart, right? You're grateful in your heart, but if we're only grateful in our heart, our heart's not actually seen. And if we're only grateful in our heart, and we never actually say that we're grateful, then what we actually are saying is that we could have done this without you. When we don't say thank you, I'm so grateful.
What we're actually saying is I could have done this on my own. And of course, it takes time and it takes thought and energy and it takes vulnerability to go back and to pause and to think and to express gratefulness. And Jesus actually says at the end of the story, He says, we're not the other nine cleanse yet. Only one came back.
And I think that Jesus, and this is one of the reasons why I think it's such a powerful moment because I think Jesus was blessed by the one that did come back. Because this one that did come back wasn't only grateful in his heart. Instead of moving forward, he went back. And he came and he thanked and he expressed his gratefulness to Jesus.
And I think Jesus was incredibly blessed. And as I was pondering the story this morning, the Samaritan thanked Jesus for something specific. And I found that when my gratefulness is specific and detailed, it has so much more power. The more detail, the more impact.
When our gratefulness has a fine point on it, it goes so much deeper. So think about your parents, your neighbor, your boyfriend, your teacher, whoever you rub shoulders with. What specifically could you go back and thank them for? Even if it's back 10 years, back two years, back two weeks, back two minutes.
Who can we go back to before we go forward? And the more specific, the more impact that thank you will have in their lives. And I would say like this Samaritan did with Jesus, maybe consider doing it publicly. Not only specifically, but publicly.
Everybody loves to be bragged on. Everybody loves to be told what specifically they did in earshot of other people that really blessed you. We don't say that we want to be thanked publicly, but we do. Be grateful and be thankful in public.
Announce it from the rooftops. Why not? I mean, of course it's vulnerable, but it's so powerful. And our culture is getting more cutting and more flippant and more entitled.
And the way we can begin to break that trajectory in our relationships and our families and our communities, on our teams is by specifically announcing our gratefulness by going public with our gratefulness at a family dinner or a staff meeting in really any setting. Because a heartfelt public honest specific thank you has the power to literally transform the moment and the event and a relationship and a life. And again, Jesus was incredibly blessed by this Samaritan who was healed and was willing to come back before they went forward, come back and say specifically and publicly thank you for healing me. And so one of the things that I'm often telling myself as a father, a leader, a preacher, a friend, Travis before you move forward, who do you need to go back to and thank?
Before you go forward to the next thing, who do you need to go back to and thank for the last thing? Who do you need to go back to and express gratefulness and thankfulness to? And it's probably also good to assume that we don't know the half of what other people are doing for us. You know, there's so much more going on than meets the eye.
And gratefulness pulls some of what other people are doing, you know, out of the darkness and into the light. Gratefulness celebrates people, it empowers people, it changes everything. And in this story, only one of them went back and knelt before Jesus and praised and thanked and allowed voice specifically and publicly and it blessed Jesus deeply. And so let's be that one.
Let's be the one that goes back before we go forward. Let's be generous with our gratitude. We'll talk soon. Thanks for listening to the Together on Mission podcast.
We truly hope that you were blessed and encouraged by you today. If you had any questions about the Inland Vineyard Church, our ministries, or our Sunday services, feel free to connect with us on our brand new app, which you can find in the Google Play and the App Store and check out our social media pages like Facebook and Instagram, or even check out our website at inlandvignard.org.