I'm ready to share with you what God has laid on my heart, and I believe it's for me for you, and you'll be blessed by it, and I encourage with it, sure. So the last few weeks, the last few times I've been teaching, I'm in number four, this is part four. Part four of your faith has made you well. This will be the last one.
Four instances in the Gospels where we see this phrase, either your faith has made you well, your faith has made you whole, your faith has saved you. Any of those different terminologies can all be the same because it's the same word, and if you don't know it by now, I'm going to tell you to go back and listen to the last three times. What's that word? Sodzo.
Come on, you knew it, right? So, sodzo, which is the word for saved in the Greek, but it's more than just saved like we think somebody gets saved where they accept Jesus and they become a new creation. Sodzo is an all-encompassing word. It means to restore it to health.
It means to deliver, to protect, to preserve, to heal. So all of those things are encompassed in that. And so four different passages, we looked at the woman who was the especially wicked center that came to Simon the Pharisees' house. We looked at the woman with the issue of blood, we looked at blind Bartimaeus.
In all of those stories, Jesus at the very end, he said, your faith has made you whole. Your faith has made you well. Your faith has saved you. And today we're going to be looking at the last and final one of those, which is what Jesus says to the Samaritan leper.
And there was a story in Luke 17 where he encounters ten lepers. So it's that story we're going to look at today. And again, this is another passage I never preached from. So I felt like a little bit that God's been challenging me in the last couple of weeks to stay on this and persevere.
Oddly enough, do you remember Pastor Sess's series that he's weaving in and out of mind is called what? Holding patterns? This is another holding pattern. So imagine that God has woven these two together really uniquely and prophetically, I believe.
So any guest here today, I want to welcome you. God bless you. Any guests? No, first time guests.
First time, oh, there's one. All right. Welcome. Good to have you here.
God bless you. God bless you very much. All right. If you have your Bibles and you want to turn to Luke 17, this is where our story will be today.
Luke 17 is where Jesus encounters ten lepers. I really wanted to hone in today on the action side of faith. The action side of faith that there's activity that comes as a result of believing and that never does, you know, our faith doesn't work for the promise of God. Our faith rests in the promise of God that God's already provided everything by grace.
But there's usually activity of some sort. There's something that there's a response that we make. James says this. That as the body without the spirit is dead, so that faith without what?
Works. That's not our effort that produces the blessing of God, but when I truly believe there's going to be a corresponding action that goes along with my faith. So the three things I want to look at today are this. Number one, faith requests.
If you want to write these down ahead of time. Faith requests that what I mean by that is faith actually places a demand on the grace of God that faith requests. We're going to see it's more than just a begging request that faith places a demand on God's grace. Number two is that faith responds.
And the response is this. It's not one a lot of us like to give. Anybody ever respond to a question? Everybody, right?
But this response is a different word. That we answer the command that Jesus gives with our obedience. So that faith, first of all, places a demand on his grace. But number two, that faith responds to his command with obedience.
And finally, the last thing is this faith returns. Faith returns, and we're going to look at faith returns. It brings me back into his presence, for the purpose of giving him glory. A lot of what we sang about just a few minutes ago.
So that's where we'll end that today. And we'll just go ahead and start reading. So Luke, chapter 17, verses 11 through 19 say this. Now it happened as he went to Jerusalem that he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee.
That phrase is what really God honed me in on this week and it's where I want to launch our message here in a minute. But remember this, tuck this in the back of your head. Jesus passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. Then he entered a certain village and they met him, ten men who were lepers and stood afar off.
And they lifted up their voices and said, Jesus, master, have mercy on us. And so when he saw them, he said to them, go show yourself to the priest, yourselves to the priest. And so it was as they went, they were cleansed. And one of them when he saw that he was healed, returned.
And with a loud voice glorified God and fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks. And he was a Samaritan. And so Jesus answered and said, where were there not ten cleansed? But where are the nine?
Were there not found any who returned to give glory to God except this fauna? And he said to him, arise, go your way, your faith has made you well. Father, I ask in the name of Jesus, Lord, in these next few minutes, Holy Spirit, bring your word to life. Father, your word is alive.
And so God, I thank you that your word never returns, boy, that your word always accomplishes the very thing for which you sent it. So Father, I pray today as your word says that you sent your word and healed them. Father, I just pray today for activity, miracles, transformation as the result of your word going forth. In Jesus' name.
Amen. All right. So the first thing we see is this. I said the thing with the Holy Spirit really highlighted.
I love as I read scripture. I'm not just read scripture, but listen to scripture. So if you have an app on your phone, you know there's an audio option, right? So I encourage you to do that.
Sometimes you need to read. Another way is you need to speak scripture. So as you're reading it, maybe you say it, sometimes you listen to it, sometimes you can do all three at the same time. But whichever way that you use, the Holy Spirit highlights certain phrases, certain things.
And this week he really highlighted this to me was that Jesus, it says in the NIV translation, it says that he traveled along the border of Samaria and Galilee. So Samaria and Galilee are two territories, right? They're two territories in Israel. They're two regions.
He's not in Galilee and he's not in Samaria, but he's traveling the border between the two. And it's on this border that he meets these ten lepers. Now lepers sees a horrible thing. I won't get into all the gruesome details of lepersy, but it's a disease that begins to cause its deformity, it causes loss of feeling.
A lot of times in your fingers and toes and hands and many times people who, because they have no feeling, they get cuts and then the disease takes place and then they actually lose digits and limbs and it's a very horrible disease. For thousands of years this disease was incurable. So from the time of the Old Testament all the way up to just about maybe a little bit over a hundred years ago, this disease was incurable. No known cure for it outside of a miracle.
And so when these ten lepers are living in this leper colony, it says they're living on the border of Samaria and the border of Galilee. Now Samaria means this, it means watchtower, it means watchtower. Galilee means circuit or circle. Samaria, the word watchtower comes from the, if you trace the word back in Hebrew, if you remember when God put Adam in the Garden of Eden, he says I'm placing you there to tend it and to keep it.
He says I want you to preserve it. So this word Samaria that means watchtower is rooted in the word that means preservation. It means to be preserved or protected. And then the word Galilee, which means circuit because of the cities that lay in that area, they actually formed a circuit or a circle.
And so to me that speaks of connection. And so what happens because of the disease that these men have, they were forced out of a place of connection, they're forced out of a place of protection, and they're living exiled from their community on the border of two realities. They're living, it's like this, they're alive but not living. No man's land, yes.
They're living in a place that it's no man's, they're alive but not really living. They're existing. But Jesus did what? He traveled to the border.
He traveled to the border. So I feel like a lot of times we live on the border of a lot of things in life. I think some of you today are living at the border. You know, that border could be a couple things.
It could be a lifestyle. It could be that you came out of your old life and into your new life in Christ. And the people that you used to associate with now don't associate with you. And the people that you want to associate don't want to associate with you yet.
Think of the Apostle Paul. You remember the Apostle Paul in Acts 9? He gets delivered, he gets saved, set free on the road to Damascus. And it says that when he came to Jerusalem, he tried to associate with the disciples, but what?
They were afraid of him and they rejected him. The Apostle Paul. And it said that Barnabas came along and brought him to the apostles. Sometimes you need a Barnabas.
That's a whole other story. Barnabas is the same word as Para Klechthos, which is what the Holy Spirit is, the comforter. You need the comforter, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus to bring you off the border. And sometimes you can be on the border of a relationship.
Maybe you're in the middle, maybe you were married. Maybe that marriage didn't work out. Maybe you're stuck on the border between divorce and what's next. Maybe you're stuck between health, wholeness.
I know a lot of people that live, God's healed this, but I still have this. I'm suspended between health and sickness because I'm somewhat healthy, but at the same time I'm still living with this disease and I'm living on the border. Maybe the border's just decisions in life or destinies or I'm not sure what direction to take that for a while in my life, I knew I was going this way. Now I don't know what's next and I'm just stuck on the border.
Well, here's the good news I want to tell you today. No matter what your border is, Jesus travels to the border. Jesus travels to the border. So it doesn't matter what the border is, it doesn't matter what border you're living at that's been a holding pattern in your life.
Jesus leaves his throne and travels to the border. Like you're living between two realities. You've been ostracized. You've been put out of the camps, so to speak.
Alive but not living. And Jesus travels to the border. But here's what happens when he travels to the border, there's a response on your part, right? He meets all ten.
There's ten lepers living there. There's ten lepers that have been brought together because of a common misery. What's amazing is it doesn't specifically say, but the implication is that one was a Samaritan which would have meant the other nine were Jewish people, the Jews and Samaritans hated each other. That sometimes you can commiserate that your misery actually supersedes the fact that you can't stand somebody.
Do you ever commiserate with your enemy? Like Jesus travels to that border too. Like the thing that brought them together was a negative thing. And Jesus traveled between the two realities to reach these ten men.
And so the first thing I want to look at today is that faith requests. Faith requests. Now when you think of requests, a lot of times we think of asking a what? A question, right?
Usually a request comes in the form of a question. Well this statement ends in not a question mark, but what? An actulation point. So this is not a, will you help me?
Will you heal me? They say master. Now what's interesting here when they say master, Jesus master have mercy on us. The word master here is not the word normally used almost all the time in the New Testament.
The word master typically means teacher. This word master is only used about five or six times in the New Testament. And it means overseer or superintendent. It has to do with authority.
We talked about authority earlier. Can you mention that Jesus has authority? And so when they're crying out, they're not saying teacher master, they're saying master, the one that has authority. They're recognizing that Jesus has the ability in his authorized to do something in their life.
They say have mercy. Mercy is this. It's sympathy in action. It means compassion.
It means kindness. It means that it's helped. It's given to somebody in need. They say we know you can do it.
And now we're, I hate to even use the word asking. We're asking with a exclamation point. See the difference is here when they're saying master have mercy on us. It's not a question in the Greek.
This word is in the imperative mood. Now what's interesting about the imperative is it's a demand. It's a command given by one person for the other person to fulfill that action. Imagine that.
They're telling Jesus what to do. They're making, see this is what I like to say that faith makes a demand on Jesus' grace. Like if he didn't provide it by grace, your faith can't make it happen. He's provided it by grace.
It's like this. Let's just, how many have ever sat around a big table of Thanksgiving? Everybody probably at some point have sat around a table of Thanksgiving. Now just for a minute, I have three kids.
I claim them sometimes and other times not. But I have three biological children. I've got two sons in law now, so I have like five kids. Just imagine for a minute that Kristen and I are sitting at the table at Thanksgiving.
I've got my three kids there and they have certain things they love. I can tell you every year Caroline's going to ask for four cheese, mac and cheese. I don't like mac and cheese for Thanksgiving, but that's what she wants. I've got another one that they want, these sweet potatoes with marshmallows and pecans and all that stuff.
It's all other favorites, right? As we're sitting there, the table's prepared. I've paid for the meal. Kristen's cooked the meal.
The table's set. Let's just say you're a guest at the table that day. My son says, hey dad, some potatoes. Or past the potatoes, please.
Is he really asking me to pass the potatoes or is he making a demand on something that I've already prepared? See, if you were sitting there and all of a sudden my son scutes the chair from the table and comes to the head of the table where I sit and he said, Father, thou great man, if you could find it in your hearts to just spare me a piece of potato from the potato pan. Would that not be weird? It's stupid.
And you would think that they're probably living a weird life at home, right? Like what kind of house is this guy living in? But so often we come to the Father's table the same way. We laugh at that, but we do the same in our spiritual lives.
He set the table. He's prepared it. He's provided everything. Like, oh God, will you heal me?
I don't know. I've already done it. So maybe. Like it sounds dumb here, but man, we live a day to day.
Faith places a demand on grace. And 1124 says this. This word ask is in the same mood. It's in the imperative.
It says whatsoever. Whatsoever things you ask for when you pray. Whatever. Whatever things you ask for when you pray.
That word ask means to whatever you desire, whatever you require is another translation. Whatever you crave. And it literally means demand. Also everything's you demand when you pray.
Believe that you receive them and you will have them. See, it's not that I'm asking God to do something that's a, it's a, it's a, it's a question mark in it. It's a request that's founded on the fact that he's already set the table. And I can sit there and say, Hey dad, pass me the healing.
Hey dad, pass me the deliverance. Hey dad, pass me the supernatural power. Hey dad, pass me the wisdom. Hey dad, pass me the discernment.
See it's not a whatsoever that's anything that it has to be a whatsoever is on the table. If we're sitting at Thanksgiving dinner and Frederick says pass me the pizza. Well, that's not a good example because we used to eat lasagna and pizza and spaghetti. I grew up in an Italian side of my family.
So that's not a good example. But let's just say, let's say he said pass the liver. Okay. There's not going to be any liver on Thanksgiving table.
I can declare that with 100% confidence today. Not even liver. Unless Pastor Seth comes over and I'll cook it just to make him eat it. That man's the pickiest eater ever met in my life.
But no. Here's the guardrails. First John 514 and 15. This is the confidence we have in him.
So my confidence, I can ask with confidence and my confidence is him that whatever we ask, what according to his will, this is the confidence we have. Whatever we ask according is well, we know that he hears us. And if he hears us, we have the petitions asked or demanded or required of him. Faith places a demand on his grace.
It's not a cockiness. He doesn't say this is the cockiness we have in him because it's not me, it's him. He set the table. He paid the bill.
He laid the spread. But I can confidently make a request for what he's already provided because if he's already provided, I know it's according to his will. No brainer. It's a no brainer.
Number two is this. Faith responds. But it's not just a response. This is not lip service.
Faith responds this way. Faith answers the command that he gives with obedience. Faith answers the command that he gives with obedience. Let's just say Frederick says, hey dad, pass the potatoes.
Now our table's fairly long. So if I'm at the end of the table and he's the other than the table, and if the thing's hot, what am I probably not going to do? I'm probably not going to pass it because maybe people burn their hands, which can kind of add some fun to Thanksgiving day if you want to do that. That's kind of fun to watch.
But no, I'll probably say, hey, hammer your plate. Right? Hammer your plate. Now what does he have the option of doing?
If he holds on to his plate, those potatoes are going to sit there and get cold. All the way, I prepared him. I paid for him. They're all his.
He's asked, I'm willing to give him a hammer plate and he stands there and holds on to his plate. See, there's a response that has to respond that faith answers the command of God with a obedience. I think of a lot of times, I love this saying, but I think it gets people in trouble. John Windber, who was the founder of the Vineyard Movement, is credited with saying this.
Faith is spelled R-I-S answered. Okay. What's R-I-S-K? Faith is spelled R-I-S-K.
I believe that because all faith involves some sort of, there's an element of risk. Right? There's an element of the unknown. But I think before faith is spelled R-I-S-K, it has to be spelled O-B-E-D-I-E-N-C-E.
Because here's what happens. As I was praying and meditating on this this morning, often I talk to people who are people about the difference between faith and foolishness. Right? There's faith, and then there's foolishness.
What's the difference? And I feel like God gave me the answer this morning to it. Foolishness is when I take a risk devoid of obedience to a word. See, a lot of times we take risks that are based on somebody else's word.
Like you can take all kinds of risk, but if it's not a risk out of obedience to what God told you to do, you're probably going to crash and burn. See, there's got to be, it talks about in Romans 4 that those who are of faith circumcised and uncircumcised that we walk in the steps of faith, of Abraham. That there's steps and stages. And so often like, you don't take a no risk step.
Like what happens? We try to take this big risky step, but we've never taken a low risk step. My son-in-law, Joshua, he's a risk taker. He's a, you might call him an adrenaline junkie.
He's jumped out of airplanes, I think, some 800 times. Like I have no desire to ever do that. I believe God's word, it says to stand in grace. Right?
He doesn't say, it doesn't say float from the airplane down. But he no longer jumps, but he does a lot of these things. Well, his latest thing is this. He's a, he's a paramoderer.
Anybody know what paramodering is? It's basically a 90 pound backpack with a propeller and gas. And what? Oh yeah, you had a parachute, right?
Yeah, you need a parachute. Yeah, hell. Well, this morning he texts Christ and he's like seven o'clock. He's like, hey, I'm out.
And, you know, he gets a little riskier every day. So today he's outside behind our house, dropping smoke. You know, he's, he's flying this paramets. It's like, it sounds like a leaf blower with a parachute.
But here's the thing. Oh, and get this. When he got into this about two months ago, he bought an attachment that's for two people. It's like a tandem attachment.
He said, hey, dad, I'm taking you up next year after I get certified. I said, no, no. That's, that, that, that, that, that liver on Thanksgiving and me going up in the paramod are not going to happen. I have no desire to be up on a parachute with a propeller.
But here's what can happen. Would you put a 90 pound backpack with a propeller and a gas can on a baby? Why? Well, because they haven't learned how to do what?
They don't even know how to stand or take a step. Would you put a 90 pound backpack with a propeller on a toddler? No. Would you put it on elementary student?
No. Because every time they're learning to take steps, they're getting to a higher level, but they're not at the level to take the risk of putting a backpack with a propeller on them yet. See what happens is we try and, oh, yeah, you got to have faith. And I believe that.
You got to take a risk. I believe that. But there's steps that you go from faith to faith because what happens is obedience is a constant, but risk is ever increasing. See, when you get people to jump off the cliff without the obedience, they end up hurting themselves.
I wouldn't even put that backpack with a propeller on me. I could probably carry it. But I haven't taken enough steps to do it effectively. See, there's obedience.
Obedience is the training ground to take a bigger step later. See what you would think about Jesus when his first miracle, the very first miracle he did, your breakthrough is on the other side of your obedience. There's always breakthrough that comes as a result of obedience, but sometimes the obedience that we're going to see is a training ground for something greater. See, at the miracle of where he turned the water into wine, right, where at the marriage of Canada, they run out of wine.
What does Mary say? She goes to Jesus. What are you going to do? What are you going to do?
He's like, what's this got to do with me, Mary? And they say, my party, and I'm not letting, I'm just hanging out. But she knew it was time. And she looks to the servants and she says, whatever he tells you to do, do it.
That's what I want to tell you today. Whatever he tells you to do, do it. See, you're never going to develop a life of obedience if you don't take a step of obedience. You're never going to take more risks of faith if you don't take the initial step.
See, I can't operate here until I've learned to operate here. See, what's he saying? He says, there's some water pots there. I want you to take the water pots and fill them.
And what's he saying? They did. They filled them. And then he said, I want you to get some of it and take it to the master of the feast.
And I want you to give it to him. What's he saying? They did. They took it.
He said, draw some out, take it to the master, and they took it. And we know that when they take it to the master of the feast, he takes it, says he tasted the water that became wine, and he goes to the bridegroom and is like, what are you doing? This is the good stuff. You don't bring the good stuff out.
At last, you bring the good stuff first. You give people the good stuff. You get drunk, then you bring the bad stuff out and they don't know the difference. What's wrong with you?
Let's see. Jesus says, whatever he tells you to do, do that. If he tells you to fill it, fill it. If he tells you to take it, take it.
If he tells you to taste it, taste it. When Jesus heals the blind man in John chapter 9, the man that was born blind, it says that he spits on the ground and makes clay out of his saliva. He turns the dirt in his saliva into mud. He anoints the man's eyes with his clay made out of saliva.
And he tells him what? Go washing the pole of Saloa. Now that guy could have walked around all day with mud in his eyes. Spitting his eye and he had been blind tomorrow.
But Jesus told him what to do. And it said he went and washed and he came away seeing. Whatever he tells you to do, do it. Whatever he tells you to do, do it.
See, we think of Abraham. You know, we think of Abraham. How many know that Abraham's the greatest, probably the greatest example of faith in the Bible, right? He's probably the greatest.
He's called the father of our faith. But you know, I think the greatest test in Abraham's life was when God told him to sacrifice his promise son. He'd waited 25 years for Isaac to be born. He raised Isaac as a young man.
And eventually God says, all right, I want to test you. I want you to go to sacrifice. I want you to light on fire. I want you to bind your son.
I want you to put him on the altar. And I want you to sacrifice the one son that I've given you as a promise. Do you think that took a risk? There was risk involved, right?
A lot of risk. But see, he didn't take the risk he had stepped up his face without building it upon a life of obedience. In Hebrews, chapter 11, it starts, you see Hebrews 11, 8, Hebrews 11, 17. You see those three dots in the middle?
I want you to think of 40 to 50 years as those three dots. Because it was 25 years from the time that Abraham gets called out of Mesopotamia that he comes into the land, 25 years until he has a son at 100 years old. And depending on how old you think Isaac wasn't, he was sacrificed, irrelevant. He could have been 15 to 25 years old, whatever it is.
But it's somewhere between 40 to 50 years expires between these two verses. So here's what God does. By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called out to go to a place that he didn't know. Now is there a little bit of risk involved in that?
Yeah, there's a little bit. You might end up in a place you don't like. You might get turned around. You may not like it when you get there, whatever.
There's a small amount of risk. But what was evident from day one? Obedience. What happened 50 years later when he's called to sacrifice his son?
That's a big risk. You don't get there overnight. You get there by taking steps of obedience that are consistent as the risk of faith grows, you have a consistency in your life based on obedience to God's voice. It says in between those two, that's 40 or 50 years, it says that he waited in the land of promise.
By faith Abraham waited. By faith Sarah conceived. She didn't get, it wasn't the immaculate conception. You realize that?
You realize that even though Abraham's body was dead, he still had to do something? That's faith. That's a big step. That's a risk.
It could be quite embarrassing at 100 years old. But see, the obedience becomes the consistency in my life that prepares me for the bigger steps that require greater risk later. Risk devoid of obedience is foolishness. I want you to take this word that Mary spoke today, whatever he tells you to do.
Do it. Whatever he tells you to do, do it. Faith makes a demand on Jesus' grace. It appropriates what he's already provided.
It doesn't beg, but it makes a demand on it. Like you have a check that's already been signed in blood that you're cashing. Faith responds in obedience, but finally faith does this. Faith returns.
Faith returns. That's kind of dumb. What does that mean? There was ten people, ten lepers, that the problem united them, but praise separated them.
See, there's a distinguishing factor here. It says in Luke 17, 15, 16, go back. It says when he saw that he was healed, he did what? Returned.
And with a loud voice glorified God, fell down on his face, giving thanks. Which means this, that glorifying God and giving thanks are synonymous. They're used interchangeably in this verse. That he returns.
See, I guarantee you, all ten got healed. It says as they went, they all made a request, they all responded in obedience, and they all got healed. As they went, they were cleansed. I guarantee you, they were grateful.
Imagine being any of the ten. They're all lepers, they're all ostracized. Jesus says, go show yourself to the priest, which is really upholding the law of Moses. But also, if you look back at Luke 5, when the one leper came out, he said, go show yourself to the priest as a testimony.
So that in itself is declaring who Jesus is. That there's only one person on the face of the earth that can do the impossible. It's Jesus. But, so I guarantee you, they're all grateful.
I can't imagine that they're like, well, this is dumb. I just got healed. What am I? Oh, I'm going to have to go back to work now.
Oh, man. I'm going to have to move back in with the old woman. Oh, lady. Oh, my God, it's the ball and chain.
I had freedom out here in No Man's Land. No. I guarantee you, they're like, yes! Yes!
Well, I want to tell you this today. This stood out to me. There's a difference between being grateful and giving thanks. One is an attitude of the heart.
The other is an act of worship. Not the ones, not that the attitude of the heart's wrong. I guarantee they're all grateful. God, healed me.
But one is an attitude of the heart. The other one is an act of worship. And he turns around. And he returns to the one that healed him.
There's a difference. There's a big difference. So you can be grateful all day long. We need to live, like the people called the attitude of gratitude.
You should live that. But the attitude of gratitude doesn't say anything. It's an attitude. One return.
Which tells me this, that being thankful for what God has provided is not common. It's not common, because only one out of ten returned. But think about this. If giving thanks for what you received is uncommon, how much more rare would it be to give thanks for the thing that you haven't yet received?
If only ten percent are thankful for what they have, how much rarer is it to give glory to God before you've received the thing that you have? I don't know, but it's less than ten. Matter of fact, I only know one verse in the Bible that speaks of somebody giving glory to God before the manifestation of what they were believing for showed up. Other than Jesus.
Because you know Jesus was thankful. When Jesus stood at the tomb of Lazarus, what did he say? He found something to give thanks for. Father, I thank you that you always hear me.
Lazarus, come forth. Because of God, why did you let him die? God, why am I in this situation? Why do I got to smell this disgusting smell?
Father, I thank you that you always hear me. See, there's always something to be thankful for in the midst of what you're going through. Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing.
And everything give thanks. For this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. It doesn't say I'm giving thanks for the situation. Because I don't am Sock.
But in the midst of it, in the middle, at the border, in the middle, I can find something in that situation to be thankful for. But I want to point you today to a greater level of faith. Like shouldn't it be easy to be thankful when you get the thing you prayed for? It should be, but it's uncommon.
But I want to move you beyond that today. I want to move you to being thankful before you even receive, before you see and receive the manifestation of that thing. Abraham was that kind of guy. It says this in Romans chapter 4.
It says not being weak in faith. He did not consider his body already dead, even though he was 100 years old. Or the deadness of Sarah's womb. He did not waver at the promise that God threw under the leaf.
But was what? Strengthened in faith, giving glory to God. He was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully persuaded that God was able to do that which he promised. That word strengthened means enabled.
It actually means empowered. It's a longer form of the word, dunamis, which means miracle-working power of God. And I want to tell you this, that when you can thank the Lord, when you can give him glory, ahead of the receiving of the thing that you asked for, you actually supercharge or release the miracle-working power of God into your faith. Thanksgiving invites the miracle-working power of God into this situation.
Abraham was empowered in his faith. In the month of May I was in Korea. I got invited to go to Korea to a Hyundai trip. And on that trip I got to drive the new Ionic 5.
I went to a Hyundai Kia, the research lab in South Korea. And it's just this big massive expanse of asphalt. And we got to drive these new EV cars. I'm not a big EV guy, but I got to admit to have a lot of power.
And I experienced power that day. And so the last thing you want to do is put me behind a wheel of a car with two miles of asphalt and say, hit it. So we all get a turn, you know, we get coached on what to do, and we got to slalom in the straightaway. But nobody, I'm the guy that like asked better questions and get better answers.
So I see a button that's kind of hidden, but it says NGB on it. NGB. And of course I pull up to the line and ask the professional driver, I'm like, what's NGB? He goes, oh, oh.
He goes, that's like the super charge for you. This thing's already almost 700 horsepower, right? So it's fast. And I don't know how fast yet.
But I said, well, can I hit the button? Of course, yeah. He's like, yeah, if you want to. And I'm thinking, why wouldn't nobody else have asked this yet?
He's like, oh, yeah, I was like, what do I do? He said, I want you to hold down on the gas, hold on the brake simultaneously until that thing goes, ergh. And then let off the brake and take off. I was like, cool.
So I do that. Whoo. I'm telling you what? Well, I haven't hit the button yet.
He says, now when that thing starts to redline again, hit the button. I was like, all right. So I'm like, ew. And I got this guy sitting next to me.
He's a Hyundai dealer from Atlanta, but he's from India. I thought he was going to start speaking Arabic. He, he, this guy was about ready to vomit. And so as soon as that thing redlines, I hit the NGB.
And I thought I had experienced power up to that point. But then it's basically this. If you ever watch the Fast and the Furious, it's like the nitrous oxide button for electric vehicles. So it's like Vin Diesel hitting the nitrous.
So I hit that button and we're going like fast. And then all of a sudden it's like next level fast. And I thought like my gut was in the backseat. But all that to say this, that's what Thanksgiving does.
It supercharges the faith that you already have. See, I was already going fast. But there's this button that I can hit that's called Thanksgiving. It's a veil.
Like anybody could have hit it. But nobody did. But I got to experience something nobody else got to experience because I asked a question. Because I decided to hit the button.
And it's supercharged the power that was already there. And that's what Thanksgiving will do. Here's the question for you. If you aren't giving thanks for what you have received, how do you expect to give thanks for what you're believing to receive?
I could have sat at the starting line all day long hitting the button. So that's what we try to do. We try to like, when it's a big deal, why are you getting my faith engaged? I got to thank.
And we're hitting the button at the starting line. It does nothing. See, we're trying to hit the button, but we're not doing the thing that precedes it. Like, how do you think you're ever going to learn to give thanks before you receive it if you haven't learned how to give thanks after you receive it?
It's steps of faith. But this is next level stuff. It's available. I wrote down, we're going to close.
I wrote these down early this morning. I want to read these to you. Because faith does this. Giving of thanks.
Giving of thanks is an act of worship. Like it's more than just being grateful. Number one, it says that Jesus says, where are the nine? Where are the nine?
Were there not ten that were cleansed and has nobody returned except the Samaritan? It says that he, when he realized he was healed, he returned. And so the first thing that giving of thanks does, it brings me into his presence. It literally brings me into his presence.
Psalm 104 says what? Enter his courts with thanksgiving in your heart. Enter his gates with praise. I can't return to him unless I, like, the other ones were still being obedient.
Don't get me wrong. They were doing what he told them to do. But this guy went NGB. He hit the button.
And he said, I can go back to that later. Everybody else is doing that. But there's another level here. And I'm returning to the one that brought this into my life.
Thanksgiving brings me into his presence. Number two, it does this. It lowers my inhibitions. I forgot about acting cool all day long when that was happening.
Right? It was like, I was so overwhelmed with what was happening. I didn't care what it looked like. What did he do?
He said, he cried with a loud voice. When he realized he was healed, he cried with a loud voice. David, in 2 Samuel, chapter 6, it says that as he's bringing the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem, that he danced before the Lord. It says his wife, Michael, looks out the window and sees him doing this.
It's called a whirl. Like, he didn't care. He didn't care. He leaped.
He whirled. He danced because he was overwhelmed with the presence of the goodness of God. He said, if you think that's something, I'll become even more undignified than this. See what happens a lot of times.
We see people, we think, man, she's crazy. Man, I got, he's crazy. But stop for a minute and ask God, maybe they were delivered to something that I don't even know about. Don't ever bash somebody for their unashamed praise of the Lord.
I feel like this might be a message one day, but number three, lowers my inhibitions. Of course, alcohol can do that too, right? Been there. Number three, it keeps me humble.
It keeps me humble. It says that he, with a loud voice, but then it said what? He fell on his face at the feet of Jesus. What happens sometimes?
When we receive breakthrough, we begin to honor our faith instead of his grace. See what happens? I'm one of the nine. Man, did you see how we walked out of that thing?
And when we walked, we got healed. And when I held my hand like this, my finger, this turned clean. And then I did it a little with this. And all of a sudden, our faith becomes the thing that we're glorifying instead of the one that gave it to us to start with.
And so returning to give glory keeps it in perspective. It keeps me humble. Number four, it recognizes God as the source. You've heard people say the healer, not the healing.
Like returning to him to give him glory turns me to the one that is the giver instead of focusing on the gift. And so, we see too often we get so caught up in our breakthrough that we failed to return to the one that gave us the breakthrough. And when I returned to him, David, in 1 Chronicles 29, he says, it's in your hand to make great. It's in your hand to give honor.
All authority is yours. All kingdom is yours. You're the head overall. And for this reason, we thank you.
Everything we have comes from you. And so giving of thanks recognizes God as the source. And the final thing is this. It magnifies God.
It magnifies God. To give someone honor, to give him honor means to glorify, to magnify, to think about it. It makes him big. It makes him so big in my life that the thing that I'm needing or the thing that I'm living in becomes so insignificant.
Like I want you to make God big in your life. All those other things just fade away. The things that we think are a big deal. And I get that they, in this realm, they're a big deal.
But you got to quit living here. And see when I returned to him, when I turned to his presence, when I exalred him and mad at him, and exalred him and magnify all that he does and all that he does. All that stuff doesn't even matter. Giving thanks will supercharge.
It's like, I'm not a good, I'm terrible at driving a clutch. My wife will tell you that. She says I'm terrible at driving an automatic. It's like gas brake, gas brake, gas brake.
It's like there's an ongoing joke about how I make everybody sick when I drive. But it'd be like having a five speed car and there's like a hidden sixth gear you didn't even know about. And that's what giving glory to God will do. It only exists in the spirit realm, but it's there.
Let's finish, we're done. Go back, let's finish with this verse because it all sums it up. I've heard a lot of people over the years, what I think is teach this verse incorrectly. Because the guy comes back to Jesus and Jesus says, your faith has made you well.
And they'll say, this guy received something that the others didn't receive, which he did. And they'll say he got saved because this word means saved. Well, nobody could get saved until Jesus died on the cross and resurrected. So people that believe that, then they say this guy got saved.
It doesn't even make sense because everybody Jesus healed was unsaved. If you ever think about, well, should we pray for the sick that are unsaved? Everybody Jesus healed was unsaved. So we should, as was this guy.
But here's what I believe this guy, he did receive something the others didn't receive. The others were cleansed. They were healed. The leprosy was stopped.