Let's look in the God's word this morning. This is Luke chapter 17 verse 11. This is the word of God from the gospel of Luke chapter 17 and verse 11 And it came to pass as he went to Jerusalem as Jesus is talking about Jesus is going to Jerusalem and He passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee and as he entered into a certain village there met him ten men that were lepers which stood afar off and they lifted up their voices and said Jesus master have mercy on us and When he saw them when Jesus saw them. He said unto them go show yourselves unto the priests and it came to pass that as they went and they were cleansed and one of them when he saw that he was healed turned back 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 Jesus answering said were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine? there are not found that return to give Glory to God, save this stranger. And he said unto him, Arise, go thy way, thy faith hath made thee whole. Won't you remember that? Thy faith hath made thee whole. He had already been healed. So what's he talking about there? Thy faith hath made thee whole. We're going to talk about that in a few minutes. I love this time of year. Thanksgiving and Christmas, all the holiday season. It's a good time to count our many blessings and to be thankful. But every day is a good day to count our many blessings and be thankful, isn't it? I do love Thanksgiving, a day of thanks, relaxation with family for the hustle and bustle of December and the Christmas season. And then Christmas with family and friends around. What a blessing it is. We all have so much to be thankful for regardless of your current circumstances or what's going on in your life now. I know there's a lot of hardship. I know there's a lot of trials and tribulations. And no surprise, Jesus said there would be. But in the midst of that, we have so much to be thankful for. Count our many blessings. I love Thanksgiving. It's my favorite holiday of the year. It's just such a wonderful time with family and friends to relax and to really think about everything that you have to be thankful for. That's setting aside one day a year where you focus on being thankful. Now I know there's a lot of other distractions. Thanksgiving, there's football games, there's a lot of good food and all that. But in the midst of that, don't forget to really think about all the things you have to be thankful for. We all have so much to be thankful for. I'm so thankful that y'all are my brothers and sisters. You know, when I get to travel around and preach every once in a while, I always feel at home when I come in the back door of a primitive Baptist church. I just feel like it's a family reunion. I really feel that way. And it's just wonderful to know that we have this common faith in the Lord that we have. So It's wonderful that we have that in common. We have something really special. And the great thing about it is it's going to last for all eternity. It's not just for today. It's not just for next Sunday. This that we have is going to last for all of eternity. Isn't that a wonderful blessing to be thankful for? The worship and love of our Lord Jesus Christ, who's done so much for us, is something that's going to last long after all of us are dead and gone. Long after this world's gone on, long after this world is gone, after the Lord burns this place up and brings in a new heavens and a new earth, the love that we have, the love of Christ that we have is going to last forever and ever. The Bible talks about that, that we have hope, faith and love, but we won't need hope and faith anymore. Only love will remain. The hope will be fulfilled, that earnest expectation we have in living with our Lord forever. And the faith that we have that was given to us when we were born again, that precious gift of faith so that we have eyes to see the spiritual world. We won't need faith and hope anymore. We'll have eyes to really see the Lord then. And we won't need those eyes of faith. It's going to be a wonderful, wonderful day. You know, I genuinely look forward to every Sunday when I get to try to worship and praise and thank God for all He's done for me and for all of us. And I look forward to seeing all of my brothers and sisters. You know, I tell the folks at our home church that it's almost like having a family reunion every Sunday. Isn't that wonderful? A lot to be thankful for. In the best of times and in the worst of times, we have something to be thankful for. Somebody once told me that he starts his day every day when his feet hit the floor with a prayer and he thinks of three things that he's thankful for. He told me that that one thing that he decided to do years ago had changed his life. Now here's the thing, he's a recovering alcoholic. He lost everything he had, his job, his money, his friends, His family, everything. But he thought that the best thing he could do to turn his life around was to think of three things to thank the Lord for every morning to start his day. It's a great way to start the day. I highly recommend it. That prayer of thankfulness to the Lord. There's also a tremendous blessing in just being thankful. You know what I'm talking about? Just the act of being thankful. There's a huge blessing in that. Great benefits to having this attitude of gratitude in your life. You know people like that. They just exude joy. They're just thankful. They're just happy to be there. You know people like that, right? And then we all know Oscar the Grouch, too, don't we? You know, which would you rather be? I saw an article online that listed seven, this is what, it's on the internet so it must be true. These seven scientific benefits to being thankful. And I just wanted to give you these. The first one is gratitude opens the door to more relationships. Gratitude improves physical health. Gratitude improves psychological or mental health. You want to be healthier? Be thankful. That's what that means. Gratitude enhances empathy and reduces aggression. You know those empathetic people, they just exude empathy and love for you when they're around. Number five, grateful people sleep better. As I get older, I need that. I need to be more thankful right before I go to bed. Y'all won't understand that until you get to be old like me, but you'll be thankful for sleep, sleeping better. Gratitude improves confidence and self-esteem. This is less comparing yourselves to others. And you know, we're all sinners. You know, I know y'all know that. And one of the bad things about human nature is that we have this tendency to compare ourselves to others. Don't we? You know? The Joneses, gosh, his grass is a lot greener over there than my grass is. You know, got a nicer car. You know what I'm talking about, right? We do it. But gratitude improves your confidence in your own self and in the Lord and your self-esteem. And you don't find yourself comparing yourself to others as much. Number seven, gratitude reduces stress and increases mental strength. We all need a little less stress in our lives, don't we? Let's go back for a minute and look at our scripture from Luke chapter 17. Now let me set the context for you. Jesus is on his way from Galilee to Jerusalem for the last time. Now Jesus always kept the law to a jot and tittle, so he went to Jerusalem for all the feasts that the Lord had commanded Moses and the children of Israel to keep. We know that Jesus' ministry is about three years long because in the Gospel of John we see the three Passovers that Jesus kept. But I'm going to draw an imaginary map for you here. Galilee was up in the north. That's where Jesus was from. That's where Nazareth is. That's where the Sea of Galilee is. That's where Cana of Galilee is, where he turned water to wine. So he's traveling from Galilee down here to Judea and Jerusalem was a city in Judea. Well, in between Judea and Galilee was Samaria. Jesus is going from Galilee to Jerusalem. So you would think from that map. He's got to go through Samaria. Well Actually, they didn't like to go through Samaria And so what Jesus would do and his disciples unknown when they were going from Galilee down to Judea is they would go West Jordan they would go down and when they got to Judea they crossed back across Jordan because they didn't like to go through Samaria too much. But sometimes Jesus would go through Samaria. Okay, so that is the setting. Now Jesus knows that He is going to Jerusalem to die. He knows He is going to be crucified and die for our sins. But first He is making His way from Galilee through Samaria to get there. Jesus, he went through Samaria several other times. You may remember the woman at the well. So there were some times when Jesus said, I need to go through Samaria. And this was one of those, one of those times. Remember, you may remember from the Old Testament that the kingdom of Israel was split up after David and Solomon were king into the Northern kingdom and into the Southern kingdom. And the northern kingdom was defeated by the Assyrians, and many of the defeated Jews mixed with the Assyrians and others, and were known as the Samaritans. They were considered half-breeds by the Jews, and the Jews didn't like them. They looked down on them as heathens, as bad or worse than us Gentiles. So that's the way they thought about the Samaritans. Remember Jesus told a story one time about the good Samaritan? Y'all remember that story? to show some Jews that they just thought they were righteous and religious, but actually the Samaritan who helped the man who was beaten and lying by the road and in need, he was the righteous one, not them. The Jews were just self-righteous. Righteousness was not because of the family you were born in, Jesus was teaching them, as the Jews thought, but was actually shown by the one who loved his neighbor, like the good Samaritan. So Jesus is going to Jerusalem by way of Samaria, and he would do this sometimes because he had a lesson he wanted to teach his disciples. You know, one thing to remember when Jesus interacts with people on his way, and he heals them, teaches them a lesson, he has followers around, particularly his disciples. And they're listening, and they're watching, and they're going to write about these things someday. So that's what's going on here. And so I believe he's doing these things in public to teach his disciples then and us now. So this is for us now too. We should learn some lessons from what he's teaching here. So he's going through Galilee and he runs into these 10 guys in a village and they're lepers. They have this terrible disease called leprosy. In the Bible, leprosy is a symbol for sin. Leprosy did to the physical body what sin does to the soul and spirit. This was an awful disease It was so bad that your skin would literally rot off while you were still alive I'm sorry to be so graphic, but I'm making a point here It gets so bad that you would lose feeling in your fingers and your toes your extremities it would destroy the nerves so that you couldn't feel any pain and where it affected your body. I always thought, wow, that'd be great. You know, no pain. But actually, it's the opposite of that. It's the worst thing, to not have any pain. Imagine if you can't feel pain in your fingers or hands, for example, and you grab that, you know, you grab that skillet or something, you know, you jump back, but if you can't feel any pain, you'll just burn your hand, okay? So that's the way this disease worked. What would happen when the leprosy got really bad, fingers and toes and everything would fall off because they'd be so injured all the time, not feeling the pain that they would just fall off. It was just an awful disease. They could get burned or injured so badly that their extremities would literally just rot or drop off. Sorry to be so graphic about that, but I want you to understand that that's the way sin is in our lives. I want you to get that graphic picture. When you get involved in sin and you don't repent, but get deeper and deeper into that sin, your soul and spirit become numb to it. Just like your fingers and toes become numb to the leprosy. And eventually you can do irreparable damage to your soul and spirit. That's why sin is so insidious and so damaging. I've heard this story over and over from addicts. They get so involved in these sins of addiction, drugs and alcohol and other things, that they destroy their lives and the lives of their families and friends. It gets to the point where it's almost impossible for their souls and spirits to ever recover. Of course, nothing is impossible with the Lord, as we're about to see. By the way, it's not just the sins of addiction that can destroy us. It's often the more insidious sins that we don't think about that are just as damaging or even more damaging. Sins like gossip. Sins like judgmentalism. Sins like self-righteousness. Many more. Those aren't necessarily as visible, but they can be just as damaging or more damaging. So here we have these 10 lepers standing away from Jesus and his disciples. And now leprosy, the other thing about leprosy is it's a very contagious disease. Back then, lepers had to leave their families. They couldn't live at home with their families, couldn't be around their friends. They had to live on their own in colonies. They were called leper colonies where all the lepers lived together. Not have any contact with anyone except other lepers. Now, isolating lepers was done In the Law of Moses, this was instructions given to Moses by the Lord to keep them from infecting other people and wiping out all the tribes of Israel. That's one of the reasons it was given. The only way a leper could go back to his family was for a priest to inspect him and declare that he was clean, he was cured of the disease, free from the disease. But for most of them, it was a life sentence and they died. with that disease. So in the meantime, during their lives and their everyday life, if they came into contact with anybody who didn't have leprosy, they had to cover their mouths like this and shout, unclean! Unclean! So people would know and stay away from them. And people would go on the other side of the street and stay way away from them. What a terrible life to live. And that's very much the way we are as sinners. We're ruined. We're helpless. We're separated from God. Unclean. That's our true state before a holy God. So these guys are standing way away from Jesus and calling out to Him. Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. That's the only thing they had to plead. Lord, have mercy on us. First of all, Notice this, they knew who Jesus was. Now, he's three years into his ministry now because he's on his way to Jerusalem to be crucified. He was a respected rabbi, teacher, master. They're acknowledging him. They knew him either by reputation or revelation or both. And they said simply, have mercy on us. And that's our only plea to our Savior today, sinners. Lord, have mercy on me, a wretched sinner. And it says that Jesus saw them. I love that little phrase, Jesus saw them. You know, you can imagine that these guys were probably well known in this area. People were used to seeing them. But can you imagine that people just, you know, averted their eyes and didn't want to have anything to do with them? You ever had anybody treat you that way? But Jesus saw them. He saw them. And Jesus sees us for who we really are, too. He does. He sees right through you. He sees right to your heart. And that sounds like, oh no, you know. But here's the great news, is that He loves you anyway. He knows you better than you know yourself. I mean, all the bad, all the good, everything. And He loves you anyway. He sees you. Isn't that wonderful news? And he says to them, go show yourselves to the priest. That's it. Just go show yourselves to the priest. You know, they had to be looking at each other going, what? Go show ourselves to the priest. The priest is just going to say that we're unclean lepers. You know, that's not going to help. Doomed to this life that we already know we have. But then something pretty cool happens. They go anyway. They go to the priest. Now I wonder what they're thinking. Okay, you're the master. I'm going to do what you say. I'm going to go see the priest. They're showing faith here. And they must believe that something good is going to happen, so they go. Notice Jesus didn't heal them first and then say go. You know, sometimes Jesus would do that. He would heal them right away, just like that. But this time he didn't. He didn't heal them right away. He said go. and they were cleansed on the way. You see that? They were cleansed on the way. They're going by faith and they're cleansed on the way. I think that's kind of like our journey in this life. If we have faith in the Lord. Now I'm not talking about eternal salvation here. I'm talking about having faith and the journey of your life here on earth. Jesus says go, live a life of faith in me. Live a life of faith. Trust me. Trust me. And if we do that, we'll be cleansed on the way. There's a great lesson in this. When we're initially converted and we're baptized, and we start to try to follow what Jesus says, we continue to obey Him, we'll be cleansed. We'll be converted along the way as we obey him in faith. And that's just what happened here. They were cleansed on the way. Now we're getting to this lesson in gratitude. That was all just a prologue. Now the real lesson is in gratitude here. It says, And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God. One of them, one of the ten, ten percent of them, He saw that he was healed. He saw, he noticed what the Lord had done for him. It's a challenge to all of us. Do we notice? Here we are, we're trying to live this life of faith and obedience. Do we know what the Lord has done for us? Are we cognizant of that every day, what the Lord has done for us? Well, that's the example, I think, here. Do we notice what the Lord has done for us as we go along our way? Do you think that the other nine didn't know that they were healed too? I mean, come on. They're all healed. I mean, they've had leprosy. They had this life that was not much of a life at all, and now they're healed. Do you think they didn't notice? No, they noticed. I can't imagine that they didn't. So what was the difference? This one saw, he really saw where his healing came from. And we can do that too. We can notice every day where our healing comes from, where our spiritual healing comes from. He saw that it didn't come from the priest who declared him to be clean. All the priest did was look at him and say, yep, you're clean. You know, the priest didn't do anything. He saw that it didn't come from anything he did to cure himself. There's no way that these guys could do anything to cure themselves. He saw that he was clean and he knew who it came from. He saw where the mercy came from. And what did he do in response? It says, with a loud voice he glorified God. He wasn't embarrassed to give thanks to the Lord, was he? With a loud voice he glorified God. He recognized that this healing came only from God, not from anything that he did or anybody else did or the priest did. It came from Jesus. This healing came from Jesus. And the healing that Jesus brings to our soul and spirit, these sinful lives that we live, that is reason for gratitude and reason for thanks in our own lives. He recognized that This Jesus, this master, this rabbi was doing the work of God. He is God, so he glorified God. He recognized that this blessing came from God. And then there's just this spontaneous shout of gratitude. It just poured out of him. He couldn't help it. No one had to tell him, you know, you should probably go thank Jesus for that healing thing that he did for you. Like a mom will tell her little boy or girl, you know, you should go thank them. You should go thank them. Nobody had to tell him. He returned to Jesus before he did anything else. That's true gratitude from the heart that that we're seeing from this man It just overflows out of a truly thankful person. You've seen that haven't you when somebody's just truly thankful they just exude Gratitude and thanks you can't contain it Don't you have to think about it's almost involuntary? You know when you're when you're so thankful for the you don't have to think about it. You know, I'm just so thankful it just comes out and fell down on his face at his feet giving him thanks again he's falling on his face in sincere gratefulness to Jesus recognizing him as Lord giving him thanks and it says and he was a Samaritan Jesus makes that point and he was a Samaritan you know kind of like he did the the Good Samaritan. He wants these self-righteous Jews to know that this is what's important in life, not being a Jew, but being thankful, being a Good Samaritan, being thankful. The other nine were probably Jews. So the point is that that salvation that Jesus is on his way to accomplish in Jerusalem It's not only for the Jews, but for the Samaritans and the Gentiles and all peoples. And Jesus goes on to emphasize this rather explicitly. It says, and Jesus answering said, were not, were there not 10 cleansed, but where are the nine? There are not found that return to give glory to God, save this stranger. And he said unto him, arise, go thy way. Thy faith hath made thee whole. I want you to notice that. What else is going on here? Jesus makes the point that all ten were healed, but only this stranger, only this Samaritan returned to give glory to God, to thank him for his mercy. Only this one. And what does Jesus do? He blesses him. He blesses this one for returning to give him thanks. He says, your faith has made you whole. It wasn't the man's faith that made him whole physically, it was Jesus who healed him. So how was he made whole by his faith? Not only was this man healed physically, but because of his gratitude, his thankfulness, his faith, he was healed spiritually too. His faith healed him spiritually. So there was a double blessing here. He was doubly blessed. Those other nine, they got a good blessing. That was a great blessing. They got healed from their leprosy. But this one, he got doubly blessed. His faith made him whole. He had a spiritual blessing that the rest of them missed out on because they weren't grateful. You see that point? Isn't that good? Yeah. That's what gratitude to a merciful God can do for us too. We can be healed spiritually when we're thankful. You know, I know that people go through a lot and I know that, you know, some of the things mentioned here, people, you know, we live this life and we go through so much, there's so much, there's so many trials and tribulations, there's so much sickness, there's so much heartache and all of those things. But when you're thankful for what the Lord has done for you, There is a salve to your spirit that you can't really get any other way. That's the blessing here in being thankful. In this season of Thanksgiving, like I said before, we have so much to be thankful for. For everything, for every good gift, we should be thankful to God for all His blessings. And when we are, there's an extra blessing in it for us. When Ellen's husband passed away, she received a call. It was an old woman who lived 300 miles away. And she asked if she could come to the funeral service of Ellen's husband. Ellen said, well, of course you can come, but how did you know my husband Sam? The old woman spoke with this thick Yiddish accent, which is a Jewish thick Yiddish accent. She said, I read his obituary that he was one of the first three soldiers to liberate the concentration camp at Dachau at the end of the war. That's World War II, the Holocaust concentration camps. There was a long pause on the phone and she continued, I was a little girl then weighing only 28 pounds, naked and limping. I was shot in the foot for taking a drink of water. And when these soldiers, when those soldiers entered the camp, we didn't know if life was ending or beginning. And seeing us naked and starving, they took off their shirts and covered us. And both of these women just fell into a deep silence on the phone. And then she said, I always wanted to thank them, but never knew who they were. So that little girl from Dachau, now an old woman, drove 300 miles to stand at that dead soldier's grave and thank him and hug his widow. It's never too late to reach out to someone in gratitude. Never too late. And give God all the glory for it. I do love Thanksgiving. Some of my favorite memories are going to my granny and papa's house for Thanksgiving Day. Some of y'all knew them. We'd get there early. Granny'd already had a lot of things cooked. I can still remember the smells just walking in the door of Thanksgiving. They were different than the the other times my grandmother cooked. You know, they say that even more than sight or hearing, that your smell, your sense of smell, brings up memories. Have you ever experienced that? Well, the smell of Thanksgiving dinner cooking takes me right back to my granny and papa's house. Of course, there was, you know, turkey and dressing, six or seven kinds of vegetables, sweet potato casserole, all kinds of casseroles, mac and cheese, pickles. I mean, it was the worst. Relishes. It was a feast. My favorite was, my personal favorite was the lemon meringue pie with that meringue that's browned in the oven. I love that. My grandparents were thankful for what they had. Those Thanksgiving dinners were a bounty. I mean, it was something. Granny even had one of those horns of plenty. Have you ever seen those that she would put out on the table? There'd be fruits and vegetables pouring out of it. She used it as a decoration. You know, when you grow up without much, it often gives you a perspective that makes you more thankful for the things that you have. Granny and Papa grew up in the Depression of the 30s, and they lived through World War II, ration books where you were only rationed a little bit of sugar, a little bit of coffee, those things. I still have one of her ration books somewhere. Well, Granny and some other relatives lived in these cramped apartments, sometimes several of them together. while their husbands were off fighting for our freedom in Europe or the Pacific during World War II. It was a tough, scary time. They didn't like to talk about it a lot. I could sometimes pry some things out of them, but some of my uncles and cousins didn't come home. And almost all families at that time experienced the same thing. This was back in the 40s. This was a long time ago. Well, before the war, President Roosevelt made a speech known as the Four Freedoms Speech. And in the speech, he said that there were four freedoms that everyone in the world should enjoy. The freedom of speech, the freedom of worship, the freedom from want, and the freedom from fear. And that's a good thing for us as a culture and a society to try to provide for people. My granny would show me a picture she had that listed those freedoms. She had it in her kitchen. She was thankful for the freedoms that they had. Now, later, my parents were Republicans. But they loved FDR. They loved President Roosevelt. Granny would tell me, I don't care if he was a Democrat, he fed us when we were hungry. And he did. Times are very different for us now. For most of us, we haven't experienced the kind of want, and I know that's not true for everybody, but for most of us, we haven't experienced the kind of want that those folks back in the Depression did, when there was just widespread hunger, and that sort of thing. We have a lot to be thankful for. I want to look at a few more things in the Bible that we can be thankful for this season and all seasons really. First of all, mercy. Remember these lepers said have mercy on us. Let's look at Psalm 136. Psalm 136. Oh, give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good. For His mercy endureth forever. I love the repetition in this. Look at the repetition in this. Oh, give thanks unto the God of gods, for His mercy endureth forever. Oh, give thanks to the Lord of lords, for His mercy endureth forever. Do you think they want us to get that point? For His mercy endureth forever. What a blessing that is. Think about that if the Lord just says, you know, I've given enough mercy out and I'm done. We don't want that. No. We're thankful that He's still full of mercy for His children. Mercy is not getting what you deserve. Not getting the punishment you deserve. And that's God's mercy for all of us. I mean, we're sinners. We deserve death and eternal separation from God. But because of His mercy, we don't get what we deserve. You don't need mercy unless you're guilty. The innocent, the non-guilty, they don't need mercy. You've probably seen this scene on TV where someone will throw themselves on the mercy of the court. That's after The trial's over. They've been found guilty. There's no other possibility left except to throw yourself on the mercy of the court. We're all guilty of sin. We need God's mercy. And we can be thankful that he treats us with long-suffering and forbearance and is kind and merciful to us. This is the mercy Jesus showed those lepers that he shows to all sinners. Second thing we can be thankful for is grace. 1 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 4. This is the Apostle Paul writing to the church at Corinth. He says, I thank my God always on your behalf for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ. So mercy is not getting what you deserve. Grace is getting something good that you don't deserve. You see the difference in those? Mercy Protects you from punishment grace is this wonderful gift of getting something that you don't deserve We don't deserve the goodness of God's grace, but he loved us not because of anything that we've done But because he loves us just because he loves us it was his will to love us Have you have you ever had your spouse or your significant other or somebody like that ever ask you? Why do you love me? What do you love me? You know? Kind of want to know that knowing what do you love me? And you may be tempted to start listing all of their wonderful traits Well, I love this about you and that about you and this and about don't do that Don't do it What happens when those things change? They may start to doubt your love For them the right answer to why do you love me is? Because I love you Because I love you I know the circular reason I love you because I love you because I love you. But that's the perfect circle of God's love. I love you because I love you because I love you. And we can be thankful to God for his grace and love for us, even when we don't deserve it. And that's that's the reason God loves us, because he loves us. There's not anything lovable about us that he would love us. Let's talk about being thankful for the greatest gift. 2 Corinthians 9 verse 15. 2 Corinthians 9 verse 15. Again, the Apostle Paul writing the second letter to the Corinthians. He says, Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift. Do you know what that unspeakable gift is? Anybody? I think you all probably have an idea. You know, some gifts are better than others. Have you ever gotten that Christmas present where you go, Some gifts are better than others. The greatest gift of all, God's unspeakable gift, is the gift of His only Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who was given for our sins. The Lord gave Him up, gave His only Son up for our sins so that we could live. God who stayed the hand of Abraham when Abraham climbed that mountain and was told to sacrifice his son Isaac. He did not stay his own hand but gave his son for us. It's unspeakable. It says it's an unspeakable gift because we can't possibly understand the depth of God's love for us that he would do that. We can't explain it. But we should be thankful to God every day for this unspeakable gift, the sacrifice of his precious son Jesus Christ for our sins. We should be thankful for all good gifts. We should be thankful to God for all good gifts. This is James chapter 1 verse 17. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and cometh down from the Father of lights with whom is no variableness neither shadow of turning. Be thankful to God for all the good in your life. All the good and all the true good in your life is a gift from God and comes from Him. It all comes from Him. 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 verse 18, In everything give thanks for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. It's God's will that in everything you give thanks. Ephesians chapter 5 verse 20, Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Even in hard times, even in good times, we are to give thanks to God. For everything, for all things. Even when things aren't going your way. You know, you're probably sitting there going, you know, I just, I don't see how you can be thankful when you're going through some of these, going through an awful disease, the loss of somebody that you love, how can you be thankful? But the Lord tells us to be thankful in all things and at all times. You know, one of the cool true Thanksgiving stories I heard about was a grandmother who sent a text one time saying that Thanksgiving dinner was going to be at her house at three o'clock on Thanksgiving Day, except she sent the text to the wrong person. A young man 17 years old, got this text and replied to it. Who is this? You ever done that? You ever gotten a text? Who is this? She sent back a text. She said, it's your grandma. The young guy thought, wow, grandma must have learned how to text. How about that? He still wasn't sure, so he asked her to send a picture of herself and she sent a selfie back. Grandmother can do selfies too. How about that? Well, she was somebody's grandma, just not his. As a matter of fact, she's a white lady and he's a young black man. He sent his picture back to her and said, well, you're not my grandma, but can I come over for dinner anyway? So she wrote back, sure you can, because that's what grandmas do, right? They kept texting and they ended up meeting and she invited his whole family to join her for Thanksgiving. It's a pretty cool story in these times of smartphones and advanced technology that Random text can turn into an opportunity to be a good Samaritan I actually saw a follow-up to this story on TV and it's now years later and those two families are still getting together for Thanksgiving Every year it's pretty cool in it. I just love that story Our thanks to God, you know It's one thing to be thankful to God and we should be but our thanks to God should translate into love and service for one another It should spur us to action. You're thankful to God, so how do you really show thanks? I mean, you can say that you're thankful, and just like the leper did, he praised God in a loud voice. We should do the same thing. But how do you show you're really thankful in action? The way you do it is to love one another. The way you do it is to serve and help one another. That's showing that you're truly, truly thankful. It's our great privilege to show reflect God's love out of grateful hearts for all that He's done for us. You know, when I think about the struggles that my grandparents had in those days long ago, how poor they were, it sometimes makes me ashamed of how ungrateful I can be when I have so, so much to be thankful for. When we don't have anything, when we see ourselves as the sinners we are, we should be especially grateful for a gracious and merciful God. I saw a picture of a list online that a young boy wrote. He's a foster child without a family of his own. It made me really think about how much we all have to be thankful for when I read this list, and that we should never take even the smallest things that we have for granted. This was a foster child. It's a young child. You can tell by his writing. This was a foster child in Oklahoma. And he was asked what he wanted in a family. Now think about all you have to be thankful for as I read this list written in the hand of a young child. This is what he wrote down about what he wanted in a family. I want food and water. Don't hit on me. A house with running water and lights. I want love. Mom and dad don't fight. I want no drugs. Don't kill my pets. help with school, nice clean clothes, no lice, no bug in the house, clean house, clean bed with covers, don't sell my toys, treated fair, don't get drunk, TV in the house, let me keep my games, school stuff, nice shoes, my own comb, soap, nice house and safe, AC and heater, coat, toothbrush. Lord, please bless this child and all your children. And Lord, give us thankful hearts and hearts of gratitude for all, all the many blessings that you've given us. May the Lord bless you.