God on the Go: What is Gratitude?

Gratitude. Have you thought about its meaning? Do you truly feel gratitude? Julie talks about how we say ‘thank you’ on a daily basis, but often it’s done without truly considering the depth of how it’s meant or said. Today, the story of Jesus healing ten lepers, and only one returning to express gratitude, is an excellent illustration of this point. We think you’ll express genuine gratitude differently after listening to this episode today. Let’s dig in!

What’s New!

Monday Bible Story:

• Jesus and the 10 lepers, true gratitude.

Tuesday Key Verse:

• Luke 17:15-16 – “One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him…”

Wednesday Prayer:

• Dear God, thank you for loving me. Thank you for the way you take care of me. Forgive me when I forget to give you true gratitude for all you do. In Jesus’s name, amen.

Thursday Question:

• What is something that you are grateful for?

Friday Fun Fact:

• Q: How many times a day do we say thank you?
• A: Five times a day…but researchers say that 3 of those times, we’re not really thinking about what we’re saying!

 Special thanks to George Fox University for sponsoring the God on the Go Podcast!

Show Notes:

To get this week’s episode and daily text prompts, text the word Go to 89419. If you are in Canada, text GodOntheGo to 866-729-1065

Transcription:

Is there a song you’ve heard that you just knew that you knew the words, but then it turned out that maybe you got some of the words wrong? I sure have. I’m Julie Lyles Carr, and you’re listening to God on the Go, part of the Purposely Podcast network. And I’m here to help you make the minutes matter. I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve been belting out a song as I sing along to a playlist, and then someone either laughs at a word that I sing or a sentence, or they stop me and they say, that’s not how that goes. What? Yes, it’s! And then I’ll look up that word or part of the song and find out that I really didn’t know the word. It’s a completely different word or sentence. Has that ever happened to you?

In our next few episodes, we’re going to be taking a look at gratitude. Now, maybe you haven’t heard the word gratitude before, or you’re not quite sure what it means, or maybe you have heard the word gratitude and you think you know what it means, but maybe, just maybe there’s something to it you haven’t thought about before. Now, whenever I hear the word gratitude, I think about saying thank you to someone for something they’ve given me or something they’ve done. Thank you and gratitude kind of go together for me, and that’s certainly part of gratitude, but is it all of it? Researchers say that we say thank you about five times a day. That’s the average, but three of those times that we say thank you, we say it without really thinking about it. We say it to be polite or because it’s expected of us, but we haven’t really said it from a place of deep appreciation, and gratitude means to show appreciation for something. To stop and really think about what someone has done, what it took for them to be able to do this for you, where the resources came from, the kind of work that went into it, that really shows deeper appreciation to pause and to think about this thing that’s been done for you. It makes me wonder how many times a day I say thank you to God, but I’m not really stopping to appreciate all He has done for me.

There’s a story about Jesus in the New Testament that talks about this. Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem, but while he was on the road walking there, 10 men came up to him and asked him for help. Now, these 10 men had a horrible sickness called leprosy. Leprosy is just awful. It causes sores all over the body, and people can lose parts of their body as the disease gets worse. In Jesus’ time, people who had leprosy often had to leave their homes and their towns so that they wouldn’t spread the sickness to other people, and it meant that they didn’t have food or jobs or places to live. So, when these men saw Jesus, they called out to him and asked him to heal them. Jesus told them to go to the leader of their church and that they would be healed. But guess what happened? All 10 of them were healed, but this is the really interesting part… only one of the men came back to thank Jesus, sincerely, giving him gratitude. Luke 17 says, one of them when he saw he was healed, came back praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus’s feet and thanked him. And Jesus points out that all of the 10 men were healed, but only this one man came back to show gratitude. Yikes. Do you say grace at dinnertime, thanking God for the food? In our family we do, but I got to tell you, sometimes I’m a little distracted. I’m thinking about the salad that I forgot to put on the table, or I’m noticing that my fork didn’t get completely clean in the dishwasher. We say thank you for our food, but am I really thinking about what all God has done to make sure that I have food, that he sent rain to water the vegetables and the fruits, that he provided money to buy the food, that he gave us a kitchen to cook that food in. I’m telling you, it can be all too easy to get lazy with our thank yous.

So, remember this week that gratitude is more than saying thank you. It’s really stopping to think about and to thank God for what he does in your life. And the same thing goes for when you’re showing gratitude to your friends, your teacher, your parents, your coach… Sure there’s a time and a place for giving a polite thank you and moving on with your day. But now that you know the real words about gratitude and what it really means, let’s make sure we’re giving real gratitude when we should.

I’d be so grateful. I’d give gratitude if you would text the word GO, that’s G-O to 89419, and we’ll send you all kinds of goodies via text to go along with each episode of God on the Go. God on the Go is sponsored by George Fox University, where each student will be known personally, academically and spiritually. I’ll see you next week.