More than once throughout the Gospels, Jesus questioned the lack of faith of Israel and praised the faith of Gentiles. When the Roman centurion had faith for his servant’s healing, Jesus remarked, “I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel” (Luke 7:9). And to the Gentile Syro-Phoenician woman who had a demon-possessed daughter and asked for crumbs from the masters’ table, He said, “O woman, great is your faith!” (Matt. 15:28). He then healed her daughter. And here in Luke 17, 10 lepers, 1 of whom was a Samaritan, were healed; but only the Samaritan came back to worship. Jesus took note of those who did not come back.<\/p>\n
God responds to those who say, “Thank you.” In fact, the Old Testament prophet Malachi says that God even writes it down: “Then those who feared the Lord spoke to one another, \/ And the Lord listened and heard them; \/ So a book of remembrance was written before Him” (Mal 3:16). When you talk about the Lord\u2014what He\u2019s done for you and blessed you with\u2014He hears it and writes it down in a book of remembrance. This should not surprise us since earthly parents write down their children’s first words, and the cute things they say and do. The Lord’s book of remembrance is a similar type of recording for us.<\/p>\n
Some people will have volumes of books because they are always giving God thanks. We are told in Psalm 92:1: “It is good to give thanks to the Lord!” The opposite is also true. The book of Romans says that an unthankful heart is the soil in which all kinds of sin takes root: “although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened” (Rom. 1:21). By becoming people who are thankful in all things, we will set up a roadblock to becoming people who are ungrateful and fall away. As someone said, “If I am not a thankful person, I will end up an awful person.”<\/p>\n
“LORD, we are grateful for Your salvation in every way. Your grace toward us makes us stop and say, from the bottom of our hearts, ‘Thank You, Lord!'”<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" More than once throughout the Gospels, Jesus questioned the lack of faith of Israel and praised the faith of Gentiles. When the Roman centurion had faith for his servant’s healing, Jesus remarked, “I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel” (Luke 7:9). And to the Gentile Syro-Phoenician woman who had a demon-possessed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10945"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10945"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15456,"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10945\/revisions\/15456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}