The Gratitude Gap

Well hello and good morning. Good morning balcony. Thank you. My name is Mark, one of the pastors, and I want to welcome all of you, those of you here in this room, those of you joining us on our live stream, wherever you're at, we are so glad and grateful that you are with us. In fact, I just want to say right at the very top that I know I speak for all of the pastors when I say that we are so grateful for you as a congregation. Twin Lakes Church, you are one of the most amazing congregations on the planet as far as I'm concerned. God bless you, we love you, and we just praise God for you. So thank you and really, it's such a blessing and I really can't do justice to that.

But as we look forward to this week where we are reminded to be thankful, this weekend, next weekend, we're going to be focusing on both gratitude and grace and today, gratitude. Now let me see, show of hands, how many of you would say that thanksgiving is one of your favorite holidays of the whole year? Yeah, a lot of us. I love, it might actually be my favorite holiday of all just because it's so simple, right? It's really like step one, take something like a turkey and it's kind of bland but if you make it taste really good, it's awesome and then you throw in just a ridiculous amount of carbohydrates and if you're lucky, you have room for pie.

And Elizabeth touched off a real controversy this weekend with this whole pumpkin pie and pecan pie thing because last night I said, "I can't recall ever having pecan pie." My wife thought that I was suffering from senility and Adrian questioned if I was even a Christian or not. That's how deep this goes but I've just always thought that if you make something just basically out of nuts, it's intended to kill you. So some of you already took offense to that but it went so far that someone brought me a pecan pie this morning. I kid you not, it's waiting for me over in the staff breakroom so knock yourself out, whatever kind of pie you like, I just hope you have an amazing week.

But of course the most important part of Thanksgiving is the actual Thanksgiving part, right? The giving thanks and whether it's this Thursday or any other time when we are intentional about expressing gratitude, there's something about it that fills our tank, our souls, our hearts and you may know there's just a lot of research that backs us up. I just read an article that was put out by the Mayo Clinic. It says this, "Expressing gratitude is associated with a host of mental and physical benefits. Studies have shown that feeling thankful can improve sleep, mood and immunity. Gratitude can decrease depression, anxiety, difficulties with chronic pain and risk of disease." And then check out this line, "If a pill could do all this, everyone would be taking it." Wow.

I mean that's a pretty strong statement but again the research really abounds. You may be aware that there's a professor named Robert Emmons up at UC Davis. He's a leading expert in the benefits of gratitude and in a book called Gratitude Works he says this, he says, "People who just keep a gratitude goal are 25% happier, sleep 30 minutes more per evening, exercise 33% more. They experience up to a 10% drop in blood pressure and a decrease in dietary fat intake up to 20%." And again you've probably heard much of this type of things and so we're convinced I think that gratitude is a good thing and that it's good for you.

But today I want to shift the focus away from just the personal benefits to how our gratitude when it is expressed benefits others or not. Because let's go back to this Mayo Clinic thing. Would you just read out loud these first two words? It says what? "Expressing gratitude is associated with a host of all these other benefits." Expressing it because it's one thing to feel grateful. It is another thing to share it, to express this. And this brings us to what Andy Stanley, a pastor, calls the gratitude gap. And I'm indebted to Andy Stanley for this concept as well as some of the thoughts I'm going to share today.

But here's the big idea. There is a gap between feeling gratitude and expressing gratitude. I can feel all sorts of grateful feelings for my wife, Laura, but if I never share those with her, she would have legitimate reasons for feeling underappreciated, taken for granted, and over the course of time that will create a gap in our relationship. And again, this can happen in all sorts of human interactions. For example, last month the holiday was Halloween, right? And our street, Halloween is like every year. People come from all over the place and have their kids trick-or-treating on our street. And this year was no exception.

And you know this from your own experience, but the first trick-or-treaters to come to your door are the littles, right? Little preschoolers because they got, you know, 6.30, 7 o'clock bedtime, got to get this done. And I love, this is like the best part of the evening for me because this year we had some kids. Clearly this was their first time ever trick-or-treating. Their parents had coached them up on what to do, knocking their open. Trick-or-treat, thank you! We haven't even given them any candy yet. They're so excited. They want to get these lines right. They've been memorizing, you know.

And the one little guy, he comes up, he was probably all about two feet tall, just so cute. And I opened the door and he's like, "Thank you! Happy Halloween! Trick-or-treat! Merry Christmas! Thank you!" He got extra candy, by the way. But have you noticed as the night goes on, the kids get increasingly older, taller, which kind of decreases the charm factor, if you know what I mean? This is around the time of the night when the Lord tells me I'm becoming a Scrooge, which is true. But you know, when you open the door and you're greeted by "Trick-or-treat," a six-foot guy dressed like a werewolf, but that facial hair is his own. It's like, you know, "Got any candy, mister?" I'm being honest.

I'm thinking to myself, "Dude, you know, why don't you drive your car to a store and buy your own candy?" Just being honest. And I know I'm a terrible person. I shouldn't judge. But here's the thing. In the absence of kind of sincere gratitude, something goes missing. It's the gratitude gap. And you know, this is not something new. This is something that actually Jesus even experienced in his own life. And I want to show you a fascinating account of this. It's in Luke's gospel, chapter 17, and we're going to be looking at verses 11 through 19. If you want to look that up on your phone or you've got a Bible, you can follow it on screen.

But starting at verse 11, it says, "As Jesus continued toward Jerusalem, he reached the border between Galilee and Samaria. As he entered a village there, ten lepers stood at a distance, crying out, 'Jesus, master, have mercy on us.'" Now, this border area between Galilee and Samaria, this is like a religious, ethnic, no man's land right there on the border. And you can tell how attractive this real estate is because in at least one of the villages, they've portioned off a place to serve as a leper colony of sorts. And it's kind of a double difficulty because just as you're living in this weird kind of cultural border land, if you're a leper, you're living in really a border between life and death.

You're alive, but you're not allowed to live with anyone except other lepers. You're cut off from your community, your family, your friends, your children. And you know, in a milder way, we experienced a little bit like this at the beginning of the pandemic. Remember the lockdown? And everyone had to retreat into their own little lockdown bubbles where you're isolated and it's lonely. You remember that? That's how these guys lived all the time on lockdown permanently. And if that wasn't bad enough, people didn't just think that you were unfortunate for being a leper. No, they actually believed that your disease was evidence of God's judgment upon you for your clear sin. And so again, there was this double edge side to it.

And so these 10 lepers, they've banded together because they're like the only people that will accept you are your fellow lepers, the only people you can be with. And when they realize that Jesus is approaching, they cry out from a required distance. They can't even run up to Him. They call out from a distance. Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. And I love this because without any fanfare, without even saying a prayer or anything like that, it says He looked at them and said, "Go, show yourselves to the priests." And imagine these guys thinking to themselves, "I think He skipped a step." Like the healing part.

Because the only thing they have to show to the priests at that point is their leprosy. And yet Jesus has engineered this moment so that they will be able to first show their faith. And so, to their credit, off they go. And at some point, we don't know, was it seconds? Was it minutes? Was it hours? Was it days? Suddenly, your skin that's been covered with ugly, knobby sores and disfigured fingers and faces that they've kept hidden for months, perhaps years. Suddenly, they're healed. They're clean. And now, man, they're laughing. They're jumping around. They're high-fiving each other. I mean, they have experienced a miracle in their own bodies. This is like the best day ever.

And now, it's a foot race to find the nearest priest. Because after that, you get to go home. See, the priests were like the health inspectors when it came to leprosy or other things that made you unclean. And so, until the priest declares you clean, you can't go back to your family. You can't go to the synagogue. You can't go to the temple. You are just cut off. But now, they can see it. They can imagine. He's going to say, "You're clean." And as soon as they can get back home, they are hugging their kids. They are kissing their wives. They're seeing this in their own mind's eye.

But one of them, when he saw that he was healed, came back to Jesus, postponed whatever reunion was awaiting him. He came back to Jesus shouting, "Praise God!" And he fell on the ground at Jesus' feet thanking him for what he had done. This man was a Samaritan. And if we were part of the original audience, we would say, "What? Are you kidding me? The only guy that came back is a Samaritan? It also infers, by the way, that the other nine are not. In fact, I think they're from Galilee. They're like "Yes, that's where he came from." You know, maybe, "Hey, we went to the same high school." I don't know. But they feel like Jesus is one of them. And he's their people. But a Samaritan, the only one who expresses gratitude?

And you'd think it would take a lot to shock Jesus. But clearly, he is taken aback when this happens. In verse 17, Jesus asked, "Didn't I heal ten men? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give glory to God except this foreigner?" To appreciate the context here, you have to imagine something like, you know, the American South during Jim Crow. This is how hard the lines of segregation are between two people groups, between Galileans and Samaritans and the tension that exists. And this is how it's glaring. And so the word that is used for foreigner here, this is the only place it appears in the entire New Testament, right here in verse 18.

However, when archeologists were excavating the temple site in Jerusalem, they found two stone tablets. They were like signs that were used in the temple grounds. This one right here, this is in a museum in Turkey today, but it uses the exact same word that we see in Luke's gospel, verse 18, in our story today when it says, "No foreigner is to enter within the balustrade." That's a rope strung between posts to form a barrier. They're not here, you're not able to enter within the balustrade, round the temple and enclosure, whoever is caught will be himself responsible for his ensuing death. Welcome to the temple. Please know, flash photography, try not to get yourself killed.

Again, that's how hard these lines were drawn between these groups, and yet it is the outsider that comes back to give thanks above all else. And Jesus said to the man, "Stand up and go. Your faith has healed you." Now, the obvious moral of the story is be like the one, not like the nine. But here's the twist. All ten had faith. All ten went and sought out a priest before they were even healed, and when it happened, you have to think all ten of them were equally ecstatic, full of so much gratitude. But here's the problem with the nine. They felt it. They didn't express it. Not to Jesus at least.

And when you or I do the same, it creates a gratitude gap between the receiver of the gift and the giver. In fact, have you ever noticed this? I found this to be true. People who do not say thank you quickly often do not say it at all. I mean, I'm often guilty of that same thing. People who do not say thank you quickly often do not say it at all. And it's not like that was their intention. You just get distracted. Other things get your attention, and next thing you know, the time has gone by. And so today I want to again say it is so good to have an attitude of gratitude. We have to cultivate that in our own hearts and lives, but please do not keep it all tucked inside. Express it.

And isn't that the kind of person we all want to be? A person who is generous with their gratitude and their praise? I mean, I want to be that kind of person. And so in our remaining time, I want to point out three simple observations from this story and then move on to some application. And these observations are, they kind of have an edge to them, but I think that's faithful to the story, how Jesus responds. Hey, where are the other nine? And so I don't make these to make us feel guilty, but actually for us to just be cognizant of these realities within the dynamics of our relationships.

Because here's the thing, every act of kindness, every gift presents an opportunity, an opportunity that we will either meet or an opportunity that we will miss. And so write these down because if you want to deepen your character as well as your relationships, then we all do well to be aware of these things. The first observation is this, it's that unexpressed gratitude feels like ingratitude. It feels like ingratitude. And the irony is you never intend that. You are grateful, but if you don't express it, it feels like it's experienced by the giver as ingratitude. There's just something about how the human heart is wired. We gravitate towards recognition, towards gratitude.

Someone says thank you to you. That draws you in. That's a happy conversation. Essentially what they're saying is mission accomplished. You intended to bless me and that's exactly what you did. Thank you. And again, there's no gap there. On the other hand, ever send someone a gift and then days go by, week, maybe two, something like that, and it's just crickets. And you start to wonder, did they even get that gift? How about this one? Ever have someone politely ask you if you received their gift? I know I'm not the only one, okay? And it's talk about feeling like a dork. They think your gift got lost in the mail. In reality, it's like, well, I was meaning to thank you, but excuse me while I go crawl back under that rock over there.

And we've all been there. We didn't intend to be there, but that's how it's experienced. Here's the good news. It's not too late. It's not too late to express your gratitude. In fact, you could make that a goal for this week if something comes to mind. Some person you know you need to thank. It's not too late. They might have already forgotten, probably have, but you can just say either write, call better yet, tell them face to face, I just have to tell you that thing you did for me, you know, years ago, it still blesses me to this day. And you can fill in the blanks. They will not resent that at all. That will actually be well received.

And you know what? If that's not an option because that person is no longer with us, it's not too late for you to derive some blessing. Tell others about how that person blessed you, how he or she impacted your life. Honor their legacy. Because again, the reality is, left unsaid, unexpressed gratitude feels like ingratitude. Second observation, unexpressed gratitude can also feel like rejection. Rejection. Like I said, I have no doubt at all that the other nine lepers were filled to the brim with gratitude. How could they not be? Jesus gave them back their lives. And yet, however you slice it, in the final analysis, the gift took priority over the giver.

It wasn't their intention, but that's what happened. And when someone feels more appreciated for what they can give than who they are, that stings. That feels transactional. That feels taken for granted. Or how about this? Have you ever noticed that it is easier to brag about your spouse, your kids, a friend? It's easier to brag about them to someone else than it is to the people that you are bragging about. You know what I'm talking about? I mean, some of you, if you have the misfortune of asking me, "How's my family? How's Laura? How are your kids?" Be ready for a few minutes because I'm going to tell you about the amazing wife that God has blessed me with. They're going to tell you about our kids and stuff like that.

And even if my kids or my wife overhear me doing that in the church lobby, it's not the same. It's not the same as with... Take a moment, you know, in private, and I share those same things directly to them. My mom was a master at this when we were growing up. In fact, she still is because she had a way every time she'd be in a conversation with a friend or one of her sisters and they'd be talking about the kids. And my mom would say something nice or the other person would say something nice about me or one of my siblings. Every time she would say, "You know, I was talking to so-and-so today and this is what they said about it. This is what I said." And it basically came down to, "Mark, I'm so grateful for you. Mark, I think so highly of you. You're a blessing to me. You're a blessing to others. And I am blessed to this day because she was direct in expressing her gratitude."

Some of you know people, and maybe you may have experienced this yourself, they have waited their entire life to hear their father, their mother express something good about them, something they appreciate that they are proud of. And it goes both ways because there are parents who long to hear the same from their adult kids. And in the absence of these words, these expressions, "Seeds of doubt will take root, leaving people to wonder, am I really deeply loved?" Conversely, when we express these things, man, express gratitude feels like appreciation. It feels like acceptance. It feels like being esteemed.

And so this Thanksgiving week, if you want to touch someone's heart, share yours. Share it. Express it. And you will breathe life into those relationships. And again, there's no better time than this week when we start to think about what we're thankful for. But what we're thankful for is not even as important as who. Right? I mean, we live in a beautiful…we live in paradise. Ocean on one side, mountains and redwood trees on the other side. We're all grateful for that. That's the easy part. But who are you grateful for? I can tell a redwood tree I'm grateful for it until I'm blue in the face. It's not going to change the tree at all. But when I share it with the people I love, wow, that's powerful.

And to make this super practical, this weekend we've got available these really cool artistic designs that a woman in our church, Heidi Nash drew these. These are, if you want to kind of have a template for making a gratitude journal, this one over here on your left. This is, you know, if you're like to write things in, you can write things in each one of these little rays, names, people, whatever. If you're an artistic person, this one on the right here, there's 30 boxes for one for each day of the month. And you can doodle in little pictures and stuff like that.

But think about this as starting an inventory, a list of people that you will express your gratitude towards. And by the way, Heidi made these completely available to us for free. She said, "Print as many as you want and we have." And so again, they're available out in the lobby. I encourage you to use that as again, a springboard for applying what we're talking today. And by the way, let's thank Heidi for doing this. We didn't ask her. She just volunteered this and it was super, super timely. And so again, thanks, Heidi. And you can grab a couple out of the information desk right after this service because like it or not, unexpressed gratitude feels like ingratitude, rejection.

And finally, it feels like entitlement. Unexpressed gratitude feels like entitlement because entitlement is the opposite of gratitude. Entitlement says, "I deserve what I get. I deserve it." And this is honestly where I think the nine went astray because most of Jesus' public ministry was in Galilee, in their area. Most of the messages that He gave, most of the miracles He performed, they took place in Galilee, their home region. And so even though they're now on this borderland, they still hear stories as people travel along the border and they have to listen from a distance, but they pick up bits and pieces and they hear that Jesus fed thousands of people.

They're here, Jesus fed thousands of people with a couple fish and some loaves. And I don't know that Jesus, do you hear Jesus can calm the storm? He can walk on water. He can even raise the dead. And not only that, but our guy Jesus, He can heal lepers. Wow. And then the day arise and they hear that Jesus is heading their way and they're thinking to themselves, "This is it. This is our day. I mean, Jesus is one of us. I mean, how can He not heal us of all people? And after all we've suffered, how could He not heal us?" And yes, even in our suffering we can feel entitled. God owes us.

And so when He gets within earshot, "Jesus, master, have mercy on us. Have mercy." And when He does, it's no longer ten lepers. It's nine Galileans and one Samaritan. Nine conclude, "God has finally vindicated us. One understands, one understands." God has given me grace and nothing, nothing will stop Him from turning back, running to Jesus, falling at His feet and shouting, "Praise God, thank You, thank You." So who's done something for you that you could not ever do for yourself? Bring you into this world, raise you, give you your first job, help pay for your education, help you experience healing, recovery.

Who comes to mind for you right now? Because here's the application. Be like the one who went back in order to thank the one who enabled Him to go forward. Who was that for you? Well, be like the one who went back to thank the one who enabled you to go forward. A parent, a spouse, teacher, friend, a co-worker, maybe a professional whose skills blessed you, helped you recover from some sort of illness or helped you with your finances. Whatever it is, be like the one who went back. And of course, we're all, if we call Jesus a Lord, we are indebted to the one who came and became one of us and took upon Himself the curse of sin and death and rose victoriously from the grave, which we could simply never ever do, right?

And so we owe Him our greatest thanks and praise of all. But again, ask yourself, who needs to hear me say thank you? You might even write down their name and right now make a commitment to be the one who comes back. Simple as that. But few things will warm your faith and your relationships like expressing gratitude. And so let's ask God to help us put this into practice. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your goodness and Your grace. Thank You for the opportunity, Lord, to just sit with Your Word, with Your people, to worship You.

And Lord, we all have our stories. We all have our burdens that we bear. And we thank You that You are mindful of that, that You invite us to cast our burdens, our anxieties upon You because You care for us. But Lord, we also want to be people who are mindful not just of what's wrong, but also we want to celebrate and be grateful for what's right. And so Lord, I pray that You would already be filling our hearts with blessings, not just material blessings, but the blessings of relationships, the blessings of people. And Lord, help us to put feet to what Your Word calls us to today, to be people who are generous in terms of our gratitude, our praise, our appreciation.

And may we be a people, Lord, who are just known for that in their winsome, grateful hearts. And so Lord, I again, I ask for Your blessing upon this week, upon each person within sound of my voice. And we thank You for all that You do for us, God. We are so blessed. I pray this in the matchless name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and all God's people said, Amen. Amen.