Life Is More: Garbage and Gratitude | Part 4

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

Listen, hope you all had a great Thanksgiving.

I know uh my family and I did.

We did the uh cutting of the Christmas tree, went hunting for that yesterday, and uh killed it and then brought it home.

So that was a good time.

But listen, when it comes to Thanksgiving, I think we're all aware that it's usually a time where there's an increase of sweets, there's also an increase of waste lines, and also family drama.

It just comes with uh the holidays, and also what comes with the holidays is an increase in garbage.

We actually, uh between Thanksgiving and New Year, we actually um throw away 25% more waste, and it adds up to about one million extra tons of garbage.

And I can only assume that's just extra food and gift wrap and old school assignments, those kinds of things.

Uh, no question.

But I think I'm gonna take a hard turn.

For some of this this past year, our garbage may actually weigh a little heavier than it normally does.

I've sat down with many of you and I heard your stories, but for some of us, uh life has delivered the garbage of job loss.

For some of us, it's delivered the garbage of relational conflict, of death, of isolation.

And even for some of us, divorce.

For some of you, it's truly been a throwaway year where you've experienced paralyzing depression, anxiety, abuse, and addiction.

And with all the loss and the change and the frustration and the pain that we may have experienced this past year or even beyond, guys, the tendency is that we just want to go ahead and quickly wrap it up, put it on the curb of 2023 and hope that something new and normal will come a month from now as we enter into the new year.

But as eager as we may be to count our losses and move on, the question is this is that what if God wants to teach us that there is more to this junk in our lives, that life is more?

What if he wants to actually teach us that, you know what, he's in this garbage with us, and that we have a God that actually takes our garbage, transforms it into a gift to turn up our gratitude?

This is the question that awakening family member Barbara Jandu was faced with a year ago, and a story that we want to unpack with you here today.

So would you welcome to the awakening stage, Barbara?

Here she is.

Awesome.

Hey Barbara.

Well, if you're not familiar with Barbara, she is actually a therapist.

She's a blogger, she's an author, and you'll see her and her family usually experiencing the services out on the uh bench out there outside, and you sit out there not because the music is too loud or because of the smell of our garbage on stage, but you sit out there with your husband Ravjeet, son Solon, and O'Rion uh because of a rare lung condition that you have.

And on top of that, last year, really this time last year, you received, I think, some significant garbage, uh, a diagnosis of cancer.

Uh I can't fathom how devastating that was, stage four lung cancer.

And can you tell us just about this diagnosis, Barbara, and just the initial impact that it had on you?

Yes, when I think of the word impact, I think of like a car crash.

And it's kind of felt like that.

Um I I found out about this lung disease that I have, this inherited lung disease called Alpha 1 antitrypsin deficiency about 10 years ago, although actually I was born with it.

Um it's incurable.

The damage to my lungs is irreversible.

And um, you know, when the pandemic hit a couple years ago, uh air purifiers and masks became my best friend.

Um and then on top of that, uh finding out about lung cancer, um, I didn't find out about the lung cancer first.

My doctor called me.

I was walking in the door, just had an MRI done, the phone was ringing off the hook.

We still have in landline, so you know, for you kids that don't know what what that is.

Um, and I was told that I have 20 tumors on my brain and hurry up and get to the ER.

And so I went to the emergency room and they gave me a whole bunch of steroids.

Uh they did a biopsy on my lung and ruptured my lung.

They punctured it, and so I had to stay in the hospital.

There was a bunch of waiting, trying to find out if I'm gonna qualify for a certain type of medication, um, and then some more waiting, trying to figure out if I was going to have brain damage after doing the um radiation to my brain.

Uh, found out that I had two tumors on my spine, so yeah, it was a lot of garbage.

That is garbage.

And and the the initial shock and impact of that, um, I've experienced that in my own family, my father uh being diagnosed with an incurable cancer.

And uh, to be honest, guys, when when someone tells me, when I hear news like that, and we all hear news like that, that Jesus is in the midst of it and can actually redeem it, I mean, I personally just want to put them out on the curb.

Uh but despite what I may feel like doing, I know that I still needed to lean into God's truth, which actually says that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character, character, hope, and that there is something that Jesus somehow wants to produce in all of us in the midst of this rubbish that we experience within life, to show us that he's been in the midst of this garbage with us and that he is a God that takes our garbage and he transforms it into a gift to actually turn up our gratitude.

And Barbara, it was in your latest book, The Field Guide, Finding the Way Through a Difficult Diagnosis, that you wrote about this kind of mental fortitude and this deep trust in God.

And after several weeks of just sitting with this harsh diagnosis, you stated this.

You said, I knew I needed to do whatever I could to prepare myself for the battle to come.

So I adopted the mindset of a warrior because I began to realize this battle would not only be physical, but mental, emotional, and spiritual as well.

You mentioned to me this warrior mentality, this is really it was like an unbridled assurance that early on in this cancer you said that God was going to Romans 8.28 this, whether I was gonna be a part of it or not.

If you're not familiar with Romans 8.28, it's where the apostle Paul writes these words, and we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

This is a passage that's actually sometimes used harmfully, prematurely, towards someone without actually getting into their mess and empathetically feeling their pain and recognizing that before ever delivering hope that they can receive.

You had hope early on and this faith that was just strong.

Where did this conviction come from?

You know, Dave, I it was unexplainable.

You know, Paul talks about when you're really anxious to just pray and God will give you this peace that surpasses understanding.

I had that from the very first moments in the hospital.

I just went in with this mindset of just, you know, God is gonna work this out for his glory and for my good.

And so I just started praying right away.

Um, started praying over the lung scans that, okay, the next time they do the x-ray, Lord, let it just be a little bit smaller because I just want to show people that you are so big and so good and so amazing.

Um and the the mindset of the warrior comes from Ephesians 6.

Uh we don't wrestle against principalities of uh we don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but we wrestle against principalities and powers that you can't see.

So I knew I was gonna have to do this like war on my knees.

Um there's that song that says, Um, if I fight, I'll fight on my knees with my hands lifted high.

Oh God, the battle belongs to you.

And so I just knew that it was gonna be his battle.

Um I just started praying.

I just started praying and I just said, you know, God, you can do this.

Um faith like a mustard seed, you know, I just held on tight.

Um Hebrews 4.16 says to come boldly to the throne of grace.

And so I went, okay, we're being invited to the throne of grace.

Um Jesus in uh Matthew 7 has like this really great sense of humor.

He's like, if you go to your neighbor in the middle of the night because some guy shows up at your doorstep and you weren't expecting visitors and you're just knocking on his door, he's not gonna open the door because you're so special and you're so cool.

He's gonna open the door because he wants you to like stop knocking so you can go back to sleep.

And so he invites us to keep seeking, keep knocking, keep asking.

And so that's what I did.

I think this is a great example of having a faith that is really anchored in Scripture and the truth of God's word and uh how God, you know, is moving to heal you of this cancer, and with my dad with the same fortitude and faith, never healing him of his Parkinson's, it's a mystery.

Uh, but we know that there are other forms of healing that God provides, all culminating with the eternal healing for all of humanity.

And and so today, through Barbara's story and also through the Bible, we're gonna be reminded that Jesus is in the recycling business of our garbage.

For we're gonna hear from Barbara, but we're also gonna remain true to our 2023 Jesus-centric vision of dipping into the gospel of Luke again.

We're gonna look at one of the most famous passages on gratitude, Luke chapter 17, verses 11 through 19.

Luke 17:11–19

So if you have your Bible, if you're able to pull it out, while the passages on the screen, you can also find it on our teaching notes on the QR code, on your connections card there as well, too.

But when we look at this passage, we actually see that Jesus is actually making his final ascent to the pinnacle of his mission, which was his sacrificial death for all of us.

And it's on his way to the cross that Luke describes an encounter that Jesus has with the garbage of his day.

And so Luke 17, starting in verse 11, it reads, Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee, and he was going into a village.

Ten men who had leprosy met him.

They stood at a distance and they called out in a loud voice, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.

And awakening, it's it's within this scene, like with so many so many uh within Scripture, that we're reminded that when it comes to the pain and the suffering of this world, God never chose to ignore it.

He never tried to flee from it, but instead he sent his son to come down and actually dwell within the mess of this broken world among his broken children.

And with each turn in Jesus' ministry, he was just immersed within the garbage of his world.

And it's in this scene in Luke 17 that we discover that this village had already put their garbage out on the curb, this garbage being these ten lepers.

Now, the heartbreaking reality about leprosy is that except for the very early stages of this disease, lepers don't feel physical pain due to the deadening of the nerves.

That's why a leper will walk around and have a nail in their foot and not realize the harm that it's doing.

And therefore, each abrasive use of their body actually destroys tissue and eventually it removes limbs and it and it removes their vision.

It's a reminder that when we turn to our own garbage, there's a danger of being numb to our pain in our lives, not appropriately feeling it and processing it like we should, which in turn causes way more harm than good.

Barbara, during the first initial days of uh your stay at the hospital, you wrote this.

You said, I only shed tears once during that hospital stay.

It was when I heard that I would need to go on indefinite medical leave from my job.

There's a lot in the sentence about the recognition of loss, also the internal work that God was doing in the midst of this circumstance.

But what were the things that you had to intentionally mourn in this season?

And what are the things that you're still grieving?

So the the grieving process started about 10 years ago when I realized that I've got this lung disease.

Um I can't go camping because I can't be inhaling campfire smoke.

I can't paint indoors because I can't handle the fumes.

Um anything that I do like that causes irreparable lung damage.

And so when 2020 hit, um, that grieving process got even deeper because I couldn't gather indoors with people unmasked.

Um and I love to gather with people.

Um but in the midst of this cancer diagnosis, um, I'm still struggling with, you know, kind of like leprosy, um, nerve pain because of the medication that I'm taking.

Um I have bone pain and muscle pain all day, every day.

Um it gets worse at night.

Um but you know, I'm still struggling with some of those things.

Uh just a couple of weeks ago, I was getting ready to um, you know, look for a gadget in, you know, you you everybody's got that kitchen drawer where it's kind of like you can't really find stuff unless you kind of go rifling through it.

And I knew I was gonna have to ask my oldest son to come and help me.

And I just started crying.

And I'm like, okay, I'm gonna give myself permission to cry right now and to mourn this loss because I know that digging through that drawer is gonna hurt my hands.

I can't do it.

And I'm gonna have to ask for help.

And I just was crying out to the Lord, like, God, am I ever gonna feel normal again?

Am I ever gonna have my body back again?

So there's still some stuff that I'm grieving for.

Yeah, and in the conversations we've had, you've expressed that really well about um yes, God is healing and God is doing amazing things and he's good, but also this garbage really sucks.

And you've been open and honest about that too.

And I think guys like these lepers, we can actually uh instead of expressing our emotion and what we're losing, we can actually numb the pain.

And uh I think it's just so important that we recognize that we all face trauma.

And our natural bent is to minimize the need to name and process the heartache and loss for what it truly is.

And we sometimes don't do this because one, we're just not in touch with our emotions.

That's my personal battleground.

I think many times we just don't admit loss and pain because of the shame and because of the fear that comes with such a vulnerable act.

To take our garbage and actually bring it to light admits that we don't have it all together, that we're not in control.

And though on the outside we're pretending that all is well.

Deep down, many of us are hurting, we're depressed, we're anxious, we're raging, we're binging.

And so, due to the religious law of these lepers, these garbage bags of society, they were required to live in shame outside the city limits, remaining at a distance from the rest of the world.

And guys, we do the same with our own personal garbage, keeping it all at a distance, even from those closest to us.

Here's the question.

But what if God is asking us to courageously let others know about the garbage that we've experienced and the trauma and the pain and the loss that comes with it?

You mentioned in your book the need to find a tribe.

You wrote this, uh, you said, you'll need members of your tribe to validate your feelings without over-reacting or offering unsolicited advice and definitely without making it all about them.

People who can convey hope and respect and encouragement while holding space and gently offering different perspectives are worth their weight in gold.

Um, the faces on the screen that we see here, they represent a number of the core members of your tribe.

And Barbara, how hard was it to admit just need and pain?

And how did processing it with them help you?

Well, you know, I work as a therapist, so I'm used to helping other people with their garbage, so I'm not the person to, you know, reach out and ask for help from mine.

Um you know, Ryan said last week, if tragedy strikes, that's when your priorities get really clear.

And I realized that I was gonna need some prayer warriors to come alongside of me.

Not prayer warriors, but prayer warriors.

And so I invited some people to come alongside and just battle with me on my knees.

Um I also invited some people who are not yet believers in Christ because I wanted them to bear witness because I had this feeling that God was gonna do something pretty extraordinary.

Um when things got scary, uh, friends would send a a word or a prayer or a psalm, um, like Psalm 7, 13 through 14.

I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

Wait for the Lord, be strong, and let your heart take courage.

Wait for the Lord.

Um so I was raised in a non-Christian family, my family of origin.

Um, none of them are Christians.

Um, so my sweet husband and our boys, and my tribe of colleagues and friends, and my church family are my family.

Um, and there's just so many precious friendships that have grown out of this last year.

Um Thomas and Kelly and Addie have known me for 20 years.

Tina and Megan encouraged me to write the book.

Galila prayed on the phone with me, and Renee came to the hospital.

Uh Christina and Nassim sent Marco Polo videos to me when I was looking really gnarly.

Like on days when I'm really super healthy but I'm not wearing makeup, I still I look really scary.

But when you've got cancer and not wearing makeup, it's like super scary.

Um, Christina invited me to become part of the prayer team when I was starting to feel a little bit better.

Um Vita Strength and Courage was super inspirational.

Um Janet brought so many meals delicious meal, so she's really good.

Um but you know, for the first time I was actually able to feel God's love.

Um you know, there's a difference between knowing that God loves you and actually feeling that God loves you.

Um but people showing up in such just amazing ways for me actually let me feel like God really loves me and I didn't have to earn it.

And that's such a beautiful example, the power of community and really awakening.

It's just uh so important and another reminder.

Like, who are the safe people that you can let in and actually just tell about the garbage that you're experiencing?

And maybe even support with support of a counselor, a professional counselor, or a therapist.

But also hear me on this: even if no one ever knows the greatest depths of the mess that you are in, Jesus knows.

There isn't a tragedy in our world or in our hearts that he hasn't experienced.

And you see, Jesus isn't repelled by your garbage, he joins us in it.

And whether it's a garbage that is self-induced or just a bypot of this broken world, he joins us in this garbage.

When it was about 20 years ago, when I was about 20 years ago, I had my own sort of skin disease.

Now it wasn't leprosy, it was like a mix of, I don't know, eczemaceritis, it's still a mystery.

But anyway, I actually let it go for almost a year.

And the top of my feet were became this uh has anyone eaten?

Okay, scaly, bloody, pussy mess.

I mean, it was just the entire top, and I have large size 14 feet, so it was just the whole thing.

And I did not go to the doctor.

You may wonder why, it's because I'm a dude.

We don't go to the doctors unless like we're bleeding out, or our wife says you're not gonna touch you anymore.

And so, and by the way, dude is synonymous for idiot.

Okay, so I finally went to the dermatologist, I went to the best in town, I went to the examination room, he comes in, asks me questions, asks me to take off my shoes and socks.

So I take off my first shoe and sock, and I kid you not, when he looks down, his reaction was, oh my god.

That was like, this is a professional, all right?

Like it was a little it was a little shaming, I'll have to admit.

I don't know what embarrassing failure or garbage that you're carrying with you this past year or beyond, but guys, you need to hear me on this.

Our God is not disgusted by it.

He doesn't look at it and say, oh my God, or oh my me.

That's cheesy church humor, I'm sorry.

But guys, what our God does is he joins us in our mess.

He takes our garbage, he actually turns it into a gift to turn up our gratitude.

Now, luckily for these lepers, and I mean luckily, there was no way they could pretend like everything was alright.

Unlike the imperfections and insecurities we hide from others, their struggles were front and center for everyone to take notice, and that is right where God wants us to be.

An honest people about our true, unfinished selves, desperate for his healing.

And so these lepers cry out, Jesus, master, have mercy on us.

You see, in hearing the stories of this great healer, these ten lepers, they had no other choice just to put but to cry out to Jesus.

And so Luke's narrative continues in verse 14, where it says, When he saw them, he said, Go show yourselves to the priests.

And as they went, they were cleansed.

Awakening, Jesus loves to recycle the garbage of this world.

For he was on his way, this path to the cross to bring final, eternal renewal for all of humanity, and he just couldn't help himself from liberating and healing people along the way.

And as with each miracle of Jesus was a little different, sometimes requiring a level of faith, sometimes he required no faith at all.

For this particular miracle, Jesus wants to test their.

Willingness to simply trust in him.

And so he tells them to go show yourselves to the priest, which is an act a leper would do to be declared clean after they were cured from leprosy.

And with this one small step of faith, Scripture tells us that they were then healed on their way to the priest.

All these lepers needed was enough faith just to follow Jesus in this one command: go show yourselves to the priests.

And yet I am sure they were questioning the logic of this to follow this request, knowing that they had not been healed.

To put themselves out there facing even more public ridicule after years of being shamed and ostracized.

But guys, this is the small, simple faith that our God requires of us.

God doesn't, he doesn't require a blind faith that inflates our outlook on life.

He doesn't demand a faith that is void of doubt or even doubt.

Blind faith.

He doesn't demand unbridled optimism without fear.

Hear me on this.

Faith isn't the slogan that you've heard, let go and let God.

It is actually grabbing tightly onto God and allowing him to take the next step.

God wants us just to trust in the fact that he can come through even when we think he can't.

And sometimes he doesn't in the way that we had hoped.

You wrote about faith in your book, and you said this, Barbara.

You said, faith and hope have been inextricably linked in my journey.

It meant that I stubbornly refused to give up on the thoughts that God would heal me in his own time.

Some days were harder than others, but I always came back to reminding myself of God's character.

Not knowing why God chooses to heal and other times he doesn't.

How did you balance the tug of war of having such a stubborn faith while also wrestling with the human condition of just faith and doubt?

So I go to the scriptures because that's where I find I find my hope and my safety.

So in Mark 9, a man comes up to Jesus and asks, if you can heal my son.

And Jesus is like, dude, if I can?

You know, if if you can believe, anything is possible.

And the dad's like, okay, help my unbelieve.

In Matthew 17, same story after the fact, Jesus said, Heal this boy of a demon, cast it out.

Disciples were like, why couldn't we do it?

Um Jesus is like, you have little faith.

If you have faith like a mustard seed, then you could move a mountain.

And they're probably thinking, like, dude, mustard seed?

Mustard seeds are really s tiny.

By the way, dude, you know, it's a loose translation from the original Greek, so you know.

Um mustard seeds are tiny, but they hold on really tight.

And that's what I did.

I didn't do anything special.

I wasn't like this, you know, super awesome, like, you know, faith-filled whatever.

I just held on.

Um, like the song says, I didn't, um all I did was praise, all I did was worship, all I did was bow down, and and God saved me.

And um I had to stay still.

All I did was stay still.

That's hard for somebody like me.

Um when I was first diagnosed, somebody shared a metaphor of um Moses holding holding up his arms, and his arms got really tired when when he was doing what God told him to do to part the Red Sea.

Um, and a friend came along, she said, I'll hold up one arm, and this other friend's gonna hold up your other arm.

And then after the Red Sea was parted, the Israelites had to walk through.

They had to take a step and another step and another step.

And so it's been a little bit harder, ironically, after I heard the words, no evidence of disease, praise God, right?

Cancer's gone, but I'm still walking because I still have to continue in the faith that those you know walls of water are gonna stay where they are.

And so, you know, doubt might show up here and there, and I just have to like cast it aside because um, you know, if you're doubting, like you're like a double-minded person tossed to and fro.

You can't really expect anything from God.

Um, and you know, perfect love casts out fear because fear involves torment.

And so if fear shows up, which is my go-to, because I was raised as a little kid to be really fearful.

And I just have to say that's not perfect love, and I have to cast it aside.

But it's a daily struggle.

Daily struggle, and at the same time, I think you you're helping model this kind of faith of Moses, just one small step at a time, these lepers, just one small step.

And and could God be asking us to just take the garbage and the mess that we've been experiencing this past year and actually just go take a small step and go show it to the priests?

Just to recognize that no matter how messed up or heavy our garbage is, that we can still trust that he's going to, as you're use your words, Romans 8.28, this causing all things to work together for good of those who love him.

That our God is in the recycling business and he wants to take our garbage and turn it into a gift to actually turn up our gratitude.

And and Barbara, this is what I admire about how you, and I want to use the word, you chose to embark on this journey, this cancer journey, and to recognize that God was bigger than the circumstances that you were experiencing.

But also you did this.

You also realized that you couldn't change this garbage of cancer, but that you were going to allow the garbage of cancer to change you.

And you mentioned that through this harsh journey of diagnosis and treatment, that God was actually uprooting some things and helping you become, I think, mirror more of his likeness.

And you wrote this in your book.

It says, I don't think my diagnosis was God's way of punishing me.

That said, I do believe that there are lessons to be learned in every trial and every struggle.

And so, can you share with us what God was teaching you when it comes to the pruning and planting that occurred through this experience?

Yeah, so I'm an Enneagram two with a wing three, and so that means I struggle with pride.

And I was arrogant, you guys.

I was like, oh, I'm living a healthy lifestyle, I don't expose myself to any kind of smoke or anything.

You know, I was raised with smokers, but you know, I'm I'm exercising, I'm eating clean, I don't need to go and get my lungs checked out like most Alpha 1 patients do every year.

Um so I had to repent of that.

Um I had to learn how to rely on the Holy Spirit and to listen.

Um I had to, you know, practice listening prayer.

Um, I had to practice um reaching out for wise counsel and not trying to do it on my own.

Um, really leaning into my community and learning how to love and appreciate my family and friends like never before.

There were three friendships that grew out of this that are just beautiful.

Um, Susanna and Shadi and Joy.

Um we still check on each other several times a week.

Um, and also not making a single big move without consulting with the Lord first.

And you know, just taking it one day at a time.

But most importantly, um to just stay humble because you you can't even take a single breath without God.

And just that those words that you said about just um waiting and listening.

And I think for all of us, with the garbage that we are experiencing, one day we'll experience whatever that may be, can we have that similar posture of just surrender and just being able to say, we're not gonna quickly move on from this, but we're actually gonna sit in it.

We're gonna ask the question to God, like, what is it you want to renew in my life in light of what I'm experiencing here?

Is it to be more vulnerable with others and more real with myself?

Is it actually to transition some things in our lives, moving from really angry to gentle or deceitful to honest, greedy to generous, prideful to humble, impatient to patient, or like my continued growth edge, you know, self-serving to sacrificial.

But the ultimate question remains if we just want to say yes to being a part of the renewal that God is doing in the garbage.

Because when we allow him to transform our garbage into a gift, guys, there's no other response that we have than his gratitude.

And you see, with Jesus, once he heals these ten lepers, the story doesn't stop there.

Luke chapter 17, now verse 15, says, one of them, when he saw he was healed, came back praising God in a loud voice.

Luke 17 · chapter mention

He threw himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him, and he was a Samaritan.

And for it was the one Samaritan leper who not only took notice to the miracle of his physical healing, he came to the startling fact and conclusion that this truly was the Son of God.

And so he rushes back to Jesus with this unrestrained gratitude, living out the words of Psalm 136, one give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.

In awakening, will we ever get to the point of just thanking God for the garbage and that he's in the midst of it, even if we never experience the gift in our lifetime?

For me, the easy option is just not to be grateful, uh, but to be cynical.

It's a simple way that I can detach myself from my emotions and hide the fact that I'm actually experiencing loss and pain.

And then when things blow over or I stuff them under and we all of a sudden go back to normal, all of a sudden I move from cynicism to entitlement, thinking, you know what, this good life, I'm the one that produced it, I'm the one that built it.

Yet what the brokenness of our world shows and the garbage of our lives shows is that we aren't God, and He is.

And therefore, every good and perfect gift is from above.

Therefore, even in the midst of our dark valleys, we have a lot to be grateful for, thanking Him, even without experiencing any kind of renewal.

That we have a God that is again in our garbage, he seeks to take our garbage, transform it into a gift to turn up our gratitude.

And Barbara, in your book, you mentioned about the need to call out and celebrate those unexpected blessings.

You called them mini miracles, you quoted C.S.

Lewis, who said this in difficult times.

Yeah, so honestly, being thankful after the healing is way easier.

I'm I'm like the loud leper, like, woo-hoo, God did this, this is amazing.

But in the midst of it, you know, like in 1 Thessalonians 5, it says, to rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in all circumstances, give thanks.

That for this is the will of God.

Like you want to know what the will of God is, it's right there.

Um, but that's hard.

And so sometimes it looked like a whispered prayer in the shower after I was able to walk down the hallway all by myself.

Or sometimes it was just, you know, lifting my hands and praising God on a Sunday morning while Robbie and Marcella and the worship team sang over me because it felt like they were singing over me, just noticing that the Holy Spirit is in my living room also.

Um, it was being thankful for the small things, the tiny things, the tree that was other times it was telling pretty much anybody that would listen, hey, I serve a really big God.

I used to have stage four cancer, now I don't.

Um and uh just nowadays it's you know, when I wake up and my hair is a frizzy, crazy mess, just thanking God that, you know, the patchy bald spots grew back again.

And okay, God thanks for the frizz.

Um but more importantly, learning how to abide in Christ, learning that um rediscovering the access that we have to the Father because of what Jesus did for us, and just learning how to be more grateful for the giver than for the gift.

That's good.

You had mentioned too, you prayed that God would restore your hair, and he did that, and I would appreciate a little of those prayers my way, all right.

But intentional gratitude, it's so difficult, yet it's so important, so powerful.

You know this because, and you write about this in the book when it comes to the just psychology of it and your therapy background, but it's so healthy for us just to take time, guys, to just carve out some time and just to be thankful and to list the things that we can be thankful for, even when we're going through some really trashy stuff, just to thank him for these unmerited blessings of just the the air we breathe, the changing color of leaves, the fact that uh, you know, we have friends that we're connected to, the things like food and shelter that we take for granted.

God deserves our gratitude for these blessings as well.

And awakening, may we give God our gratitude.

Hear me on this, not only for his presence in the midst of our mess, but that he has been in the garbage with us in this world from the very beginning.

That ever since our pride contaminated creation and infected our hearts, that he has been on a mission of love to restore each and every one of us through his son Jesus.

You see, this is ultimately what Jesus was really seeking to communicate through this miracle here in Luke 17, that we all find ourselves in a spiritual wasteland separated from our creator, and that he was on a mission to heal his creation, and that this healing would be more than just a physical healing, but it would be an eternal healing.

It would make us whole again.

As this miracle story, guys, it could have easily ended with the Samaritan just thanking Jesus.

But it actually ends with these sobering words from Jesus.

In verse 17, it says, Jesus said, Were not all ten cleansed?

Where are the other nine?

Has no one returned to give praise to God except the Samaritan?

Then he said to him, Rise and go, your faith has made you well.

Guys, the scriptures are once again revealing the scandal of God's unmerited favor.

You see, in the midst of these lepers, being a part of the so-called family of God due to their Jewish heritage, it was the one outcast, the hated and despised Samaritan, who was granted not only physical healing but spiritual healing as well, a foretaste of what has made we remain confident that God is present in our mess.

He takes our garbage, he transforms it into a gift to turn up our gratitude, but may we also acknowledge this that the greatest gift that we could ever receive is God's unprecedented gift of salvation.

Barbara, you wrote about this in your book.

Knowing that I am saved through grace and believe in God's own Son brings a great deal of relief and gratitude.

My Lord Jesus is a reason I even have access to the Father at all.

It's by Christ's work on the cross and the certainty that God has raised him from the dead that I know I am not only an image-bearer of God, but also a child of God.

Tell us when your ultimate healing occurred, trusting in Jesus as your leader and your eternal rescuer.

So my spiritual, my spiritual healing started when I was seven years old.

I was raised by non-believers, didn't go to church, didn't take me to church.

And there was a neighbor who ran a little after-school Bible study with a little flannel graphs, and I just knelt down in her front yard one day and asked Jesus into my heart.

And at that point in time, I felt like he was I was holding on tight and he was saving me from my circumstances, but I found out later on he was saving me from my own sin and the consequences of that sin.

And so that's that's kind of where it all began.

And now I just hold on to the the anchor of hope that is referred to in um Hebrews 6, and I'm just holding on to where when this life is over, um, I'm just gonna go to heaven and get the party started early.

I tell my kids that all the time.

Like, you know, when it's my time to go, I'll just be dancing with Jesus and hanging out and waiting for you.

Um But in the meantime, I've got a job to do, and I'm just gonna do it to the best of my ability.

Whatever it is that he tells me to do, I'm just gonna take that next step.

That decision you made when you were a child.

It's very similar to what we see here with the Samaritan.

It's actually called conversion.

See, this leper, he realized that he could not save himself from his eternal brokenness, and only Jesus could.

And for some of you, you've had a garbage year.

At the same time, this could be one of the most pivotal years of your entire life when you finally took that small step to just trust in Jesus, not only with the outcome of whatever mess you may be going through, but also with the healing of the spiritual disease that we have all been born into.

We're gonna end our time here with just a time of prayer.

And for those that have trusted in Jesus, you've walked that line across that line of faith.

It's really just an opportunity for us once again just to thank God that He's in the mess, to just have not the amount of faith that you have for that.

It's just the presence of faith and trust.

For some of you, we just want to take a moment here and just to guide you through a prayer of doing exactly what Barbara did when she was a child, and really the whole meaning and point of this passage here, that there is a spiritual rescue that's for all of us, and the choice is yours.

But that God offers it up through the trusting in his son and the work on his cross to repair our hearts, to mend our relationship back with our creator, and to become a part of the family of God, to be his child.

And we want to give you some space to do that as well, too.

And so as we um conclude this time, I would love for us just to stand as we pray.

Is that okay?

And so, God, first, as followers of you, we just want to stand here and once again just lean into the truth of your scriptures, that you're a God that's present, you're not absent, you're here with us.

There's stuff that we hide, it's garbage.

We hide it from those closest to us, yet we acknowledge right now, you know.

You know it's there.

And you want to heal.

And we ask that you would just do your healing work.

God, there's some in this room to just need to take a step and just going to a safe person to say, this is what I'm dealing with.

There's some in this room to just do it, need to admit there's stuff that's happened that they just haven't acknowledged, and they just need to name the pain and the loss and to allow you just to continue to do your healing work and to turn whatever that is into such a gift.

How you do that I have no idea, but it's an amazing miracle that you do.

You did it with these lepers, you do it with our garbage too.

God, for those that don't know you, maybe they're ready right now just to take a step of faith.

Just in the in the quietness of your heart, like that Samaritan, I ask you to just turn back.

And simply just say this prayer, say, Have mercy on me.

I'm broken.

I trust in your rescuing work on the cross, just to repair my heart and my relationship back to you.

And from here on out, you're gonna be my king, my leader, and my rescuer.

Thank you, God, for taking our garbage, transforming it into a gift to turn up our gratitude.

And so we leave here as a grateful people.

We know that you're renewing right now the garbage and the mess that we're in, but we know that you promise to renew this world, and we lean into that and we trust in that.

We're so grateful that we get to be called your children.

And we ask all this in your name.

Amen.

We hope you are blessed by this message.

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