This is a guest post by Tracee Persiko. Tracee resides in the Northern VA area. She is a practicing private practice counselor.Tracee enjoys speaking on topics including: leadership development, cultivating character, second mile living, identity in Christ, and carrying the weight of your influence well. Her heart is all about empowering others to believe different and live different. You can also find her on Twitter and Facebook.
- Two Words That Change Everything
There are two powerful words in the English language that changes everything. These two words are expressions of a heart that is grateful. These two words fill the heart of another with appreciation. These two words change the hearts of all involved.
Thank you.
Thank you are the words of a grateful heart. Thank you takes the heart’s gratefulness from just feeling it to the next level of living it. It makes all the difference.
I have been camping out in a story of gratefulness in the bible that has been rocking my heart. This gratefulness comes from a man who had nothing, and who was also considered to be nothing. This man had no reason to be grateful as disease dictated his life and grief. He is the exact person that has changed my heart of gratefulness.
The story begins as Jesus was traveling on a road along the border of Samaria and Galilee. Along that road stood a community of men who had been thrown out of their homes and lives due to the disease of leprosy.
They say Jesus was approaching and shouted out to him for mercy and healing. That day they risked what was left of their hope and believed this man could heal them.
Jesus shouted back, “go show yourselves to the priests.”
If I were one of these lepers, I might have been confused by those words. “Was I healed because he didn’t really say….”
They took Jesus at his word and set off to find the priests. Along the road feeling started to come back to lifeless limbs. Their skin, which had been dead for so long, started to mend –fingers started to move again.
One of the men realized he was healed and returned to Jesus. He fell at his feet praising him for his grace. This man was filled with a thousand thank you’s of gratefulness. I wonder if he even made it to the priests before heading back to Jesus.
This wasn’t just a healing for this man. Jesus gave him his life back. He was dead and now alive again. This man was really seen for the first time in a long time. Life was restored to him.
All ten lepers were healed that day. Gratefulness is what made the difference between feeling something and expressing it. This man’s whole life expressed his thank you through the response of gratitude.
I am no different from this man. Jesus came and gave me my life back as well. I was once considered lost and now I am owned by my God. At one time my life looked aimless, grief stricken, and lost.
He has matched the depth of my pain with the depth of his matchless love.
I want my life to tell the story of gratefulness. A heart that responds out of gratitude looks and sounds different. A heart that’s grateful makes all the difference.
Your life has been given back to you. Does your life express that gratitude?