"Real Thanksgiving"

"Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, Thou God of my salvation: and my tongue shall sing aloud of Thy righteousness." (Psalms 51:14) Yes, and also I wanted this verse for today! There is such power in being thankful for what God has done for us; not just the power that comes from our salvation, although that is pretty powerful, but the power in knowing that we are innocent before God; that power that gives us the boldness to enter into His praise with thanksgiving in our hearts; that power that makes us want to shout out to the world how much God loves us, because we have witnessed it firsthand. When Jesus first came into my heart, my heart felt as though it was not large enough to contain Him by myself, and I needed to share what I was thankful about, or else I was going to explode. That is the kind of thankfulness that David is trying to express here in the verse. It is not just about giving thanks for what God has done, because that is to be directed towards God in the form us praise and worship; but it is more about having a heart that is totally and completely overwhelmed by what God has done; so much so, that you cannot contain yourself, and you have got to shout it out! The other day I was listening to a message about the "Ten Lepers" from Luke 17, and I was pricked in my heart by the summary to this message, which basically spoke about shouting out thanks as loud as we shouted out for mercy. If you don't know that story, it involves these ten lepers that were standing on the side of the road as Jesus walks into town, and they were crying out with their voices lifted up, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" And Jesus told them to go show themselves to the priests, and as soon as they were headed into the direction of the temple, they were all healed; yet only one of them turned back to give thanks to Jesus. Actually, it says, And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell down on his face at His feet, giving Him thanks: and he was a Samaritan. (Luke 17:15-16) After which something else happens that I believe is Jesus magnifying what had just happened, as the Pharisees demanded an answer of Him regarding the coming of kingdom of God...
"And when He was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, He answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo, there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you." (Luke 17:20-21)